Dieting and Me

Short Version: I've lost 18.5 pounds.

Long Version: I've been on a diet since approximately 1977. I was a senior in high school, and it was kind of fun. Avoid fat and sugar for a week, drop five pounds. Considering I weighed a whopping 130 at the time, five pounds was 4% of my entire self. I felt successful.

Unfortunately, my success led to a thirty-year bad habit: I didn't continue counting calories and writing down every morsel I ate, but I did continue drinking diet soda.

Fortunately, I was in college by this time, and it was easy to take a PE class each quarter to stay in shape.

My next serious diet commenced in 1985, after a day of shopping when I noticed I looked terrible in everything. At home, I weighed myself and I discovered I'd surpassed 150 pounds. For some reason that number clanged an ominous bell in my head, so I signed up for aerobics class and started buying 1% milk. For lunch, I ate a yogurt and maybe a piece of fruit, and for dinner I stuck to salads and avoided meat. I got down to 135, and felt pretty good about myself.

It seemed odd to me that I'd gained weight in my early twenties. I was living with my husband, and we ate a low-fat, high-fiber diet. We avoided meat, enjoyed pasta at least once a week, ate cereal for breakfast, and seldom had any dessert. It was a stark change from my childhood diet of meat, potatoes and gravy, and vegetables drenched in butter. In my mom's kitchen you'd find whole milk, ice cream, butter, and eggs. Yet as a child, I'd always been underweight.

The other big difference in my life during my twenties was that I had a string of awful colds. I'd get so sick that I'd miss two and three and four days of work...for a cold. When I asked my doctor what I should do, she prescribed antibiotics. I got to the point where I'd visit the doctor as soon as I felt the first signs of a cold, knowing that the antibiotics would help prevent the infections that made me so sick. I also had bladder infections. It took a while to figure out that the spermicide used with my diaphragm was killing off all the good bacteria; until then, I took more anti-biotics. I've read that the gut flora of slender people is different from those who are heavy. It resonated with me, because before my antibiotics era, I was able to lose weight with minimal effort. But after my twenties, it became virtually impossible.

I had my first child when I was twenty-seven. I gained a horrifying 35 pounds, but everyone said nursing would help me lose it, so I didn't worry.  I should have. I couldn't lose an ounce, despite joining a gym and pushing my daughter's stroller around my hilly neighborhood for what must have been thousands of miles.

And then I got pregnant again. Again, I gained over 35 pounds. After I delivered this one, I weighed over 200 pounds.

By this time, I didn't much care about my weight. I had two small children, a demanding job, and a busy life. I continued my "good" eating habits during these years, never buying any butter and using so little mayo that even the smallest jar would dry up and get crusty before we finished it. I steamed veggies, sauteed meat in the smallest amounts of oil possible, and if I wanted a snack, I stuck to popcorn or pretzels. Yet the pounds kept creeping on.

In 1996 I quit my demanding job and decided losing weight would be my top priority. Every morning, I took the kids to the bus and went straight to the gym to work out. I did a circuit of weights and then walked on the treadmill for an hour. On the weekends I'd walk a 2-mile loop in the hilliest part of the neighborhood. I recorded everything I ate, each bowl of Cheerios with 1% milk, each carton of yogurt, each ounce of chicken. After six months I'd lost nine pounds.

So I took my food journal to the doctor and asked her what I was doing wrong. She gave me a prescription for phentermine, a drug that suppressed my appetite and boosted my metabolism perfectly. I quickly reached my goal weight and felt terrific. I bought an wardrobe of new clothes. It was heavenly.  Unfortunately, you can't take an amphetamine for too long, and she ended my prescription after two years.

It was as if I'd never lost the weight at all. Looking back, I wish I'd weighed myself daily so I could quantify how quickly it returned. All I know is that in virtually no time at all, I gained it all back, plus an extra twenty or so.

I concluded that losing weight wasn't for me. Up until this point, every time I'd been successful at losing weight, I'd not only gain the weight back, but also gain a few bonus pounds. It was as if my body anticipated imminent starvation. Both of my parents faced severe food shortages in their lifetimes. Had I somehow "inherited" an unusually high need to pack calories away for the future? My doctor convinced me that genetic changes take far longer to show up, but I can't help noticing that all of my relatives on my dad's size are as heavy as I am. I also had a baby that weighed over ten pounds at birth. I wondered if my body was carefully socking away enough fat to support the growth of another ten-pounder.

As my kids got older and I got heavier, I decided that my worth as a person had little to do with my weight, and stopped worrying about it. I worried much more about the migraines that plagued me, and after some stomach issues--likely caused by my Aleve habit--I started examining my food triggers. After a good deal of trial and error, I eschewed most anything that came in a package in favor of fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables.

But then my husband started worrying about his weight. And he learned different habits than I had. He read books about avoiding carbohydrates instead of fat. He read books about eating bacon and eggs, but not the toast. Eventually we both ate very low-carb diets. I gave up the sugar I'd always had in my tea, something I never expected to be able to do. I stopped eating cereal entirely.

Sleep apnea and migraines?

This week I picked up my custom-fitted mouth guard, which should help my sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a common migraine trigger, so I'm hoping for improvement on that front as well. In fact, one article I read suggested that the apnea is an underlying CAUSE of migraines. Really??

Hmmm. Is there a relationship between sleep apnea and gaining a ridiculous amount of weight all your life even though you don't eat that much. Why, yes, there is.

What about depression? Do people with sleep apnea tend to have chronic depression? Yes.

OK, so what about ADHD? I have that, too. Is it relate--holy cow, that's related too!

But I bet the IBS isn't related. How could it be? IT IS.

Holy cow.

Healthy AND Easy

Many of my friends look skeptical when I talk about eating only fresh meat and fruits and vegetables.  One of their concerns is that eating this way takes too much time and talent in the kitchen.  Well...I do have talent in the kitchen...but it's not necessary for grilling a piece of meat and steaming or sautéing some veggies.

Recently I made this recipe from Taste of Home, and it wasn't much faster than opening a can of Navy Bean soup.  I chopped a few vegetables and cut up the ham.  It was quick, and it was delicious.  Given that it called for so much cubed ham, this recipe is one of the few where I'd suggest using low-sodium broth rather than the good stuff.  The final result was saltier than absolutely necessary.  Otherwise, this recipe is a keeper.  Had I been able to find a ham hock in the grocery store, I'd have begun with dry beans, which really isn't that much more complicated.  It just takes longer...and you need that ham hock.  They can be hard to find in the Pacific Northwest once Thanksgiving and Christmas are over!

Doing well with the Wellbutrin, but upped my nightly dose of Nortriptyline to 20 mg a while back.  I still get breakthrough headaches, but most respond to meds and caffeine in time for work.

Twenty Laps

The YMCA was closed for a week for cleaning and repairs and I missed my swims.  Today I got right back into the habit with twenty laps.  I don't want to brag or anything, but I can swim twenty laps in under an hour.  Whew!  So fast!!  Twenty laps, incidentally, is two-thousand meters.  I think.

Did I mention I swam twenty laps?

The XR version of Wellbutrin is continuing to give me very mild headaches.  These are the type that I can ignore as I go about my day, and they may well cease once I'm back on a strict regimen of waking at the same time each day.  I've read lots of feedback from other patients online, and many of them say the headaches do taper off, so I'm willing to continue with it.

I've eaten lots of carbs in the past few weeks, mainly in an attempt to curb the headaches.  It doesn't really help, so I'm going to stick more closely to the low-carb eating for the rest of the summer.

Is it a cure or a cause?

So now the Wellbutrin, which is meant to stop the migraines, is giving me migraines.

I'm on week four of taking the standard release variety and week one of non-stop--but very mild--migraine pain.  It's possible that switching to the extended release variety will change my reaction to the medication, so I'm going to try that next.

Meanwhile, I'm going to take 10 mg of Nortriptyline each night to fight these headaches.

I did some checking around the web, and most of the people who say that Wellbutrin gave them migraines also say that the headaches ceased after two to three weeks.

I hope I have the same experience.

Because I'd really like for this medicine to be a cure, not a cause.

Wellbutrin Update

It's been a week, and I'm now officially off of Nortriptyline and taking only Wellbutrin for the migraines, the ADHD, and the SAD.

And I feel great.  I've kept a daily diary of, well, anything I notice, and it seems to me that I'm not suffering any strange side effects.

I have woken with headaches a couple of times, but I think they were both due to the fact that I'd gone to bed and woken up later than usual. 

I've also stuck with the swimming.  I got started at Intrawest in Palm Desert and have joined the YMCA to keep it up.  I like going on weekdays at three, because that's when they begin pumping in cold water in preparation for swim team practice.  I have the lap lanes to myself.  Today I completed 10 laps, a new personal best.

Tonight I'm trying something very interesting out:  I'm having a vodka tonic.  Dave and I cleaned out our sad little liquor cabinet and had to throw away bottles and bottles (smallish ones) of alcohol that had gone bad.  The Bailey's expired in 1995, and was so thick it couldn't be poured down the sink.  There were black things in the bottom of the gin.  It was yucky!  It will be interesting to find out if I can have a drink and not suffer a migraine.

Over the Fourth of July weekend, I had no trouble sticking to my diet, except for one meal.  Omi had made her potato salad so naturally I had to have some of that.  I also ate a piece of "nice cake." I think an occasional indulgence is perfectly acceptable.

My weight is pretty much unchanged.

Wellbutrin

I visited my PCP last week to talk about ending my prescription for Nortriptyline.

My concerns about the Nortrip (can I abbreviate it?) are that it seems to contribute to weight gain, the dry-mouth is annoying and causes dental issues, and I'd like to be able to try ADHD medicine.  I confessed that the weight-loss side effect of ADHD medicines really appeals to me.

I also explained to my doctor that I become a different person when I visit the desert.  I eat less, sleep better, have the desire to work out, and am generally more productive and busy.  Here in Seattle I sit in my recliner and get fat.

She recommended Wellbutrin.  Like Nortrip it is an anti-depressant that also helps alleviate migraines.  It's also effective for ADHD symptoms and for SAD.  So if it works, it's basically the magic pill I've been looking for.

But it was a scary start.  Side effects include thoughts of suicide or suicide, grouchiness, and, of all things, MIGRAINES.  But when it works, it's great.

So far, it seems to be working.  I've been aided by a week of warm, clear weather so there haven't been any issues with the barometer.  I'm sticking to my lo-carb diet so that there are no headaches due to sugar or wheat.