Relapse and Recap

Hello Blogsville, Ok. So I ate pizza today. Yeah. You heard me right. Pizza. See it seems like I am relapsing and I have to nip this madness in the bud before it destroys my weightloss aspirations. See, I had yogurt (which unfortunately was sweetened as I like my yougurt to be greek and very tart) and plenty of fruit that I bought from costco. Its this cut up fruit salad in a bowl that has mangoes, cantaloup, honey dew and pineapples all cut up. Then I had a banana. I couldnt find any rotisserrie chicken at costco and so I have been eating tilapia fish fillet. I just cook it in a non stick pan with very little oil. And then eat it with my salad. So all last week I did well and sunday night I was to have pasta but oh my no whole grain pasta. So I had to settle for white pasta. The next morning I had white rice, vegetables and stew. Yeah and I had no lunch cause I shopped all afternoon. 4 stores and 1000 dollars of merchandise and a lot of leg and arm work. Yeah. And then I went home and my sis had cooked this devlish jollof rice. I ate some and splurged on the oven dried beef and then went to bed. Monday I continued my diet stuff and diddnt have much of an apetite due to the cold I have been battling. Tuesday I went gaga. No breakfast. Lunch was eba and vegetable soup. Now Eba is high in calories but also high in fiber. And dinner, I diddnt plan to eat cause I felt full but then after spring cleaning my room and doing a mountain of laundry, Hunger pangs hit me at 10pm and I settled for the only thing I could lay my hands on which was some indomie noodles. Was a 520 calories pack. So I broke the rule of eating most of my calories during the day and tappering off as the day advances into the night. So I need to go back to the drawing board and stick to the rules. So tommorrow is another day to start afresh. In positive news, I have a new stash of apple sauce. Ok. Now. To the recap. I am going to attempt to tell the story of how I got here. See 2006/2007 I was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, insomnia and I received a mix of drugs to deal with these. One of the drugs was Ambien and reports have shown that Ambien can lead to an onset of NSRED. I took Ambien for 2-3 years approx. In 07/08 my sister and I were housemates in Chico State and one night she stayed up to study all night. Something we call TDB (meaning till day breaks). According to her, I had gone to the fridge 3-4 times to eat withing 5 hours. She attested that I was alseep/awake during these episodes. She then asked me a question "Ozi are you this hungry" and this statement marks the first time I have an awareness that I am eating at night. Never knew I was doing something like this. 2009, I graduate from college and move home and now I know that I am really doing something really wrong. Every morning, my bed had particles of food in it and I have no recollection of eathing the food. As a rule, I am never hungry in the morning. Also, I am very strict with what I eat cause I know that at night, the strange zoombism would start and I would negate all the hard work. I also became an astute member of 24 hour fitness and would exercise 5 times a week so I became my fittest and I was healthy despite my issues. I was about 210 pounds then. 2010 I started graduate school. Increasing stress, no time for exercise and all and I started packing on the pounds. Slowly but surely. I would exercise whenever I had a chance, particularly during breaks but never enough to negate the damage I did at night. The fridge was very close to my room and I had time too cook all sorts so I ate and ate and ate (at night though). And I put up attempts to lose the weight but I gradually lost the battle. So steady weight gain. Ok. 2012 I am done with grad school and I am 226pounds. I am ashamed of it but nothing I can do. NSRED continues. Plus stress. Lots of stress with job hunting. 2014 working and schooling concurrently. Now even more stress. But something happens. August 14 I believe I hurt my back at work. Spine MD tells me arthritis, DDD, back older than body. Bottom line LOSE WEIGHT. I am helpless and cry. Tell my sister who advises me to go to my primary and ask for help. I make the appointment. I see him and attempt to tell him but shyness and shame holds me back. He then tells me to write him and email and tell him whatever I want to say. I believe this saved my life. I write him. He responds with more questions about my night eating brouhaha. I tell him. He comes up with Binge eating disorder extreme as the diagnosis. I start to research binge eating and question it because as rule I dont binge during the day. During my research I came across NSRED and then I brought it up with him. He agreed. Started me on Lamictal 25 mg and advanced to 50mg. And now I sleep through the night and wake up ravenous. So its going good. So today I had my first accupuncture appointment. And going again on friday. and I am loving it. So thats it.

Another Mile Stone.

Hello Blog, Today is another mile stone. It is exactly 3 weeks since I started taking Lamictal 5Omg nightly. And its crazy cause it seems like I have lost 7 pounds. I just cant believe it. Its so wonderful to finally be able to lose weight and get healthy. See, I started taking Lamictal on the 13th of november, precisely one day after I had the proceedure for my back. So as expected I am joyful. Remember the sweet lemons, I hunted them down. I went to Eliat food market (seems to be a persian/jewish) market and hunted that sucker down. And boy, they were ridiculously cheap. As a matter of fact everything was ridiculously cheap and this store is in Beverly Hills. Oh my. This is so so strange. And guess what, most of the fruits/vegetables are labelled Organic. Now I smell a rat. Organic stuff is usually expensive because of the strict production guidelines. This market might be honestly dishonest (please refer to the entry titled HOnest food). Or maybe its just a miracle. Maybe its actually organic. I also found a new fruit. I bought a piece and I need to find out what exactly it is. Now I am craving. Honestly I am. This morning I had my usual starbucks run for my chai teabag. And then the madaline cookies started calling out to me. It was intense. I thank God that I had the courage to say NO. I believe that these cravings are my body's response to the new changes. See, my body has been stuck in the fat range for a long time but now I am losing weight and my body feels this is weird so its trying to crave carbohydrates that would take me back to my past. Now, fruits are sweet and soo its time to consume more fruits in order to satisfy my sweet tooth with fewer calories. I am out of food. I packed the last of my spring mix for lunch today, also my rotiseerie chicken has been eaten to the bones. I am out of carrots and all the good stuff. So its time to stock up on food. Yeah. So I will be heading to trader joes, costco and my new store. Now I have had chicken for the past two weeks and I am becoming sick and tired of it. So I will turn to starkist tuna mixed with avocado, greek yogurt, ornions and the list goes on. I will formulate new accompaniments for my salads. Also, I have been spending tons of money buying fruit mixes outside of my home. Yeah like four dollars every money. Enough of that. I will buy 1 water melon, 1 honey dew melon, 1 cantaloupe and one strange looking melon that I saw at the eliat food market. I will peel them, cut them up and store them in my fridge. This would be breakfast (with boiled eggs) with greek yogurt every morning. Yesterday morning, I did not have breakfast cause I slept in late in the morning. At 12 noon I had a large pear and then at 1pm, I had some whole grain pasta and tomato sauce (stuff that Nigerians call stew)accompanied by two boiled eggs. Was lovely. The pasta was of very little quantity so at 5pm I was expectedly ravenous. I had ewaagoyin, with garri sweetened with splenda. Afterward 1 cup of reeeses peanut butter cup at 110 calories. An hour after that I had 3 slices of bad bread (and this was the only blunder in my diet) cause I still felt hungry. The bread was 100 calories per slice totalling 300 calories. So its important not to wait till I am too hungry cause then I go overboard. I still love my sweets and I brought this up with the nutritionist yesterday. It was her advice to limit sweet consumption to 100 calories per day. She recommended a sweet for me that I can purchase at trader Joes. I will be hunting that stuff down soon. This new week stir fries and a variety of pepper soups (fish, goat, chicken, mutton) will be added to my diet. Next entry in this blog will be a recap of my journey so far. Of how I got to 236 pound and where I am on my road to recovery. Stay tuned.

Updates, Matters arising and Progress report.

Hello. Its about 8.00 on Tuesday morning and I am spanking. Yeah. Am good. So I am having some anxiety. See I was supposed to weigh myself sunday or monday but I did not because I am anxious. I dont know what I would find and I dont want to know cause I fed up of having fluctuations in self esteem that is tied to fluctuations on the scale. So I wont check it. But I might have to check it when I get to the doctors office today and tommorrow. I dont know how that would go. Lets see. So something strange happened to me yesterday. I went clothes shopping at nordstrom and all the clothes I bought were 1X. Strange. Really strange. I dont know what this means. I really dont know but I dont want to obsesses about it some I am just going to let it be. Ok. I went to see the spine doctor yesterday and I would still be on light duty and the next step in my treatment would be accupuncture. The facet injections really helped but did not take all my pain away. I still have pain when I stand for a duration greater than 1 hour and when I sit for a duration greater than 1 hour. One of my greatest wishes now is to get better so that I can go back to vigorous exercise. That would accelerate my weightloss. But for now I have to be content with the rate of my progress. Ok so saturday and sunday I went bananas. I ate and ate. I had rice, I had cheese cake and I had apple pies. The difference is that I had smaller portions of these calorie bombs. You see I followed the 80/20 rule. 80% of the time you eat clean and then 20% of the time you go bananas. So that is what I did. I am still dealing with my sweet tooth and the nutritionist replied and gave me tips on how to deal with it. The plan I have chosen is called controlled indulgence. You see I cant just say I wont eat sweets. That is not feasible by me. So I will plan for it. I will have a controlled amount of it and I wont starve myself cause when we do that, we eat just too much. Yesterday for breakfast I had 2 fried eggs that was fried with very minimal oil in a nonstick pan. Then I had a banana at 12 noon. At 1pm I had a super salad (I will explain what I mean by super salad) and at 5pm I helped my niece to finish her icecream (but it was very little in quantity). For dinner I had a handfull of pounded yam with egusi soup. The only problem with my diet yesterday is that I at late (but that was because I was very busy). I wanted to make a stirfry but I was just too busy to do it. I will do it soon. Also Yesterday I made my chicken and avocado stuff. Now thinking about it I realize I made a glorified chicken salad with avocado instead of mayonaise which is a healthier option. I used avocado with onions and then the chiken from the 2 rotiserrie chicken that I bought at costco two weeks ago. It came out delish, however my magic bullet dulled my game. It did not hold up to chopping the onions and mixing the stuff properly. So to continue my experiments I would have to invest in a food processor. This morning, I just had some fruit and two boiled eggs. The fruit was a medley of melons (watermelon, cantelope and honey dew melons). The boss gave me a handfull of almonds (So generous of him) and I have my chai tea and am sipping away cause the nonsense URI has come again (courtsey of my adorable niece). Okidoki. See you later.