Now It's My Thyroid

Well, the blood test confirmed that my thyroid has gone wonky again. The hospital called and wanted to make sure I got on medication ASAP, but...

My endocrinologist (who I can't stand) has gone MIA. I think she may have married and changed her name (short rant: I will never understand why women change their name when they marry. For crying out loud, we don't belong to our husbands anymore!). In any case, her name is no longer on the list of doctors at the clinic where I used to see her and I didn't have time to leave a message asking if they knew where she'd gone because I won't be home next week to answer the phone and speak to a human being. This is not a time for telephone tag. Maybe it's good news after all that I can't find her.

In the meantime, the internist at the hospital has already called the pharmacy and my prescription is waiting for pick-up tonight. Maybe it's a good thing Dr. F. has disappeared. Now, I'll be able to go to someone who is hopefully easier to deal with. I have to go to my GP's next week ASAP to get a referral to a new endocrinologist.

I guess I'm a nice person with a heavy karmic load. Otherwise, there's no way to explain all this crap.

Herein endeth the "woe is me". I've got things to do before surgery on Nov. 17.

By The Way...

I've been very busy recently with work, but also I've been preoccupied with my upcoming surgery.

I'll be having a total knee replacement on Nov. 17.

Yesterday, I spent about four hours at the hospital for pre-op meetings with the anesthetist, the pre-op nurse and the internist, in addition to having x-rays and blood tests done. My BP is stellar, but I have a feeling (and the blood test will tell soon enough), that I am a bit hyperthyroid. I've got some mild, but clear symptoms and the internist felt that it was important to check my TSH levels. We'll see. In any case, this won't delay the surgery (at least no one said it would...).

During my talk with the anesthetist (I can't remember exactly what we were discussing at the time), he said something about not worrying about xyz because, and I quote, I'm "thin". Hello! Whatever...But it was rather surprising.

My last experience with joint replacement--my hip in 2003--was more like a nightmare than surgery. I won't go into the details, but it has left me more than a bit skittish about orthopedic interventions. But I'm not going to let this hold me back. As the internist said, it's not going to get better, so I must boldly go where a lot of people have gone before and trust in my surgeon's skill.

I'm not a praying person myself, but please don't feel shy about putting in a good word for me with the higher power of your choice.

How to Gain Weight

Via Weight Maven:




This is my story and the story of many people I know.

Health at Every Size: Further Thoughts and Clarification of My Viewpoint

The response to my last post from Screaming Fat Girl (as well as comments from RDhiker that arrived a few days later) really got me thinking.

SFG writes:

I don't think health is possible at literally every size. At some point, the stress on the body from being very overweight will have an effect on the heart, circulatory system, etc. People who have never lived life over 300 lbs. for any long period of time can't possibly understand the stress it places on the body [...] Most of the FA who are talking about being healthy at large sizes aren't yet 40. Trust me, as someone who has lived most of her adult life over 300 lbs. and topped out near 400, your body will tolerate it a lot better when you're young. You start to develop problems as the years go by. For quality of life, most people could use some help in dealing with their relationship with food (which often results in weight loss). Denying this does nothing for the bodily acceptance movement except make it look willfully ignorant and therefore disingenuous [...]

However, I think we need to stop even addressing health as if it were equally possible at every size. It is not. Sure, you can be fat and healthy, but you can't be healthy at every weight (that includes extreme thinness as well as extreme fatness)[...]

Let me start by saying that I have enormous respect for SFG. She is someone who really thinks about things and certainly takes nothing at face value. She is a courageous person who has made great strides forward in forging a healthier life for herself.

So, to SFG and my readers in general, consider the following thoughts the continuation of a fruitful and respectful dialogue.

First, I'd like to set some parameters:

First parameter: Some of us choose to make "healthy" choices while others don't. I know that SFG and I agree on this point: your quest for health (or lack thereof) is your decision. I'm not here to tell anyone that they must try to be healthier. That attempt is a choice.

Second parameter: I insist on using the words quest, try and attempt because I know that life isn't fair. Our healthy choices are tempered by heredity, the hand we were dealt at birth (or, quite often, in the womb) and the traumas and experiences we have had throughout our lives. My late MIL lived a happy, active life until she dropped dead of a heart attack at 82. She ate lots of junk food, drank copious amounts of coffee and smoked like a chimney. Yes, she may have lived longer had she not smoked, but she far exceeded the average life expectancy of a woman born in 1927 in Canada (61, according to Statistics Canada). My mother, on the other hand, was a model of healthy eating. She spent much of her adult life housebound--severely crippled by arthritis. So yeah, life isn't fair.

Third parameter: My healthy choices are not yours. You may be a vegetarian, or eat a diet heavy in meat and shun most carbs including fresh fruits and some vegetables. You may be a runner who runs without any problems far into old age or you may be a person who is prone to shin splints and should avoid running at all costs. The healthy practices of A might fast-track B into illness.

Now, let's get down to brass tacks:

In my mind, there is a difference between fat acceptance (FA) and Health at Every Size (HAES). I certainly believe in FA in the sense that behaviours such as fat shaming and blaming, prejudice and bias against fat people, the assumption that a fat person is slothful, lacks self-control (in terms of eating and often other areas--witness the often interesting association between fatness and sexual voraciousness) or is less worthy of respect have no place in a civilized world. FA is an attitude, a belief that fat people are...people, neither better nor worse than anyone else. However, FA is not specifically linked to health, be it good or bad.

HAES, on the other hand is a dynamic, on-going process; it results from the choices we make every day, tempered of course by heredity and pure old luck. HAES, to me, means considering oneself at the place (weight) one is today, and saying "what can I do to be healthy or healthier?" Considering that 95% of people CANNOT maintain a significantly lower weight after dieting, I question the worthiness of responding, "just diet".

HAES does not mean ceasing to strive for health. It means that while you are probably never going to be a size 0 you can commit to engaging in a host of practices that CAN help you to be healthier, though not necessarily any or much svelter.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I suspect many of the morbidly obese we so worry about got there by dieting. If they have health concerns, why aren't we working with them to improve their health through gentle movement (acquafit, if your joints are suffering; or starting with just a few minutes of walking and building up to longer periods; or stationary biking--as long as you don't have a knee like mine, lol), or through nutritional counselling? Rather than putting the overweight back in the dieting straight jacket that got them into this fine mess, why aren't they directed towards resources to teach them the fundamentals of mindful eating (if that is helpful--and it certainly is neither helpful nor needed in many cases)?

And while I'm on the topic of mindful eating, allow me a short rant: People are unconvinced of its merits because dieting has ROBBED them of their ability to read their own signals of hunger and satiety. This is the true tragedy of the diet culture: the people who need it most have lost their their ability to read their body's own signals--the signals that enable all living beings to continue to stay alive and healthy.

I also suspect that many morbidly obese people may have reached a physical state of disequilibrium due to years of mental and sometimes physical abuse. They have felt it necessary to develop a protective layer of fat around themselves. Again, dieting is not the solution. In such cases, improving one's physical health and rebuilding a healthy relationship with food require psychological intervention or simply helping the person to physically escape the abusive relationship. The disordered relationship with food is actually a symptom rather than a cause. How can a woman stop gorging herself when gorging is a defence mechanism to prevent abuse and attack or simply a way of forgetting what makes her so unhappy in life?

Those of us who seek to improve our health need to approach this goal by using a variety of approaches rather than resorting to dieting--which has proven itself to be not only usually ineffective (perhaps not in the short term but certainly in the long term) and downright counter-productive in perhaps the majority of cases.

Some people may lose weight through implementing techniques that first and foremost improve their health such as movement, mindful eating, and psychotherapy to get to the root of their disordered eating. And that's fine. However, we know that for the vast majority of people, it is practically impossible to lose weight and in particular maintain a weight loss.

Moreover, though there may indeed be certain correlations between a higher weight and certain health problems, weight loss is not a magic potion that will solve all our health woes. If that were the case, there would be no slim diabetics and my particular knee problem would not be common amongst ballerinas--not the fattest group in the general population (this, according to my surgeon, who has made knees like mine his life's work).

My bottom line is that--if you so desire--you should do your best to achieve the best health possible for you, no matter what weight you are at today.

There is ample proof that weight loss at any cost can be deleterious to both one's mental and one's physical health. There is ample proof that maintaining significant weight loss is impossible for 95% of the population. Furthermore, there is ample proof that taking truly positive steps to improve one's health do lead to better health outcomes, even if they do not always lead to a significant weight loss. We need to move, to learn to eat relatively normally rather than adopt a binge/restrict pattern and some of us also need to work towards overcoming the psychological reasons for obesity, though this last point certainly does not apply to everyone.

Health at Every Size really is all about health.

Of course, I am far from exhausting the topic of HAES, but I've kept you reading long enough. To be continued...

Addendum: I just read a blog post by a medical doctor whose extremely strict approach to eating leaves no room for compromise. I must admit I continue to be perplexed. Since so few studies have been done on how mindful eating can be used to help binge eaters, we still don't know what can actually be done. I certainly feel unqualified to talk about binge eating since I have never been a binger myself. However, I find it hard to accept that binge eating can only be treated by severely circumscribing one's eating and adhering to what essentially amounts to a straight jacket approach to food. I don't think human beings are made to live in a state of constant restriction. The opposite of severe restriction is severe bingeing. Someone who is in a constant state of severe restriction cannot learn moderation, which I believe is the key to self-regulation, and the restrict/binge cycle cannot be broken. To what extent is binge eating physiological and to what extent is it a learned behaviour? And do the two cross-pollinate each other?

Health...Really?

While 20 or 30 years ago, people (OK, let's be honest, women mostly) dieted because they felt that slim equalled beautiful and sexy, in today's world no one openly admits to dieting for such a shallow reason...even though I suspect that it still remains the REAL reason most people/women diet.

Today, people say they diet because of their health. Many people are convinced that they are on the verge of dropping dead because they have a BMI of 30. Many people will ignore anything good about their health--perfect blood pressure, glucose levels, etc.--if their BMI is over 25. This is the only number that counts for them and they will not consider themselves healthy unless this BMI number is reached, or ideally, until it drops below 25.

For the vast majority of people, slimness (or its proxy, the BMI) and health are synonymous.

Losing your hair due to food restriction and the resulting poor nutrition? That's OK, you're losing weight. Developing osteopenia or worse yet, osteoporosis? That's OK, you're "healthy" because your weight is down. Carrying around fat while losing muscle? That's OK, as long as the scale (which doesn't distinguish between fat and muscle) says you've lost some poundage.

On the other hand, have you become depressed because despite exercising regularly and reasonably, and eating like a healthy human being (in other words, without bingeing or scrupulously restricting calories or the types of food you "allow" yourself) you have lost no weight or just a few measly pounds? Do improved numbers (for instance, blood pressure), more energy, better sleep patterns etc. seem a poor substitute for a size 6? Have you decided to give up these healthy habits because they're not really healthy habits, since you haven't lost weight?

If you are depressed and desperately want to lose weight; if you feel that you are intrinsically unhealthy because you don't wear a size 6, then please stop reading this blog.

I've been blogging for almost two years now and I have slowly come to the realization that my weight and my health are not siamese twins. I now realize that what I do to improve or maintain my health may or may not have an effect on my weight.

My goal is to be as healthy as I can. For me, this means many things:

• making peace with food; realizing that I do not have to eat a piece of chocolate cake because I know that I won't have the opportunity to eat any for weeks, months or years to come because I will be on a diet; realizing that healthy eating includes a wide variety of foods, and that neither restriction nor gorging lead anywhere good;
• exercising to the best of my abilities and taking steps to help my body return to better orthopedic health;
• in other words, practising what Dr. Linda Bacon terms Health at Every Size.
  

In my opinion, the "war on obesity" has nothing to do with good health. It has a lot to do with blaming and shaming. When you realize the truth in the joke "Q: What's the best way to gain 25 pounds? A: Lose 20.", you begin to see that weight loss hysteria is making our Western world fatter and fatter and encouraging people to engage in behaviours that do much to negatively impact both their physical and their mental health.

I am convinced that if we lived in a world where we lost the emphasis on weight loss and put the emphasis on health gain through normal eating and regular, reasonable exercise, we would still see a variety of body types. There would still be thinner than average people, lots of "average weight" people and heavy people. However, there would be far fewer Victoria Beckhams--in other words, people who starve themselves for "beauty"--or headless fatties, many of whom have dieted themselves up the scale.

Don't get me wrong: there will always be people who eat a lot, sit on their duffs all day and stay slim, just as there are people who eat reasonably and exercise faithfully and still carry a great deal of weight on their bodies (and are stamped with the scarlet "O" for [morbidly] obese). It's due to the amazing beauty of human diversity. Furthermore, there will always be a certain percentage of the population whose heights fall either significantly below or significantly above what is found in the general population. What's worse, there will always be red-heads, and even people with two different eye colours! The horror!

Let it go, people. It's called diversity.

And please put me down as a proponent of Health at Every Size. And that means every size.

Musician and Athlete

This past weekend, I went to a "house concert". A house concert is a real concert, featuring a professional musician, but held in a private home. I only recently found out about these concerts, through a relatively new friend who has known the host ever since she was a teenager. This was my first concert at GA's house.

Before going, I checked on Youtube to get an idea of the featured performer's musical style. I found a number of hits for her and decided to go to the concert. Obviously, Youtube is visual, but I was listening to the music and didn't really pay attention to the musician's physical appearance, especially since her body was in part hidden by her guitar.

Just before the musician came out to begin her first set, the house concert host gave a short introduction. He said that this was the first time that a triathlete was performing in his home, since the performer had recently completed a triathlon for the first time. I think we were all impressed.

A triathlon is a three-sport event made up of swimming, biking and running. There are different distances for each of the sports, depending on one's level. I just looked up the triathlon that the musician I heard on Saturday night competed in. It was a beginner's level and included a 375 m swim, a 10 km bike ride and a 2.5 km run. By tri-athlete standards, this is pretty light, but I know that even before falling prey to arthritis and degenerative back disease, there would have been no way that I could ever have run that 2.5 km. In fact, I am ready to bet my home that the average Jane or Joe in the street--no matter what their weight--could not do this beginner level triathlon without some serious training.

Back to the concert...

So, having just heard that the musician we were about to hear took her physical activity seriously on top of being a great musician, you can imagine my shock when in walked a morbidly obese young woman. Yes, I admit it. I was shocked. Which only goes to show just how brainwashed I too am by a society that insists--day in and day out--constantly and emphatically--with no exception--that fat people CANNOT be athletes and that fat people are by definition unhealthy.

She proceeded to give an amazing concert. Her energy level was through the roof, her voice was strong and vibrant. And she was truly one of the best blues guitarists I've ever heard. BB King move over, you've got some incredible competition out there.

Who is this amazing woman? If you really want to know, you can send me an e-mail and I'll give you her name. She's amazing. However, I'm not giving her name here because I believe it's spectacularly unfair to write a post about a great musician that focuses on her weight rather than on her incredible musicianship. But I just had to: I felt that this was an opportunity to stand up to the bias, stereotypes and ignorance that permeate our world.

The Car, the Carpet and the Cat

In the spring of 2009, we finally started a long-desired but major renovation of our home. They say that you should live in a home for awhile before making any major changes and that is essentially what we did--aside from having to renovate one bathroom (not a choice, but an unexpected necessity), redo the roof and change all the upstairs windows within the first six months of moving in.

By 2009, we had already been living in our little midtown semi-detached house for almost nine years and we were ready to make the big leap into the horrors of home renovation.

We knew that cats don't like change and that living in a construction zone would not be good for Miss Bean, so I called our cat babysitter to ask if she would take the Bean for an extended period of time (several months, at least). She agreed to do so, but warned us that for the first week, JB would have to share her home with another kitty guest. Well, JB's stay at the sitter's was over within 24 hours. She probably realized that this cat was also a guest rather than a permanent resident and decided to make his life a living hell. Sandy, the babysitter, was afraid that JB would try to harm the other cat and since that cat was already there, we had to take JB home.

And there she stayed--with us throughout the long and arduous renovation.

First, we were without a kitchen for eight weeks. Then, the contractor took the front of the house down and rebuilt it, incorporating what had been a decrepit, three-season front porch into the actual house. Of course, it being an old house, all kinds of unexpected things came up and the renovation dragged on and on. We never used the fireplace, which had probably been built in the 1970s and jutted like a Star Trek space ship into the living room.We had it removed and therefore had to re-do part of the hardwood floor in our living room/dining room.

At first, Miss Bean took it like a trooper. She really liked the man who laid the kitchen floor with a new eco-friendly linoleum-type product called Marmoleum. She soldiered on through the dust, the walls coming down, the noise and the upset. But by the time we got into the third month of what was to be a six-month renovation, she had had enough. For that matter, so had we, but we were humans and she was Jelly Bean.

We started finding wet spots (i.e. pee) on the paper spread on the living room floor. Litter box use became unpredictable, but there wasn't much we could do.

Finally, the renovation ended and we had to find a new place for her litter box, since the room where it had always been had changed "vocation" and been turned into the breakfast room. Chaos ensued. After fighting a losing battle, JB won and the litter box went into the new, beautiful little sun room at the front of the house. We started calling this several thousand dollar renovation the "litter box room". Obviously, JB was showing us that this renovation had NOT been worth it.



As a result of the renovation, the reorganization of our living room and the changing around and discarding of some furniture, the carpet that had previously graced the living room floor no longer looked good there. We were, of course, pretty well out of money by this time and on top of it all, our 13 year-old car needed replacing.

Enter Abbas, the oriental carpet man.

The two oriental carpets we already had were sorely in need of cleaning so we sent them down the street to Abbas's emporium. I mentioned to him that I really needed a new carpet for the living room, but that I needed to buy a new car even more. Of course, he had a used carpet right there and he suggested we try it out. It fit perfectly...but we still needed a new car even more.

Abbas came up with a solution: he would trade us the carpet for the car. Sheer brilliance!



The new carpet went down on the living room floor, the new car moved into the driveway, the dust settled and we were happy...until we noticed that Jelly Bean was no longer using her box for "number two". She chose the new carpet to do her business and treated it just like a litter box, scratching to prepare the area for her "gift".

Within short order, the beautiful carpet was looking rather frayed in one corner. We rolled it up and took it back to Abbas to have it fixed.

"When you want carpet back?" asked Abbas.

"In about ten years," I replied.

Abbas looked at me as if I were crazy. The carpet was ready a few weeks later. We paid a fortune to have it fixed, took it home and put it in a closet, thinking it would stay there for many years.

But now Jelly Bean is gone and the carpet is back in its rightful place. It looks gorgeous and feels beautiful and soft under my bare feet. The sun room has finally gone back to its true vocation as a chess playing and reading nook. But I still miss crazy Miss Bean.