Dieting

Stress Eating/Mental Health Nightmares

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 3 Comments

I started my diet to lose 20 pounds at 6:00 a.m. It is now 11:30 A.M. and I have downed two pieces of fudge, drank another cup of coffee that is mostly milk and devoured a bag of moon cheese. All within 30 minutes.

I had good intentions. Truly I did. And I was sincere too in the belief that this week would be the one I got off my kester and set to work reducing my waist but at this point my resolution appears to be a waste… for life got in the way.

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It all started yesterday. I drove home from Las Vegas after Gracie’s dive meet where she took a first in one event. So proud of that kid. Anyway, after driving 6 hours I was met at home by an angry teenager. Paul was fine while we were gone but seems he and Gracie got into it the moment she came through the door.  An hour later I was holding him while he melted down and cried. Damn you autism and mental health challenges!!!!

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After those difficult and emotional moments it appeared things were better until I decided to spoil myself with a nice warm bubble bath.  And therein lies my first mistake…actually thinking that I could do something nice for myself without being interrupted.  For as I lay in the tub I suddenly heard very loud shouting and a slamming of a door that shook the entire house. As I jumped up and wrapped a robe around me I heard uncontrollable crying coming from Paul’s room. I walked into a mess caused by a kid who had dumped, in a rage, the contents of his desk all over the room and he was sobbing. I went over to him and he yelled at me to leave him alone. Now I don’t know about you but when I hear those words spoken with the tunderous roar of a fighter jet I know that I am needed more than ever. I also know I need to change into my Green Beret mentaility to succeed in turning things around despite the odds being against me.

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What ensued was not easy. I ended up on the floor while this child both raged, hyperventiled and talked scary stuff. I held onto him like his life and mine depended on it. This went on for almost an hour until at last he wore himself out. His words broke my heart. His pain broke my soul. And his anger touched a place in my brain that I never want to visit again.

Later, after going down to the kitchen I realized what the problem was. While I was gone he had not taken his medicine and B had not checked his box to make sure that he had. Two days without meds in Paul’s case is a disaster. He becomes a tsunami of emotions that threatens to wipe out anyone nearby and the result is anger that cannot be contained.

I worry about my son. I worry that one day he will rage at the wrong person. I worry that while “out of his head” he might get shot by police or hurt himself. I worry that in his anger he may seriously hurt his siblings instead of a kicking a hole in the door that is a reminder of when he got seriously mad. Sometimes I worry that his mental issues will engulf us all and carry us down the mountainside with him broken and  buried under tons of stone. I know my marriage has been effected by Paul’s issues and that we all suffer in different ways when he is off-balance and out of control.

This morning, I packed everyone’s lunches and drove each one to their school. I proceeded to the gym in order to kick my diet into high gear. As I was nearing my goal of three miles I received a phone call. Paul was having an anxiety attack at school and could I please come and get him?

He’s sleeping now. His face soft and relaxed. Quiet breaths making his chest rise and fall in a slow steady rhythm unlike yesterday when he sobbed so hard he chest was moving mountains. I look again and my heart fills with love for my son; this boy who feels others emotions so intensely and takes them on as his own. This boy whose face I first saw on an adoption site. Right now, he looks like an angel which is what I am afraid that he might someday be. For unless, we can find a way to teach him to control his emotions I am afraid he will be hurt and possibly killed. By a stranger, The Police. Or himself. Either way, our path is a hard one and we are scraping our knees as we once again escape the sharp edges of the precipice which is our lives.

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Middle Age Sweat

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 7 Comments

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In the past six weeks I joined a gym and while exercising is not at the top of my “fun things to do” list, it is slowly getting bearable. I try to do at least two miles on the elliptical and then at least a 1/2 hour of weights five days a week. I also hired a personal trainer who I meet with once a week to give me ideas of new things to try with my various medical issues that make exercising a little more challenging. And while I have lost a bit of body fat already I have to confess that this exercise thing is really not my cup of tea. Why? Because of sweat.

I HATE sweat. For most of my life my body has refused to sweat no matter how hard I worked it and frankly; I liked that. IMHO, sweaty people are gross. While B would have sweat pouring down his face and dripping in his eyes during the most mundane of household projects; I would look and smell like I had just stepped out of the shower. But not any more. Recently I have discovered that with old age comes sweat. Not the menopausal “TURN DOWN THE AIR CONDITIONING” kind of sweat but the honest to goodness stinky sweat that antiperspirant companies make a mint off of. Frankly, I hate it. These days doing two miles on elliptical makes my hair sweat and my eyelashes too. YUCK! To me that water is far worse than exploding diarrhea oozing out of a baby’s diaper!

These days when this nearing 60 body works out; I look like a linebacker with sweat under my arms, dribbling down my back, and sloshing between my boobs. When I sit on the seat of the quad weight machine, a sweat line from my butt appears with two flabby cheek imprints on said seat, which requires me to have to position myself in such a way that allows me to quickly grab the disinfectant to spray down the seat before anyone notices. I almost killed myself doing this maneuver several times and today I almost took out a line of jazzercisers who were prancing around near by. For me, avoiding sweat at all costs is almost as dangerous as raising my heart rate to my target zone.

I don’t see what is so special about sweat. I know a lot of men who equate sweat as akin to having sex…it is something to strive for at all costs. Yet, I have always avoided it to the point of refusing to watch those movie love scenes where the bed sheets end up looking like a swimming pool. I mean, who wants to slide around on someone else’s recently released bodily toxins anyway? Not me. And further, since the government always wants to get into our business, shouldn’t OSHA have some sort of fact sheet posted in all bedrooms so consumers know what environmental hazards we are being exposed to when sweaty skin to skin contact occurs? Shouldn’t the EPA be instructing us whether to use bleach or plain old soap after being sweat contaminated?

As you can tell, sweat is a subject that gets me all hot and bothered. It also almost deters me from grunting, running, and lifting on a daily basis. But I have hope that I can cure this aversion because today when I was gyming; I met a sweaty woman who has lost over 100 pounds. Her story was inspiring and awesome. And as the sweat soaked through her bra and down her back as she was telling me about how she lost that weight she said, “it’s no sweat off my back to come in and work out everyday. It’s really just fat off my middle.”

“Wow,” I thought. “What a strong and amazing woman…such a great attitude. She really has it all together.”

And then she stuck out her hand to shake mine. I swear that I almost broke out in a sweat at the thought of her sweaty palm touching mine.

“Oh what the hell,” I admonished myself. “Time to stop sweating the small stuff.”

And with that, I stuck out my hand and clasped hers in mine, upon which which we both quickly wiped our hands on our towels and started laughing at the near mirror images of distaste written all over our faces .

“I hate sweat,” she said.

“Me too,” I answered.

And as I walked away, I decided if she could get over her distaste for sweat enough to lose 100 pounds then I could push myself a little harder in the days and weeks to come… right after I get some antiperspirant that I can rub all over my body to minimize all that pent up middle age sweat!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weight’s Burden

/ Gardy Loo Pismire / 6 Comments

*This has been an incredibly hard piece for me to write because it puts a lot of my own faults and flaws out there but I believe in being honest in my writings and telling my story through my lens whether it be right or wrong*

 

My weight has always been a sore subject with me. When I was a child I was average, not overweight nor underweight.I was just right.Yet, it was never enough. I wanted to look like the popular skinny girls. The ones with legs up to their elbows. The ones you could almost see through because they were so paper thin.

In my early 20’s I was underweight weighing in at 111 while being over 5’7″ tall. Of course, everyone thought I looked fabulous, myself included, with my bones sticking out the way the media says that women are suppose to look; when in reality my health was suffering. But I had a lot of attention paid to me by the opposite sex so it appeared to be a fair tradeoff as far as I was concerned. Like=skinny. Love=skinny. Sex=skinny, so that is what I would be. Only it didn’t last.

Then several years later, I became pregnant and gained 60 pounds and B told me that he didn’t really find me attractive. He made it clear that overweight women did nothing for him. I remember thinking even then how fucked up this was. I remember thinking whatever happened to loving a person for who they were and not what they looked like. I remember feeling that I had to look like some centerfold to be loved by him. I felt resentful and angry which lead to over eating which lead to being over weight which lead to a fucked up thoughts of him having to prove he loved me because I was heavy.Do you love me now? became the challenge. Do you accept me now? became my battle cry. And no matter how much he tried to prove his love/acceptance I wouldn’t believe it because I knew how he felt about fat women and, well, I didn’t love and accept myself either…so how could he?

For years I dieted “for him” and for years I was in a never ending cycle of gain/lost. And when I lost I was mad at B because he paid more attention to me than when I was heavier and I was wounded because of it.  How screwed up is that! Yes, I know… pretty screwed up! Why can’t you just love me for who I am? Yet, he did but I couldn’t believe it because with those few words said years ago about not finding me attractive created a pit from which I chose not to climb out of. A pit that I gave up and into. Wrapping my body around it like a blanket to keep me warm. Anger and resentment piled up and so did the pounds. I was miserable. So was he. Making love in the day light soon changed to making love with the curtains drawn so no light could enter the room.

Finally, I decided that I was tired of looking the way I did. Feeling the way I felt. Joints aching due to the excess poundage, surgery too. I had admired women who felt good about themselves no matter what their size and wished I had confidence in my body and myself. I wished that was like that too. But I was not no matter how I tried. So I slowly began to lose weight but I still wasn’t very serious about it. Until I saw this scan:

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A scan of a 250 woman vs a 120 pound woman. And I could see how the bones of the leg were being impacted. The white fat around the heart, intestines, and in the brain. And that was all it took…with one look at that picture I realized that being overweight was no longer an option. And this time I have lost weight ONLY for me, myself, and I.

In the past 8 months I have lost 30 pounds. And over several years prior to that I had lost 30 pounds. I now set little realistic goals for myself and today I reached the one I had set to reach before I turned 56. Yeah for me!

In retrospect, it is sad to me that I wasted all those years being unhappy with my weight and not doing enough about it. It is one thing if you are accepting of yourself it is another if you flog yourself because acceptance is not in your vocabulary. I wish that society just celebrated all women for who they are instead of what they look like, perhaps, I would have internalized that and loved myself despite of my weight. But I will never know. What I do know is that being miserable about my weight made me miserable about many parts of my life in general. That it is not B’s fault that I chose to overeat and that punishing him and myself for words spoken so long ago was harsh and unnecessary. And that something that was solely under my control was put back on him many times over our 30 years history. And if I am totally honest I am not sure that I would find my obese spouse sexually attractive either.

This unwanted “I might want a divorce” journey has forced me to examine all areas of my life. This work to discover the authentic me has proved humbling, exhausting, painful and eye opening. I have discovered some things that I really didn’t like and needed to change and some things that are pretty terrific about me. And I am still journeying…to where…I am unsure. But one thing I know is that I feel better about myself in all areas of my life because I have finally internalized the fact that the only person I have to impress or lose weight for is ME. It’s all for ME. ME. ME. ME. Finding my own importance has somehow flipped the switch and finally allowed me to reach my goals both in regards to my weight and in other parts of my life.