Harsh, Man. Really Harsh

Facing music and paying pipers (and insurance shake-downs)

Good things. This is my backyard yesterday between rain episodes. I love rain and look forward to the coming week which brings more rain. Now, the sun is shining once again and it looks a great deal like it did yeesterday.

Living in a world that looks like that, it’s easy to think that life is good enough that we can eat whatever we want and still be healthy and look great. I do look great, but I also am fat(ter).

I still go to the gym twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, and I still do the whole-body workout for 29 minutes on the circuit. I can’t say that it has had a huge effect as far as how strong I am or how I feel, but I have increased the weights on the machines I use quite a bit. I have been doing this since February 6 of this year, so that’s something like seven weeks. Not a huge stretch of time, but more than I have done in a long time.

Somehow, my brain misfired into thinking that if I worked out, I could eat what I wanted. Intellectually, I am mortified that some part of me believed that. I had plenty of sugar and plenty of trans-fats during that time. It was such a relief to not think about what I ate and to feel like a ‘regular’ person who does not obsess over every macro and calorie.

I stopped taking Saxenda because it felt like a waste when I wasn’t even trying to control my eating. I also knew by this point that my Saxenda was in short supply because of my recent health insurance changes, not to mention the national shortage. Since then, I learned that the health insurance plan I chose and was assured would include the medical group I use, does not service that group or rather, the group does not take the insurance. This means I no longer have a health care provider and the (massive) insurance premium I pay each month is in anticipation of any catastrophic health crisis I might suffer between now and when I turn 65 in Sept 2026 and qualify for Medicare.

I met with a health insurance agent to verify that what I was seeing was how things are and yes, that’s how things are. I can pay twice as much as I pay now and transfer to a plan that my medical group does take, but for me, that is not worth $1000 a month plus copays. On my current plan, I can find a new primary caregiver, pay for whatever labs that provider wants to run, and maybe resume treatment.

For me, that all feels odious and just thinking of it makes me tired. For now, I have a reasonable stock of the daily medications I take, which are minimal and not life-sustaining or critical. I have 22 injections of Saxenda left, which I restarted today and will take every other day to try and assist with cravings management.

Starting today, I am back to no added sugar, no trans fats, minimal carbohydrates, and lots of keto foods to try and shift away from the addiction aspect. I don’t feel hungry. I just feel sad and frustrated. I don’t feel shame. I feel something akin to futility. Certainly, I have been here literally hundreds of times before.

One breakthrough I did have recently is the awareness that the fat on me came from living so many years of trauma where the only recourse I had was to medicate myself with food. I couldn’t not go through what I was going through and if I had to do it, the dopamine from the food provided enough pleasure boosts that I could make it through. This started when I was a child and persisted for decades afterward. Food was and is literally my only coping strategy for stressful situations.

For the past three years, I have not been in crisis. The fire happened in August 2021 and that is the defining mark. Just before that, things began to slow down and improve significantly for us, but the fire was such an upheaval that I can hardly count what came before.

My spirit processed all the grief and horror from the fire and although there are still times when I think of something I lost and cringe a bit, but mostly, I am OK. Eric and I have a great life since retirement and I feel myself becoming more adapted into it all the time.

After decades of trauma, I am no longer in trauma, but my body has not yet figured that out and still responds as if I am in crisis. (That part is the breakthrough). In the past, I understood that my bad eating habits were born of trauma and I also knew that my body had unhealthy developments as a result of those eating habits, like insulin resistance and adrenal fatigue.

What I couldn’t understand was why the trauma responses continued when there was no longer any trauma and I’d worked so hard to heal the wounds that caused the trauma responses.

In one of the most recent episodes of “My 600 lb Life,” a woman struggling with her weight attributed her massive weight gain to the fact that her grandfather, wtih whom she was close, had died sixteen years before. As she spoke about it, she broke into sobs. It was clear that she was still in crisis now, sixteen years later over what happened back then.

I am not in crisis. I have searched and sifted and there is literally not one gram of crisis or trauma left in me. As I mentioned, there is occasional sadness, but nothing to indicate huge, gaping wounds in my spirit. I feel great. I have an amazing, blessed life. Why do I still respond to food as if I am desperate to fill some massive abyss inside me? Why do I feel that frantic, nearly hysterical panic over the idea of being unable to eat whatever I want, whenever I want?

All I can figure is that my mind and spirit know we’re OK, but my body does not and still fires up off all of the same responses as it did throughout all of those years of pain and crisis.

The most important step I can take is to figure out how to get the message through to my limbic system that all is well. I have tried EFT, affirmations, hypnosis, meditation, and so far, nothing has worked for the long-term.

I cannot begin to count how many times I have tried and failed, tried and regained even more weight than I lost, tried and made hundreds of excuses.

I weighed this morning for the first time in literally weeks. I knew I’d gained because of how my clothes fit. I gained so much weight that the app that connects to my smart scale literally said, “data inconsistency, please confirm that this is really you” because I gained so much weight since the last time I weighed. I am up to 265.2 and 60.6% body fat. Over half of my weight is fat. My knees hurt again. I feel enormous after being ten pounds smaller so recently.

There are mitigating factors like missing my daily diuretic yesterday, so I know I am carrying some water weight. I ate a ridiculous amount yesterday and all of that material is still in there. When I start to eat Keto-types of foods, I drop even more water weight, so I know a decent amount of this will fall off quickly. Within 3-4 days, my cravings will be under control, but it could be a rough few days. If it goes as it usually does, I will have trouble sleeping for a few days as my body adjusts, but I have minimal demands on me this week, so that’s OK.

I do not feel any enthusiasm or motivation. I just feel resigned. For now, my job is to lose the weight because I cannot depend on my ongoing professional preventative health care to keep me safe. I have to do it myself.

So here we go…