the modernity ward

Are You There, Blog? It's Me, Jo

First: My Paragard IUD that I loved so well a year ago, I'm not so sure I love it. For the past about six months I've developed midcycle spotting that turned into midcycle bleeding and then there was no midcycle anymore. Past two months I've had near constant at least spotting, often actual bleeding, enough to need something not marked "light days." With peaks around periods but still, I never don't have to deal with it.

Second: My midwives said, okay, come in, we'll talk about other options plus we need to evaluate you for fibroids, because duh.

Third: My mom had fibroids. For which the treatment was total hysterectomy. 

Fourth: I have been tapering my metformin dose. Maybe this bleeding is not related to the IUD or to any fibroids, but to hormones that are still messed up no matter how much I exercise or how well I eat. Maybe the PCOS is going to get me no matter what I do.

Fifth: After considering the previous, I very much hope it's the IUD. I would even settle for fibroids. 

Sixth: I mean, I would happily raise my metformin dose again if I needed to. I don't have any side effects or long-term concerns about it but...there was something very rewarding about believing I'd healed something about myself. But, hey, maybe not. Maybe the trashed ovaries always win.

 

On the Brink

I ran six miles today. Six-point-three, technically -- the longest run since I effed up my iliotibial band in December. (No pain beyond the expected discomfort, by the way.) 

I wish you could hear what it sounded like in my head while I ran. I am poised, right now, between a valley of horrible self-talk and a peak of self-encouragement, and until I can settle on one or the other we're just going to whip back and forth between the two. 

"This is going to be awesome! Good for you, Joey! You suck and you can't do this, see how awful you feel? You need to just give up right now. Don't give up! You can do this! You've done it before and you can do it again! See how strong you are? See how much faster you can go without feeling the effort? You went out too fast and you're going to blow it! That's it, one foot in front of the other! Just keep going! Hey, look, you're almost done -- you did it!"

And that's basically how it goes all the time in there, no matter what I'm doing. 

I look terrible! I look great, look how strong I am, look at those pecs, oh shit, look at that lumpy fat on that belly, look at those thighs that still rub together. Hey, they rub together because the muscles underneath are so huge now and the little fat you have left just happens to be right there. But who cares because they're all gross and rashy from the chafing? It's not going to get any better from here. You're not funny, you know that? You think you're funny but nobody else does, nobody's going to laugh if you go up and tell a story at open mic. But hell, nobody else is all that funny either, and I'm proud of me for trying! 

I guess this is a side effect of pushing my own boundaries like a tackle dummy, digging up the grass into divots of earth with my toes. I'm waging a valiant battle against my own stupid self and having to cheer myself on for it. It's better than the times when the mean self-talk overtakes the cheerleading entirely. At least I have someone on my side, in there. I'm doing something I've never done in all my life: actually following through on the shit I said I was going to do. Go to school, finally. Find another way to tell stories. Care for my body without the safety net of metformin, make that body as strong as it can be. Find goals beyond parenting. I shouldn't be surprised when my head gets all roiled up.

Does this happen to you? Have you gone through periods of intense internal reorganization -- or just finally calling yourself on the carpet for all the stuff you always wanted to do? What was it like?

 

Greetings! Please Sit Down and Enjoy This Presentation of Everything I Ever Made is Crap

It's gonna be THAT day today: where I berate myself for not having paid enough attention to my sketchbook last week, and then for everything in it being garbage, and a waste of time, and what is the point anyway, because if people wanted to see the likes of that which I have made they would simply hie on down to the middle school art classroom and peruse the stuff that wasn't good enough to get taped up on the wall.

SO WHY BOTHER, is what I'm saying. To myself, as I run. (Forty-five minutes, by the way! Longest land run since December! I turned off the distance and pace displays on my watch so I could only keep track of time.) Oh and I got all panicky and was literally flapping my hands in angst when I saw what time it was and WHY WAS I NOT RUNNING YET.

No, I didn't have anything else to do. I just seized upon any opportunity for panic. You would think this stack of papers having to do with school finances and entry requirements would be enough to keep me busy, but those things are too stressful even to panic about so I'm just going to look at them and feel sick.

And I have to do something tonight that I very much want to do and very much do NOT want to do. This thing requires nothing of me. It requires that I sit and drink a beer in a room full of people I don't know (Lord, I hope I don't know them) and not interact, just sit there, but sometimes even the thought of visiting an unfamiliar grocery store is more than I can bear.

Complicating and simplifying matters: this is my hair right now. 

The advantages of having a mohawk are that you are forced into strutting around like the badass you aren't, when you don't feel like it, and if you don't talk people think you are snotty and brooding or something, which can be worked to your favor. The disadvantage is that people are definitely going to notice you. 

Anyway. I like to do things to force myself outside of my comfort zone, as a tonic, and sometimes I feel up for it and sometimes I don't and it's when I don't that I really NEED it, you know, so tonight I will be charging outside of my comfort zone (and seriously! not doing a damn thing, just sitting in a place!) and maybe that is what's bugging me out today. Or maybe all the Oreos I ate last night. I regret nothing -- it was a lush sensory experience that I can still recall with delight -- but a sugar-fest does give me a bit of a depression hangover.

My bravado is uneven, is what I mean.

SLUT

I self-identify as a slut.

And it doesn't matter what I'm doing (or not doing) with my vagina, or my hands, or my mouth right now, or this year, or the past two decades: I am a slut at heart. Because I get to do with my cunt and my hands and my mouth whatever the hell I want. And nobody else gets to say dick about it.

I decide. No one else. And I own my decisions and I am completely okay with every last one of them. 

And if Rush Limbaugh wants to call me a slut, that's fine, because for once in his stupid, stupid life, he'd be right.

Except being a slut doesn't make me any less worthy of things like medical care. And good manners. And basic human dignity. 

I know that the men of the Republican Party would largely disagree with that, but I don't care. The only way to rob that insult of its power is to say, yeah, you know what? I am a respectable married mother of two, a homeowner, a taxpayer, a voter, a regular visitor to an Abrahamic house of worship -- and I am a slut, down deep in my soul.

And you will take me seriously.

 

 

In Which I Am Totally Insufferable About Food for Kind of a Long Time

But what's new, huh? Winky smily face. Eh. I suspect that at least 3/4 of you are just hatereading me, whether you realize it or not. GOD, JO. SHUT UP ABOUT WHATEVER THING YOU HAVE RECENTLY DETERMINED IS THE WAY TO DO THINGS.

I'm afraid I simply can't, darlings. You know sometimes I hateread myself? True fact.

Onwards.

First I was a dick about things being organic (well, some things) and also being whole (you know, readily identifiable as to their plant or animal origins). Then I was a dick about things not having carbs in them -- sugar, white flour, potatoes, yut da dut da duh.

But hey, as long as I was being a dick about things? I was usually looking pretty hot. 

Also running behind the wagon you fall off of is a great way to get in shape.

So! People are asking me How I Did It, It in this case being dropping twenty pounds below my previous "thin" weight (which was kind of borderline in terms of BMI but it was as low as I'd been since about 21 years old so I figured it was as small as I got). There is a three-pronged approach, and I? Am gonna tell YOU what it is.

Part the First: What I Eat

This makes up about 40% of the equation. 

I eat like this, for the most part. In short: Lots of protein from meat, fish, and eggs (I aim for 100 g daily), lots of fat (and plenty of that saturated from healthy sources such as nuts and grass-fed meat and butter), and lots of vegetables, including a sweet potato here and there. A little fruit, a little dairy (butter, a splash of milk in my coffee, Greek yogurt). Occasional white potato or rice. Grains once in a while -- if I make whole wheat challah I eat some of that, sometimes I have some Kashi GoLean or some popcorn.

Oh, and I do eat an entire box of Thin Mints sometimes. Or giant bag of M&Ms or dessert at a restaurant or whatever. I pay for that -- not in guilt or weight gain, but in feeling crappy and having to weather days of sugar cravings.

Of the things that I eat, the things listed above, I eat what I feel like as dictated by my intuition. I learned that my intuition signals, both in terms of what I eat and how much I eat, get totally garbled when sugar or wheat enters the equation. I learned to make a half-recipe of challah because I will eat until it's gone; I don't bring cookies in the house unless I intend to eat every last one. My satiety signals disappear. Avoid those things, and my body will tell me it wants kale or liver or eggs or a barely cooked pound of hamburger or a huge salad with vinegar.   

This all took a lot of trial and error to figure out, by the way. I have been experimenting for years. 

Part the Second: How Much I Eat

Less than I thought I needed to. I don't advocate starting from calorie restriction, especially if (like most of us) you have a fucked-up relationship with eating, but it can be awfully edifying to measure out everything you eat, like with actual measuring cups, and enter it all into a calorie counter for a few days. Or at least get an idea of what a cup of yogurt or cereal looks like. I was way overestimating how many raisins I was eating, and underestimating peanut butter. How was this not weird and diet-y? Well, if I wanted more peanut butter, I had some -- I just measured it out. 

I average between 1900-2300 calories a day, with the occasional 3500 calorie bender and 1400 semi-fast if I'm not hungry. 

That's maintenance though. When I was dropping that 20 pounds, I had to let myself actually get hungry -- to eat less than I wanted and only eat what I needed for a while. Years of wonky insulin had left me feeling panicky if I got hungry -- because of the inevitable crash and inability to choose food that would follow -- but it turned out that feeling a little hungry is no longer an emergency thanks to a really high protein and fat diet and vastly improved blood chemistry.

Anyway, that accounts for about another 40% of the equation. Part the First and Part the Second work in tandem, as you may have figured out: I can eat the right amounts of the right foods and feel satisfied, but if I start tinkering with the foods I lose the ability to determine the right amount OR to feel satisfied. There is no such thing as "satisfied with Oreos" for me. It does not exist. There is only "No more Oreos and the store is closed." 

Part the Third: How I Move

This is about 20% of the equation. Maybe even less.

I run. Less now than I did. I cross train too: I run in the pool, I bike, I do strength training and bodyweight exercises. I probably get in three to four hours of aerobic movement most weeks, sometimes more. And maybe 30 minutes every other day of strength stuff (mostly my physical therapy exercises and core exercises) and bodyweight stuff. 

That means push-ups, some ab stuff (not crunches exactly), T-Tapp, tricep dips, and lots of planks and side planks and bridges. Nothing complicated. I am starting to add more free weights at the gym but that's a time suck. 

I do other stuff too: I stand at the computer instead of sitting. I move around the house all day, low-intensity things like tidying, cooking, walking around in the yard.

How's All That Working Out for You, Then, Asshole?

I mean, if you're eating 60% of your calories from fat, much of that saturated, shouldn't you be really unhealthy?

My total cholesterol is 200 at last count. Triglycerides 40, HDL 72, LDL 120. (That is what the lab report says. Any math problems are theirs.)

LDL ("bad" cholesterol) is calculated and not measured, and there is a chance it's artificially inflated because my triglycerides are so low. Either way, my doctor says, it's absolutely fine. The triglycerides are AMAZING, the HDL is AMAZING, the LDL is certainly within acceptable limits and for complex reasons I won't go into probably also AMAZING. Before you let that 200 faze you, pay attention to the proportions. I far exceed any health recommendations for ratio of one measurement to another.

My A1C, a measurement of blood glucose over the long term, was something like 5.2%, which is, again. AMAZING.

We have dropped my metformin down to 500 mg (initially it was at 1500 mg/day, then 1000) on the way to discontinuing it entirely. 

I weigh about what I weighed at the end of high school -- except I'm far stronger and leaner. My body composition is different, so I look different. My face doesn't look haggard after all the weight loss, though, which I chalk up to my heavy fat consumption and, okay, my over-the-counter retinol habit. My blood sugar is normal, my insulin response is normal (I can now fast comfortably for 16 hours, no lie), and I can work out in the morning before eating breakfast and feel just fine at the end of an hour.

So. That's all the things I did, and how it worked out for me. I am far from perfect in the execution of this great plan, but the system is now robust enough to survive a few knocks. No promises as to how it might work out for you -- everyone's body is different, everybody's LIFE is different. I would love to hear what works -- and doesn't work -- for you.