With apologies to Nenette for not responding to the tagging sooner, 8 things I love about my body (and yes, it was difficult to think of 8, but if it's not obvious that I am super-hyper-critical of myself by now...):
1) I love my green eyes.
2) I have a very good, clear, practically flawless complexion which means I rarely have to wear any cosmetics, and rarely do.
3) I am starting to love the way my body tells me what it needs and wants in terms of nutrition, which is apparently different to what I think it needs. It would, however, be nice if it didn't do it in such startling technicolour fashion.
4) I love my cheekbones. I love all the rest of my bones, actually. The ones that I can see that I should be able to see. They are strong and have never broken.
5) I love my long hair and the way it is continuing to grow long and healthy and thick, at about 1 inch a month.
6) I love the way that my muscles respond to working out and become defined quite quickly
7) I love my body's powers of recovery
8) I love that my body is, despite my many fears, probably extremely healthy.
Touch wood. :-)
Tuesday, 30 October 2007
Sunday, 28 October 2007
Update From Springfield
I am becoming more and more certain that the hand weirdness is more likely due to my high intake of veggies loaded with beta-carotene over the past 10 months than to a precursor of my imminent demise. I'll be seeing the doctor again tomorrow to get full blood checks to put my mind at rest (and also to work out how to get rid of this!), but today P was sick with an ear infection and wanted to go to a walk-in NHS centre for antibiotics; while he was there, I decided to take the opportunity to panic a little at a nurse, and she agreed with me that while the colour is really quite startling, I'd be a lot sicker than I am if it was anything Really Nasty. So I hope so.
Mara's comment about the same happening to her with pumpkin while her fat intake was quite low is very interesting. I've been lazy about fat recently; I eat my almonds daily, but I've been neglecting my olive oil and my flax. Most of my dairy is fat free. So maybe that's a reason why the tint has appeared over the last few weeks, or become more noticeable at any rate. I also realised today that my lack of appetite for Big Salads might also be connected - my body has just had enough leafy greens for the time being! :-)
Out of interest I just did a report out of CoM for the last year's average on Vitamin A (I don't eat meat therefore I am assuming most Vit A recorded in CoM has to be beta-carotene). I'm averaging over 1000%, and I don't have a CoM report for each day of the year, so the average is likely to be higher.
P has said that if I have made myself yellow by eating broccoli, he will never let me live it down. But then if one is going to become yellow through excess, I suppose leafy greens are the best thing to have as the culprit.
This week will tell, I hope.
And then, it's back to reassessing my diet. It's not a failed experiment yet.
Mara's comment about the same happening to her with pumpkin while her fat intake was quite low is very interesting. I've been lazy about fat recently; I eat my almonds daily, but I've been neglecting my olive oil and my flax. Most of my dairy is fat free. So maybe that's a reason why the tint has appeared over the last few weeks, or become more noticeable at any rate. I also realised today that my lack of appetite for Big Salads might also be connected - my body has just had enough leafy greens for the time being! :-)
Out of interest I just did a report out of CoM for the last year's average on Vitamin A (I don't eat meat therefore I am assuming most Vit A recorded in CoM has to be beta-carotene). I'm averaging over 1000%, and I don't have a CoM report for each day of the year, so the average is likely to be higher.
P has said that if I have made myself yellow by eating broccoli, he will never let me live it down. But then if one is going to become yellow through excess, I suppose leafy greens are the best thing to have as the culprit.
This week will tell, I hope.
And then, it's back to reassessing my diet. It's not a failed experiment yet.
Thursday, 25 October 2007
Cabbage Soup, Water and Weirdness
Hi All. :-)
Thank you for comments left and well wishes and for checking up on me.
I'm mildly detoxed, although I was helped on my way by a stinking cold which laid me low in bed and kept me away for people for pretty much an entire week. Meh. Seven days without the wine (yay); I managed to stay away from wheat but only by virtue of eating spelt bread (comfort toast); I totally failed to stay away from dairy but at least most of it was fat-free.
(I fell off the wagon in spectacular but planned fashion last night with wine and cheese with one of my bestest friends in Vivat Bacchus. Very small portions of cheese though, positively dinky.)
I'm feeling a bit better about things in general, although I am still having annoying obsessive thoughts about food and nutrition and getting my RDA's. I think most of this has been brought on by not being at home all that much, and a week of actually being at home has helped. I deliberately tried to keep away from CoM but curiosity kept getting the better of me. I find it easy to restrict my calories, no problem. But, as we know, restricting calories without monitoring nutrition is at best foolhardy and at worst extremely dangerous - and I am aware of that. Hence the sort of panic when I know I am not eating as well as I could be. It's a panic that I consider to be both justified and irrational, and I am veering between the two. Does that make any sense?
I won't go on about it for fear of adding to the whole CRON = ED thing. Which I am extremely tired of, actually! :-)
Anyway, this last week I mainly ate cabbage soup. Or more exactly, soup full of veggie goodness and deliciousness with lots of dino kale and beans and smoked tofu. Mmm. The ingredients of the batches varied, but the soup is basically an onion, carrot and celery base, with mushrooms, chopped fresh tomato, thyme, rosemary, oregano and garlic, all simmered in lots of water, with dino kale and other green leafies added in towards the end of the cooking time, when the water has taken on all the flavours of the veggies. Then I stirred in acorn squash which I had baked and mashed, to thicken it, and added beans (turtle beans on time, aduki the next) and cubes of smoked tofu in varying proportions when I ate it. Very comforting and just what I needed with this horrible cold. Soup like a hug.
The weirdness in the title of this post? Well, hmm. The other week at work I was talking to someone at my desk, and he suddenly gave me an appalled look and said "What the f*ck have you done to your hands? They are all yellow!". And indeed they were. And are. And it is quite frankly very freaky. The palms of my hands, and especially at the base of them, towards my wrists, are clearly and undoubtably... yellow.
After several days of staring at my palms in various lights, and comparing them to P's and my mother's, and getting a bit anxious, I decided I really ought to take myself off to the doctors and get it checked out. I was, of course, thinking Oh my GOD, the wine has caught up with me, I am jaundiced and my liver is failing, oh bugger, oh hell, etc, despite the fact that my eyes were clear and I had none of the other symptoms indicated by scary google searches.
I hate going to my doctors because they think I am mad. I can quite understand R's concern about being labelled by her doctor, because I am well and truly labelled. But never the less, I went, and said - ok, I might be having a hypochondriac moment here (ha, ha, silly me), but look... my hands. Yellow.
Ooooh, yes - said the doctor. You are a bit, we'll take some blood. Liver function, that sort of thing.
Cue a couple of days of anxious waiting...
Thankfully, the tests came back normal. Liver function fine, no bilrubin (sp?) in the blood. I'm not jaundiced.
But what it is, I don't know. I'm now in the position where I need to go back to the doctor and say, ok, so it's not jaundice, so can we please find out what the hell it is because it is really, really embarrassing and actually a bit ugly. I have wondered if it's the excess beta-carotene thing, that I eat so much spinach and kale and butternut squash that it's coming out in my skin. MR might suit orange. I do not suit yellow. It is not my colour.
P googled around and suggested it might be a B12 deficiency. Which is always possible since I know I am low on B12 in my diet anyway (and strangely have been craving whole eggs and skim milk recently, despite them tasting disgustingly of chicken and cow) and I don't take my supplements because the ones I have are 10,000 times the RDA and I think that in itself is a bit scary. But I need to do something. Any suggestions, anyone?
So, well, that's where I am at the moment. Semi-CRON'd, demi-stressed, probably completely mad... and yellow. Ah, the joy of Sara. :-)
Thank you for comments left and well wishes and for checking up on me.
I'm mildly detoxed, although I was helped on my way by a stinking cold which laid me low in bed and kept me away for people for pretty much an entire week. Meh. Seven days without the wine (yay); I managed to stay away from wheat but only by virtue of eating spelt bread (comfort toast); I totally failed to stay away from dairy but at least most of it was fat-free.
(I fell off the wagon in spectacular but planned fashion last night with wine and cheese with one of my bestest friends in Vivat Bacchus. Very small portions of cheese though, positively dinky.)
I'm feeling a bit better about things in general, although I am still having annoying obsessive thoughts about food and nutrition and getting my RDA's. I think most of this has been brought on by not being at home all that much, and a week of actually being at home has helped. I deliberately tried to keep away from CoM but curiosity kept getting the better of me. I find it easy to restrict my calories, no problem. But, as we know, restricting calories without monitoring nutrition is at best foolhardy and at worst extremely dangerous - and I am aware of that. Hence the sort of panic when I know I am not eating as well as I could be. It's a panic that I consider to be both justified and irrational, and I am veering between the two. Does that make any sense?
I won't go on about it for fear of adding to the whole CRON = ED thing. Which I am extremely tired of, actually! :-)
Anyway, this last week I mainly ate cabbage soup. Or more exactly, soup full of veggie goodness and deliciousness with lots of dino kale and beans and smoked tofu. Mmm. The ingredients of the batches varied, but the soup is basically an onion, carrot and celery base, with mushrooms, chopped fresh tomato, thyme, rosemary, oregano and garlic, all simmered in lots of water, with dino kale and other green leafies added in towards the end of the cooking time, when the water has taken on all the flavours of the veggies. Then I stirred in acorn squash which I had baked and mashed, to thicken it, and added beans (turtle beans on time, aduki the next) and cubes of smoked tofu in varying proportions when I ate it. Very comforting and just what I needed with this horrible cold. Soup like a hug.
The weirdness in the title of this post? Well, hmm. The other week at work I was talking to someone at my desk, and he suddenly gave me an appalled look and said "What the f*ck have you done to your hands? They are all yellow!". And indeed they were. And are. And it is quite frankly very freaky. The palms of my hands, and especially at the base of them, towards my wrists, are clearly and undoubtably... yellow.
After several days of staring at my palms in various lights, and comparing them to P's and my mother's, and getting a bit anxious, I decided I really ought to take myself off to the doctors and get it checked out. I was, of course, thinking Oh my GOD, the wine has caught up with me, I am jaundiced and my liver is failing, oh bugger, oh hell, etc, despite the fact that my eyes were clear and I had none of the other symptoms indicated by scary google searches.
I hate going to my doctors because they think I am mad. I can quite understand R's concern about being labelled by her doctor, because I am well and truly labelled. But never the less, I went, and said - ok, I might be having a hypochondriac moment here (ha, ha, silly me), but look... my hands. Yellow.
Ooooh, yes - said the doctor. You are a bit, we'll take some blood. Liver function, that sort of thing.
Cue a couple of days of anxious waiting...
Thankfully, the tests came back normal. Liver function fine, no bilrubin (sp?) in the blood. I'm not jaundiced.
But what it is, I don't know. I'm now in the position where I need to go back to the doctor and say, ok, so it's not jaundice, so can we please find out what the hell it is because it is really, really embarrassing and actually a bit ugly. I have wondered if it's the excess beta-carotene thing, that I eat so much spinach and kale and butternut squash that it's coming out in my skin. MR might suit orange. I do not suit yellow. It is not my colour.
P googled around and suggested it might be a B12 deficiency. Which is always possible since I know I am low on B12 in my diet anyway (and strangely have been craving whole eggs and skim milk recently, despite them tasting disgustingly of chicken and cow) and I don't take my supplements because the ones I have are 10,000 times the RDA and I think that in itself is a bit scary. But I need to do something. Any suggestions, anyone?
So, well, that's where I am at the moment. Semi-CRON'd, demi-stressed, probably completely mad... and yellow. Ah, the joy of Sara. :-)
Friday, 12 October 2007
Reset
Yet another angsty, attention-seeking blog entry deleted minutes after publication! :-) Was it cathartic? No, not really. But never mind.
So I am all over the place geographically and mentally. Will be for another few days yet. But next week I do have the opportunity to hit the reset button. And I'm going to make every effort to.
Means moving away from CR per se, and from tracking in CoM. I've been fretting too much about not making my RDA's, and eating far too many vegetables for my own physical comfort in order to make those RDA's. Too many Big Salads have resulted in a lack of perspective where now I feel unable to judge my own appetite and satiety mechanisms. Has that happened to anyone else? Or am I just susceptible to it because of my own past emotional problems concerning food? Right now I fear I am on a slippery slope to a binge mentality. I don't want to be there.
Anyway. Detox for me. No dairy, no wheat, no coffee... most importantly no alcohol. No, not even a single social glass. Not for seven days. Fruit and wholegrains and vegetables in moderate proportions. I need to trust myself again.
Wish me luck.
So I am all over the place geographically and mentally. Will be for another few days yet. But next week I do have the opportunity to hit the reset button. And I'm going to make every effort to.
Means moving away from CR per se, and from tracking in CoM. I've been fretting too much about not making my RDA's, and eating far too many vegetables for my own physical comfort in order to make those RDA's. Too many Big Salads have resulted in a lack of perspective where now I feel unable to judge my own appetite and satiety mechanisms. Has that happened to anyone else? Or am I just susceptible to it because of my own past emotional problems concerning food? Right now I fear I am on a slippery slope to a binge mentality. I don't want to be there.
Anyway. Detox for me. No dairy, no wheat, no coffee... most importantly no alcohol. No, not even a single social glass. Not for seven days. Fruit and wholegrains and vegetables in moderate proportions. I need to trust myself again.
Wish me luck.
Sunday, 7 October 2007
Keep Away From Our Kale!
The secret is out. :-)
I'm being quiet because I'm sick of food right now - thinking about it, preparing it, eating it. And I'm doing far too much of all three. Sigh. No fun.
I'm being quiet because I'm sick of food right now - thinking about it, preparing it, eating it. And I'm doing far too much of all three. Sigh. No fun.
Tuesday, 2 October 2007
Never the twain shall meet
I wrote a long post about hunger and satiety and regulation of appetite based on my experiences this past week, but frankly it's far too bloody angsty so can just stay unpublished for now. Suffice it to say, I think it's incredibly unfair that I can be quite so painfully hungry in London on a daily basis and still gain weight in 6 days. It just goes to show quite how much attention needs to be paid to micro and macro-nutrients when your natural inclination is towards a low calorie diet, and how easy it is to mess it up.
(I messed it up. Big time. Several times.)
In other small world news, it would appear that Linda and myself visited the same very small farmer's market in North London on Sunday. Did we see each other there? Who can tell? :-)
(I messed it up. Big time. Several times.)
In other small world news, it would appear that Linda and myself visited the same very small farmer's market in North London on Sunday. Did we see each other there? Who can tell? :-)
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