I think it’s funny how much we go through life not really experiencing things. Not funny laugh out lout but funny kind of sad.

As part of my food diary, I record not only what I am eating but other things as well. It’s not just a diary of intake but a diary of experience and acknowledgment. Before I eat, I record my level of hunger from a 1-5 range. I also record what emotions I’m feeling at the time.

Before I started this food diary, I would have said that I have my bad times and my times of dealing with depression, but I’m overall a happy, content person. Little stress. Well, apparently I was wrong – even about my own feelings.

Through recording my meal and snack time emotions, I have come to see that I am a lot more stressed than I thought I was. More often than not, I am feeling work stress, anxiety, sadness… And I am left feeling shocked. Low level anxiety and stress have become the norm, so no longer am I basing my opinion of how I’m feeling as compared to happiness – which should be the norm. I compare it to the stress and anxiety I feel nearly every day.

Now, some of it is unavoidable. We all have bad days at work or have to deal with things/conversations/people that don’t jive with us on the given day. But for that to become normal is unhealthy.

As I unravel the intricacies surrounding my food addiction and reactions, I see that this is a bigger can of worms than I could have ever anticipated. But, weirdly, it’s my levels of anxiety facing these things that tells me I’m on the right track. True healing never was easy.

I love the word ‘gobsmacked’. It so accurately describes what I felt when I saw how few calories I was getting and how I am feeling now, losing weight when I’m eating more!

After deciding to meet minimum calories this week, I am already experiencing the benefits. I’m losing weight (nearly a kilo all up), I feel like I have more energy, food is no longer the enemy to be avoided. I’m not making optimum choices all of the time, but that will come with time. At the moment, my body and my mind – and my emotions, really – are happy to be getting in plenty of yummy food.

Yesterday was a tough one. I was almost hit by a jackass driver who didn’t want to stop at the pedestrian lights, and the experience put me into shock. After The Bloke talked me through it and I had a few hours to calm down, my body went into ‘I want carbs and nothing but carbs’ mode. I managed pretty well, though I did get a little cranky with The Bloke when I wasn’t giving my body the bread and ice cream it wanted. Haha.

Today is a much better day and I’m looking forward to seeing how things go when I increase exercise along with getting enough calories.

Yesterday I was in a foul mood and had a rant about how it was so annoying that I had been doing so well only to have all my progress knocked out by a single fun night at the pub. I drank more than I intended and had a few slices of gourmet pizza, but surely that shouldn’t destroy everything.

I hadn’t made that much progress, but it was still my progress and I was proud of it. To have it taken away so soon was a harsh blow that I wasn’t expecting. Yes, I’m losing it again, but I don’t think it’s healthy to have my weight jump around like that not to mention not wanting to sacrifice my social life.

Something wasn’t right.

I felt like I just needed a single puzzle piece to work out what the heck was going on. Plenty of people don’t have to sacrifice their social lives to lose weight. So how did a couple extra schooners and a few slices of pizza screw things up so badly?

As it turns out, they didn’t. I’m not saying pizza is a new health food, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought. My body was just reacting as it should: packing away all available calories while in starvation mode.

Yep, starvation mode.

The Bloke suggested that my problem might not be from having an extra drink every once in a while but from what I’m doing in the time between that could be the problem. He suggested I check my food log to make sure I’m getting enough calories to make sure I’m not putting myself into starvation mode (thus making my weight bounce wildly when I do have more than usual calories).

Lo and behold, probably the most important number on Nutridiary I had been completely ignoring: Daily Quota

I had a look at one day, and I had eaten only 510 calories. Another day, 739. No wonder my body is so confused! Mix in a 2000 calorie day and my body wants to pack it away like there is no tomorrow.

So I have new – and very strange – goal this week: eat more. It goes against everything in me, but it will be a stunning experiment to see if meeting the minimum will actually help me to lose weight. I know I have to do it for a while so my body will learn to trust me again, but I’m looking forward to the results when paired with exercise.

And really, I love any excuse to have more carrots and hummus.

Food doesn’t make me happy.

While this may seem like a no-brainer to many people, it has been one of the harsher realizations in my journey for a healthier mind and body.

The thing is, food used to make me happy. Really. I would scrounge up my allowance money just for the chance to buy a container of Ben & Jerry’s because buying the specialty ice cream was my way of telling myself I was special. And it worked. I felt special. I felt like I was treating myself to special things like no one else would. Of course, the sugar rush certainly helped.

I was too young to understand the shame that would come later in my life after I would sit and eat an entire container of ice cream.

You see, that’s the thing – I’ve been doing this for years. Before I could understand why sugar is bad for you, why I was gaining weight and long before I could understand anything like emotional eating or binge eating disorder. I ate to feel, I ate to comfort, I ate because some days that was the only thing that felt good about my life.

But I’m not a child anymore, and food doesn’t make me happy.

I remember the first time when all of the reading and the talking had finally sunk in enough to become a life thought. I ordered a chai latte, one of my old favourite cold day treats, and drank maybe a quarter of it while walking home. I stopped, looked at it (the largest size, of course), and said, “But I don’t want this.”

The taste was off (mentally; in reality it tasted just the same), I wasn’t hungry or even thirsty. I walked the rest of the way home and then dumped it out.

The thing is, though, that you can get rid of the food. You can realize that food doesn’t make you happy. But no one tells you where to go from there. You have the thing that comforted you for years taken away from you by harsh truth and understanding, but no one replaces it. No one says, “Now you can do x to find comfort.”

For some, it becomes exercise. For others, they go into therapy and/or go on mood helpers while they figure themselves out. Some do great works of art and others rediscover or make new friends.

Exercise is almost it for me. I definitely feel more focused and on track when I’m exercising. But exercising when I’m depressed or frustrated just doesn’t cut it. ‘Social anxiety’ doesn’t begin to describe what I feel when I think about the prospect of making new friends face to face. I’m writing novels still, which is brilliant, but it has yet to prove to be a good therapy. Mood helpers? Well, I’m thinking about it…

That’s where I’m at now. I’m just trying to figure out where to go from here.

I write video posts for another site and came across this. It’s kind of a weird video, but it’s nice hearing someone else talking about things that I’ve gone through.

If there is anything I can say about what Australia has taught me, I can say that I have learned so much more about natural remedies. When I was growing up, even chiropractics was considered a bunch of hogwash (and I could have used it!). So herbs, vitamins and teas? Yeah, no. But now I’m here and I am embracing natural ways to help my system become healthier.

Which is how I came to find Adoretea.

After spending a lot of time researching and talking to women who a) have PCOS, b) want to conceive or c) both, I decided to try out some raspberry leaf tea. I figure that if it can do half the stuff some women claim it can do, then I’ll be doing well. So I looked around online and found this lovely website that sells raspberry leaf tea in all kinds of different sizes.

I bought the 50g packet of raspberry leaf tea for $5.50 AUD. I don’t know if I even like the stuff, but my thinking is that I will have to drink it for a while to feel the full effects. Given you use one teaspoon to brew a cup, this size is more than enough to test it out.

I was just going to leave it at that, but I decided to nose around the other teas as well. There are so many! And so many that sound so delicious…

I ended up getting about a half a dozen of their ’2 Cup Sampler’ packs. What an excellent idea! At $0.95 AUD a pack, I can try all sorts of different kinds without it being too expensive (especially if I end up hating any of the kinds I chose).

As I make more and more changes geared not just for my overall health but for creating a healthy environment for my future bubs to grow in, I feel more like I am headed on the right path – for mind, body and spirit.

I’ve even added a new category called ‘Natural Health’ for when I talk about the influence of the vitamins, teas, etc I add to my regime. Hopefully I’ll find some great things come of it.

I am always excited about starting something new, but when it comes to my body and the difficulties of the past fortnight, I am being careful not to think of getting back on the horse as starting over.

Exercise is difficult right now, as the pain, doctors and such have pushed me past my stress limit. Get me past that limit and my body shuts down to the point of making things like just doing the laundry and walking down to the shops very tiring. The good news is that, as much as I get tired out by little things, I’m recovering from that tired faster and faster every day.

Once again I am grateful for my Wii Fit, as I can use it as the energy strikes (which would be difficult with a gym or even with walking given Melbourne’s ever-changing weather moods).

I’ve gotten my next set of three months of birth control, and I am using that as a goal to really make a dent in the weight loss and fitness levels. I want to get off birth control (I hate the idea of artificial hormones) and I’m hoping that the end of this prescription can mean the end forever.

I’m now taking milk thistle and have ordered some raspberry leaf tea to try out in an effort to help my lady parts sort themselves out naturally. The very fact that I have an ovarian cyst means my system is waking up (my system pretty much just did nothing for a long time), and I want to take this opportunity to do what I can to treat it right.

So I’m not starting over so much as adjusting while my body adjusts to things.

And the adjustments are focusing not only toward a healthier me but towards a healthier environment for future bubs…

I’m here! I’m here!

There have been so many times I have sat down with the intention of posting here and at my other blogs, and I have just been way too exhausted. How things are so, so busy even though I’m off work this week, I don’t know…

I’m still getting up about an hour and a half earlier than I usually do every morning to exercise. I am so darned proud of myself! A solid hour of exercise every morning has been hard, but the pride and confidence that I get from doing with it and sticking with it (even if it hasn’t been quite two weeks yet) has made me feel amazing.

While my chiropractor was able to do amazing things with my ankle to alleviate pain, it’s still just not strong enough for a walk every morning (unless I want to limp home on the second day, which is no fun at all I can tell you from experience), so I’m alternating my walking days right now. On the opposite days, I’m doing a solid hour of…

Yep, my old friend. Wii Fit!

The first morning I opted for an hour of Wii Fit, I felt bad. I was sure I was cheating somehow, even though I was determined to do the same amount of time a walk would take, and even though I knew that I had to give my ankle some rest lest I damage it severely. So I did the hour and wow!

As it turns out, the Wii Fit is a more intense workout than the walking by heaps. I know that’s because there is only so much I can push walking because of my ankle, but still. Wow. I was really impressed and finally got shot with the clue gun that Wii Fit is like anything else – you get out of it what you put into it. And I have been putting some hardcore workout time into it.

While some people might not ever pair ‘hardcore’ with ‘Wii Fit’, I do because by the time I am done, I am exhausted, drenched with sweat and puffing. Woohoo!

I am so happy about this because it means that I don’t have to walk on rainy mornings if I don’t want to, and I can strengthen my ankle up slowly while still getting the amount of exercise I want. While my weight is still bobbing around, the past couple of days have showed definite losses. Happy, happy!

So I have the exercise, now I just have to get the eating and the mentality up to par.

I’m thinking about how much you should/do tell your partner. Do you tell little white lies, hold to ‘honesty is the best policy’ no matter what, or do something else? That got me thinking of, well, something unpleasant. It’s something I’m willing to confess here, though, because I know at least some of you will understand.

A couple years ago, I had a binge afternoon. It was pretty ugly. Sushi (I’m not supposed to have sushi that involves rice), chocolate cookies (more than one box)… I was not proud of myself at all. I’m also sad to say that I didn’t speak a word of it to my husband.

What I did do was take all the wrappings and stuff them in one of my purses. I figured my purse is the last thing my husband would ever look in, and for months, he didn’t. I then took the purse and put it in my sight so whenever I walked in the room, I would see it and be reminded.

Then one night I was looking for a hat I hadn’t been able to find for weeks. He decides to help me look for it, and guess where the first place he looks is?

As it turns out, he wasn’t disappointed at all. He was sad that I went through it, but for the most part, he was just amused that he found it when I thought it’d be the last place he would look. I had a good cry and he told me it was okay, and I finally felt like a huge burden (that I didn’t realize was there) was lifted off my shoulders.

I’m happy to say that now, I don’t do that anymore. I don’t hide. The time I gave in and had a stress chocolate, it was hard to tell my husband. Ultimately, though? I felt so much better for it. There is nothing like it out there for me that fixes up my behavior better than knowing my husband will know.

Do you have anyone you tell everything to? Do you have a partner to help you through the bad times? Or do you not need one?

I went to the shops yesterday because I wanted some ingredients for a new recipe I was trying out. (Which was pretty darn good for my first attempt, if I do say so…) As I was wandering the shelves just to see if there was anything else interesting enough to pick up, I spotted the peanut butter section.

Now, I realise that peanut butter isn’t the best thing for you. However, paired up with some Vita Wheats (healthy crackers) and sliced banana for an occasional afternoon snack? Just peachy! I’ve been having cravings for peanut butter lately anyway, so I figured I might as well work it into a healthy snack.

Did I buy any peanut butter? Heck no!

If there is one awesome thing my husband has taught me, it is to read labels.

I couldn’t remember which brand of peanut butter didn’t have any additives in it (peanut butter should have three ingredients: peanut butter, vegetable oil and salt (sometimes no salt)), so I started reading labels. Lo and behold, out of all the brands on the shelf, I could not find a single jar of peanut butter that didn’t have sugar added.

GRR!

Before anyone tries to tell me sugar in peanut butter is standard, stop. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but in all my time in Australia, I have never eaten peanut butter with sugar added. Never.

I suppose it’s just the way of the world, but I’m really disappointed. Sugar has made its way into all peanut butter now, too? Blah. I don’t want to spend twice as much money on the so-called ‘health’ peanut butter either, so I guess I’ll just have to do without.

Grrr.