FATGIRLslim

I was told the worst news in the world this morning:

My doctor told me that I needed to rest, in order to let my arm heal.

Let me explain:

For about a year, my right arm’s been weird, like my shoulder needs to pop back into place or something. When I’ve been lying in bed and reaching over to the right-hand side to get my phone, it’s been sore to lift my arm straight up, so I’ve had to sort of… reach back and then up to bring my arm forward, if that makes any sense.

In the summer last year, I managed to pull a muscle in my shoulder, making it even worse.

Since late November/early December, my arm has been… ooh. Agony? Basically since I finished The Zero Excuses Challenge, I haven’t been able to do any shoulder presses because my right arm has just been incapable of pushing up. I can do lat pulldowns, but only if I do that weird reach-back-wiggle-up thing to get my right arm above my head.

So, after three weeks of absolute agony while I’ve been asleep, I finally caved – realising that it wasn’t going to go away on its own, no matter how often my shoulder popped back into place – and Doctor David said that I’ve managed to inflame my muscle, the one that runs from the front of my chest and into my bicep.

Awesome.

So.

No pushups in Spinning class. No shoulder press. No lifting heavy weights for the time being.

It’s like my body’s breaking down, piece by piece.

On Tuesday, I got the phonecall that the flat I’d been offered back at the end of October was finally ready for viewing.

On Wednesday, Mum, Dad and I went to see it.

Yesterday, I went and signed all of the paperwork, and:

The keys to my very own flat.

I’m gonna start moving my stuff in ASAP. I just need a cooker and a fridge/freezer before I can Move In, move in, because as I’ve said before: the last time I lived without either of those, I ballooned to 32 stones.

But!

I have a flat of my own.

I am a responsible adult. Supposedly.

Now, I’m not sure how many of you know that I’m actually on a list of medications as long as my arm.

(It’s not actually as long as my arm; it just feels as though it is. I’m on four different painkillers for my back alone, two different pills for my brain, two for my migraines, Metformin for my PCOS, and a tablet to stop me from getting acid reflux from everything else.)

Thing is, because I’m on an antidepressant and an anti-psychotic, I have to, occasionally, go to speak to a psychiatrist, to make sure I’m coping okay, and that I don’t want to slit my wrists or something.

When I went in today, I ended up talking to my psychiatrist about how diet could affect sleep and muscle pain and general well-being. It’s not something I ever expected a psychiatrist to come out and say, but he did.

He flat-out told me that maybe the best thing for my general health, as well as my mental health and my sleep patterns, would be to switch to a low-carb diet.

I was doing really, really well on the Paleo Diet before Christmas, with The Zero Excuses Weight Loss Challenge, but then Christmas came along, and it’s been hard to get back into that.

(It’s going to be even harder to get into it if I don’t get some money soon, let me tell you.)

But he suggested Atkins; starting out with, initially, 30g of carbs or less per day and then maybe 60g or less, and then 72-80g of carbs or less per day, depending on how I feel I’m doing.

He said, in studies, that when the body goes into ketosis, that it actually puts you into a sort of… a relaxed state? And it does something that helps with muscular pain.

I’ve got a whole page of notes he made while we were talking, and it was fascinating while he was talking, mostly because I knew a lot of what he was talking about, considering how much I’ve read about diets and stuff in my lifetime.

Obviously I know that, having PCOS, a low-carb diet is a really good idea for me, but it’s just doing it. It’s getting me to stop eating bread and pasta and rice and stuff again. Stopping eating the stuff that Mum’s cooking, or stopping eating the carbs that she’s cooking and just eating the meaty parts of it.

But it’s difficult.

I’ve ordered myself a copy of The Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution and The Illustrated Atkins New Diet Cookbook, and I’m not ashamed to say I bought them cheap from sellers – it cost me (or, rather, it cost my Dad, and I’ll pay him back later) just over £5 for both books – and I’ll see how I do with those.

I’ve still got my South Beach diet books (although one of them is packed away in a box right now!). They’ve got the carb contents in their recipes at the bottom, so I can use those, too.

It’s just getting my head screwed on that way.

Plenty of protein. Plenty of salad. Plenty of eggs.

Hopefully less muscle pain.

I’m still going to talk to Doctor David on Friday about Fibromyalgia, because… well. The shrink agrees that the symptoms are there.

(I wish I could remember my psychiatrist’s name! I don’t see him every time. I feel terrible.)

At the start of the year, I made a huge decision: I asked my mother to buy me a walking stick. Making longer journeys by foot has been getting progressively more painful, which is, I realise, probably pretty difficult to believe when I talk about how much I exercise in the gym.

Most of my workout is done sitting down, for the precise reason that I’m in agony if I’m on my feet for too long.

I’ve mostly been using it to walk down to the Jock Stein Centre and back home, because walking down that hill is strangely difficult. I think it’s because I’m leaning backwards a little to cope with the hill.

Today was the first day that I used my walking stick in the town centre.

I’d consider it a mild success. I didn’t get many strange looks, and only two people tripped over it or bashed into it or me while I was LEANING ON MY STICK at the bus stop.

But I got a dirty look from an OLD GUY while I was walking from the bus stop to the clinic, like, “WHY ARE YOU WALKING WITH A STICK?! I’M DECADES OLDER THAN YOU AND I’M WALKING WITHOUT ONE.” kind of a look.

I just kept on leaning on my damn stick and walked past him.

Nobody got up out of their seats on the bus back home to offer me a seat, even although there were perfectly able-bodied people sitting in the “Please get up and offer these seats to the elderly/disabled,” seats, and I had to climb up the few stairs to the back of the bus. Not that that’s that much of a problem. It’s just awkward, trying to navigate out of a seat with a bag and a stick.

But yeah.

Mild success.

At least my walking stick has roses on it, and is pretty?

-2lbs -3lbs (-3lbs/1.36kg)

There we go.

Told y’all I had my head screwed back on properly after the breakup fiasco.

It probably helps that I talked to Janey and it was friendly and good, and not at all awkward. Of all the breakups I’ve had, there are only two of my exes that I don’t speak to any more, and that’s only because one of them I wasn’t “technically” dating, if you were to ask him.

Moving off of the subject of my nonexistent love life and back to the topic of my losing weight and getting healthy:

I may be moving house again soon.

This is slightly terrifying, because I do not have a cooker or a fridge/freezer.

What I would really like, of course, is an American-style fridge/freezer or a SMEG (even although their freezers are teensy tiny) and a range cooker, because I have Big Dreams, but No Money. *laughs*

The point is, I moved into a flat near Dublin without a fridge or a freezer, and I ended up living on takeaway food, and that’s how I ended up at 32st. I’m not going to do that again.

So I have to find this stuff before I move in. Freecycle and Gumtree are good places to look.

I don’t know what I’m gonna do.

I’m gonna be an adult.

An actual, grown-up, responsible adult.

I put an order in with Food Bargains. Something like 50 packets of Ainsley Harriott couscous. Three different flavours. Four bottles of no-added-sugar Vimto. Diet Coke. And a bottle of Newman’s Own marinade. It came to just over £10.

I like couscous.

I love Ainsley’s couscous. Stuff like that will do me for a quick meal – a chicken breast done in my big George Foreman grill, a portion of couscous, and some veg on the side.

That’d do me once or twice a week. And 50 sachets of couscous will last me a long time.

I’ll admit, I’m totally worried about moving out.

I’m worried about cooking for myself and maybe going a little mad and having pancakes every night for three weeks or something.

I’m also hoping that I’ll have enough sense to not do that.

But I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?

Yesterday, my Mother survived her first-ever instructor-led exercise class.

L-R: Mum, Lorna, Matt, Me at Lorna and Matt's wedding last year

Since mid December last year, I’ve been trying to convince her to come to the new Aqua fit classes at The Water Palace with me. Twofold reasons: one, I get a lift down and back, and two, my Mum gets some exercise.

She’s been saying for ages that she wants to get her head screwed on right and start exercising and eating healthily and stuff again. I figured that the Aqua Fit would be an excellent place for her to start, but when I’d finally gotten her to book into a class last year, we both came down with a really bad cold, and she didn’t feel like coming to the class in the end.

I’m so tenacious that I went to all my classes despite not being able to breathe through my nose and potentially passing all my germs onto everyone else anyway.

(Y’all can thank me later.)

But yesterday, Mum and I went down to The Water Palace, and Mum and I both participated in the first Aqua Fit class of the year.

And she enjoyed it!

She was a little miffed, however, after she was finished and she found out that the jacuzzi wasn’t open – it opens at 4pm, unless it’s the school holidays, when it’s open all day. (Yes, they will open it for the kids, but not the adults. Go figure.) So while I was doing my Aqua Zumba, she showered and sat in the café and had lunch.

I have no words, really, for how proud I am of my Mum. She’s not really the kind of person who wants to come to a gym – or a class – and do exercise that way.

She enjoys the Wii (and recently, my little sister’s XBox Kinect, which I’d love one for myself, but at £100, I can’t quite afford it) exercise games and Dance Central, which I also love.

Anything where you can dance to Lady Gaga is good in my eyes.

So getting my Mum to come along to an instructor-led class is a huge step for her, I think, and I’m hoping that it’s just the first step.

I mean, I think y’all know me by now: if I didn’t have to leave the gym to do other things, I probably wouldn’t, until I was at my goal weight.

But yeah.

I’m pretty proud of my Mum right now.

I was going to post today about something exercise and/or weight-loss related.

But this is more important:

I am sure everyone knows that Wikipedia, Mozilla, WordPress, and hundreds of other sites are going dark today in protest of the bills, which could be used to shut down all material on the web not generated by corporations with big money lawyers — affecting everything from whether we can get unbiased news reports to how we share our own news and photos with friends. Though the House bill, SOPA, is closer to being stymied, the Senate bill, PIPA, has several dozen co-sponsors.

Find out more at http://americancensorship.org and http://www.fightforthefuture.org.

Last week was supposed to be my first Zumba® class of the year, but it was Gillian, my Very Pregnant Zumba® Instructor’s birthday, so this week was our first Zumba® class of the year.

Strange thing: when I joined the class last February, it was so busy that there was hardly space to move. I was so shy at that point, because I was still massive and was in a lot more pain than I am right now (admittedly, I’m still in a lot of pain right now, but I was in more pain then) so I stayed right at the back, at the door, so I had to move out of the way whenever someone wanted in or out.

Over the course of a few months, I sort of… got talking to people. And started working my way through the ranks, up to the front of the class.

I’ve been at the front of the class for a little while now, and I’m fine with that. I’m pretty happy to be next to Gillian, like a little mini-leader. When I told her I had a sore shoulder (dunno what’s wrong with it; it just freezes up when I try to move it some ways) she sort of went, “No, you’re not allowed to have a sore shoulder, you’ve got to be up front with me to lead the class!” or something like that, and I laughed.

There were only four regulars in the class today; everyone else either hadn’t been in a long time, or was new to the class. It was good to see the place so busy again. I love seeing my Zumba® class busy. I love looking in the mirror and seeing all of these people doing the dance moves in sync… when it happens. *laughs*

So next week, we should have a new instructor – there’s a girl who takes Zumba on Wednesday nights, who’s covered our class once or twice and said she might be taking the class when Gillian (finally) takes maternity leave – and new routines to learn.

I won’t be helping to lead the class next week, but I won’t be missing steps, either. I’m not usually one to toot my own horn, but I’ve gotten pretty damn good at this dancing thing in a year.

I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

±0lbs -1lbs (-1lbs/0.45kg)

Considering what my mood has been like this past week, I’m surprised I didn’t gain an entire stone.

I was fine for… most of Saturday night. I woke up on Sunday morning, and I felt okay, considering.

And then Monday morning happened.

I don’t know what made Monday any different from Sunday, but I would have eaten the moon if it had been made of food.

I felt like eating everything in sight.

I feel like I didn’t stop eating, all week.

It wasn’t even that I was overeating at any given time. I was just eating all the time, and it added up to too much stuff, and-

Yeah.

I got my head on straight on Friday, but it obviously wasn’t enough to pull back five days’ worth of bad eating.

At least I didn’t gain anything.

And my life can’t exactly get worse.

I don’t know what I’m doing with myself this week, if I’m honest.

I feel… I feel completely lost, somehow, just sort of drifting along. I keep saying to myself, I need to get back to Paleo eating, and then going back and having another couple of slices of toast and jam.

Like I said before, though, it’s by no means the worst breakup I’ve ever hard. I’m not eating my way through three tubs of ice cream and numerous packs of Doritos and stacks of profiteroles.

But I’m not-

It’s like I know I should care more, about what I’m putting in my body (130g bowls of Fruit ‘n’ Fibre are not healthy. I don’t care that it’s not fruit and nuts and wholegrain cereal) but right now, my brain and my heart are numb, and I…

I’m a little lost, right now.

I thought I was fine, but I’m not.

I’m a little broken, and flailing.

I’m hoping to get back to normal within the next week or so. I’m writing a lot of stuff in my diary (offline) for catharsis, and… yeah.

I need to get my head on straight again.

Tonight was my first Spinning class of the year. (I also had Aqua Fit this morning! I’m exhausted.)

The whole are between my legs hates me.

My legs hate me.

My head hates me.

But d’you know what?

It was amazing, to get my Spinning shoes back on and get back in the saddle. I feel like, even although I’m a few pounds heavier than I was before Christmas, I can do more in class.

I didn’t need to sit down, except when we were doing standing runs – my knees couldn’t take the low runs – and everything else was doing as Anne-Marie instructed.

Even although I still have a cold and was coughing a lung up at one point, it was all fine when I felt the sweat dripping down my throat.

When I was working out, I wasn’t thinking about the break-up, I wasn’t thinking about Janey, and I wasn’t thinking about anything except how good it felt to be back on a proper Spin bike.

I know my weigh-in last week wasn’t stellar.

My weigh-in this week will probably be less than stellar, but by GOD, I’m gonna exercise my ass off anyway, no matter how my heart and my head feel.

-1lbs -1lbs (-1lbs/0.45kg)

I thought I’d stayed the same this week, because I was weighing in for the first time this year on my Zero Scale and so had to weigh-in on my Weight Watchers’ scale to get my actual weight this week. I thought I’d weighed in at 24st 10lbs last week, but no.

Apparently I weighed in at 24st 11lbs last week, so.

I get to start the year with a 1lb weight loss!

Which isn’t incredible by any means, but considering the fact that I ate an entire medium-size Domino’s Americano (with an added portion of pineapple, minus the onions – low-fat cheese instead of mozzarella) last night, plus a whole serving of 5 Domino’s fresh cookies, I’m surprised I lost anything, still having that in my digestive system.

I had a bad night last night.

The plan was to eat half of the pizza last night and eat the rest for dinner tonight.

And then my relationship dissolved and crumbled in front of my eyes. I sobbed for an hour, and then…

And then I went back to the pizza.

@belfastbiker on Twitter asked me what was wrong, and I think I said something along the lines of, “I should just be glad I don’t have Doritos handy.” I could have eaten the house.

I also went to the liquor cabinet, and I took a straight, warm shot of my Captain Morgan’s Rum. I promised myself I would never, ever do that again, because it’s foul stuff when drunk like that, but.

Those are my coping mechanisms, as a food addict and an alcoholic.

I’m just glad I didn’t take the whole bottle upstairs.

All-in-all, I feel like I coped with it better than I coped with my last breakup, wherein I ate two tubs of Haagen-Dazs in two nights, three packs of cookies, a share-bag of Doritos and a tub of dip, and an entire box of Tesco’s profiteroles. Over two nights.

So eating an extra half a Domino’s medium pizza isn’t too bad.

(Considering I usually eat a large breakfast cereal at that time of night anyway, I mean.)

Week one, and it’s still a weight loss. I’ve still got 51 other weeks to go, hopefully none of which will involve my relationships breaking down.

In random news:

I’m not sure if many are aware of it, but I used to blog, back in 2004, on a self-hosted site that was entirely hand-coded in HTML. It’s always been online (since I started blogging here, anyway) at http://www.fatgirlslim.org/archive/, but during the past week, I went ahead and posted them all TO fatgirlslim.org.

If you’re interested in reading my badly-writted, swear-word-filled entries from the first-time-EVER joining Weight Watchers, you can check them out under the archives tag.

It’s almost a week into 2012 already, can you believe that?

On December January 1st, I wrote a couple of personal resolutions in my diary, but I’ve got a couple of health and fitness resolutions that I’d like to hit by the end of the year.

1. Lost at least 50lbs.

I usually don’t put numbers on my weight loss resolutions, but I would really, really like to be below 300lbs this year. I’d like to lose double this, if not more than that.

2. Do not miss classes!

It’s not like a go out of my way to miss classes – I think that least year, I missed, possibly, three or four classes, total, and that includes due to sickness and due to my trip down to London. I’d like to not miss any this year.

3. Run for at least five minutes. And then, at least ten minutes.

Considering the fact that I’ve only just started running for short bursts of time on the treadmill, this is a huge thing to aim for. But I would like to be a runner.

4. Fit into a size 30, or a size 28.

While I mentioned that I listed a lot of size 32 stuff on eBay recently, I still haven’t tried on anything smaller. I don’t think I’m small enough for a size 30 yet; I just think I’m too small for the particular size 32s I have in my possession right now, and I’d like to fit into at least a 28 by the end of the year.

5. Do not binge-eat.

An obvious resolution, but… possibly the most difficult one to actually complete. I have binge-eating disorder. I binge-eat as a method of coping when my emotions go out of whack. Even when my diet is good, I feel the need to binge-eat. It’s something I need to work on, and it’s a demon I need to exorcise.

The gyms reopened yesterday, and I was right back in there.

I’d forgotten how horrendous it was, trying to get anything done in the gym in January.

I understand that sometimes, New Years’ Resolutioners become people like me, people who see it through and don’t give up, but it’s frustrating, when there are people hogging machines and weights, when I can’t get on the shoulder press machine because there’s a guy sitting on it watching TV instead of working out.

The new Water Palace gym is pretty incredible, I’ve mentioned that before. But when it’s full?

Good lord, good luck getting to use anything. There wasn’t a free treadmill in sight. Luckily, I was heading for a Spin bike, and I got the last one. A 30-minute workout, plenty of resistance, and I was sweating by the end of it, my quads burning.

I managed to get my weights done – sort of – by adapting the Zero Excuses weights around a day or two, because I quite simply couldn’t get on the machines I needed. Too many people, not enough machines, too many people not moving.

If you’re going to go into a gym, use the gym. Don’t sit on a weights machine and watch TV, and then look offended when I ask if you’re gonna move any time soon.

(I was a little more polite than that; I think I asked, “Are you going to be finished soon?” and he didn’t even deign to answer me. He just looked at me and reached for the handlebars, which he hadn’t touched prior to my question in about five minutes or so…)

It’s just… it’s frustrating.

Roll on February and/or March. Let’s flush out the Resolutioners and leave those who are RESOLVED.

I’d quite like to actually get a full work-out done sometime this month.