Milestones - 5
3/28/05 - 8/09/06
I removed most names from these excerpts of messages that I posted to an online support list to protect other people's anonymity. This page is a sort of chronicle of my recovery from June 2004 forward.

4/23/05  239 lbs.

Hi All,

My weight loss seems to be slowing down. I'm not too concerned because I've been working out really hard the last several weeks. I may be exchanging body fat for muscle to some degree. Hope so, I sure feel a lot stronger. I've also been having a tough time emotionally. My elderly dog Sweetpea developed serious back problems and I came within a hare's breath of having to have her put to sleep. I still may have to in the near future, but for now—today—she's doing good enough. She can get up and move around and her pain levels seem to be low enough. She's comfortable enough to demand her doggie cookies and belly scritches several times a day. We're taking life one day at a time for sure. Honestly, I haven't paid particular attention during the last couple weeks or so to what or how much I ate. Half the time I was too worried to bother with eating and so I'd get too hungry. Of course, this always leads to overeating. I still have been eating my whole natural foods, but portion size and patient mindful eating pretty much got thrown out the window. I didn't go shopping much so ate less vegetables and more denser foods from the freezer. I'm back on track now though.

I unsubscribed from the support list that I've belonged to  and helped moderate for several years. There's a lot of reasons but I sure miss it and everyone there. I just need some emotional distance for awhile and I need to spend a lot more time off of the internet. This recovery business brings up so many issues and my perspective keeps changing. A lot of the time I don't know what I feel—all I can do is feel it and see what happens.

I went shopping yesterday and bought men's XL tee-shirts, tank tops, and boxers for the first time since probably 1993. I'm so excited because all stores carry men's small, medium, large, and extra large, but many don't go into the 2 XL and above sizes. Men's large here I come! :-)

I've decided to modify this web site some more. I want to make it more personal—mostly just relating my experiences instead of trying to talk a lot about nutrition specifics and the like. I plan on slowly modifying all the pages from the third person manner I had used, to a more personal first person. Quite often when I look at my site I feel like I'm either preaching or doing long and boring technical reports. Besides, there's tons of great sites to get that stuff from and they are much more knowledgeable and authoritative than I am. Check out my "Links" page.

Love, Dave

6/10/05  233 lbs.  BP was 116/65 first thing this morning and my pulse was 54

Hi All,

I'm pretty sure I'm pushing my exercise levels too hard. I've been doing pretty good at my current level, but my joints and muscles are complaining pretty loudly by the end of the week. I've decided to cut back a few pounds on most of my weight training exercises and focus more on proper technique and speed—that is, I want to slow down a bit especially on the downward strokes. I need to make sure I'm doing the full range of motion, breathing right, and I need to make sure I do a slow controlled pattern up and down. I have a book that says 2 seconds for lifting and 4 for the return. Right now I'm pretty even on the up and down. A more controlled downward phase, even at a lighter weight, should help prevent injury and may be a more effective exercise in terms of conditioning. I'm not trying to become a muscle man, I mostly want to make sure I don't lose lean tissue as I lose fat tissue.

I did some research today about target heart rates and I can, and probably should, cut back a little there too. I'll still be well into the aerobic range most of the time. I don't need to push past 70 percent for any extended period of time, if at all. I still need to look into this further. It's frustrating because I can't afford to get any professional guidance or join a gym. The books and web sites all seem to say something a little different. I guess another thing is that I don't have anyone to compare myself to in terms of what's a normal ability for someone my size, age, and condition. I don't know what I should be expecting or demanding of myself—how much I should be bench pressing; or how long, fast, and hard I should be working on the treadmill. I need to remember I'm not so young anymore and that I started at a hugely deconditioned state. My main focus or goal for doing all this has to be good health and well-being, not weight loss per se.

It's been good for me to spend less time at my computer and on the internet lately. Letting go of the responsibilities of co-moderating the TWR support lists has helped improve my serenity levels. I can get so obsessive about some kinds of responsibilities, yet I'm way irresponsible at others. I have a big problem finding balance and reasonableness in this area of my life. I have a hard time getting any perspective on what is really important and what isn't so important. It's like I let simple or inconsequential things fill me up mentally and emotionally so there's no room or energy left for anything else. Maybe it's a symptom of my psychiatric disorders or maybe it's just immaturity—I dunno.

Love, Dave

7/20/05  228 lbs.  BP was 112/64 first thing this morning and my pulse was 49

Hi All,

I'm pretty stoked. I bought myself a bicycle a couple of weeks ago and am having more fun than I have had in years. Of course, not that long ago, I couldn't have ridden a bike, but now, I'm on that thing for 10 to 20 miles and more, every day. Portland is full of fantastic pedestrian/bicycle trails and many streets have special bicycle lanes marked out so they are relatively safe places to ride. I had no idea how bicycle friendly Portland had become.

I had an appointment up at the VA hospital yesterday. I assumed it was a follow-up appointment with the ear nose and throat doctor regarding my deviated septum. It turned out to be an appointment with a Dr. McConnell, a bariatric surgeon that would have been in charge of my weight loss surgery if I had gone that route. Apparently the appointment was never canceled way back in late 2003 when I decided I wasn't going to use that option. We had a nice chat about my recovery and then he proceeded to figure out for me at what weight/BMI (when I gain it back) that I should see him about getting surgery. I'm pretty damn sure I'll never need to make that appointment though. I don't think he really believed in my recovery as much as I do. But the statistics aren't all that great so I'm sure from his vantage point, there is good reason to be a little skeptical. I think that if I did need the surgery, I would have felt good about having this doctor do it. He is a nice guy with a calm air about him.

Love, Dave

8/6/05 Lessons from the trail. 

Hi All,

I learned something yesterday. When getting ready for a long bike ride, don't use those little jars that minced garlic comes in to pack your snack raisins in. Garlic seasoned raisins can be a rude surprise. Best to just recycle those little jars.

Observation: Snacks should take some work. Peanuts are cool little protein guys with healthy essential oils so long as one doesn't get carried away. When I was still really sick in my disease I use to buy big cans of shelled roasted peanuts and swallow handful after handful. I could consume hundreds—if not thousands of calories in just a few minutes this way. Yesterday I took a big handful of the unsalted in the shell type peanuts that I feed the squirrels in the yard, with me on my bike ride. Glad I did 'cause the raisins weren't fit. Anyway, as I was sitting by the creek shelling and munching peanuts one by one, it occurred to me how it was taking a lot of time and energy to turn a rather large handful of peanuts in the shell into a rather small amount of shelled peanuts. The process of getting them little goobers out of their shell is time well spent after an hour on my bike. What could be nicer than shelling some peanuts out in nature by a creek. What a good way to slow down and just be. It made the half ounce of actual peanuts I harvested easily satisfying. Totally the perfect amount of food for the given situation. Well... except for a few raisins would have been nice—high in potassium and sweet.

I went and got myself a library card yesterday. I hadn't had one for many years. Somehow, in the isolation of my disease, I had stopped going to the library a long time ago and then lost touch even with the possibility. I got into a mental rut that said that I had to purchase every book I read (online) and I stayed there for a dozen years—even though money is tight and books are expensive. Small steps and maybe I'm getting my sanity slowly restored. It felt so good to walk in the library and go up and ask for a card. Another little pocket of my life back. One more bit, empowered.

Love, Dave

8/30/05 Resting pulse rate when I got up this morning, 45 BPM. I haven't lost any weight lately, I'm at a plateau.

Hi All,

I've been at the same weight for several weeks now. Been pretty slow for several months actually. I guess we all reach plateaus once in awhile so I'm not worrying too much about this. I keep getting fitter and that's what it's really all about anyway. I had to take my blood pressure reading twice this morning because I didn't believe my pulse was only 45. It was. I felt really happy with this news.

When I was out riding my bike today, I realized just how badly I wanted to fully live my life as opposed to avoiding living life. That's what I use to do—avoid living. That's what the food was all about for me before I got a hold of recovery. I wasn't really living, I was just marking time. Now, I feel vital and alive—intimately enmeshed in the fabric of life.

Love, Dave

1/03/06 Weight and blood pressure are about the same

Hi All,

I went to the bicycle shop today to by a new rear tire for my bike. Ended up ordering a whole new bike. They were having a closeout sale on the 2005 model I'd been dreaming about. There is only one left in the size I need with the disk brakes. It's a Trek 7300 FX. It's at another store of theirs in a nearby town so they are bringing it in for me tomorrow. I'm 99% sure I'm going to purchase it. Not sure how I'm going to eat the rest of January. Even on sale the new bike will take the biggest part of my Social Security check. And I still have to pay my bills, but I'll be riding on a much better bike that has a properly sized frame for me. I'm going from an 18 inch frame to a 22.5 inch frame. I knew the bike I bought last summer was on the small side, but since it was on sale at Costco for cheap I thought it would be ok just to see if I even liked cycling. I feel I've more than got my moneys worth of use out of it. The new bike is much higher quality and seeing as it fits me right, I think it will be much friendlier to my body.

Disk brakes are fairly new to road type bikes but a huge advantage for people like me who ride year round. The wet gritty spray in winter is like sandpaper when the brake pads rub against aluminum rims. Wears out the pads and the rims but quick. Not a big problem with the disk brakes and they perform much better when wet.

Other things: I'm doing better physically since going off of the meds that were causing my muscles to cramp up. Still have some cramps, but they seem to be gradually getting milder and less frequent. At least I've been able to do things again—feel like I got my life back. My overall pain levels are down a bunch too since starting the new pain medications. I'm sleeping better as a result and that helps just about everything. Emotionally I'm doing very uneven—up and down like a rollercoaster. I still haven't heard from the VA mental health folks for scheduling so don't know when that will start. Going without antidepressants can be a lot of work. Really mixed feelings in regards to learning about the ADD and dyscalculia stuff. Mostly a huge relief to the point of feeling almost giddy, but it is bringing up some confusion, anger, and sadness too. I'm trying to sit and just be with the feelings instead of look away or dissociate.

Love, Dave

1/18/2006 New bike update: I've averaged about 11½ miles a day on my new bike since getting it. Pretty proud of my efforts really seeing as I'm just recovering from some physical problems and the weather... well it's the middle of winter in Portland Oregon; it's been VERY wet.

And I'd like to say thank you to Ryan at the Woodstock Bike Gallery store for being so very helpful to me in choosing the right bike and in setting it up for me so well. I've had nothing but good luck with all of my dealings with the Bike Gallery and highly recommend them.

One of the hardest things for me to "get" is the ability to see the larger picture. To see the day to day, minute to minute fluctuations in my recovery, in my food, and in my weight, for what they are. I tend to magnify little things. Like if I overeat one day I can feel like I've completely failed. But if I step back to get a longer range perspective on my recovery, it's just an insignificant blip on the screen. In the bigger picture, that binge or whatever it was doesn't really make much difference at all. At least it doesn't if I can just count it as a vegetable and move on with my recovery.

Back when I was still in diet mode, going over my allotted daily calories or carbs felt like a disaster. Deviating from my OA food plan felt like a disaster. I felt certain that if I didn't have some clearly defined limits set, that I'd be out of control. The problem was, that even with all the diets and OA food plans, I was out of control. It took me a long time to realize that control would never come for me through a diet or a rigid plan of eating.

Right now, the scale feels like that to me. My weight is essentially stabilized. I've been losing, gaining, and re-losing the same few pounds now for several months. That's not a terrible thing considering how much I've already lost and the increases I've had in my overall fitness level. But when I don't see the numbers going down and down on the scale, I feel at times like I'm failing and that I'm out of control. Stepping back to see that these small fluctuations in my weight are just a blip on the screen is hard for me. I know that despite the numbers, I'm continuing to get healthier. My body is still changing—getting firmer, re-proportioning itself, gaining in strength and endurance, becoming more resistant to chronic disease type things...

The diets, the food plans, and the scale are all things that end up driving me crazy. They can feel like a necessity, but they drive me crazy. I have to face it—the feeling of being out of control scares me and the numbers are the most seemingly logical way I have to try and feel in control. The number of calories, the numbers on my scale... all are means that I've used to not feel so afraid—to feel some sense of control. But I've found precious little serenity with those numbers. They seem to bring me either fear or shame, but no real control.

I finally let go of the diets and food plans and lost a couple hundred pounds or so as a result. Maybe it's time for me to let go of the scale too. But the idea is really scary right now. I feel like without them, I'll be out of control for sure. But at the same time, I feel out of control with 'em. It's just like counting calories—the harder I tried to control my food by counting them, the more out of control I actually was. I dunno. I guess I have some work to do here. At what point do I really trust my higher power and recovery enough to "Let go and let God" as it were, and toss the scales.

I do get frustrated with coping with several nagging physical problems: coccydynia (tailbone pain), bouts of sciatica from old back injury, and arthritis pain in my shoulders and elsewhere. Most of this doesn't stop me from living my new active lifestyle—bike riding mostly, but it does make me face my age and the damage that I've done to my body through the years. I'm gaining some acceptance about it. It also makes me face some emotional issues leftover from being raised by a fanatical Christian Scientist. My mother pounded into me a great fear of doctors and the feeling that I can't ask for help for anything—particularly from health professionals. In a way, my recovery from binge eating disorder requires me to face many childhood abuse issues just so I can keep recovering and growing as a human being. At 52, I'm learning how to talk to doctors, how to ask for help—how to feel like I deserve to feel good and deserve to get the help I need. That said, I'm scheduled for surgery at the VA on June 16th to get my deviated septum fixed. I am way excited about the prospects of being able to sleep with my mouth closed and feel the simple joy of breathing through my nose easily. 

Oh, and I got my latest cholesterol test results back. About the first of the year I quit taking the low dose of statin medications that I'd been on. Now I don't take anything for obesity related issues, nothing for blood pressure, blood sugar levels, or to control high cholesterol. I'm pretty pleased with the results. My total cholesterol went up from 143 to 198, but the ratios are all really healthy in that my HDL levels (the good one) are significantly up (from their low of 36 to a currant 59) and my triglycerides are now at a miniscule 41. And that was without fasting. I'd eaten breakfast that morning not knowing that my doctor would want to test my cholesterol levels. I really am feeling like my risks for a heart attack are now not so bad. Three years ago I was a heart attack or stroke waiting to happen. I was really scared. Now I can see the numbers, not only in my cholesterol levels and things like my blood pressure and pulse rate, but when I'm exercising I can see by the heart rate monitor I wear, that my pulse rate goes down really fast right after I stop or when I slow down. That shows that my arteries and blood vessels are fairly flexible. Three years ago I could barely climb a few stairs without getting totally winded, now I can climb a long hill on my bike with my heart and lungs pumping like mad and it's no big deal—it feels great! I regularly go out and ride hard for an hour or two and all it does is make me happy. I don't mean to brag. It's just that I can barely believe it sometimes. I may still be heavier than I need or want to be, but I think overall, I'm fairly fit aerobically. I'm pretty sure that my risk factors for disease or early death are not so high anymore—maybe not high at all.

Sorry if this is off topic. I just need to write out some of my inner processes—sort out some demons and such. Right now I feel I'm writing to friends who won't judge me, not a list about weight loss. I'm writing about my life. I don't expect anyone to agree with me or anything I say and that's fine.

I had a really powerful and confusing emotional experience today. I went to see the traveling version of the Vietnam War memorial wall today. It's in Gresham, a small town a few miles south of here. This weekend it's sitting at a memorial park about 500 feet off the Springwater bike trail that I frequent.

I took a slow gentle ride out there early this morning. It's all flat out to that point and it was nice. A bit overcast and cool. Wasn't sure I was really up to bike riding seeing how much my back has been acting up recently, but I was compelled to see The Wall and honestly, I don't know exactly how to drive there. Not good with maps and directions. Gresham has always confused me by car so I avoid it. No reason for me to ever really drive there anyway. Not much out there that concerned me till I discovered the bike paths.

So I was walking my bike along the Wall, helmet in hand. They got dates down at the bottom of each panel to say that the people named on that panel died between so and so months and what year. I noticed one that corresponded to the month and year that I enlisted. Then walking along, more panels filled with names of people who died while I was in boot camp, service school, the brig—when I was being discharged. There were so many names.... All I could think of was that "we" didn't learn a gxxdamn thing from all that. Those guys didn't die for anything real. They died for a pack of lies—a phony bill of goods. We threw them away like so much congressional pork—as if they were merely a currency to spend. We are not honoring their memory by fighting another war based on yet more lies. I could see in that wall that the only way to honor those fallen heroes would be to not go to war—so easily. I had not felt that kind of despair for a long long time. I got angry. So angry. I was fighting tears trying not to explode or break down sobbing. I'm glad I went way early so almost no one was there. Just some old VFW guy sitting in an information tent minding his own business and a few clueless Boy Scouts jabbering loudly amongst themselves about the merits of plasma TVs verses LCD whatevers. They were suppose to be helping visitors. In fact, their noise did help me feel anonymous—invisible. I needed that.

But the core of my despair wasn't so much for what had been or what was going on now, war wise. It was about my own inaction—apathy. The fact that I could look at those names and not do something—anything—to keep more names off some future memorial wall. To not take some action to stop all this madness. To not at least speak up loudly—protest.

I'm no pacifist—not really. I'm not even anti-war—exactly. I own firearms. Use to be a life member of the NRA. Even voted for Bush... once. I hate war. I see very little in history that has ever justified much of it. That's not saying that self-protection... to stop a genocide... to protect the meek... these things may be worth fighting for. It's not a perfect world.

I have no answers—no solutions. I don't even know what the best and most moral next right step is in Iraq. After making a mess, do we pull out tomorrow and leave the door open to possible genocide and certain chaos? Do we stay the course and just keep losing and killing and creating more terrorist world over? Do we set a firm timeline for withdrawal so things can really blow up once we are gone? It seems to me that all the answers are wrong, immoral, stupid, and destructive. It's the innocents who lose—who have already lost—in any case. How the hell do you untangle such a complex knot—weigh the unintended consequences of any particular course of action? Put a value on the lives lost and that will be lost no matter what direction we take? The people in power seem to be doing a rightly terrible job on just about every level. It's all the same sort of crap that was going on during the Vietnam War. Send 'em in short of supplies and manpower on trumped up reasons. Poor planning and lack of follow through. Politicians chanting the same inane mantras about how well the war is going. Success always just around some mythical corner. The anti-wars greedily using every tragedy and mistake to fuel their next campaign. Reality and facts regularly sacrificed on the alters of political rhetoric by both sides—lunacy.

Today I saw that my sitting back quietly and watching the news every day is not just NOTHING. I have become part of the problem. Sitting here safely wrapped up in my own little problems, pains, and aches. The blurbs on the nightly news telling how many lost their lives today in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in other hotspots. Somebody's children, husbands, wives, brothers, daughters, lovers, reduced to numbers; future names to be engraved on some traveling exhibit in a memorial garden in some small town.

I dunno. I'm probably going around in circles tonight and the monsters may be winning. I went. I saw, and I felt stupendously inert—next to worthless. Ashamed of my inaction but not having a clue as to what to do about it. I just ache and I hate it. Sorry for the rant. I don't know what I'm talking about. I just needed to talk.