A Fat Lot of Good: January Drear and Diets

I made the catastrophic mistake of weighing myself on Monday. First day back at work and I added to that joy with a painful arm and a horrific number on the scale. And as the writer of this blog, dear reader, I choose to abstain from printing it here. Just know that I'm currently limited to a wardrobe selection of pyjama bottoms that have no elastic left in them, and a reindeer onesie I am supposed to put away after today according to Twelfth night traditions. Oh and some leggings. I am a wearer of leggings now. And giant sweaters.

Yes it's been a stellar week so far. I'm officially on a diet and I know that ahead of me I have weeks of it to come if I have a hope of shifting all the stuffing I have oh so casually stuffed myself with. And I'm delighted that the gabapentin I'm taking as well as the other pain medication and the antidepressants are such a tonic to this diet, for their potential to make people like me, who are, quite frankly, depressed enough without their help, thanks, able to help us to gain weight. It's an overused word, I know, but, frankly, and not without my classic British sarcasm: awesome. And now we add to it the fact I mentioned in my last blog: that another operation on my elbow is needed, meaning more time without being able to swim (it's not the right kind of physio) and only walking as the exercise option. Or cleaning. And let's face it, I'm not writing a blog about being a domestic goddess here. The house is tidy because I'm living mostly in bed.

So, "We get it," I hear you cry. "You're unhappy. It's January. Get over it. (Whatever the 'it' is you wanna focus on. Just get over it. Already." And okay, I should.) But really, this is the best time of year to embrace being miserable. We're all at it. I can scarcely rouse myself from my bed to turn on my laptop in the morning without my eyes moistening at the thought of work. They stayed like that all day today. Moist. Moist when I ate my Rice Krispies (being carefully calculated as part of my get-thinner-even-though-you're-on-weight-gain-meds diet by myFitnessPal). Moist as I went for my lunchtime walk listening to Hard Times (depressing month cause for depressing literature) and moist throughout the rest of the day. Moist now.

Ugh Pills. This is what mealtimes feel like.

Why is January so hard when I can hardly tolerate Christmas and find New Year's Eve stressful too? I would have thought I'd be happy to have it over with. Perhaps it's all those additives and the hangover (both booze and booze-free) from the partaking that has left me in this sorry state. But it is a pretty sorry state. Thankfully, everyone else is miserable too, or so it seems. If August is the silly season for news, January is the dreary destination for deadly dieting and depressingly downcast outlooks. People are giving up or cutting back on the booze (me too), cutting the calories (me too) and getting on the treadmill again (not me too, worse luck). I spent most of yesterday wondering how much of my medication I could forgo for the sake of my figure (I'm an idiot. My arm hurt a lot today.)

Now I'm just saying roll on April. Which is the cruellest month, but by which time I'm hoping I won't need some kind of fat sucking device for my normal jeans to fit, and my darned elbow should be screwed firmly together and actually behaving itself. (I'm giving my body my sternest teacher-like stare.)

The only odd thing I can say amidst this depression is that I can read the most sad and haunting things at my bleakest moments, because it's not the sadness or the despair which is the worst time, it's the feeling that this will never end, and since it may never end, and there's a numbness, why not try poking myself with something really tragic. At twenty one I watched The Ice Storm in such a state. It was the perfect film to get over with while so morose. Today I am going to read a new book on depression, and think about last year when I was travelling back to New York to erase my life there. Unfortunately I think the real life element of the latter is too close to actual trauma, so I will look for fictionalised versions instead. Safer. Distant.

Not an answer to the question: "What's a happy film we can watch?"

I did talk about New York though, and being lonely there while I lived there, recently, so if you want to join me in embarking on exploration of a topic that's important, though not perhaps one to get out with the Christmas crackers or happy birthday music, you can listen to me talking at about 22 minutes in about loneliness on Five Live. They put it on at 00:00 on Boxing Day. I.e. in the small hours when we were all stuffed with turkey, it was already time to stop being cheery (or fake cheery) and start being dreary.

A Life Less Lonely, Radio Five Live

What I think we need is a #joinin for January. In fact that's it: #joininjanuary. Who can come up with the most sardonic tweet for jaundiced January? I challenge you, reader, to join me and cheer me up by telling me that your tape measure doesn't go round your waist either, and that you've got your old step out from behind the wardrobe / from the greenhouse where you were using it as a shelf for pot plants. If you've managed to slice open your finger as my friend Lucy has whilst being middle class using a mandolin (it's a dangerous way to live, the middle class life) or similar, then #joininjanuary. And by the way, I'm still eating a few nice things on my diet hoping not to fall off the wagon before the pounds fall off first. So thanks, Marks and Spencer, for keeping your Extremely Chocolately Roll in stock. I may only have a sliver, but it's enough to make my eyes water. In a good way.

It's New Year's, Eve, Time to Get Anxious!

Anxiety, moi?

On the day after Boxing day I started to write and posted something the day after, but what I actually wrote was much longer, because my feelings post Boxing day, post fat+sugar+alcohol+sugar+fat etc. were more than one blog could contain. I wrote this:

"It's a delicate balance. If I'm in the slew of a deep depression there's not much I can bring myself to do other than stay in bed and perhaps watch something on TV. If I'm a little better I might be able to read something - fiction definitely, not too taxing. Or I could eat something unhealthy (or healthy) or I could drink something healthy (or unhealthy) and then I could... "And don't I want this darned depression to vamoose? Yes I do," I tell myself, and the internal monologue continues. Unfortunately I've got more consciences in my head than a plague of Jiminy Crickets and the discussion goes on for quite some time. I won't bore you with all the repetitions, but on and on they go. 

In the meantime my anxiety might come back right after Christmas with the special worries about the fact that the day we're supposed to eat the most is 6 days away from the night we're supposed to look better than we ever have; apart from our wedding days. Well, anyway, the depression and rumination about what I've just eaten mixes with the worry and anxiety about which outfit on earth I'm going to be able to wear, and this fills up a good amount of time. I never have so much of the two so beautifully blended in their toxic potion than at this time of year.

Last year even though I was on no medication and wasn't receiving any help from a doctor or counsellor, I managed to make it out for a run on Boxing day because I knew that needed to try to curtail the depression caused by chemicals and topped up by me at times with more in alcoholic form, with as vigorous a form of exercise as I could manage. I went running every day from Boxing day to New Year's day (inclusive, almost certainly fuelled by prosecco). This year I can't do that and it's already 27th and I've barely moved from sofa to bed; pre-Christmas Day, I did all my shopping either online or through the local high street shops; I wrapped on the table with lots of cushions to support my back and took a rest afterwards, so all in all, my physical activity has been spectacularly low. 

All in all, I guess I'm saying that I don't have the usual physical aspects of running to help me out, and I've not done too well in making myself get up off the sofa and out into the world. (And the rain hasn't helped either, so no thanks to you, weather gods.) "

Now it's just under twenty four hours in which I will be buttoning myself up in something. I don't know what. Perhaps straight-jacket and comfy sweater will have a stand off. I'm not sure where we'll get to but we shall see. I'm going to a dinner so it would be great if I could eat something without exploding, à la Monsieur Creosote, avant les entrées.

I have had a horrid day of anxiety which I have not self-medicated with any unhealthy food or drink (although I am am going to have a Chinese for dinner. I'll try to eat in moderate proportions. That's 'try'...)

I've felt sick, I've felt miserable, I've stayed in bed and gone for a walk and slept and just waited for it to go away. It might be going now, and I hope they don't put too many additives in the food - I really hope that it doesn't come back. And tonight I get to take the most medication I'm allowed in my weekly cycle to try to stop my legs fidgeting and my arms trembling or whatever the main medication throws at me. "But it will pass", I tell myself. "This will pass. I have to just wait. So wait." And I will. And I do.

I wish you all a happy new year's eve. I've had some where I've made resolutions and some where I've kept those resolutions. And others not. I am going to go into this one a bit more neutrally. I can't resolve to run a marathon this year as I don't know what my neuro-spinal surgeon will say about the metal work and screws in my back, and now I know that these wretched wires in my arm will have to go, but only to be replaced with a rather large and nasty-looking screw instead to have a chance of fixing my arm. Again. 

Hopefully it will work this time. So more hospital for physical conditions. I don't know about what's going on in my head, but I'm back at work, albeit getting there part time and from home, and will be working hard to make sure I try to stay healthy. I suppose that is something like resolve; I just need to remember to not beat myself up on the days where I need to stay in bed because my arm kills or my back prevents me getting up, or my head won't let me leave the house. Resolve, but not regret. I would like, no more, to regret being me.