It Can Be One Hell Of A Struggle

I just ate an entire tube of Sour Cream and Onion Pringles.  UGH.  I hope that won’t make you think any less of me.  I know I am supposed to be the poster child for leaving the dark side and leading you all into the *SANE culinary light, but I can explain – I think.

I blame the meds.  Hey, hold on a minute!!  Meds?  I thought you were the epitome of health and wellness, Carrie Brown??  What do you mean, “meds”?

Let me assure you that my current condition is nothing whatsoever to do with food.  It has everything to do with extreme stress (none of which was at all related to anything *SANE – in fact, Bailor has been a peach through this whole crazy time), which lead to insomnia, which lead to even more stress – and the two together basically made me go mad.  OK, I’m not mad, but it sure felt like it at the time – and a few people around me would have been forgiven for thinking I’d lost it.  Like my Therapist and my neighborhood cop who came to rescue me.

Back in March, I was diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder (I like to call it diabetes of the brain) after I tried to – how do I say this without being dramatic? – do away with myself, permanently.  In reality, my brain just got a little out of whack chemically – sleep deprivation and extreme stress will do that to ya – and now we’re working on getting those chemicals back in balance.  Once we have achieved that I should be able to stop the meds and ditch the Bipolar II Disorder label.I realize that you’re probably sitting there looking at these words sprawled across the screen thinking, “Are you kidding me right now??! We never knew, we never realized, you just kept on posting pictures, and being funny, and creating recipes, and posting posts, and recording hilarious podcasts…like everything was fabulously peachy in your world.”

Yep.  All I can say is – it has been one hell of a struggle. I still showed up at my 60 – 70 hour-a-week day job and kicked a**, and no one had any clue what I was dealing with – I even planned my demise at the start of my 3-day weekend so I would cause the least inconvenience to people at work.  Our bodies are amazing things when the chips are really, truly down and we need to perform.  In all honesty, I don’t know how I did it, either.

Before that {almost} fateful Thursday when Sergeant Todd heroically threw himself under my automatic garage door to stop me locking him out and giving myself the opportunity to do something terrible, my brain had been doing this, relentlessly, for a considerable time.  My brain has stopped that now, but there’s been some interesting repercussions to the meds I am on, which is really the whole point of this post.

Creatively my brain went nuts.  Hence the 8 flavors of SANE Ice Cream in one weekend where I had failed to nail SANE Ice Cream despite months of effort beforehand.

I have bright-shiny-object syndrome.  Ooooh!  Let’s cook something with brussels sprouts!  Sprouts are the most delicious green color!  I know, while the sprouts are steaming, let’s write about green tea!  I’ve never tried xylitol in green tea!  Let’s see what happens when I make xylitol melt!  Ooooh!  That was fun!  Oh the sun is out!  I think I’ll just go plant some herbs!  I love playing in the dirt.  Laundry!  Let’s do laundry!  I love my new dishwasher.  I know!!!!  Let’s build a kitchen!  In one weekend!  All on my own!   Gosh – let’s write a post on how being single can be wildly fulfilling!   Daisy – stop slapping Penelope!  Gosh, that’s a pretty vacuum cleaner!  I wonder how fast I can vacuum the den?  Let’s go to Trader Joe’s, spend $200 on glorious fresh food and then cook 58 new recipes in two days!  I love how I can look out onto my back yard when I am cooking now.  The lawn needs mowing!  I love mowing!  It’s warm out here.  Let’s eat ice cream!  I think I need an edger.  Let’s go to Home Depot!  Oooooh!  That’s the most beautiful rose-tree I’ve ever seen!  The scent of roses is like crack to me!  Let’s write a post on addiction!  Dougal – leave Zebedee’s ears alone!  I’m out of cotton buds!  Let’s go to Fred Meyers!This has been both highly entertaining and very annoying.  Typically I am focused and deliberate and very orderly.  I am learning to go with the flow more, and to be ok with that.  I am also learning techniques to keep me stay on track with critical things that have to get done in a certain timeframe – not something I have ever struggled with before.  I am embracing my new scatteredness while at the same time making sure I still get things finished.

Sitting down to write for longer than 4 minutes at a time has been an interesting endeavor, to say the least.  When you spend a large portion of your time writing blog posts and recipes, this can prove more than a little trying.

Being randomized externally sends me into somewhat of a tailspin.  Which is kinda ironic given my bright-shiny-object syndrome and my current attention span of 4 minutes.  I am acutely aware of external stressors now, and am working hard at reducing the major ones – hence my new day job :-D  If people get on me, and keep getting on me, and won’t stop getting on me, I may get a little snappy.  PS. Ice cream recipes?  I am doing the best that I can right now!!

My lips are so dry I have gotten through more lip balm in the last 2 months than the rest of my life put together.  A friend of mine has even started calling me Lipbalm.  I prefer his usual nickname for me: Orange Peanut.  I have lip balm on both my desks, in every kitchen cupboard, in my purse, my laptop bag, by my bed, in both bathrooms, and in the car.  The thought of being without lip balm is enough to spark a panic attack.  When I changed jobs the other week, I could not work in my new office until I had unpacked the lipbalm.  You know what happens when you burn your finger and the skin goes all smooth and tight?  It’s exactly like that only on my lips.  I wish I were joking.  Plus, I am still trying to work out how my body can be so discriminatory as to only let the meds affect the skin on my lips.

Can you say WEIGHT GAIN??!  Can you even imagine how I am dealing with this?  Until I get to stop taking the meds – it just is what it is.  It sucks, but I am alive.  Priorities, lovely people!

Carb cravings.   Seriously.  You know how I’ve always said that a day or two after I started eating SANE all my cravings disappeared?  I wasn’t lying.  Then in April I started taking this anti-psychotic medication for my Bipolar II Disorder.  O.M.G.  I feel like I am in the middle of a full-blown addiction here.  Which is exactly where this whole post started out – Pringles.  Bread.  Pringles.  Raisin Bread.  Pringles.  Bread.  Bread.  Bread.  Pringles.  The entire tube.  The whole loaf.  The whole loaf!  It’s not all the time, it’s like twice a week I become completely consumed with cravings – to the point where I have to leave the house in order to get my fix because my brain refuses to think about anything else.  I was reading online a few days ago about how researchers have now shown that sugar and starchy carbs trigger the addictive region of our brains.  I am living that right now, and I am here to tell you that it is very real.  UGH.  Don’t believe me?  Listen to this.This experience has caused a lot of deep thought – in 4 minute bursts – about the chemicals in our brains that control us, and all the processes in our bodies.  Sometimes they can cause us to think and do things we don’t understand or buy into.  I would hazard a guess that most of the time we just blame ourselves and beat ourselves up, when in reality we may well be powerless against whatever funky imbalance our brain has us locked into.  My short attention span is nothing to do with me – this behavior only started when I started these meds.  My dry lips are not a lack of self-care.  My cravings are real and uncontrollable, and I did not have them before I took these meds.  My weight gain is something that I am still working out how to control while these meds are merrily working against me.

NONE OF THESE NEW BEHAVIORS ARE MY FAULT.  AND NONE OF THIS IS IN MY CONTROL – other than I choose to take the meds. And while we ALWAYS have a choice – choosing not to take the meds at this point in time would likely have me in a coffin before the week is out. So I take the meds. What the meds do to my brain I just need to learn to live with, and manage, until I get to not take them.So I want you to know that it really may not be you that is the problem if you are struggling with fat loss.  There’s a bazillion things going on in our bodies that we aren’t even aware of – most of them good – but some of them not so much.  Maybe you have a variation of Bipolar Disorder that you are living with – either unmedicated, where your brain is sabotaging all of you daily, or medicated, where the meds are sabotaging bits of you daily.  Maybe you have another mental health issue going on – over which you have little or no control.  Maybe your medication – for whatever reason you take it – is disrupting your system in one way, while also fixing the initial problem.

I am NOT saying that you now get to blame any bad behavior on your brain, and not be accountable. I am saying be clear about what you ARE responsible for and what you aren’t. Understand what IS in your control and what isn’t, and then manage accordingly.  If you are in a situation where there are some things you can’t control right now, give yourself a break.  Do the best you can, and respect your limitations.  Most of all, be kind to yourself.

Without being overly gushy, I want you all to know that it’s YOU that has kept me going through this – and you didn’t even know it.  Being single, I’ve been fighting the good fight alone – save my therapist and a couple of girlfriends who were aware.  You all gave me a reason – a whole world full of reasons – to keep on keepin’ on.  Just by being there. Your comments on this website, your emails, your tweets, your posts and comments on Facebook.You never know when you might be touching a life in a truly profound way, with the smallest of gestures.

THANK YOU.