If I could have one wish I think it would be to have a year without any medical problems or injuries. Not a lifetime, just a year! I’d like one sweet, sweet, year when my body would function just as it was supposed to. Alas, this will probably always remain a fantasy. I always tended to injure myself when I was running or training for races, and even though I’m not training for anything right now my right foot is causing problems.

I don’t remember the day my right foot began to hurt (kinda like I don’t remember the moment I got my headache), but it was sometime around late December 2010. I felt a pain in my arch whenever I walked, but it felt fine when standing or sitting with no weight on it. I thought it would just heal with time, but it started to get worse, particularly after I did anything active that required bending my foot, like, oh, WALKING.

I decided I needed to see a doctor, but I waited until February to schedule an appointment because that’s when my COBRA ran out and my state-sponsored health insurance for sickos kicked in. Little did I know that it would take TWO MONTHS to get an appointment with a general practitioner. I might have been able to get in sooner if I’d bitched about it, but the foot wasn’t really an emergency, so I just waited.

When I did get in to see the doctor in early April, she took a look, didn’t find anything obviously wrong and decided to send me to a podiatrist. So I have to wait ANOTHER MONTH to get an appointment with that expert. I wish I’d known all this back in January and had just scheduled an appointment with the foot doctor for February. But I didn’t, so here I am, having walked around on a dodgy foot for four months before I can get an expert to tell me what’s wrong.

It’s particularly frustrating because it makes exercising more inconvenient. Yeah, I can bike or swim or yadda, yaddda, yadda, but the best exercise is the exercise you actually do, and for me that’s always been walking and running. I like that it’s basically idiot proof (though maybe I am disproving that assumption). I like that it’s meditative and gives me time to just think. I like that it allows me to wander about the city and feel more connected to my community. I miss it.

Part of me wonders if they’ll take an x-ray and I’ll learn I’ve been walking on a broken foot all year. It would kinda suck to go to FitBloggin’ on crutches. My doctor said a broken bone was unlikely, though, so I might just end up getting a special insert for my shoe. Or maybe I’ll have to weird really dorky orthopedic shoes. I hope this doesn’t turn into something like Shauna’s dodgy knee saga back in 2006 where I learn if I’d done something sooner I could have prevented more damage and drastically shortened my recovery time.

For anyone who’s about to diagnose me, I don’t think it’s plantar fasciitis. I had a case of that about 8 years ago and my current pain doesn’t feel like that. The plantar fasciitis pain was focused on the bottom of my foot near my heel, whereas my recent foot pain is located in the middle of my arch. Also, the pain from plantar fasciitis goes away as you walk around because you’re warming up the muscle, making it stretch and making it more flexible. This recent pain hurts no matter how long I’ve walked and actually gets a bit worse the more I do walk.

The strangest twist in all this is that my foot feels best when I’m wearing high-heeled boots. Go figure! High heels are supposed to be all kinds of evil for your feet, but for whatever reason they seem to take pressure off of my trouble spot. I’ve been a strong hater of everything high-heeled for most of my life. I’ve always considered high-heels to be uncomfortable and unnecessary since I’m already 5’9″ without them. But I was charmed into buying a pair of boots with a 2.5″ heel on sale, and now I’m sort of coming around on the issue.

Off-topic: Do people in foreign countries measure heel height in centimeters? I’ve never thought about this before and it now seems rather odd to me. Does this affect shoe production and design?

I can tell it’s weight-loss season because I’ve gotten more emails asking for weight-loss advice in the past two weeks than I did for the last two months. I think some people are finding this site and my email address after they purchased my book Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir. If so, thanks for buying the book! I truly appreciate the support. Eighteen months ago I quit my job to freelance full-time as a web designer and writer. (That’s right. I stuck it to the man! And the man has yet to stick me back.) So, I depend on book royalties to pay rent and buy lots of chocolate healthy veggies. I guess that means it’s really my landlord and Food Lion that thank you.

In the interest of full disclosure, I want to reiterate a fact that I’ve blogged about and posted on my About page, which is that in the past three years I’ve gained back about 50 pounds from my lowest weight. This was mainly due to a never-ending headache from hell, but eventually apathy and boredom snuck in there, too. So much so that for the past few months I haven’t been eating that healthy, nor have I been exercising regularly. So, when people write me asking how to lose weight (or “loose” weight, because the only thing worse than too much weight is tight weight) I’ve felt an urge to reply, “I dunno! Ask someone else! And bring me a cookie!”

However, it’s the new year, and the resolution I made six years ago (Dear God, has it been that long? Am I really 30?) worked out pretty well, so I thought I’d make another one. My resolution isn’t to start a diet or run another half-marathon or anything like that, it’s just to make better food choices and to work out at least three times a week.

There is a part of me that looks back on the time when I was exercising 6 days a week for 30-60 minutes and cooking dinner every night and thinks, “You should jump right back into that again!” But there is a more realistic part of me that thinks it’s silly to go from 0 to maniac in a day. Working out 3 days a week is better than working out none. I also think diets are silly, so I prefer to frame my new eating behavior in my mind as “making better choices.” If I make better food choices, choices that do not involve buying Krispy Kreme donuts at 10 o’clock at night, than I’m doing better than I was before, even if I’m not eating as healthy as I did at my peak. Really, it all comes down to choices. Everything in life comes down to choices, outside of what we can’t control like earthquakes and tsunamis and neighbors who play bagpipes.

I’ve been keeping a food diary, recording my weight on the wall calendar every day and then writing my exercise for the day down next to it. (And if you haven’t done Pilates or lifted weights for over a year, be prepared not to be lifting anything for three days afterward. Or sitting up.) So, I’ve got a plan, I’ve got accountability, and it’s been going pretty well for the past week. Then I’ll make it through the next week and the week after that, just like I have with my headache. One day at a time, people.

Most important of all, besides the optimism and hope of change that comes with the new year, I feel like I’m more mentally in the game right now that I have been for any time in the past few years. In that time I’ve had to deal with an ongoing medical problem, learn how to manage my own business, and I moved to another state. There was a lot of shit going on, and weight loss honestly wasn’t that important. I still weigh over 100 pounds less than I did at my heaviest, so it’s not like my weight has been making me miserable and trapping me in my home like it used to. I’m not back at square one, I’m back at square 50 out of 200. It’s been manageable, if not optimal, which might be why weight loss hasn’t been the primary occupation in my life like it was when it was destroying my life.

Right now I’m feeling my freelancing groove, I’ve settled into my new home, and my headache has been staying pretty steady at a 1 out of 5 on my latest medication cocktail. (Unfortunately it has the side effect of making my heart skip beats occasionally, which the doctor says is not a big deal nor is it the life-threatening, call-911-NOW-PLEASE!!! condition you would immediately assume it is when you feel your heart pause and then make a big THUMPing jumpstart. It’s freaky, but better than a headache!)

So, here we go 2011! Here’s to better choices! My heart’s already skipping a beat in anticipation.

I got to chat with Jared last Thursday on a conference call with four other bloggers: Courtney from My Dallas Mommy, Julie from Wii Mommies, Mindi from Moms Need to Know, and Jessica from Fringies…Knitting with One Needle. I also want to apologize to them because I was the moron who kept accidentally hitting buttons with her cheek for the first 10 minutes. As I said, I’m thirty now and can no longer operate technology.

The roundtable nature of the interview created a nice conversational atmosphere, and we got to learn a lot about Jared, his foundation, and his training as he prepares to run the New York City Marathon on November 7. (Good luck, dude!) Jared seems like a nice, down-to-earth guy, who’s still grateful for all the opportunities Subway has given him. Here’s what he had to say on a variety of topics, based on my notes and questions he answered from all the bloggers. (And I admit, I stole most of my questions from your comments on my last Jared entry.):

How do you maintain your healthy eating and training schedule while traveling for Subway gigs?
“It is by far the hardest challenge,” Jared said. When you travel, especially for business, you have to remember you’re not on vacation. You have to make healthy eating a priority. Jared tries to ask about what restaurants he’ll be eating at so he can prepare in advance. He orders sauces and dressings on the side, but the key is to stay “mentally strong.”

You’re very recognizable as the Subway spokesman, but do you ever eat at competitor’s restaurants like McDonalds or Pizza Hut?
Jared laughed and said he doesn’t go to any quick service restaurants because they don’t serve food he wants to be eating. He also said that he’s aware that the Subway spokesman probably shouldn’t be seen at those places. “You don’t want to see me under the golden arches.” However, he wanted us to know he doesn’t eat Subway for every meal. When he eats out, it’s at sit-down restaurants.

How did you become the Subway guy?
Believe it or not, Jared didn’t have a 5-year-plan or 10-year-plan to become the Subway spokesman. He was a business major at Indiana University when a friend wrote an article about his weight loss for the paper. That led to more articles and television interviews until the Subway spokesperson opportunity came up. When he graduated, he had to decide if he wanted to keep pursuing the Subway gig or get “a real job.” He decided to stick with Subway as long as it was still fun and he wanted to do it.

When I trained for a half-marathon, I had to take some days off for injuries. Have you faced any obstacles like that in your training?
Yes, running is completely new to Jared, but he knows you have good days and bad days. The important things is to have the mental will to push through the bad days. He’s fortunate that he hasn’t had any knee problems like I did from damage I did when I was overweight. He’s come to like running, and plans on continuing to run 5-8 mile distances after the marathon. He’s never gotten the runner’s high, but he loves the feeling of accomplishment he gets at the end of a long run.

What has training for the marathon been like?
“Twenty-six miles is a very, very, very long way to go.” Jared has been building up to the distance and has successfully completed several shorter races, including a half-marathon. He says he breaks it up mile by mile. He allows himself 20-30 seconds of walking at each mile. That’s time he uses to drink fluids and mentally recharge. He’s also got a watch with GPS, heart monitor, and pace intervals that he uses to monitor his progress. He’d like to finish the marathon in about 5 hours, but his real goal is to simply complete it no matter what his time.

What advice do you have for other who want to lose weight?
Phase 1 is losing weight. Phase 2 through infinity is keeping the weight off, which is much harder than Phase 1. “Until they create a carrot stick that tastes as good as a mozzarella stick, it will be difficult.” The key is to find exercise that is fun to do and not a chore.

Congrats on your recent marriage! Is your wife a runner? Does she go on training runs with you?
Jared’s wife is not a long-distance runner, but she leads an active life. Sometimes she’ll run a mile with him on a training run and then turn back home. She’s been very understanding of his training schedule. Jared admits, “I’ve seen my trainer this year a lot more than my wife.”

What are some of the best experiences you’ve had as a result of being the Subway guy?
Jared’s gotten to attend the Superbowl for several years, which he loves as a big sports fan. He also enjoys meeting with Little League teams. He got to meet President George W. Bush when he was in office, and Bush told him that at the Texas ranch he’d often ask the secret service guys to run out and get him Subway sandwiches. Jared also got to meet President Obama before he was president, but after the Democratic Convention speech that made him famous. Jared was walking down a hallway and recognized Obama, but wasn’t going to bother him. A few seconds after they’d passed he heard Obama say, “Jared?” They then had a conversation and Obama said he likes how Subway is toasting their subs now.

Can you talk about your foundation?
The Jared Foundation aims to stop childhood obesity. Jared particularly emphasized that he wants to find techniques that actually work, and not just ideas that sound good but have little impact. They’re starting a pilot program in Indianapolis (where Jared lives) in which they’re handing out pedometers to school children and challenging them to reach a certain number of steps.

You’ve been doing this for around 11 years now. What question do you get asked a lot that you’re absolutely sick of answering?
Jared laughed and said one common misperception people have is that he only eats Subway. He wants us to know he does eat other foods. He also feels lucky that people still care, and he hasn’t had to get a “real job” yet.

And where did you get those cool specs?
Jared laughed. “They’re Burberry.”

Thanks to Jared for taking the time to talk to us! As part of the Subway Commit to Fit program, I’m giving away a $25 Subway gift card. To enter, post a comment below listing what your favorite Subway sandwich/cookie/wrap/salad/whatever is. You must be a US resident to enter. The contest ends at 11:59pm on Thursday, November 4, 2010. Winner will be drawn randomly. For more information about the Commit to Fit program and for a chance to win up to $26,200, visit the Subway Facebook page.

Honestly, even I don’t know what this machine was doing, and I was too afraid to ask for fear they’d try to pressure me into trying it too. All I know is that the machine wiggled that man back and forth, making him do a human snake impression. This happened last weekend at the inaugural Indy Health Expo at the state fair grounds.

When I saw the fair advertised on Twitter, I thought the $10 entry fee and $3 parking fee would be well worth the potential blog material. And it’s a tax write-off too! The expo consisted of almost 100 booths where exhibitors displayed their wares and/or services. There were also four “stages” set up at the corners where some exhibitors were scheduled to do presentations during the day.

There was a real range of people there, including chiropractors, yoga practitioners, massage therapists giving back rubs in their booths, martial artists, plastic surgeons who had assistants so impeccably groomed they frightened me, dentists bleaching people’s teeth on site, natural health practitioners, cancer prevention programs, Wii Fit demonstrators, Vitamix people who annihilated a pound of fruits and vegetables with their powerful blender, life coaches, and Mary Kay and Avon ladies giving away catalogs. There were also people selling balloon rides, home baths, insurance, and bedazzled hats and shirts. I don’t know how that fit into the health theme, but I guess it fit into the unofficial “make money off of the visitors” theme.

The first exhibit I saw upon entering was the “Healthy Chocolate” booth, either because of its positioning near the door or because of my innate ability to hone in on any free chocolate samples in my vicinity. The chocolate is “healthy” because it contains acai berries. Interestingly, several of the other exhibitors had bowls of candy set out in their booths and didn’t even bother to pitch it as health food. I suppose they wanted to lure people in with fun-sized Snickers bars before convincing them to get their colons cleansed.

My Farm Fresh Delivery peeps were there too. They gave me a free pear and didn’t mention my colon. I also saw a Nutrilite stand, which reminded me of my recent trip to their Optimal Health Center. I passed by a booth where a woman was selling magnetic jewelry, which was pretty but would probably murder my laptop. At the end of one of the rows there was a hyperbaric chamber, which I was curious about, but fearful to inquire about. I didn’t have a buddy with me to accompany me to the emergency room after any hyperbaric accidents.

Near the end of my loop around the booths, I made eye contact with one of the exhibitors for a second too long and she pulled me into a pitch about Sahaja Yoga Meditation. She told me that I could make energy blossom out of my head like a flower and balance my energy so it shot out my fingers which would allow me to control aspects of my life…or something like that. I just kept nodding politely and then made my getaway as soon as I saw an opening. When I typed the word “Sahaja” into Google, one of the suggested searches was “Sahaja yoga cult,” which makes me glad I got out of there while I could.

I was particularly fascinated by the human dynamics of the exhibition. There were some booths that had mobs of people around them, usually because the exhibitor was giving away something free that had perceived value. This could be a prize awarded through a random drawing at the end of the day (provided you submitted your mailing address) or a coupon for a free service at their location. The other popular booths were giving away free trinkets and schwag, although there was one booth for insurance that had lots of free schwag and no mob around it. There were also some booths that were totally unmanned, and simply had pamphlets and brochures for the company that rented the booth. There were some booths there were manned, but the person working the booth was obviously not into it and was reading a book or just chilling out instead of pitching. Then there were the booths where the worker looked very anxious that no one was approaching them and would try to grab someone to talk to. I was also somewhat disgusted by my own behavior, in which I would scout the booths as I walked up and down the aisles, trying to assess if they had any free stuff worth my time. It was very predatory of me, but I somehow can’t help falling into this behavior whenever I attend exhibitions like this.

On the bright side, the concession stand offered a few healthy food options on top of their regular pizza and nachos. I entered a lot of the free drawings and won nothing, though I am now probably subscribed to a lot of kooky mailing lists. I did get to “spin the wheel” at two booths after entering their drawings and won a free facial at a spa clear across town and a $5 gift card to Ritters, an ice cream store, which I will probably never use.

When I emptied my baggy at the end of the day, I saw that I had gotten free toothpaste, floss, a chip clip, a bottle of acid-reducer tablets, a combo brush/mirror/sewing kit, a notepad, a lens cloth, a band-aid dispenser, a pear, a Paradise Café coupon, and a Kotex sampler packet. I also got leads on a few services I might actually be interested in checking out. However, the price of admission was worth the pure entertainment value of the fair alone, even if I didn’t ride the water snake.

Disclosure: Nutrilite paid for all expenses related to this health assessment.

My Nutrilite health assessment arrived in the mail last week, bound in a snazzy spiral booklet that made me nostalgic for middle school geography reports. (My favorite? Bolivia: A World Within a Country which featured Lake Titicaca. *snicker* Yes, my sense of humor is stuck in middle school too.) The health assessment was offered to everyone who attended the Nutrilite Blogger Event last month. After undergoing a zillion and one tests over the past two years in search of the source of the headache from hell, throwing a bone density test and a body fat analysis into the mix felt like ordering an appetizer.

A few days after receiving the report, I had a one-hour phone consultation with Dr. Duke Johnson, the Medical Director of the Nutrilite Center for Optimal Health, who is a specialist in chronic diseases. He’s also a speaker and author of The Optimal Health Revolution.

The results were divided into four sections: Fitness results, blood analysis, BCoR score, and bone density. The results of these tests determined the contents of a fifth section, titled “Risk factors.” First off, Dr. Duke emphasized that the aim of the report is to help you achieve “optimal health.” This is defined not just by being free of disease, but by eliminating risk of disease. You don’t have to be a bodybuilder to meet these standards, and in fact a bodybuilder who uses steroids that has caused a heart attack before the age of 40 wouldn’t qualify. I was glad to learn the assessment was taking a holistic view of health, and I wasn’t going to get a point knocked off for every stretch mark on my belly. The goal of the report is to help identify and correct habits that increase your risk for chronic disease.

Fitness results

The fitness section of the assessment measured my grip strength, flexibility, resting heart rate, body composition, waist-to-hip ratio, and blood pressure. My grip strength and flexibility were scored as average. My resting heart rate was above average and my blood pressure showed no risk for heart disease. (Score two points for the beta blockers!) However, my body composition was, uh, predictably problematic. I felt bad for the guy at the body composition station (a.k.a. the “How fat are you?” station). He was as popular as a tax collector. Using the most lenient standards for a desirable body fat percentage, I’m 12% off. Using a more strict standard, I’m 19% off. So, yeah, I got some work to do there. On the positive side, while I would make a buoyant life preserver, my waist-to-hip ratio was well below the risk area. This is because I’m pear shaped, so I don’t have much abdominal fat, which is the fat that is more metabolically active and a risk indicator of heart disease.

Blood analysis

I have a blood analysis done every six months at the headache clinic I visit. I also had two or three blood panels done the first year of my headache, so I wasn’t surprised when my blood work came back looking fairly stellar. Still, there were two problem areas.

I’m low in Vitamin D, scoring in the “insufficiency” range, and not too far from the “deficiency” range. My allergist made a similar observation last year, at around the same time of year. This is not a surprise because Vitamin D is synthesized by your skin’s exposure to the sun, and Indiana is the home of the long, grey winter. Dr. Duke told me that even if you’re getting the FDA recommended daily allowances of nutrients, your body can often benefit from receiving more than those minimums. The allowances were created during World War II to ensure that the food being shipped to the troops overseas wouldn’t cause any deficiency diseases, like lack of Vitamin C had once caused scurvy in sailors. Of course, you can also get too much of a good thing, so it’s best to find a balance. I’m going to start taking some Vitamin D supplements, since this is the second time it’s been recommended to me.

I’m also going to start taking Vitamin D because it’s supposed to help with the other issue, a higher than usual fasting insulin level. The blood analysis looked at both my glucose and my insulin level after a 12-hour fast. My glucose level scored well within average, but my insulin level was unusually high. There is some debate over the importance of measuring the insulin level, and I’m not an expert on this so I can’t really give you deep insight into the issue, but this site offered some information about the tests. I’m sure some of you will tell me why the insulin test is complete bullshit, and then some of you will comment to tell me why those people are complete morons. Work it out amongst yourselves.

Part of me wonders if the water with lemon juice I drank right before the test could have boosted my score, but when life hands you a lemon, I don’t want to blame the lemon. According to Dr. Duke, a high insulin level can be a sign of growing insulin resistance, which ultimately can lead to type II diabetes. I was rather surprised by my insulin score since I eat fairly well and exercise. I don’t know if this is a medical trait leftover from my years of morbid obesity, or if it’s a result of my current lifestyle. Anyway, my grandmother had type II diabetes, and I’d rather not lose a foot, so I’m going to watch this. I was also surprised to learn that Vitamin D and magnesium have been shown to help lower insulin levels. Dr. Duke’s book also includes a list of 22 ways to decrease insulin resistance. They gave me a free copy of the book at the event, so I’ll have to look that up and report back to you on it.

BCoR score

The BCoR stands for “Body Composition Health Risk Score” and is a formula developed by Nutrilite. It’s an attempt to take a comprehensive look at someone’s health to determine if they are obese and if that obesity is putting them at risk for chronic disease. It is calculated using a person’s body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage, and waist-to-hip ratio. I liked that Nutrilite wasn’t focusing on any single one of these obesity indicators, since you can find flaws in any one of them. The BMI can score extremely muscular people as obese, and can score thin people with low muscle mass and high abdominal fat as normal. The BCoR formula is still being tested to see if it is a more accurate predictor of risk, and I’ll be interested to hear their results.

My BCoR score placed me at risk for chronic disease, but if I manage to lose the 40 pounds I gained during the horrible, headache years, I’ll reduce that risk significantly.

Bone density

My bone density was measured by a device that did an ultrasound on my foot. The results were printed in a multi-colored graph which shows that my bone density is within acceptable levels, but is slightly lower than average. I was a bit surprised by this because I’d hoped my bone density was still at the levels it must have been when I was morbidly obese. Bone density can be increased by strength training, so morbidly obese people usually have denser bones than their thin counterparts because they lift more weight simply by moving around. I suppose like everything in your body, if you don’t use it you lose it, so whatever high density I once had is gone. Bone density only drops as you get older, so I should add some strength training to my exercise routine to help increase this.

Risk factors

The final section of the report summarized the results by listing what my risk factors were for heart disease, cancer, and diabetes (all of which I’ve mentioned above). They recommended that I reduce these risk factors to increase my optimal health.

Final thoughts

The health assessment was interesting, and I respected the balanced approach taken in interpreting the results. At no point did Dr. Duke try to sell me any Nutrilite products, but with my permission he told me which supplements he’d recommend (like Vitamin D, magnesium, etc.). Those supplements were only recommended on top of a healthy diet and regular exercise.

After visiting Nutrilite and talking to Dr. Duke, I was reminded of the book review I did last year of Toxic Fat by Barry Sears, which talked in-depth about inflammation and the idea that inflammation is what causes most chronic diseases. I had never encountered that concept before, but it’s something Nutrilite and Dr. Duke mentioned several times, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a concept that continues to gain attention in the press.

And, hey, I got a snazzy spiral binder, and all I had to do was give them a vial of my blood!

Today has been a rather BLAH day. I just now finally got up the will to reply to some of my emails that have been sitting in my “Respond To” folder for days. And that is only partly because I got my ass out of the house and drank a tall coffee at the Barnes & Noble cafe (although the barista always lets me know I can have a venti for only 22 more cents because he is an upseller his boss would be proud of). So I wonder, do I feel like this because of my headache? Is there something else wrong with me? Or does everyone have days like these? I don’t know.

My usual techniques for coping with days like these is to exercise or get out of the house. I tried exercising, but my left leg started to hurt after 8 minutes, so I stopped because I want to be in good shape to run my race on Friday. The thought of doing anything physical sounds totally unappealing, but the thought of doing anything sounds totally unappealing, which means I probably really need to do something.

Life is so annoying like this. Plodding on day by day, never getting any easier. *sigh* At least I haven’t binged on anything and I turned down the upselling barista’s suggestion that I try something in their pasty case. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. That’s all I can really wish for.

.

.

.

Oh, you want me to say something else about this? All right.

After spending most of 2008 in pain, I began to bottom out in September, eventually started yelling at my readers, and went on anti-depressants because life was a meaningless pit of shit with no drain. I also stopped exercising and started eating more, like those chocolate covered nuts from Fresh Market and the Dove ice cream pints with a solid layer of chocolate on top and an entire Papa John’s pizza and a box of breadsticks on Oscar night.

I didn’t mention any of this because 1) Duh, it sucks to talk about and 2) The times I did start to write about it I had to mention my headache and I wasn’t going to do that again, so I never hit “Publish.”

Regardless of your views on obesity and what a healthy weight is, gaining a pound a week for months on end is not a good thing unless you’re recovering from anorexia. I kept weighing in everyday and marked it on my calendar, as depressing as that was, but I was depressed anyway, so who could tell the difference? I would tell myself, “This really needs to stop,” but then my pain would say, “LOOK AT ME!!” and punch me in the face and I’d add another ice cream pint to the bill.

Thankfully, the medications have tuned down the pain level so it does not envelope my whole life anymore. I can drive past the Fresh Market, think of the vanilla chocolate covered crunch bin, and keep on driving without remorse. Which just shows it’s easier to deal with an addiction when you are not facing a trigger 24 hours a day. As a result, I’ve been maintaining my weight for the last few months and haven’t had to buy any new pants since December.

You are free to think what you want about all this. You can say it is proof that people cannot lose weight and keep it off. You can say it shows I am a human being and you like me even more because of it. You can say I got what I deserved for writing a blog and a book about weight loss and how happy I was. You can say you are proud that I am talking about it and you think I’m inspirational because of it. All I think it proves is that my head hurt and I needed the ice cream.

I know I should be horribly devastated by this, that I should be weeping that my weight starts with the number two, that I am such a horrible disappointment to everyone who called me an inspiration and blah, blah, blah, but really? Honestly? I’m fine. It is not the worst thing to happen to me. A chronic headache that would not go away for over a year is the worst thing that ever happened to me, and if someone said I had to gain another 20 pounds to make the headache go away completely I would say, “Hand me the Ho-Ho’s!”

You know all that stuff I said in my blog and my book about how my life had changed, but it wasn’t just because of my weight? The stuff I said about how it was doing things I was proud of and liking myself as a person? You know, all that bullshit thin people say when they’re not fat anymore? Well, what do you know? It’s true! I actually meant it! I am as full of myself as ever, but even more so because there’s more to be full of! I am flying off to Europe on two month’s notice even if I am up two jean sizes. I am running a blog and doing freelance design work on the side and earning book royalties like a real business woman. I am doing other stuff that I am proud of but can’t talk about on the blog because it’s private. Feel free to call me an arrogant narcissist in denial. I’ll call you back collect from Paris!

Kirstie Alley was on Oprah this week, and I tried very hard to avoid the show, but even though I don’t have cable I still saw a dozen ads for it and saw clips of it on of the nightly entertainment news magazines. Kirstie Alley is an American actress who got fat a few years ago, lost a lot of weight as the Jenny Craig spokeswoman, appeared in a bikini on Oprah, and then got fat again. She was on the show talking about all this and all I could think while watching the clips were, “I do not give a shit.” If Kirstie Alley wants to sit at home and eat nothing but Twinkies, more power to her. And if Kirstie Alley wants to set up a home gym in her dining room and pose on the cover of health magazines, more power to her. Neither situation makes her better or worse as a human being, it just means she’s making different life choices, and they’re her choices to make, so could everyone get over it already? It shouldn’t have to be “brave” to tell people that working out sucks and you like chocolate. It just makes you human. It shouldn’t be a story to be discussed on multiple news outlets, not when we could be talking about how cute the Obama’s new dog is.

All that said, Kirstie Alley seemed pissed that she hadn’t been taking care of herself, which brings up this question:

“But PQ, what about your health? Aren’t you concerned about your health?”

Ha, ha, ha, ha! Sorry, give me a minute to – ha, ha, ha! In the past year I’ve had two MRI’s, two CTs, and more blood tests than I can count. My blood pressure has been taken. My pulse has been counted. Literally dozens of medical professionals have examined me and all they can do is rave over how healthy I am. They say, “PastaQueen, you are a paradigm of good health!” and I tell them, “No, I’m not!” and then I go see another doctor and the cycle continues. So please, do not stare at your bedroom ceiling at night worried about my health.

That said, I am not 100% comfortable with my weight gain. I still get called to do book-related interviews from time to time and if I have to meet someone in person I worry if they will think I’m too fat to do a story about my book. No one has said anything to me, but I’m not sure if that’s because their mommas taught them manners or if they just look at the “before” photo like I do and think, “Yeah, she’s lost a lot of weight.” I’m still down 160 pounds, which is an entire person, which is another reason I’m not weeping into a spinach salad right now. It all depends on your perspective

Now that my headache is momentarily contained, I’ve been eating better and I’ve started walking during my lunch breaks. I’m getting back into it and I wouldn’t mind dropping 20 pounds. But…weight loss is not the most important thing in my life. It certainly was the most important thing in my life for the first two years when I was dropping dress sizes every few months. When I told people, “I want to be thin,” what I was really saying was, “I want to lead the life I want to live.” Losing all the weight has made me confident and taught me to believe in myself and has allowed me to live my life in ways that I never could before, so that’s what I’m doing. I’m living my life. That has less to do with being fat or thin than most people think.

I still weigh every day. I’m still mindful of what I eat. I still think, “I need to exercise today” and sometimes I do. But even if I weren’t doing those things, I would still be me and like I said in my book, the fat PastaQueen was a funny, kind, person too. I am still me no matter how inflated or deflated my fat cells are and I’d hope you guys will remember that about yourselves too.

You can judge me as you will, fat or thin or somewhere in between. If I got to change one thing about my body I’d fix my headaches first, give myself normal feet second, and attend to the weight thing third, because it doesn’t bother me that much. I’m so tired of writing about my body, but I’ve written about my weight so much in this place I felt an obligation to put it out there. And hey, how cute is the Obama’s new dog?

A couple years later I woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to scoop my gallbladder out with a spoon. The surgeon did it with a scalpel and a tiny camera instead, and I was only 24. Then my knees started to hurt when I climbed up the stairs. By this point I’d also lost track of how many cavities I’d had filled, caused by too much Mountain Dew and too little dental floss.

A friend my age told me over dinner she is fighting acid reflux disease and takes medication for a slight thyroid imbalance. Another friend was just diagnosed with pernicious anemia and has to get shots of B12. We are not old. We are in out late 20′s and early 30′s.

No one told me my body was going to break down so fast. No one warned me that after 21 years I’d start needing repairs. I cannot trade myself in for a newer model. So if you are young and your body is working, enjoy it for me. It won’t be long until you’ll need a fix-up and wish you’d invested in more dental floss as a child.

When I look at the Indy 500 Mini-Marathon finisher’s medal that is hanging on my bulletin board, I fondly remember the race, particularly the part where I got to stop running. While I enjoyed the cinnamon crunch bagels and the thrill of accomplishment, I’ve decided not to run the race again this year. I wiffled and waffled for awhile, but I knew if I ran it again it would just be for show since my heart is not in it. Been there, done that, got the medal.

I greatly admire people who take up long distance running, but it is not necessary to run half-marathons to stay in shape, nor is it the best possible way to lose pounds. I actually gained weight when I was training last year. Right now I’d rather focus on maintaining my current weight and perhaps losing another 10-20 pounds, so half-marathon training is not consistent with those goals. I know some people do lose weight when training, but I’m not one of them.

Instead, my personal health goal for this year is to maintain a level of fitness so I could go out and run a 5K at any time. I just hate it when I’m at the office and they say, “Let’s run a 5K after lunch!” and I have to turn them down. At my running speed, that goal would mean being able to run for about 35 minutes constantly, which is doable.

In memory of my past running achievements, here’s a slideshow of me crossing the finish line at the Training Series 10K last year, captured by the official documentarian of my life, my mother. Thanks, Mom!

However, there have been times in the past couple months when I’ve not been grateful to be in possession of my brain considering how badly it has been hurting. It’s made my life suck. Oh, let me count the ways.

The emotional toll

When I started crying alone in the parking lot of the doctor’s office in the rain last April, I knew I was starting to lose it. There was so much snot running down my face that I had to reach into the back seat and grab a white t-shirt to wipe my nose on that I’d been planning to give to Goodwill. Later I cried on the phone to my mom who felt bad that she couldn’t kiss the receiver to make the pain go away. I’ve laid in bed wondering if I’d have a stroke in the middle of the night and die, which would suck, but at least would stop my suffering.

Several people have told me they admire my level-headed, sensible approach to weight-loss. So, the fact that I’ve been blowing snot on t-shirts for the poor should give you a sense of how far gone I’ve been in my worst moments. One day I was so befuzzled after two hours and three different attempts at finding an open lab to do my blood work, that I turned the wrong way down a one way street.

The eating

My headache is like being locked in a room with a TV that is endlessly looping a movie starring Tom Green or Adam Carrola. It’s absolutely awful and I can’t turn off the TV, but I can sometimes tune it out. In the same way, my headache always hurts, but I can sometimes ignore it. I’ve found that the best ways to distract myself are to 1) keep psychotically busy or 2) eat pleasurable things. (Hence, the weight gain in my sidebar this month. That’s seven pounds of pain, baby.)

The intravenous drugs haven’t done shit, but the cookies n’ cream milkshake from Steak N’ Shake sure did make me feel better. I mean that in all seriousness. After I’ve been in pain all day, if I eat a bowl of ice cream or a chocolate bar, I genuinely feel better for those few moments. The agony is drowned out by the other sensations, like turning up the radio to drown out the sound of your neighbors having sex. Last month I was chomping on some chocolate chips, knowing I should stop, but also knowing that as soon as I did the pain would come back. Chronic pain or extra calories? Headache or huge jeans? I really don’t know which is worse.

I started half-seriously thinking about starting a drinking habit instead of binge eating, but I didn’t know how alcohol would react with some of my headache medications, whereas blueberry bagels don’t seem to cause fatal drug interactions.

The laziness

It’s hard enough to get myself to exercise when I’m feeling fine, but when my head feels like it’s imploding, good luck getting me to pull out my weight bench. I record all my exercise on a wall calendar. Flipping back, I can see that my Pilates and weights sessions started to drop off in frequency a week or two after my headache started. After a month, they disappeared completely and I was focused only on completing my training runs for my half-marathon. After I finally ran the race, I barely exercised for three weeks.

Thankfully, I have exercised regularly for the past two weeks. It’s felt really good, getting back into the familiar routine, almost like I have my life back. I believe the exercise makes me feel better too (even though running two miles is never un-painful). Activity is good for the body and lying around wasn’t helping make the pain go away anyway.

Missing out on fun

A couple weeks ago, I could have seen a sneak preview of the Indiana Jones movie for free, but I had to come home to do a drug treatment. Last month the band Stars was in town and I wanted to go see them, but I felt tired from suffering all day and I didn’t want to be stuck in a smoky room that could inflame my headache. Several times I have been out with friends or coworkers and I can’t help thinking, “This would be a lot more fun if my head didn’t hurt.”

The hopelessness

I used to wake up and feel happy driving around town or running errands, but at my worst I was just trudging through as best I could and trying not to go more than two weeks without doing the dishes. I wanted to stay in bed all day or curl up watching TV on the couch. I watched the TV show House and I started cheering on his Vicodin addiction. (I fully support your narcotics habit, you crabby doctor, you!) My attitude to live life to its fullest became Operation: Just Getting By. It was shocking how quickly my life completely unraveled. It sucked the happy right out of life.

While I try to keep a positive attitude, living in constant pain beat me down over time. Some days I felt like fighting and other days I felt like lying belly up on the floor playing dead. I think of Jack Baur from the TV show 24 when he’s been tortured by the Chinese for years. Jack didn’t break, because he’s Jack Baur, damn it! But I was ready to tell the Chinese all our nuclear secrets if they would give me acupuncture.

On the bright side, I feel like I can now empathize with people who suffer from chronic pain and depression better than I ever would have been before. You really don’t know what it’s like until it happens to you.

The money

MRI’s aren’t cheap. When I was watching those episodes of House, he started ordering MRI’s and CT scans and I literally yelled at my TV, “OH MY GOD! Do you know how much that’s going to cost?!?!”

The medical system

Oh, yeah, this has been fun. Filling out lots of form, getting lost in medical facilities, trying to figure out who to see and what type of doctor could help me, hoping this would be the magic test that would diagnose my problem, the long delays between prescribing a test and getting in the schedule to take the test.

Retelling my medical history to several different doctors has been like playing that alphabet car game. You know, the one where the first person says, “I’m going on a trip and I’m bringing an apple.” And the next person brings something with the next alphabet letter like, “I’m going on a trip and I’m bringing an apple and bagels.” Then the next person says, “I’m going on a trip and I’m bringing an apple and bagels and cream cheese.” Except in the medical system it goes, “I have a headache and I tried antibiotics” and then you tell the next doctor, “I have a headache and I tried antibiotics and beta blockers,” and then you tell the next doctor, “I have a headache and I tried antibiotics, beta blockers and I’m willing to try crack cocaine if it will help.” It’s gotten to a point where I don’t know who I’ve told what or if I left out a part of the story because unfortunately I did not try things in alphabetical order.

But now I’m feeling better, if not fantastic

So, that’s what was going on behind the blog for the past few months. During April I kept thinking, “Dear God, how am I ever going to get through May?” But as I discovered, being incredibly busy helped because it didn’t leave me time to think about my headache. At the end of May, things started to slow back down to a reasonable pace, which left me plenty of time to think about how I’d gladly bash my head against a wall a couple times if I thought it’d stop the God damn pain. 2007 was a really great year and every day I drove home from work happy and excited, but I’d also think, “You’d better enjoy this feeling because something shitty is bound to happen to you eventually.” And it did.

But, the last two weeks have been okay, partly because the pain has lessened and partly because I’ve stopping hoping that it will go away anytime soon. It’s me and my headache for who knows how long – maybe for the rest of my life. In my research I discovered there are people who’ve had headaches for decades. I might one day be one of them. I will still keep looking into fixing my headache, but I’m sort of tired of dealing with the search for the cure right now. I’m taking a break.

Chilling out the past couple weeks has helped. I didn’t think I was that stressed despite the fact that I was training for a half-marathon, promoting a book, working a full-time job and writing a blog, but looking back and comparing it to how I feel now I’m thinking, “Um, yeah, maybe I was a little bit stressed out.” I was just so used to being stressed that I didn’t realize how bad it was until it let up. Sort of like how now my headache probably isn’t all that less painful than it used to be, I’m just so used to it that I don’t think it is as bad as I did when I first got it. If it were to go away, I would probably be surprised to realize how crappy I feel, just like I was surprised by how much better I felt when I first started eating healthy and exercising.

One of the worse things about this experience has been the feeling that I had no control over my life. I was in pain, gaining weight, not exercising, and unable to work as hard on my promotions as I wanted to – and it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong. I was victimized by my central nervous system.

But I haven’t eaten any milkshakes lately. And I’ve been hitting the trail. And I can lift almost as much weight during my strength training as I used to. Things started spinning down into a tailspin for awhile there, but I feel like I’m pulling up on the stick now. We’ll be flying normal again soon, if with a bit of turbulence.

I hope the stewardess will serve painkillers.