Breakfast: 9am
1 Peach-Complexion-Care Visalus Shake
Mid-Morning: 11am
1 Lg. Cheeseburger Patty (w/Onion, Tomato, Ketchup, Mustard & Cream Cheese)
16oz. Diet Rite
Lunch: 2pm
1 Double Snickers Visalus Shake
Mid-Afternoon: 4pm
2 Stalks of Celery (w/Peanut Butter)
1 Banana
Evening: 6pm
1 Chicken Thigh (w/Pepper)
1 Cup of Steamed Broccoli (w/Cheese & Butter)
46oz. Water
State of Being:
Sometimes you live your own metaphors without knowing it.
Back before I knew I had Sleep Apnea, I was suffering from an incredible degree of fatigue. Post-diagnosis I was told that I’d reached a point where I was only getting about fifteen minutes of actual, recuperative rest for every 6 hours of sleep. (Yeah, it was really bad.)
Anyway, during those pre-diagnosis days I can remember what the exhaustion was like. It was a 24/7/365 struggle to keep my focus and attention on what I was doing. In fact, it was often a struggle just to stay awake!
This struggle went-on, practically without end, no matter where I was, or what I was doing. Reading, sitting in class, even while having a conversation with someone right in front of me, people would comment on how my eyes kept drifting shut and I would miss portions of what they were saying. It would even happen while I was talking. And, of course… most dangerously, it would also happen while I was driving. Those were the times that really freaked me out.
I’d be coasting down the highway at sixty or seventy miles per hour and I would continually slap myself in the face, prick myself with a thumbtack, or open my eyes as wide as I could and keep from even blinking for several minutes, because I could feel that if I let myself get comfortable, I’d fall asleep. (At this point, I should note, I was at least actively seeking that diagnosis, but still hadn’t received it or any treatment yet. This was in the last few weeks before I got help.)
Anyway, I’d be sitting there, like I said, flying down the highway and struggling to stay awake, and before I knew it… I was dreaming about struggling to stay awake. I would usually realize this within a few seconds and would jerk myself awake again and keep fighting.
The fatigue and exhaustion were so strong that they would even start to work with my efforts to stay awake as part of their insidious lure into sleep.
Terrifying.
Over the last week or so, I’ve slipped on my diet a few times. This has been especially true the last few days.
If you’ll recall, when I first got started on this journey, my stringent denial of ALL carbs, in order to basically cut-off my Insulin Resistance’s supply-lines as it were, was starting to really take a toll on me physically, toward the end of my first 90 days. My teeth were grinding, I was getting depressed, etc.
So, a while back I mentioned how I was going to be reincorporating whole grains into my diet on a very controlled basis. One or two servings every three or four days.
To fulfill the aforementioned servings, I’d have a small bowl of Pearled Barley. Sometimes I’d have some Rye Bread, in the form of a grilled cheese sandwich, or a small serving of Quinoa, some whole-grain tortillas with a taco salad, etc.
I was initially very careful.
Over this past couple of weeks, a few things have happened. First, on my last shopping trip, I picked up what I *thought* were whole grain tortillas, but which turned out to be regular. I slipped and decided to have an extra grilled cheese and a bowl of popcorn for lunch at one point. When I discovered that the tortillas were not whole grain, I went ahead and had them anyway. I can’t remember what the justification was. I only know it made a lot of sense at the time.
I’ve not gotten to the scariest part yet.
It was really easy, and in fact… I wasn’t even aware until very recently at how many of these slips have happened, all stacked up in just a few days!
I feel like I felt several years ago, with as-yet-undiagnosed sleep apnea, when my efforts to stay awake would become a dream about trying to stay awake.
When a semblance of coherent logic finally returned to me today, about how easy and often I’d been making stupid choices these past couple weeks, it was startling. That sounds like such a load of BS, even to me.
I take full responsibility. I’m not claiming that I didn’t know what I was doing. I did. However, each and every time felt minor enough in terms of how bad a slip it was, that I barely even considered it when committing the next slip and the next and the next.
I guess it’s just how addiction works. Your system wants something bad enough that even talking yourself out of it mutates into talking yourself *into* something just as bad, rationalized via all kinds of mental-gymnastics as being… not as bad.
Just sitting here, describing this, my head is starting to hurt and I’m getting frustrated.
I can understand why people check themselves into addiction clinics and rehab facilities. I’m starting to feel desperate, anxious, angry and even a little panicked about how easily this thing seems to be getting away from me lately.
True, there’s a lot of other stuff going on in my life that’s stressful right now. But, I can’t pin this on that. Not this time. Before, when that was an honest motivator, the stress was on my mind and I think I was really looking for some kind of relief in cheating. Now, it’s not. Now,… I feel like I’m being strong, like I’m negotiating stop-gaps while maintaining a strict stance. But, I’m not.
It’s like there’s a guy who keeps asking me for $10, and I tell him “no.” He then asks for 8. I refuse again. Then he asks for 7, and I say… “Ok, look, I’ll give you $5 and that’s it.” He gratefully takes it and walks away.
Then, he’s back and the exact same exchange takes place. And again, I feel like I’ve been firm-but-fair with him.
It happens several more times and each time, I’ve “stuck to my guns” only now it’s happened so many times that I’m completely broke.
I went broke, “NOT” giving him $10. And there’s a feeling of… “How the hell???”
But, when I sit and think about it, it makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense to a brain that's thinking logically. It doesn't make sense to a mind that's seeing his bankroll vanish at the three-card-monte tables while he's desperately trying to keep track of the ball.
People, (including me) tend to listen to an addict say “It’s just so hard to resist,” and snicker or scoff. The idea that comes into your mind is that this person is just weak. That’s easy to do. We can be a dismissive species when something frightens or shocks us. But, I’m here to tell you that the stereotypical “Jonesing” and “Fiending” junkie is not the only scenario in which an addiction is “hard to resist.” Sometimes it’s because your brain is honestly convincing itself that you’re doing the right thing, by doing a lesser version of the wrong thing, and distorts your sense of the frequency of these occurances to keep you from really caring about how often it’s happening until you stumble upon a moment of clarity from the smoke-and-mirrors.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been trying to reintroduce whole grains at all. The alternative is to go back to my original stance, in Challenge One; the stance of “Absolutely NO compromise, no matter what.” “Death before failure.” Just iron-hand it the whole way through.
But, that brings crashes, depression, anxiety, pain,… and, reality-check: I’m still over three-hundred pounds from my goal. Even more, if I’ve regained anything these past couple weeks.
It will likely be past this time next year, before I’m done with this. If I go back to pantomiming a titanium-reinforced vault-door, can I really keep it up for three-hundred pounds at a stretch?
I have no conclusion this time. I don’t have some ray of hope or revelation to end on today.
I apologize for that.
Honesty and transparency, remember?
Slowly but surely spinning out of control. Lost with no idea of what to do, or where to go from here.
This is just where I’m at.
See you tomorrow.
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