04/01/10: Life 101

I ate carbs.  I did not eat cheese.  But I did eat carbs.  About 50g worth, to be exact.

Before I explain the why's in my decision, here is my decision.  I've decided to eat a normal dinner which can include carbs.  I've decided to be very wise about the carbs I choose - I will go for complex over simple, for example.  I also am going to be very cognizant of the amount of carbs I am getting.  I do not want to binge so I'm am totally staying aware and in control.  Whatever gets put on my plate as my allowed serving is all I get.

I ate carbs yesterday.  About 50g worth, to be exact.  I lost 1.5 pounds this morning.  I am now at 240.  Next pound gets me into the 230's.  YAY!!!!

So the why's.  I share this because I am sharing myself with you.  I do not share this for sympathy, empathy or judgement.  To everyone that laughed and cried with me yesterday

THANK YOU,

FROM THE

BOTTOM OF

MY HEART!!!

This blogworld is so awesome to me.  I love it for the accountability, for the notion that someone actually seems to care that my scale says 240 - and doesn't judge me because I'm still that fat, and I love it for the support.  I love being able to offer support, by way of comments, and each little (or not) comment that comes in makes my heart smile.  Getting sappy here...but I love you guys!  Even the non-commenters who take the time to read my drivvel and keep coming back for more.

So the why's.  I had posted about this back in January and some of y'all may remember and may have seen it back then.  I had 4-5 days of posts about how I got this way, basically.  And then, about two weeks later, I think, I decided it was too much and took the posts down.  In some ways I'm glad I did and in other ways, I wish I hadn't.  This that follows is not going to be nearly as intense (said with a smirk) as those 4-5 days of self-revelation.

But it will be a little. 

In case you haven't read this elsewhere, I got fat on purpose.  I made a conscious decision to gain weight as a protection measure because of what happened to me.  I was raped when I was 22.  And that event changed the course of my life, as have many other events I have lived through.

One of the things that is incredibly likely with rape, though, is the development of PTSD.  I had lived through a few major earthquakes and I was fine, through those.  Those can cause PTSD, too.  I had lived through a few things as a child/teenager that can cause PTSD but I had not developed it up to that point.  I think, in my case, the rape was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.  My brain might have already been changing and the rape was the thing that sent it completely over the edge.

So, if you don't know, PTSD actually changes how your brain responds to the "normal" chemicals, aka hormones.  I have now learned that where the trauma was most processed, frontal lobe, cortex, amygdala, etc, can change what chemicals are affected.  But it's a lot like depression in that my neurons and synapses no longer fire the way a "normal" brain does.  However, in PTSD, it's anxiety that kicks in, not depression.  Of course, depression can, too, as anxiety can definitely cause one to "get sad".  It makes you want to shut down - hmmm...don't we call that depression?

So I have this brain that is no longer normal.  Not really sure it ever really was.  :)

I don't know that it's a bad thing that my brain is not normal.  I know it.  And that helps.  And more often than not, it is like any other brain.  Until stress gets to me.  Real or perceived, it's stress that causes anxiety, for me.  It can be physical stress, it can be mental stress, it can be emotional stress. 

And to make it interesting, not all stress gets to me the same way.  When my mom was dieing I was one of her two primary caregivers.  My step-dad and I had to have someone up around the clock to see to her needs.  We knew we were caring for a dieing woman.  She was in and out of consciousness the last 6 weeks of her life and it was hard to watch her withering away.  A very stressful situation.  I didn't end up anxious.  Instead, I became a rock for my entire family to lean on, to cry to, to sound off of.  I'm either super strong or  a super mess and part of my problem with PTSD is that I can't identify which I'm going to be until I'm that option.

So this pre-op diet with no approval situation.  Turns out, I'm a super mess.

I am aware of what PTSD does to me and I have been through years of therapy to learn to identify triggers.  I never thought a pre-op diet while waiting for insurance approval was going to be a trigger.

And yet it is.

Now, one thing I can say about me and my awareness and my knowledge is that once I identify what's going on, I somehow, can almost instantaneously correct myself.

So yesterday I posted a blog about crying.  And as I sat there trying and trying to regain my composure, I started to freak out because I couldn't.  Now I'm talking PTSD style freak out with flashbacks and heart palpitations and sweaty palms and just generally feeling miserable.  And then it hit me...once that started.  Hello.  I'm not normal!

Oh yeah!  That's right.  Let me call my sweetheart.  And he says "after I talked to you and you wouldn't/couldn't calm down, I started to think that.  I was going to talk to you about it tonight, just didn't want to over the phone."

About half an hour later, my heart was calming down, my palms were normal, the flashbacks were not pervading my every move...I was getting back to "normal".

By the time it got to time to leave work time, I was "normal".  And in the span of the afternoon I started looking into what serotonin does for PTSD peeps.

Yeah.  I can't not have serotonin.  I already don't use it efficiently and well.  Truth is, I need more.  Which might explain why the notion of getting fat to protect myself evolved so easily.  Eating carbs felt better.  They are doing research now with treating PTSD with SSRI's to increase serotonin.

So I've learned a lot about myself in this process.  I actually need carbs!  I want to and will be wise about my carb intake.  I want to and will be wise about the amount, the types, the frequency...I'm going to think about it.  But I think I've learned that PTSD can be affected by food (or lack of it) as much as anything else.  It makes me wish I had been keeping a food diary long ago - when the PTSD is worse, what was I eating?

But in my research yesterday afternoon I realized, I needed to start getting carbs in again.  I actually found a source online that says that PTSD peeps actually need a minimum of 125g of carbs a day.  I am going to find out what I need to maintain "normal".  Because one of the things I know is that over the decade plus that I've dealt with this, my "normal" has been redefined.

What a journey this has been!