The Further Adventures of Deluzy

Interview me

Sharon has interviewed a number of us now:

What's one thing you want to do that you wouldn't have done at your prior weight?
125 pounds ago I wouldn't have taken a yoga class (not because  folks can't at 280 and higher but because I felt too self-conscious in front of others). I kind of suck at it right now, but that's the thing about yoga -- what matters is being where you're at, accepting it, and developing in your own way and at your own pace.  So far I'm really enjoying it.

 

If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?

With apologies to vegetarians, I'd have to say really good steak.  Rich in iron and protein, both of which I need more of than the average bear. (Do I get a choice of beverage, too?  Equally fine, bold, strong coffee with a little cream and some sweetener.  Steak and coffee are my greatest food delights these days.)

Describe your perfect day.
Sleeping in on a rainy morning. Cuddling with the kitties.   Oh yes, and the husband. :) Getting up late and drinking coffee (see above). Having no pressing work to worry me. Reading for pleasure.  Doing a little writing. Talking with friends. Eating a good, leisurely meal. Napping. Reading some more.

I'm lucky.  My perfect day is totally achievable.

 

Are you afraid of anything/do you have any phobias?
I've spent my life living in fear, so the answer would have to be yes.  During the past 10 years I've learned that  fear doesn't have to be constant, that most of my fears never come true, and that it's really that 4-year old child I used to be who carried most of the fear.

Phobias?  Bugs.  Hate 'em.  All of 'em. Don't want 'em near me.

What's your biggest pet peeve?
Bad spelling and grammar and people who don't use their turn signals while driving.
____________

Want to play?
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the
questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else
in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five
questions.

Body Of Work

Link: Body Of Work.

Quite simply the best written blog on weight-loss surgery -- or pretty much any topic, for that matter -- that I've encountered. 

It's absolutely phenomenal.

Week 2: writing exercise #2

2. Free-write, which means write fast, off the top of your head. Write a list of the kinds of stories you want to write about. Get detailed, tell us who or what you think is most fascinating and why you're so compelled by that.

I don’t want to write stories, per se, or rather I don’t want to write fiction (who said they had to be fiction? Is that a constraint I put on myself? Does fiction count more as “real writing” with me than essays and other forms of non-fiction? I don’t think so, but then there’s always the caveat I offer when people comment on my writing: “Oh, but I can’t write fiction.” I don’t particularly want to but I feel as if I ought to; if I were a Real Writer, I’d want to).

Okay, rewind. Start again.

More than anything I want to find a way to write that combines both personal experience and academic commentary, in my own voice. My own voice, not a pale imitation of someone else’s. I’m analytical by nature and a college professor, and what I write professionally has always been marked by the conventional codes of academic writing in my own field (film studies). There’s good academic writing and bad academic writing, and I like to think that mine was better than average; however, even when I was younger (I’m now 46) I felt the genre (because it is a genre) lacked something. Heart, maybe. You’re not supposed to write about heart and emotion and spirit when you’re analyzing something in an academic context, not even when that something is as beautiful as a stunning film that’s all about heart and emotion and spirit. As a Ph.D. student I wrote about 1940s American “woman’s films” – what reviewers used to call “three-hankie” pictures or “weepies’” for the very obvious reason that these films pulled out all the stops and made audiences cry. I distinctly remember Being a Good Girl and Writing As I Should in the body of my dissertation but also weaving what I considered relevant mini-vignettes about my mother (who was a young woman during World War II) into the footnotes. They weren’t numerous but as far as I was concerned they were the most interesting bits of that project. And in the final read-through, my dissertation advisor told me in no uncertain terms that Those Footnotes Had to Go. I half-heartedly argued with her but at that point I just wanted to get finished, and so I gritted my teeth and deleted them.

From the dissertation, that is. I saved them to a separate file for future reference (and I still have them) because I knew, one way or another, that I was going to use them. It might be when I turned that dissertation into a book and was freer to write as I wished (but not really because of course most of the established field feels as my advisor did), or it might be when I chose to write something entirely new and different. But those little bits of narrative thread were not going to be lost forever, not if I had anything to say about it.

That’s the crux of the matter for me, you see: I have a thing about stories that get lost and that have to be recovered in and through time, and it’s, well, complicated. I have a history of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of my father, a history that was largely but not entirely covered over and later painfully excavated during eight years of psychotherapy. Recovering that past was Step 1; telling it to another human being was Step 2. I have bits and pieces of writing from that period; some of it’s good, some of it’s just raw and painful, the verbal equivalent of scars that have been ripped open.

Then, too, there’s my mother, a writer in her own right during World War II, the daughter of a successful writer (who produced not terribly good novels and a long-running syndicated chat column). She extinguished her own creative voice during the two decades that she bore children and remained married to a violent psychopath, obliterating that voice first with alcohol and then, when sober, with the louder voices of self-doubt and insecurity. I remember finding (and reading) one chapter of her memoir, about which I knew only the title (Mr. Drubnick, Won’t You Please Go Home?). I’d been looking for paper in her bedroom, ran across a sheaf of typed sheets, and without even thinking about the ethics of the situation, read them, stunned and thrilled to have happened upon evidence of the book that I’d begun to doubt even existed.  I’m the only family member ever to have seen any of that manuscript, but I’ll never know what happened to it. Years later when my mother was in the hospital dying of cancer I asked her if we, her four children, would be able to find it “later” (I couldn’t bring myself to say “after you die”) and she assured me we would. But we never did. My best guess is that she burned it years before that conversation, uncomfortable with having outed tales of life with my unbalanced father and with the fact that her New York agent hadn’t been able to place the book.

So I have this passion for what I call Lost Narratives, particularly when they’re about or told by women. That madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre? She had her own story that wasn’t Jane’s or Mr. Rochester’s, and Jean Rhys finally told it in Wide Sargasso Sea. It was the theme of my Ph.D. dissertation which was probably so difficult to write because it was really a form of autobiography, heavily veiled in academic prose and masquerading as a critical reading of a body of films. I wrote it for myself, I wrote it for my mother, I wrote it for all the women – fictional or real -- whose stories are extinguished or silenced or stamped out over time.

But I’m past masquerade now. I’m too old to pretend any longer. I am what I am, which I suspect is an odd hybrid, and damn it, those footnotes I excised from that dissertation years ago? They’re not footnotes any longer. They’re the Main Event.

Avalanche

I'm still here -- just buried under an avalanche of papers, thesis proposals, and draft theses to read and comment upon.

Not to mention the teaching of four university courses.  And meetings to attend. And memos to write. And peer evaluations to do and turn in. And awards- and graduation-related ceremonies to go to from this weekend through the end of May.

Then it will be finals exams and projects to grade.

Can I take a nap yet?

(On another note, yes, I'm tired but I had  a second follow-up with my hematologist last week after an iron infusion a couple of months ago, and my iron levels have improved quite a bit.  I'm to go back for monthly follow-ups to have blood drawn until the hematologist is able to figure out how my iron trends over time, and that's fine with me.  At some point I'll probably require another iron infusion, since malabsorption is here to stay, and that's okay, too -- at least I respond well to those infusions and they're effective.)

Reality check re: balance

Hmm. After my elaborate philosophizing about why my balance during yoga sucks (see previous post), my old friend C emailed me and pointed out the following:

You don't have balance because you're out of shape. Once you keep doing the yoga and your muscles get stronger your balance will get much better. When I'm in shape (going to the gym regularly - doing the cardio) my balance is amazing. But as of right now, it stinks, which for me is always a sign that I'm out of shape. Athletes have amazing balance because they are in top shape.

Trust an old friend to Tell It Like It Is.  She's got a point: I'm totally out of shape.  A normal weight, yes.  Fit?  No, sir!

Yoga - lesson 2

I had my second beginners' lesson this morning at 8 a.m., and I noted that there were two fewer people than last week: an older husband-and-wife pair were missing.  Just as last week, the postures and moves we went over were very basic, and just as before (though I didn't write about it then), I had issues not so much with flexibility but with balance.

Bottom line: right now I can’t balance for shit, even in the simplest poses. It’s not that I get dizzy, but even in the most elementary postures (and I’m rapidly discovering that the simplest poses aren't actually simple at all) are those in which I teeter. I think this springs from three sources: 1) historically I’ve never fully inhabited my body, so to speak, as abuse made it a dangerous place and excess weight camouflaged it, so I’m only learning how to do so now, slowly, for the first time; 2) I’ve lost almost 125 pounds and my center of gravity has shifted – I haven’t a clue where to find it! 3) I honestly think physical balance is, for me, a metaphor for other areas of my life that are out of balance and that the two are connect, though perhaps not directly so.  I know, I know: very New Age, very California of me -- but that's what I think.

This morning I was realizing that there's no way in hell that the series of six classes that I'm currently enrolled in is going to introduce me to more than the most preliminary kinds of information about yoga, and that's fine -- but when my husband and I went out for lunch today, we stopped at Borders and I ended up getting Donna Farhi's Bringing Yoga to Life: The Everyday Practice of Enlightened Living as well as the slightly-hokey-but-I-suspect-still-useful OM Yoga in a Box: the first will give me some philosophical background into the practice of yoga, and that kind of information always helps keep me focused on what I'm doing, and the second is for beginners: I can probably live without the candle, incense (which I hate) and incense holder, thanks, but I think the flash cards and 70+ minute instructional CD (which "can be programmed into 4 shorter, targeted classes, including one especially for brand new beginners") could be helpful.  Oh yeah, and a yoga belt comes in the box, too.  That I could have gotten at Target for next to nothing, but whaddyagonnado?

I could be spending my money on lots of Chitos and ice cream, but I'm not.

Enough with the mental, physical, and spiritual health bit.  I have papers to grade and grad student proposals and theses to read.

Ommmm ....

A no-brainer

Okay, this should be obvious to everyone, not just D patients and WLS patients in general -- but don't waste your time -- or calories -- on inferior food.

I was running errands this afternoon, realized that it was well past lunchtime and I really needed to eat something, decided (unwisely) against the protein bar I carry in my purse for occasions when nothing appropriate or decent is available, and after a moment's hesitation in a cut-rate strip mall, headed for Hometown Buffet.

If you don't have a Hometown Buffet near you, you probably have something similar, and if you don't, be grateful.  It's Very, Very Bad.  Picture Fresh Choice, which is a couple of grades above HB, only with fewer fresh ingredients and more grease and carbs.  I saw lots of families there with limited amounts of money and lots of growing appetites (i.e., kids) -- and you know, if you have three kids in their teens and can monitor what they put in their mouths while there, it probably makes a certain amount of economical sense.  The place does have a lot of food -- it's just that none of it's very good, and the majority of it is nutrition-free.

But I wasn't traveling with a pack of kids, and "buffet" and "weight-loss surgery" is a combination that makes no sense whatsoever: you can't eat enough after surgery to make the price worthwhile, and that's why I've avoided buffets generally for the past 16 months. It wasn't the unlimited quantity of food that made me opt for HB today; it was the fact that there was no other eating establishment within walking distance of where I was, I needed food pretty immediately, and I wanted to sit down and read while I ate.  You know, just enjoy a half-hour with a book and a meal.  I knew HB wouldn't be a great option, but I figured it would at least feature several kinds of protein.

It did.  Several grease-laden kinds. 

The least offensive option was  a piece of chicken -- this, despite the fact that chicken often does not sit well with me now, even when it's well-prepared.  In addition, I took a small portion of macaroni and cheese as a guilty pleasure, but it wasn't -- a pleasure, that is, so one bite was all I had of that.  I also took some premade salad with cheese and ate the cheese out of it.  That wasn't going to be enough protein, so I went back for a hot dog, even though those are not particularly high in protein, ate most of it, couldn't finish it, heaved a sigh, and left.

Half an hour later, in the grocery store, I parked my cart near the women's bathroom, went inside, tossed my cookies (no, I didn't make myself throw up, for god's sake -- the food did the job for me), and emerged a few minutes later feeling a whole lot better.

Don't waste your time, money, or calories on third-rate food.  DS patients, if all else fails, eat that protein bar in your purse and have a nice meal later.

Week 1: writing exercise #1

1. Take a photograph and write about everything you see in the photo as well as the things that are unseen.

We look like we’re waiting for a bus.

Two middle-aged women, one rather older and larger than the other but very similar in appearance nonetheless, sit side by side on what must be the remains of a fallen tree.

It can’t be driftwood, despite the fact that we’re at the beach, because it’s simply far too big, and yet it has the bleached, desiccated look of driftwood, even in this black-and-white photograph.

My sister, who’s 17 years older than I, is dressed in dark shoes, tights, skirt, and raincoat, and gloves, and she rests her hands on her cane, in front of her. I’m similarly attired and my posture is similar as well, only I look to be wearing dark pants instead of a skirt, I know my ankle-length boots are red, and I have no cane. We both look as if we’ve been there for some time, my sister gazing off into the distance, and me, looking back at the camera that’s wielded by my sister’s teenaged daughter. My niece is at some distance from us, and the photograph she took is one in which my sister and I are positioned to the left of the frame, with the rest of the log on which we’re sitting and an expanse of long beach grass stretching to the right and behind us, filling the rest of the image. It’s a deliberately unbalanced composition that somehow provides a satisfying contrast to the very solidity with which my sister have taken up space on that stripped and fallen tree.

Urban. My sister and I both look very urban, though she lives in a combination university/agricultural town in eastern Washington, and I in the extended suburbs of California’s Silicon Valley. Still, in that beach setting, we look distinctly out of place, wrapped up in dark coats and gloves. Where’s that bus we seem to be patiently waiting for?

It was Christmas time, I remember, some years ago now, and my brother, who lives in Seattle, had taken us to the beach because my sister had wanted to gather some smooth rocks to take home to her garden.  My brother, his two daughters, my sister, her daughter and I piled into a family van and trundled off to the coast, despite the grey and inclement weather, but neither my sister nor I was appropriately equipped for trotting along the beach. With her bad knees, my sister can’t walk very far even on level surfaces, and I was in clothing more appropriate for city streets, not sand. So she and I found ourselves a seat on the long-dead remains of a fallen tree at some distance from the water and let the others search for rocks. My sister directed the searchers, examined the assorted offerings they discovered, accepting some and discarding others, and I simply tried to stay warm, folding my gloved hands into the sleeves of my coat. The stiff breeze off the ocean made that difficult. I wasn’t used to such chilly weather, or at least not to being out in it.

Some family photos become almost iconic in the years after they’re taken, not so much because they document a memorable event (indeed, I have difficulty recalling the specifics of the outing during which this photograph was taken) but because they capture something essential about a particular time, place, or relationship. This is one of those photographs for my family, and it’s been duplicated a number of times.

My own copy is in a small frame hung rather unobtrusively with others on a wall in my study; my sister has her copy in her own study, and her daughter, who took the photo, tells me she loves the photograph and would put it in her study if she had one. A friend who knows both my sister and me keeps a copy of the photograph on her bedside table.

Somehow, in the accumulation of its details rather than in any single point, it captures something about the relationship between my sister and me who, despite the almost 17-year difference in our ages, look remarkably alike in the photo and share a hard-earned, unsentimental closeness. It captures, too, something about our respective roles in our family and about ourselves as individuals. My sister, sitting there so solidly and immovably on that tree is an anchor of sorts, the emotional lodestone of the family into which we were born now that our parents are long dead. In my resemblance to her here, I echo those qualities, not so much as ones that I myself embody but in emulation and admiration of them in my sister.

It’s a photograph that speaks, wordlessly and eloquently, from its frame.

Survey Reveals Most Satisfying Jobs

Link: Survey Reveals Most Satisfying Jobs - Yahoo! News.

So I fall into the 69% category. I'd say I'm at least 69% satisfied with my line of work -- probably far more, really, despite the aggravations that come along with it.

Excerpt:

Here are the Top 10 most gratifying jobs and the percentage of subjects who said they were very satisfied with the job:  

• Clergy—87 percent percent
• Firefighters—80 percent percent
• Physical therapists—78 percent percent
• Authors—74 percent
• Special education teachers—70 percent
• Teachers—69 percent
• Education administrators—68 percent
• Painters and sculptors—67 percent
• Psychologists—67 percent
• Security and financial services salespersons—65 percent
• Operating engineers—64 percent
• Office supervisors—61 percent

A few common jobs in which about 50 percent of participants reported high satisfaction included: police and detectives, registered nurses, accountants, and editors and reporters.

The perceived prestige surrounding an occupation also had an effect on job satisfaction and general happiness. Not all jobs linked with prestige topped these charts, however, including doctors and lawyers. Smith attributes this to the high degree of responsibility and stress associated with such jobs.

“The least satisfying dozen jobs are mostly low-skill, manual and service occupations, especially involving customer service and food/beverage preparation and serving,” Smith said.

Here are the 10 least gratifying jobs, where few participants reported being very satisfied:

• Laborers, except construction—21 percent
• Apparel clothing salespersons—24 percent 
• Handpackers and packagers—24 percent
• Food preparers—24 percent
• Roofers—25 percent
• Cashiers—25 percent
• Furniture and home-furnishing salespersons—25 percent
• Bartenders—26 percent
• Freight, stock and material handlers—26 percent
• Waiters and servers—27 percent

Carbohydrates and weight loss

Link: "Glycemic load" of diet has no effect on weight loss - Yahoo! News.

Interesting, given the different forms of weight-loss surgery and the general fear of carbs. Specifically, DS patients usually fear carbs and don't count calories ... though I suspect that the further out from surgery one is, the more relevant one's caloric intake becomes. Obviously the study cited in this article describes non-surgically altered people, but it still made me think.

The thing about the DS is, patients malabsorb a significant amount of their calories, though it's generally agreed that the further out one gets from surgery, the more efficient the remaining portions of one's intestines become in absorbing foods. 

It's estimated that immediately after surgery a DS patient absorbs only 20% of the fats she eats but 100% of the refined carbs. One is urged to restrict carbs, particularly during the 12-18 month window of relatively easy weight-loss following surgery.   In general, one is also urged to restrict fats, though DS surgeons take different approaches to this question.  Still, an excessive consumption of fats usually results in diarrhea in the near term, and as one's intestines become better at absorbing foods, eventually it can also result in weight stall or gain down the road. People's experiences vary.

I know I process fats more efficiently  now at just over 16 months out than I did, however, because my cholesterol has risen.  It's still quite low, but I'm absorbing fats more. Result: I'm cutting back a little more on the fats I eat, though not drastically.

I'm also not counting calories, per se.  But I'm conscious of them.  If most of my calories come from protein, something I need more of than the average person, I'm okay with that. If my calories come from fats or carbs, I'll try to keep them down to a dull roar.

Obviously the glycemic index is still a very relevant indicator when it comes to glucose levels.  DS patients who were Type II diabetics before surgery are playing with fire if they think they're "cured" of the disease when their glucose levels drop down to acceptable ranges.  They're not cured; they're in remission, and they're still sensitive to sugar -- so the  glycemic index is still important, in my view, and the article points this out.

The moral of the story:  calories is still a significant unit of measurement, even after DS surgery -- and so is the glycemic index for sugar-sensitive people.

(Let's face it: it's kind of a no-brainer, but it's worth repeating to the DS community.)