Of course my husband called the same night I posted about him not calling 5 days after the hurricane to talk to the boys but refused to talk to me. Fuck him. Pretty certain now he is watching this blog. Given the fact in one day he friended over 20 people on my list over on Facebook I don’t know why I thought it would be safe to mention this blog over there. Didn’t help the boys mentioned it over the phone either. They were excited and proud I was doing something that makes me happy so I can’t blame them. I could move the blog but what good would it do me? Nothing.

So I went to the med clinic this morning and went over the mood trackers, including the one still pending. If I could sum everything into one word it would be the word BLEAK. Not depressed, but more like I’m sitting on the edge of the cliff waiting to fall off into the depths below. The med is doing a  really good job at keeping me from going off the deep end but damn if I can figure out how to walk away from this spot. I have no energy to speak of and by lunch time I’m ready for the day to be done. Like over done. Stick a fork in it. Throw it out. Why the hell did I even get out of bed kind of done.

I’m even having a hard time playing a video game. Of any kind. Not even Minecraft. Especially not since I realized that I’m not going to be able to afford to pay for the server I run for my boys much longer. So fuck it. I have to accept the fact that this server, this pride and joy, all this work and effort, will have to be shut down. It’s a hard pill to take.

Migraines are increasing in frequency but still not as often or as long as they were prior to the Topamax. At least the med clinic shares my concern. They agree with me that there are too many factors playing into this right at the moment to say that it’s any one thing. One thing that they did point out that I was hoping wasn’t a possibility is a tolerance for the med. If that’s the case it means it’s also possible that it will stop working for mood stability too. Blech.

I’ve only lost ONE pound since last month’s med clinic visit. Which is good. We talked about that. The nurse made the comment that it’s better than gaining weight and I told her not if you have a history of weight loss. She had that look of a deer caught in the head lights. I know I am perverse and I am an oddity but seriously, how hard is it to remember your patients? She remembers my name, my kids, and everything else… but never this one damn thing. But I have noticed something about me and I can’t remember if I have mentioned it here before, but I am a social eater. Make dining a social event and I will usually eat. Good food and good company is all I need.

A college professor said something once that I agree with and I took it to heart (although sadly I can’t remember her name – if I ever do I will edit this post). What she said was something along the lines of:

Food is life and life is meant to be enjoyed!

And I BELIEVE that with every fiber of my soul, deep down. It’s wrong that our society has become so centered around body shaming to the point that we can never be okay just as we are the way we are. It’s wrong that food has been reduced to either nothing more than fuel to run on or the necessary evil. FOOD IS LIFE. And that means whether it’s plant life or animal life something had to die in order for us to eat it. It needs to remain culturally significant. Not to say in the doom and gloom sense but we do need to remain aware of that circle. We need to remain grateful. And we need to be willing to continue to celebrate that we still live. I think food is central to that and I think we have lost that in many ways.

Honestly I had no idea that mindful eating was a thing until just today. Apparently it’s something I’ve been doing to some extent for some time. To get a better idea of what I’m talking about visit The Center for Mindful Eating. I have a slightly different focus, but principles are the same. The whole point here is to eat only when you feel hungry and then stop eating when you no longer feel hungry. If you wait until you feel full, you have already over eaten due to the lag time in communication between the stomach and the brain. Whatever philosophy you want to embrace around your food beyond that is entirely up to you as long as it brings you happiness.

And it’s also because of this approach that I do not want to start forcing myself to eat when I don’t feel hungry. Yes I can gain weight that way BUT let’s say Topamax stops working for me and they switch me to another med. Then what? Now I have shut off my hunger cues. Now most likely I’b be on a med that makes me gain weight due to a slowed metabolism. Then what? My father says “You can’t worry about that right now.” Actually yes, I do have to worry about that RIGHT NOW. We’re talking about fucking with my brain’s chemistry here and altering it for the long term. It’s not like getting a script for insulin and that’s that. Mental health typically means frequent med changes. In fact that was on the discussion table today. It almost happened but we decided to wait until therapy was back on board.

So yea, the bonus from today’s med clinic visit is that I snagged me a new therapist. All this talk of my mood and migraines flagged to them that “Hey, all is not well in Toadville” and that it was a mistake to not list me as acute care. The reason that I had been doing so well up to that point was because of the combined med and therapy treatment plan. They dropped half of it so yea, my wellness dropped. Go figure. To the nurse’s credit she told me to make sure I tell this therapist in the first appointment what works and what doesn’t work for me. I never do well with a therapist that takes an authoritarian approach. It works for some people, but not me. Things tend to get ugly.

But back to food and my weight. Personally I’ve been seriously thinking about adopting the “Hobbit Diet“. No joke. I saw a meme on Facebook the other day and it got me thinking about when I was pregnant with Little Bear and how I built myself an 6 meal diet plan for my gestational diabetes to keep my blood sugar level. Aside from the anxiety during that time I was fairly mood stable as a result – this was before I was diagnosed by the way. I think it would be easier for me to increase my calorie intake if I had smaller more frequent meals in a social setting. It’s a pain in the ass to do, but from what I remember it was also worth it. I don’t recall having any migraines during that time either. I wonder how much of that was due to the pregnancy versus the diet now. All I know is I had this diet down so precise that I knew I could eat 3 of those fun sized Hershey chocolate bars with a cup of coffee, 2oz. cream and 3 tps. sugar, for a snack without spiking my sugar. And this is because I kept a strict food diary, measured everything, tracked my glucose levels, and adjusted accordingly. Seriously, it’s a pain in the ass and as much as I hate it things are looking like I have to go back to almost that same level of detail again.

And for the record, it would need to be more than the 1800 calories that the Hobbit Diet memes show for me. There is no way I can gain weight much less maintain what I have on that. I would need to sit down and figure out how many calories I need to hold what I have and then divide it out by six meals. Then I would need to decide how to break those calories out. How many calories in protein, carbs, and fat. Then assign to each meal the break downs. Then that would be my goals to aim for. I just have to remember that I CANNOT do the ketogenic diet – which is the high fat, moderate protein, and low carb diet because of the Topamax. Which kind of blows because oddly that has always been my natural preference long before I even knew what that was which might explain a lot of things – although I must say I lean a bit more towards the protein. Given my current concerns with the cholesterol, I ought to favor the plant based foods a bit more.

The biggest downside? My father would blow a gasket. This man is dead set on three square meals a day ONLY. And all the shit he favors is death on a plate for me. (I’m looking at you MSG, citrus, and artificial sweeteners!) So, how’s that working for you in keeping your blood sugar under control? Not very good at all. He asked me once to build him a diet plan so I did. It was a 6 meal diet plan and he freaked. While he was on it though his sugar levels were golden. But he didn’t like eating those small meals so often. It went against his grain. But you know what? I see him snacking all the time. He won’t admit it but he does in fact eat a 6 meals anyway. All I did was put it on paper and assigned him the calories the doctor wanted him on. But no… we can’t do that. So I told him I wasn’t going to do any more diet plans for him and from now on he needed to see a real dietician. Pissed him off. Too bad. I don’t care if your insurance won’t pay for anymore of those visits. Not my fault you’re not listening. Not my fault you tend to forget your meds at least once a day. Not my fault you are lucky if you remember to test your glucose before eating. I’m not touching it.

BLEARGH! I could rant forever on this because he is so quick to jump my shit every day, twice a day – two hours after the fact at best – if I remembered my meds and the boys’ meds. I’m not perfect, but I don’t forget often enough to justify this level of policing. More often than not it’s just my med that gets forgotten because I give the boys their med first and it never fails SOMEBODY NEEDS SOMETHING during this process and I have to be the one to take care of it. So yea, unless I can get my med in me before that, my med is completely forgotten. Sucks to be me because it usually brings on the pain. And now he’s jumping my shit about meals. I don’t need to be reminded about my weight. Guilt tripping me is not going to suddenly make me hungry. I refuse to eat when I don’t feel hungry. It also sucks that when I do feel hungry it is not during his assigned meal times.

If I could just get a visit with a dietician and get that person on board with my diet plan then I would be untouchable on this. He could whine all he wanted and I could just point to the diet order and say “I’m just following the plan, remember?”