wavesoflife

Tonight I bought the book The Spark: The 28-Day Breakthrough Plan for Losing Weight, Getting Fit, and Transforming Your Life. It’s from the site that I started using back in 2008 for weight loss, SparkPeople. I’ve been doing well on my weight loss plan, but I want to continue doing well. My goal is to be down to 120 lbs by the end of the year. I’m currently at 182 lbs, so there’s a way to go.

I also bought The CalorieKing Calorie, Fat & Carbohydrate Counter 2010. This is a great little book and very…enlightening. For example, my usual burger at Red Robin has over 800 calories. And that doesn’t include the fries and the Coke.

I like SparkPeople because it makes tracking food fairly easy. It’s the only site I’ve tried for it, so I can’t really compare it to other sites. There’s lots of food items already in the system and if it doesn’t have it, 99% of the time another user has added it and you can use that. You get points for various things and trophies when you reach a certain amount of points. I orginally signed up for that site because I read an article online compariing several diet sites. The author mentioned that Spark People had a long form to fill out to join. I love filling out forms, so I chose that site. This was several years ago, so I have no idea if they still have a long form or not.

My username on there is seafae, if you use that site.

Today I ate 1,246 calories. My calorie range is 1200 – 1,550.

Breakfast: (264 calories)
Quaker Instant Oatmeal, Weight Control, Maple and Brown Sugar with milk
Black tea with 1 sugar cube and honey

Snack: (110 calories)
Campbell’s Select New England Clam Chowder (wasn’t a fan of this)

Lunch: (463 calories)
2 sunny-side up eggs
2 pieces white bread toasted with Benecol (need to stop eating bread again)
1 Boca breakfast link (not a fan of these either)
8 oz. Coke

Dinner: (410 calories)
6 piece McDonalds Chicken Nuggets (BIG fan of these)
Sweet and Sour Sauce
Small Coke

I usually try to only drink one soft drink a day. The McDonalds food was unplanned, otherwise I would have had water with my lunch.

Also, my eating schedule is a little odd. I don’t get up till 11ish, so breakfast is then. Then I have a snack at work after about 3 hours. Two hours later, I leave for home and eat lunch at home. Then several hours later I either eat dinner or a snack. I usually call my lunch, dinner, since it’s around dinner time.

Since January I’ve lost about 10 pounds. I’ve probably lost about 15 pounds since October.

Rather than following any specific diet, I’ve been eating a lot less and making healthier food choices. Plus drinking a lot of water. I sometimes use SparkPeople to keep track of what I’ve been eating, but not always.

I suppose what’s made my resolve stick this time is the doctor telling me I was doing a good job, and to keep doing what I’ve been doing, rather than just saying as many tend to do “you should lose some weight”.

My calorie intake was way too high before. I was also eating larger amounts of food than I should have been. It’s been an adjustment…I’ve felt very hungry some days.

(by the way, we named the kitten Luna).

I saw the rheumy Friday. He said I’ve tried most of the medications there are supposed to help fibro and that I need to try and push through the pain and fatigue and exercise. I really feel like some of the pain isn’t the fibro (although he said it is), like in my knee, hip, and foot. Well, I know the foot is plantar fascilitis pain still. But he said a year or so ago that I had arthritis in my knee and in the last visit said it was fibro pain…so I don’t know. Normally he’s the best doctor I see. I told him when I try to exercise (even just stretch) it’s hard to walk for a week or so. He just said I have to try and keep exercising. That’s all well and good, but is he going to be the one to carry me up the stairs at work when I can’t walk up them?

He prescribed me Zanaflex. He said to start at one pill at first, but I took that last night and it didn’t really do much so I’ll try two pills tonight.

I’m tired of not being able to do anything physical. Even walking around the grocery store is very hard. Painful and exhausting.

I’ve decided to stop taking the Savella. It stopped helping several weeks ago. When I was at the rheumy’s last, he had said we could increase the dosage if needed. I called to see about that and then he said that there had been no additional benefit of taking it at higher dosages so he wouldn’t prescribe it.

When I first started it, dizziness had been one of the side effects I had. It went away, but it came back at the beginning of the month. My heart rate and blood pressure were also higher (and they were already high). I’m already on the max dosage of my blood pressure medication, so that wasn’t a good thing at all.

I haven’t really done a proper withdrawal, since I only had a week’s worth left and didn’t want to spend the money to get refilled. I started taking half pills Monday night and went to quarter pills last night. I’ll be out completely by Tuesday. So far, I haven’t had any withdrawal symptoms and the dizziness is gone. It’s kind of strange…when I was still on the trial pack it seemed to be helping but when I started the month’s worth I had from the pharmacy, it’s almost like they were just placebo pills.

Today I had skin testing done at the allergists for food allergies. I had to be off my antihistamine for a week. That was torture! I didn’t realize how much it actually helps my allergies. One day I sneezed the whole drive to work. I’ve had a miserable time the past week.

There were no big reactions, like there was during the other skin tests a year ago (cats and grass were some very large ones). But I did have reactions to oats, whole wheat, pork, and lamb. I wasn’t suprised by the first two but was by the meats. I’ve never eaten lamb (and never plan to). I don’t really like pork, although I eat bacon pretty regularly. I suppose turkey bacon is better for me anyway. The arm that had the oat and whole wheat got very itchy even though the bumps weren’t large at all.

I temporarily went off the gluten-free diet the past few days, but need to get back on it. I was happy to know that I am not allergic to corn, as that is what replaces wheat in a lot of food (and things like Fritos).

I’ve now been on Savella for over two weeks. The first week was the dosage build up, I’ve been on the 50mg twice a day dosage for one week and 4 days. I had no side effects on the smaller dosages the first week. I was sleeping better, so I had less pain. Before I started taking it, I would wake up every hour or so and have to use the bathroom about 3-4 times a night. This was causing my pain to be much worse than usual. Once I started on the Savella, the pain became more bearable because I was sleeping better. I only wake up several times a night now for no reason. Unfortunately, the Savella doesn’t stop me from waking up from things like my husband getting into bed, or cats meowing in my face or banging on the closet doors. Something that I didn’t expect has also happened: I can get through the night without going to the bathroom on some nights. On the other nights, I only have to go once.

I am feeling more productive and less brain foggy. I am also feeling more social, although the Social Anxiety Disorder is still there and causes me to sign off of AIM a second after I sign on. But that’s still a big improvement. I hadn’t signed on to a chat program in years. I don’t think the brain fog improvement is entirely due to Savella since it started improving in January when I started taking CoQ10. Right now I take 200mg in the morning and 100mg in the evenings.

I almost forgot to mention that I did start having some side effects when I went on the full dosage. I started having bad headaches and dizziness when I was upright. I think those side effects are starting to go away though, fortunately.