Today I Stop

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Kathy

Ribbon for International No Diet Day

Try not to eat seems to be my mantra most days.  I gaze at my voluptuous figure with self-hatred.  I pay the price of eating little– in poor sleep, fibro-fog, increased pain and stiffness, and other reactions in my body. I inhale calories at the end of the day to make up for the ones I didn’t have in the morning.  Hypoglycemia seems to be triggered because of poor eating habits due to “dieting.” Starvation is more like it.

I’m intelligent enough to recognize that diets don’t work, except for the multi-billion dollar dieting industry, or their spokespeople. I remember watching a W-5 episode on diet companies.  The investigator interviewed an ex-employee  (a weight loss counsellor) of a diet company who revealed the strategy  “if they cry, they buy.” In other words, if these “counsellors” can get their client to cry about their existing weight, then they will buy into their expensive diet program.

Emotionally, however, is another story. I have tied how I look to how I feel about myself.  Sometimes it helps to remind myself that  I have two chronic medical conditions that cause bloating.

Today, May 6th,is International No Diet Day.  It was started by a British woman, Mary Evans Young of Dietbreakers in 1992 in opposition to the societal obsession with thinness. http://www.nedic.ca/knowthefacts/preventionhealth.shtml#indd

Today I choose:

  • To nourish my body in a way that honors it, and my Creator; and
  • To blog to raise awareness that diets don’t work. Diets harm.

Tomorrow, I may educate myself on eating competence http://www.ellynsatter.com/resources/EatingCompetence.pdf as I have lost sight of how to eat in a manner  where weight loss isn’t the goal.

Here are a group of bloggers and writers that have also written about International No Diet Day.

Diets can both promote negative body image, and negative body image can promote dieting.

Lynn Grefe, the president of the National Eating Disorders Association http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/ says:

Every place we turn we’re being told that we’re not good enough, that we need to be slim.

…

I say we should be measuring the size of our heart, not the size of our hips. We come in different shapes and sizes.

Get rid of any diet books you have lying around. They make great kindling for your next camping trip.

  • Nurture Principles http://nurtureprinciples.com/ was started by Rebecca – and others – to help us learn how to eat and practice other self-care tips. There’s a badge you can download to “take the pledge” to love yourself by looking after yourself.  Rebecca explains why she started Nurture Principles:

Chances are you have taken a ride or two on the diet/overeat roller coaster. You wanted to be thin, skinny, lean etc. and went for some type of restrictive diet/cleanse/fast or what not. For many people (self included) the holidays always seemed to be a challenging time. I was either plotting what food I would stuff myself with or what I would avoid like bubonic plague. While it took me awhile to learn that diets don’t work, it was worth the journey because now I get ideas like “me movement”…

Some other good resources are available on this website as well.

  • Sharon, one of the writers over at Adios Barbie (great name, great goal-promoting a healthy body and self-image through articles and other resources) has written an excellent post  about freeing yourself from the bondage of obsessing over calories, and the quest to obtain the “ideal” body.  http://www.adiosbarbie.com/scale-back-its-international-no-diet-day/

INDD is more about not depriving yourself for a 24-hour period. It beckons you to make peace with your body and your relationship with food.

So, today I stop. I’ll quit obsessing about thin(ner). Just for 24 hours, I will try to love my body more.

*Submitted for the Chronic Babe Blog Carnival #28 which has the theme “awareness.” May is awareness month for many things. After I submitted I re-read the prompt; this may not strictly fall into the criteria outlined but hopefully will be included nonetheless.

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Wordless Wednesday (kind of)

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Kathy

Taken from the Facebook Page of: http://fmcfsme.com/

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Miss Independent

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Kathy

Making your way in the world today

Takes everything you’ve got,

Taking a break from all your worries

Sure would help a lot.

I feel sad today. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  This was not part of the plan.  When I was married to husband #1, I was financially dependent on him.  I hated it.  I felt shame every time I came to him; arm outstretched in the familiar palms up gesture, and asked him for grocery money. I worked, but earned little in menial jobs as I had no education beyond high school. (This was a long time ago, but I am guessing we didn’t have a joint account.)

After my first marriage ended, I vowed I’d never be financially dependent on someone again.  I was going to be a Career Woman. I’d work full time and be Miss Independent, and make my own way in the world. Of course, this was before chronic illness took away much of my earning capacity and potential.

I am not the best money manager, but I did work, and survive financially.  Even after I was diagnosed in 1996, I continued to work for a number of years.

The writing went on the wall however, when I began to be let go from job after job.  My illness was beginning to impact my career as an administrative assistant. Fibromyalgia and stress do not mix. Fibro-fog and proofreading aren’t a good fit. A quick glance at my Resume shows the last meaningful employment I had was in 2006.

Attempts to have a home based web design business with my husband were not as successful as I’d dreamed.  We’d start working with a client, and they’d abandon their website mid-stream, change their mind, bounce their cheque, etc. It became a disincentive. I’m not able to wear all the different hats a small business owner needs on their head—marketer, accountant, etc.

So here I am, reliant on my husband financially.  It’s a huge emotional loss for me and a greater financial burden on him.  Writing as an occupation (the thing I love most to do) seems out of reach as I now have chronic tendonitis in my right arm.

This dependence extends beyond the financial.  I have little of my own, except an email address, a couple blogs, and my own computer (purchased of course with husband’s money), and I’ve claimed the en-suite bath as my own.  I chafe against this sometimes; something within me just cringes at all this dependence.  Still, there’s not much point of me opening a bank account in my name only as it would be empty, and while I certainly believe in the importance of women having their own credit rating apart from the spouse, it’s doubtful I’d get a credit card in my name (Ya gotta have income for some of this stuff.)

Still I am blessed with a husband who loves me and has an excellent job with wonderful benefits.

Not that he would, but if for some reason my husband underwent some sort of strange metamorphosis into a jerk, and decided to leave me, it’s overwhelming to contemplate how drastically my financial situation would change.  Despite my resiliency, http://www.lessons4living.com/resiliency_and_the_cycle.htm I wonder if a homeless shelter would be my new address.

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Wordless Wednesday

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Kathy

Taken from: http://www.neatorama.com/2011/03/30/hilarious-paper-street-signs/

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Wordless Wednesday – Perfect

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Kathy

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Happy To Help

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Kathy

When I relocated to a new city over 15 years ago, I knew one person.  I recognized I needed to find some ways to connect, and keep loneliness at bay. I was still able to work full-time then.  I decided to volunteer. I absolutely love animals, so I chose the SPCA. http://www.aspca.org/

I filled out a volunteer application form, attended a volunteer information session, and was assigned to walk the dogs in the grassy area behind the shelter.  If memory serves, I did this every Saturday for six months, except when the wintry weather made it too cold for the pooches (and me) to be out.  It was fantastic. In assisting the animals, it helped me to feel less lonely in a strange city.  A win-win.

Later on, my husband and I supported our local SPCA financially. We also adopted two cats from the same shelter.

Punkin was adopted in 1997 and sadly passed away in 2010:

Dexter, our current cat, adopted us about a month after Punkin’s passing:

Dexter --when we first brought him home--was a bit underweight

I'm fat and happy now! Thanks for bringing me home!

I honestly don’t like to toot my own horn, but I’d like to recognize, through my blog, the SPCA. Their mandate is to protect people from animals. Sad to say, but sometimes that is necessary.  My tender heart for animals rarely lets me hear about animal abuse without breaking down.

Animals have been there for me in times of struggle and extreme stress. In the abusive farm foster home of my pre-teens, I’d visit the animals.  The rabbits that lived in the old broken down vehicle on the property represented to me an oasis in a maelstrom of abuse.

Giving back to the animals — be it financially, volunteering, or though adoption – who loved me when no humans in my life did, is small sacrifice.

Submitted for the Chronic Babe Blog Carnival, whose latest prompt is “causes you support.”

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Good Help Can Be Hard to Find (but when you find it, it’s priceless)

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Kathy

We’ve certainly had people to help us move and assist with home maintenance,  tree removal,  furniture moving, and the like – out of the goodness of their hearts. [To which I offer at this time, a huge round of applause and a heartfelt thank you.] Where beers and pizzas suffice as “payment.”  I do confess to the creation of a quid pro quo system at times to balance the scales – meals offered to offset the help required, for example.

A friend helps my husband with a renovation project

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a couple of pictures from the “Poplar Chainsaw Massacre of 2007″ [a take-down of the giant poplar in front of our house, where we had a substantial amount of help from friends.] We couldn’t have done it without them, particularly one individual’s engineering ingenuity.

TIMBER!

At times, however, this whole concept of requesting and receiving help from individuals has been a bit of a sore spot with me.

We’ve  had people close to us who’ve never bothered to ask us if we need assistance for anything. Merely querying how we are doing is a stretch for some of these folks. This has been pretty painful for me. I see these same folks rushing to the aid of others who need care in acute circumstances.  Who helps the chronic that walks among you is what I want to ask them.

It’s hard to accept that there are people in our life who don’t get it, and don’t care to. They seem to be  too busy or important in their own lives to inquire into ours.

There's help out there, but it may take a little digging.

Often, we hire our help. While it hurts in the wallet, it hurts the heart much less.

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Wordless Wednesday

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Kathy

Snowdrop Anemone-one of the first spring flowers in my garden

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Pictures of Thankfulness

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Kathy

The latest Chronic Babe blog carnival starts with the prompt “I’m thankful for…”

Since thankfulness is a habit I’d like to get into, I was pleased to see this prompt.  I decided to demonstrate what I’m grateful for through my photographs:

Flowers from my husband "just because"

Warm Winter Holidays

Nourishing Food

Coffee!

My handicapped parking placard (not my photo--in the public domain)

The sale of our vehicle

Where I Live

And, saving the best for last:

Dexter our cat --such a sweetie and great company

Family

Our wedding rings - symbolising my gratitude for marriage and my husband

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Wordless Wednesday

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Kathy

She Loves You Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

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