The down side

I try very hard to keep this blog from getting becoming a moody hole of self-pity, but I’m also a big fan of real talk and real-life blogging, and I think some things are worth mentioning, especially because the readership on this blog is so small that I’m sure no one will mind (or notice) if I indulge myself a little.

Like many people, I struggle with anxiety and depression, and I’ve been mildly medicated for these things since 2014 or so, which…truth be told, happened much later than it should really have happened. Up until recently, I’ve had it under control. I did therapy for two years in conjunction with meds. I did meds alone. I started riding in conjunction with meds. Over the summer, I told my doctor that I wanted to come off the antidepressant. I thought it was hindering my weight loss and I didn’t think I needed it anymore.

My doctor told me to hold off a bit because I had a lot of life stressors happening at once. And she was right – in November, I broke my elbow, which was basically my own personal three-month hell because I could do virtually nothing for what felt like forever. On January 8, I moved, and on January 11, I started a new job. We’re in the middle of wedding planning, and there’s a lot of financial stresses associated with that in particular and adulting in general. And now I’ve gone and completely upended my diet.

It’s been a lot.

I had a bout of adjustment issues when I first started my job. Changing jobs was a huge transition. I went from working part-time in a public school, because that’s all that was available at the time, to full-time at a desk job in a large corporate environment. I had a hard time adjusting to sitting in a gray cubicle – alone – all day every day. I knew when I took the job that I currently have that it was going to be largely repetitive over the longterm, and that my ultimate goal was to move into a research position at the same company within a few years, so what I’m doing now is not my end-game or my ideal job. I still have days where I feel a little down because this job is not as inherently satisfying or rewarding or as fun as working with kids, but I have to remind myself that a.) they were never going to make me full-time at my last job, b.) the salary I make now is double what I was making and I needed the money, and c.) the perks are good. Also, there were a lot of things about working in schools that I didn’t love: spending full days in IEP meetings, being constantly yelled at by angry or ignorant parents, physically restraining kids in our behavior program, coming home every day exhausted and drained.

Anyway, I digress. I was doing much better until I started the new low-carb diet program. I don’t want to blame the diet for my mental health, because I realize that it’s a conglomeration of factors that account for the changes I’m experiencing, but I have read quite a bit that substantiates the idea that low-carb diets can cause serotonin imbalances (i.e.: anxiety and depression), particularly in women. I’m going to meet with the dietitian tomorrow and I’m planning to ask her how to deal with it from a diet perspective.

All that is to say, I feel like I’m struggling, and I haven’t felt that way in a long time. I’m finding myself pulling away from things I used to enjoy (although not everything), and I’m increasingly more irritable. I’ve found myself saying to friends, “I feel like I’m getting meaner,” or “Jesus, I’m nasty today.” But it’s every day. I have less and less patience with being at work, and more and more I feel like I just want to be at home. I’ve also had an increase in migraines (four or five in the last month, as opposed to four or five in the last two years) lately. I feel a general sense of ennui. As much as I’m pleased with the weight loss, I need to determine if these emotional symptoms are related to the diet, and if so, how to control them. And if they’re not, then I need my meds adjusted and I was clearly very, very wrong when I thought I was well enough to come off. More than anything, I’m afraid. I allowed myself to get to a really bad place before I asked for help, and I don’t want to go down that road again…but on the other hand, it’s familiar and because of that, it’s oddly nostalgic and comforting, and that’s terrifying.

#firstbootproblems

Equestrian confession: I have never owned a pair of tall boots. I’ve never needed them. Up until the last three months, I never thought I would need them because I didn’t want to show.

However, I do need new boots in some fashion. My paddock boots are old and beat up, and the suede half chaps I bought last year are getting there as well. When I told my trainer that I was in the market for new boots, she suggested I get tall boots because they’d last longer than my half chaps and I could show in them, since I’ve now decided that’s a thing I want to try. So on Saturday, I went boot shopping.

On the recommendation of my trainer and also general good sense because their return policy is awesome, I went to Dover. I explained to the lovely and helpful salesgirl that I had ridiculously muscular calves and thought I might be a tough fit, that I knew nothing about tall boots, and that I’d like something in the $200-$250 range that was appropriate for schooling-to-show. The girl gave my legs the once-over and said, “You should be fine to fit. We’ll try a regular medium calf.”

You should know where this is going by now.

Several pairs of boots (and several skin-pinches) later, we had only found one pair of boots that even remotely fit my leg properly. It’s what the girl called a “sock style” boot, meaning that the leather was incredibly soft and hugs the leg like a second skin. They were actually super comfortable, except for the fact that they were a dress boot (rather than a field boot) and I couldn’t really bend my ankle. The salesgirl swore the boots would stretch and allow my ankle to bend, but she also told me that the stock-style boots don’t have a break-in period, and those two things seemed contradictory. The other issue is that the leather of the boot was so soft that I really think that the fit of the boot wouldn’t be maintained past a few months; once it broke in properly, the boots would probably drop and bag, just like my regular “going-out” boots that I wear to work.

You can just tell these will sag after a few good rides. Also you can see all the “fallen soldier” boots behind me that just didn’t fit.
Bagging was the issue in general: because my ankles are so slender (8 inches in diameter) compared to my calves (15.75 inches standing, 16.25 sitting), what fits me in one place logically doesn’t fit me in the other. The girl at Dover told me I’d probably need a custom boot, which, with wedding payments and general living, isn’t a possibility right now, especially when I don’t even know if I’ll like showing. We tried a leather half-chap with a zip-up paddock boot, but I had the problem again with the bagging in the ankle.

My trainer seems less concerned about my boot-shopping woes than I am. She says to go boot shopping with her next time, and we’ll find something – boot or half-chap – that works. Right now, we’re both on the same page: lace-up paddock boots (because I’ll get a better fit and more mobility through my ankle) and a decent leather half-chap are probably the way to go.

The hunt continues.

Weight Loss Wednesday – Week 5

Literally nothing of interest happened this week. The big thing was that I did make cauliflower crust pizza, and I think we paid the price for that this week at weigh-in. In the interest of full disclosure, Scott and I both had a falling down last night, to the tune of two slices of pizza each. I’ve been dealing with a very low-grade nauseousness this week, which I don’t think is all diet-related; honestly, I think I’m coming down with something (and no, lest anyone else ask, because the question was already posed by one of my coworkers this morning – I am 110%, unequivocally, entirely certain that I am not pregnant. I am not harboring a fetus, but I may be harboring some sort of germ). But last night, I could not stomach the thought of another salad or another piece of chicken. Couldn’t do it. I was still within my calories and well within my carbs for the day, so I said the hell with it and got some. It was better than vomiting my chicken, and I was pretty sure that was going to happen, because I dry-heaved at the mere thought of poultry.

So final weigh-in this week put me at 171.6 lbs, which is a whopping 1.6 lbs down from last week, and brings my grand total to 10.8 lbs lost. It’s not a big loss, but a loss is a loss. I’m also not entirely certain it’s accurate. I had snarfed my dinner (more chicken. Whee) literally an hour before weigh-in; some weeks I don’t have time to eat beforehand or I drink a shake rather than eating a solid meal because I’m tutoring. I don’t love that we get weighed in the evenings, but the morning group sessions are…well, in the morning, on Wednesdays and Fridays, and I work an hour north of where the clinic is, so it’s just not feasible. When I weigh myself in the morning at home, I’m currently vacillating between 169.8 and 170.2 lbs. Based on my morning weights, I’ve lost closer 14-15 lbs total.

Still,  I think the cheese was the culprit this week, between the fake pizza and the real pizza. I ordered a food scale so I can be more accurate about my portions too (and who am I kidding, so I can weigh yarn). The dietician also gave us a great idea last week, about making a snack of those cute baby bell peppers and one wedge of Laughing Cow spreadable cheese. One wedge of the Laughing Cow is enough to stuff three mini peppers, and the cheese is only 35 calories and 1g carb per wedge. Plus, it’s cheese! This week’s flavor is Asiago and it’s the best thing ever. Pairs really well with the peppers. As a bonus, the peppers are super crunchy, and crunch is something I’ve missed a little on this diet. And guys – the tiny peppers are adorable! They’re colorful! And so wee!

I haven’t scouted any new recipes to try this week, but I’m working on it. In the meantime, stay tuned for a riding post or two – I have a lesson tomorrow and I’ve been trying to write a post since Sunday about my misadventures in boot shopping – and some knitting content.

Desert island cravings

Tonight’s dinner adventure was an answer to my most frequent craving: pizza. I love pizza. It’s pretty much my favorite thing to eat. If I had to eat one thing every day, three meals a day, for the rest of my life, it’d be pizza. It’s my “desert island food”.

The problem with pizza and the program I’m on is that pizza is full of carbs. Crusty – delicious, bread-y, yeasty crust – is nothing but carbs. And carbs, sadly, are still in the no-fly zone. However, the internet is a beautiful thing, and with a minimum of googling, I found several recipes for low-carb pizza crust, most using cauliflower and cheese. In the end, I chose this recipe from Popsugar because it didn’t require the cauliflower to be riced. Our ancient food processor broke not too long ago, and with us being a few months away from our wedding and even fewer months away from my bridal shower, I refuse to buy new appliances right now. The Popsugar recipe called for grated cauliflower, and I had a cheese grater and a fiancé willing to grate an entire head of the stuff while I did some housecleaning.

 

Prepped for cooking

Once the cauliflower was prepped, the rest of the cooking was easy. The “dough” came together quickly and cooked easily. The only mistake I made was not reading the first line of the recipe thoroughly enough, and I missed the part of the instructions that say to line the pizza pan with parchment. Later on, the recipe said something about the “prepared” pizza pan and I was like, “Prepared how? Mentally? Do I need to give it a pep talk?” Turns out, that mean lined with parchment. The lack of parchment didn’t hurt anything, except it was bit a harder to get the pizza off the pan, and the crust didn’t crisp the way it probably would have had I lined the pan.

Before

 

Final verdict? Taste-wise, not bad! There was a mild cauliflower aftertaste, but nothing too strong or off-putting. I would have liked the crust to have been a little crisper, but I think that’ll happen if I cook it on parchment like I’m meant to. In the future, I’d like to do a version with pesto sauce, grilled chicken, a little fresh mozzarella, and some sweet balsamic vinegar drizzled over top.

Sure looks good masquerading as a regular pizza though, huh? And the best part? I calculated the calorie count – 350 calories for half a pizza, which is exactly what I should have for my “high protein, low carb” meal per day. Even with all of this, I was at 60 carbs for the day. Awesome.

After

 

Weight Loss Wednesday – Week 4

Again, nothing to report that was interesting enough for a day-by-day. Here, I’ll give you the highlights and the lowlights:

• On May 7, we went to my parents’ for a combination birthday and Mother’s Day celebration. I had two meal replacements that day, and then snarfed 3 slices of cheese pizza and a piece of delicious, fudge-y chocolatey cake.
• Scott and I had headaches within about five minutes of the cake, presumably from the sudden spike in sugar and our bodies going, “WTF is that? Is that a carb? QUICK, DON’T LET IT ESCAPE!”
• We were both back on the program the next day. I was a little dizzy but ultimately couldn’t tell if it was from a mini-detox or my allergies. I was fine by Tuesday.
• Even with our little binge on Saturday, I’m still down 3 pounds this week.
• Final weigh-in: 173.2 lbs, which is 3.4 lbs down from last week and 9.8 lbs total. To be honest, I think my “true” weight is around 171.5, because clinic and weigh-in happen in the evening, but the absolute number of pounds lost should still be the same.

Tonight’s clinic focus was on “Making Vegetables Great Again”. Neither Scott nor I is a big veggie person. I’ll eat salads like nobody’s business, but I had to train myself to like green beans when I started on this diet. I did make Scott some “fauxtatoes” with cauliflower and he actually really likes them. This week I’m going to try cauliflower-crust pizza. I’m also planning to go to the farmer’s market and grab a veggie we haven’t tried before and see how we do. That will be the plan for the foreseeable future: introducing new veggies and trying to create new staples. I’m hoping to use this period on the program to train us into better habits. I’m not saying that I’ll never ever want pasta or pizza or chocolate again because I TOTALLY will. But we need to learn to enjoy other, healthier things to fill our plates so that when we have those things that we love, it doesn’t turn into a major gain.

I’ll update y’all on the cauliflower pizza on Friday. In the meantime, I have to figure out how to rice my head of cauliflower without a food processor. Our ancient one from 1980 (seriously, it was my mother’s and it was almond-colored with fake “wood” paneling) finally bit it, and we’re getting married – I’m not buying a new food processor when my bridal shower is happening sometime in the next few months.

Adventures in food prep, folks.

When life hands you lemons, make fauxcchi

I’ve been doing a lot of cooking on this weight loss program, but most of it’s been the same few things: some variation on baked chicken, some variation on crockpot chicken, chili, turkey burgers. After a month, I’m getting pretty sick of the same few things.

There are also some things I miss, like pasta. Low carb pasta doesn’t really exist, though, at least not in a variation that’s allowed on this program. Or so I thought.

Enter Pinterest. I love Pinterest, and one of my favorite things in my pre-weight loss life was pinning recipes and desserts. I’m a passable cook and a decent baker, and I can certainly follow a recipe. I spent some time searching, and found the usual zucchini noodles (which were out because I don’t have a spiralizer) and some products that promised to be low-carb but probably aren’t low-carb enough to be keto. And then there’s this:

Faux keto gnocchi, recipe courtesy of The Primitive Plate

That, friends, is keto faux gnocchi, or “fauxcchi” as I’ve been calling it. It’s literally egg yolks and cheese, with some garlic powder, sauteed in a touch of butter and oil. The recipe can be found here, on The Primitive Plate, and was really fantastic. So fantastic, in fact, that Scott ate about half, and he’s a hugely picky eater.

Speaking of half, the recipe specifies that it makes two servings. I chortled a little when I saw the yield, because come on – I’ve eaten WAY more pasta than that at a go in my day. But about halfway through, I found myself getting incredibly full, and I still had to finish my prosciutto and arugula side salad. All the protein in this recipe really does make you feel full.

This won’t be an everyday meal, partially because of the prep, which is messy and a little time-intensive, although well worth it, and partially because eating two cups of cheese and three egg yolks on the regular seems like a bad idea. But every once in a while, when I’m so sick of eating chicken, this is going to be perfect. I might even put a little pasta sauce on them next time. And the best part? For my one serving, plus the side salad, dinner came out to 488 calories. Not bad!

Stay tuned, guys: one day this weekend I’m trying cauliflower crust pizza.

Weight Loss Wednesday – Week 3

I didn’t do a day-by-day this week because there was nothing to report. The adjustment the doctor made (removing a meal replacement and subbing for an additional low carb, high protein meal) completely fixed all of the physical symptoms I was having. I’ve got my brain back, and I’m not any more irritable than usual. The headaches are gone. And I guess my body finally realized I wasn’t trying to kill it, because I’m no longer constantly hungry or thinking about food.

I also lost weight! Final weigh-in: 176.6 (down 3.2 pounds from last week, and 6.4 pounds total. They always weigh us at group, which is at night; in the morning on my scale – which is approximately 1 pound off the scale at the doctor’s – I’m 173). This was WITH me having had two slices of pizza and a Starbucks – grande iced chai, nonfat, two pumps sugar-free mocha – on Monday for my birthday. I’m pretty chuffed.

What’s worked for me this week has been:

• Keeping my total carbs between 50 and 100. I usually hover somewhere around 60.
• Keeping my total calories around 1100. This is still a significant deficit from where I was eating, which was around 1500 when I was watching and god knows what when I wasn’t.
• Eating literally every two hours, from the time I get up until I eat dinner. I make my breakfast – usually mini lemon or orange muffins from my vanilla shake mix – and eat them when I get to work. Somewhere around 8:30, I’ve finished those, and at 10:30 I’ll have a yogurt. At 12:30 I’ll have my low-carb ham sandwich and my protein-y salad; lately I’ve been favoring spring mix with prosciutto and fat-free balsamic. About an hour before I leave work, I’ll have my second meal replacement, and then I’ll eat dinner between 5:30 and 7, depending on when I leave work.
• Exercising. I get my weekly ride, and starting next week when my work hours return to normal (i.e., I’m not getting home at 6 PM), I’ll probably hit the gym twice a week just to tone.

This is the first week I’ve really felt like I’ve made progress, and the first week where I really felt like I might start to lose for real. I’m betting I won’t see as significant a loss this week because I’m going to have pizza and cake at my mom’s on Saturday, but if I lose 2 pounds instead of 3, I’m okay with that. It’ll stabilize out the following week and I’ll go forward.

Dor-sahj lessons

(That is how my fiancé refers to what I’m learning in my riding lessons. “Hon, I can’t tell who’s doing dor-sahj and who’s not. It all looks the same to me.”

“I’m sorry, who’s doing what now?”

“Dor-sahj. Isn’t that what you’re learning how to do?”

“Yep. Dor-sahj. Dressage for dorks.”

Seriously, my life.)

Learning dressage on a stubborn Appaloosa who used to be a gaming horse is fun. This week, I learned:

• My circles are actually round and the right size. Plus!
• Cinnamon can’t or won’t (I haven’t figured out which yet) halt square to save his life. Minus.
• I can make the stubborn Appaloosa bend! Plus.
• I’m really, really good at getting into the corners. Big plus.
• Roughly 90 percent of the time, I can’t make Cinnamon go with any sort of forward. But when I ask him to halt, he fights me. I mean, he halts, sort of. But he fights the contact so much, we’re literally playing tug-of-war for three minutes until he gives up and softens. Minus. Weirdo.

My trainer ran me through Intro A and Intro B in my lesson on Monday, and they were fine, halting issues notwithstanding. I could do that in a show, probably. Having been to a few local schooling-level dressage shows – which is all I have the stomach for and almost certainly all I will have the ability for – they don’t look too intimidating. Not a huge turnout, and nobody’s watching you ride but the judge, your trainer and anyone you bring as a cheering section. I could handle that. That said, I’m glad I’m taking a year to learn how to not be a hot mess in general, but on principle, it’s all stuff I can do: working trot, medium walk, free walk, circles, change rein.

I’m also stupidly excited to run through a couple of Intro tests on a stubborn, chubby Appaloosa. Not even kidding. Living the dream.

#fivethingsFriday – Week 3

1. Overtime sucks and I’m tired of it.
2. Housework and dieting also suck, and I’m tired of those too.
3. I did manage to put a heel on a sock this week. That’s about all of the knitting that got done. Because of the way the project at work is scheduled and my new role in it (I’m basically supervising a team of about sixteen people for quality control), I get a half-hour lunch, which is barely enough time to walk to the cafeteria and eat. My work knitting time has vanished.
4. One of the nose pads on my glasses has mysteriously gone missing. It’s either in/around my bed (from having fallen asleep with my glasses on literally every night this week) or in the arena dirt at the barn from my bail last week.
5. This morning Meat Loaf’s “I’d Do Anything For Love” popped up on my iPod – the full album version, all twelve minutes of it. I always forget how much I love that song until I hear it out of nowhere. It was my first musical love, and my first single, which I bought on cassette (because I’m that old) for my tenth birthday. That means that as of Monday, I will have loved that song for twenty-two years. Musical loyalty is real. I could almost be a Hufflepuff, except I’m too judgmental.

Well, that escalated quickly.

I’ve been trying to write this since Saturday, and it’s partially not been done because this week has been crazy and it’s partially not been done because I’m so mortified that this even happened. 

I wasn’t feel one hundred percent on Saturday when I went for my lesson. Because of this “keto flu”, my brain was super foggy and I was having a hard time even tacking up. I had to do the girth twice because I started on the wrong side (herp derp, I swear I know how a girth goes), and it took me like five tries to put one of Cinn’s boots on in the right place. 

The first 50 minutes of my ride were pretty good: lots of serpentines, bending, sitting trot. I even hit all of my diagonals like a big girl. 

And then we cantered. 

In retrospect, I should have probably told my trainer I wasn’t fit to canter. I didn’t feel dizzy or otherwise ill, but I was foggy, and I think being so “on” for the serpentines and diagonals used up what brainpower I had. But I love cantering, and I’m finally getting good (this week notwithstanding), so I set up and pushed Cinn forward. 

It was bad from go. My reins were too long, my leg wasn’t under me properly, and I hadn’t managed to get Cinnamon started from his hind end, so he kind of flailed around on his forehand. There’s one part of the ring where he likes to fall in toward the center, and by the time we got there, I’d lost it. My reins were too long, I had no contact, and I couldn’t steer – and I wasn’t. I also wasn’t thinking too clearly, so rather than just try to collect my reins and fix it, I became a passenger. 

There was a point where my choice was to haul on Cinnamon’s mouth to either pull him up or drag him around a turn, or we could jump a tiny cross rail that was directly in our path.

We jumped the cross rail. 

Really, it would have been fine, except that Cinnamon had no preparation to jump and so he had to really chip in to get over the thing. The landing was understandably rocky and so when I felt myself falling, I kicked my feet out of the stirrups and bailed. 

It was seriously not one of more stellar performances. I known I can ride better than that. Poor Cinn, he’s such a good guy – he probably was like, “Human, I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but you seem to want to jump the thing and I like you, so we’ll jump the thing.” If nothing else, that showed me how much I can trust that horse, which is nice, but he definitely deserves for me to sit up and ride him like I have a clue. 

I’m riding Saturday and Monday (assuming I don’t get rained out) so I’ll have two chances for redemption.