I want to be an Asterisk*

The average guy’s heavy-weight fight:

• Average guy’s waist:  39″
• Average pounds he weighs:  180
• Pounds he wants to shed:  10
• Percentage of men who want to drop more than 35lbs:  26%
• Percentage who should:  67%
• Number of pounds the average guy typically loses on a diet:  5
• Biggest saboteur of a man’s weight-control ambitions:  beer
• Percentage of men who may be lean now but are looking at a future that’s 30 pounds heavier:  42%
• Age at which the average guy tacks on the most chub:  25

My baby starts kindergarten today.  That makes all four of them in school now, the last being my son.  I almost cried this morning when the girls got on the school bus.  I will probably cry when I take Will today. 

…and I feel like do-do.  Did I just write do-do?  Anyway, I still can’t seem to eat.  Last night, I ate 1/2 pint of Mint Chocolate Chip icecream but the mint flavoring was giving me fits.

I don’t like not being able to eat.

I tried to post a bit ago and got a little worried when I received the 404 page not found error.  Gosh, I don’t know what I would do if the server erased everything again.

I spoke to my BF who has been in Phoenix during this whole strep/notstrep issue.  I can’t wait for him to get home.  I feel so lonely.  I decided that since

• I haven’t really been eating and since
• the size 6 jeans I am wearing are loose and since
• I haven’t had one in a long time

I would eat a twinkie.  Notice all the reasons I gave myself?  That is because the guilt is already there.  I know it isn’t bad to eat a Twinkie.  I mean just one can’t hurt.  Really no different than the yogurt I have been eating the last few days.

So I was eating ONE Twinkie, talking to my daughter about school starting on Monday, about her upcoming 9th birthday on Saturday and I threw in there how I missed BF and couldn’t wait for him to get home.  Know what she said?

“Are you replacing your loneliness for BF with that Twinkie?”

I said “Huh”?

She says, “I can tell you are because of the violent way you are tearing into it.”

Did I mention she is eight?

Okay, so I gave myself all the excuses but maybe I was just lonely.  Even though I have a box of 24 individually wrapped Twinkie’s sitting on my microwave that have been sitting there for two weeks and I haven’t had one, maybe I was just using food to fill that lonely gap.

I am glad she said it though.  Maybe it will keep her from making a horrible mistake one day, using food, instead of a brisk walk or work out at the gym, as an escape from loneliness.  Maybe if she is lonely, that walk will help her meet a new friend or she will fall in love with the juicer at the local gym.

Maybe I am just making another excuse for eating that Twinkie.

This morning, I checked my throat and there were twice as many dots as before.  I called in sick and have been working from home by laptop all day.  By 11:00, I was feeling some what better, checked and some of the dots are now gone.  I guess the shot from yesterday is finally starting to work.

I am starving.  I am tired of yogurt and popsicles.  I looked in the fridge and remembered I had some red potato salad and fixed a bowl.  I tried not to look at the label but I already remembered that it had 19 grams of fat per 1/2 cup.  Oh well.  I needed something cold and that would have to do. 

Thanks everyone for your encouraging words.  Hopefully by this afternoon I will feel well enough to take the kids to their open house at school.

I woke up at 3am and thought my throat was on fire.  I took some Advil (or Tylenol, can’t remember) and sat on the couch until the pain subsided an hour later.  I called in sick which irritated me because I had already taken vacation days Monday and Tuesday to get the kids enrolled in their new schools.

I called the doctor and got in at 2:30.  I laid around all day absolutely miserable.  I found that cold things feel better on my throat so I had cottage cheese, yogurt and Popsicles.  I was able to get in with my family doctor instead of the APRN.  By the time I arrived I counted 5 sores on the back of my throat and some kind of white coating covering half of my uvula.

She looked down my throat and decided to do another strep test which came back negative.  Then she went for the mono test, also negative.  She sent a culture out for evaluation but that will take 72 hours.  In the mean time, I was given a shot (of what I don’t know) and a prescription for an antibiotic to treat bacterial infections.  How in the heck did I get a bacterial infection in my mouth?

One funny thing is that I have been to that doctor’s office three times this week ( and it is only Wednesday) and I could swear one of the mail nurses was hitting on me (the one who gave Ashley her shot on Monday had to give me mine today).

Okay, enough said.  My BF is still in Phoenix so Mom came and got the kids tonight.  Why is it they can be perfect angels when I am feeling fine….put me down where I can’t yell or fuss and they are destroying the house!  I have another half an hour and they will be back.  Gosh I hope I am not in as much pain tonight as I was last night.

I woke up this morning, and my throat was killing me.  I found a flash light, looked at my throat and saw a sore about the size of the tip of my pinky.  After taking a few Advil, I called my doctor’s office, sat on hold then made an appointment with the nurse pratitioner.  There are two doctors I see on a regular basis.  Both are female, both very good.  One of the doctors recently had a baby so it has been a little harder to get in, hence me seeing the nurse practitioner.

I was pretty convinced I had strep.  I have had a headache for several days, not to mention the big sore on the back of my throat.  I weighed and was shocked to see that I was at 134.6 which is an all time low for me.  When the NP came in she said that the strep swab wasn’t showing strep.  She asked me to open up to take a look and said she couldn’t see anything.  I said, “you can’t see that sore at the back of my throat?”  “There is nothing there”, she said.

So I swallow and it hurts.  She gives me the typical “you have a virus/we don’t know what you have” answer and tells me to call in a few days if my throat still hurts.  I leave and as soon as I get in my car, open my mouth and look in the rear-view mirror only to see the sore plain as day.  WTF?

So to make a long story short, I’m a hurtin’ unit today.  I can barely swallow and I am a little worried about the weight.  134 is low for me.  It still puts me on the edge of a healthy BMI but I really don’t want to lose any more weight.  People at work are already saying that I have an eating disorder (which I don’t.  I just don’t eat much bad stuff anymore).  If I lose another 5 pounds I will be underweight for my height.  I can’t believe I am saying that when I was 45 lbs heavier in January.

If sleep is the key to weightloss, I should be 10lbs heaver.  I simply haven’t been able to sleep this past week.  I don’t know if it is the stress of work or that I am getting too hot over night but I find myself waking up many times during the night.

Last night, I dreamed demons were trying to get me to commit suicide.  What the heck is that all about?   My ex husband was in the dream too…ex husband, demons….at least a little of what I was dreaming was accurate.

Anyway, I weighed 136.4 this morning.   That is very low for me, especially when I haven’t been in “weight-loss” mode.  I kicked around maybe going ahead and losing down to 130.  That would give me the extra padding for the holidays but I have plenty of time for that.  I think I would rather lose ahead of time, planning to gain, then to gain and feel like I couldn’t lose the weight.  I don’t know how long I am going to be able to take off the couple of pounds I gain off and on.

I’m off Monday and tuesday, enrolling the kids in school, getting my 5-year old his physical for Kindergarden.  I can’t believe my youngest is going into Kindergarden. 

After reading this post by ncchris, I decided to list my Top 10 Comfort Foods:

1.  Mac and Cheese
2.  My Tuna Cassarole
3.  Loaded Baked Potato Soup
4.  Mashed Potatoes
5.  Spaghetti w/meat sauce
6.  Cheesy Potatoes
7.  Cheddar Cheese Cubes
8.  Onion Rings
9.  Chicken Alfredo
10.  Pork Pad Thi

Thanks, ncchris!  Now I’m hungry again!

Everyday I receive a fax called the Business Digest.  There are usually interesting management articles, headlines regarding mergers, and the Quote of the Day which I enjoy.  Today there was a section called Health and Fitness so of course I read it.  Under the few health tidbits section was a bulleted point that caught my attention:

Lack of sleep releases hormonies that stimulate your appetite.  Oversleeping means you burn less energy in a day.

Those two small statements didn’t surprise me.  I have always preached the key to successful weightloss is sleep.  Not because of any extensive research, mostly from paying attention to my hunger signals. 

I remember one day I was starving all day.  It seemed like all I wanted to do was snack all day.  Although I didn’t give in to the snack attack, I continued to feel hungry, even though I had eaten what should have been satisfying meals.  Like most of us who diet, we get into a routine as to what we eat, usually eating the same things at certain times.  For example, I usually eat oatmeal for breakfast because I know it is filling and doesn’t require me to have a snack to make it until lunch.

On this day, however, I had my oatmeal for breakfast, was hungry and hour later, ate a snack, had my usual 6 or 7 point lunch and was hungry an hour later.  Analyzing what was different, I remembered that I hadn’t slept well the night before.  How is that for research?

After reading the Business Digest article, I decided to do a little more research on sleep and weightloss.  I found the following articles online.

Sleep Away the Pounds - By Cherie Calbom
It’s not all in your head - Unhealthy eating and weight gain
How Sleep affects your weight
Leptin and Ghrelin:  Their Role as Appetite Hormones

If you need help sleeping, you may want to read the 4th article as it is a bit more scientific but it was still very informative.

Sweet Dreams!