The Results of My Walking Challenge :)

For the past several years I’ve been trying to lose weight. I tried Weight Watchers, I tried various eating plans--low carb, glycemic index-based, hormone balancing--I tried exercise—cardio and strength training--I tried combinations of all three. I was determined, come hell or high water, to shed those excess pounds that had gradually appeared around my middle.

Well, hell is exactly what I got.

PMDD begins with an imbalance in a woman’s hormones, but through some complicated process scientists and doctors have yet to fully understand, the end result involves a lack of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that regulates mood. Lack of serotonin in the brain = depressed mood.

One thing that helps to create serotonin in the brain is carbohydrates. What do women with PMDD crave? Carbs. So no, you’re not crazy, and you don’t lack willpower. Your body is telling you what it needs with a vengeance. Your craving for carbs is simply your body telling you what it needs to bring it back into balance. This is why at times we can’t seem to stop ourselves from eating the sugar, the pasta, the chocolate, the quick fixes.

The problem only worsens when we reach for carbs with little or no nutritional value to feed our need for serotonin, but that’s a post for another day.

Today I want to talk about diet and exercise and PMDD. Exercise overall is good for anyone, so let’s get that right out of the way. While you’re exercising, you’re boosting your immune system and endorphins, strengthening muscles, including or especially your heart, building bones, toning, firming, and burning calories. The problem for a PMDD woman, however, is when our bodies are out of balance, and especially when we’re having an episode of PMDD, exercise can make the PMDD worse. (Again, for you to experience the full benefits of any exercise program, you have to balance your hormones first.)

What do most diets tell you to restrict these days? Carbs. What does a PMDD woman crave? Carbs. What happens when she doesn’t get them? PMDD. What happens when she gets the wrong kind of carbs? More PMDD. What does any kind of cardio or strength training exercise do? Burns carbs. What does a PMDD woman need? Carbs. Do you see where I’m going with this?

This time last year I was a mess. I had made a vow in January of 2009 I was going to lose those excess 20 pounds, no matter what it took. I was restricting carbs and doing 45 minutes of cardio five times a week. That wasn’t working, so I upped it to an hour a day. I ended up with such a lack of serotonin in my brain that my PMDD episodes were lasting not just days, but weeks.

Something had to change. I went on a research binge and read everything I could get my hands on about PMDD. I found out I was causing my own problems by restricting my carbs and exercising so much, thereby burning the very carbs I needed to produce serotonin in my brain. My body was screaming in protest, sending me into longer and deeper troughs of PMDD.

So the first thing I did was start listening to my body. When it wants carbs, it gets carbs. I did, however, slowly get rid of 95% of the non-nutritional carbs in my fridge and cupboards, and replace them with healthy, nutritional carbs. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, you know the drill. The problem is not that we don’t know what’s good for us, it’s that we’re unwilling to make the change to better eating habits, until the pain of living in hormonal misery all the time forces us to make the change.

My eating habits today are 100% better than they were a year ago, and they weren’t that bad to start with. I’ve never been a fan of sugar, can’t eat corn syrup at all. It gives me a headache and makes me grumpy. Sugar makes me nauseous. So I started with eating better. I realized I was self-defeating myself with so much exercise, and made the mistake of stopping altogether.

Just until I get my hormones back on track, I told myself. Well, four months and ten pounds more later, my hormones were still out of whack and I was well out of shape…

Slowly, one baby step at a time, I had to get back into the swing of things. I had to get my body back up to the level of exercise I had been at before, or risk gaining even more weight, plus increasing other associated health risks.But boy did my body protest. No matter what I did, every time I moved it in a different way, it got stiff and sore for a day or two. Before long, everything was hurting. This didn’t make sense…what the heck was going on?

Well, for one, I’m getting older, and it takes longer to get into the swing of things again once you’re older. Even if you’re just a little bit older, I quickly learned, when you’re at my age, which is 52. Muscle response times just aren’t the same.

So after pulling a few muscles and nearly incapacitating myself, I settled for walking. Baby steps. I joined a walking challenge at my YMCA, 100 miles in 100 days. Shouldn’t be a problem, right? I started with 1-2 miles a day, and quickly moved to 2-3 miles a day, then 3-4 and 4-5. It was amazing how the miles piled up. In the first 50 days, 19 of which I skipped off and on, I already had 85 miles. How was that possible? I was going to reach 100 well before the deadline.

So I upped my personal challenge to 200 miles in 100 days. With just three miles a day of walking, I could easily make that. An added bonus was we could use time on the treadmill, cardio, or cycling machines to count toward our mile totals. During the course of the second part of the challenge, I started with ten minutes of cardio on the elliptical, and worked my way up to 30. Any more than that, I’ve discovered, starts sending me into the negative carb column again.

On Monday I completed my walking challenge. I did 203 miles in 100 days. I’m now regularly walking 20 miles a week. And you know what? I haven’t lost a single pound. I weigh exactly the same as I did at the beginning of the year, when I once again made a resolution to lose weight.

So….I improved my diet 100%, and I went from nothing to walking 20 miles a week. Things shifted, sure, and tightened and toned, but the scale, she wouldn’t budge.

It’s the hormones. They’re still not in balance. I can tell by the way my body feels, and how it responds to exercise. The harder I exercise, the worse I feel. 4-5 miles a day was too much. 3 is a good number for me, in a combination of the elliptical and walking. Too much cardio and I burn too many carbs and feel wiped out afterward. A two-mile walk, however, especially on a bad day, energizes me and improves my mood.

So…now that I’ve got the eating and exercise habits sorted out, next on my list is balancing the hormones from within, through good nutrition. In the meantime, if you’re cutting carbs and exercising like a fiend and still feeling miserable, maybe this post will help you to figure out why.

Learning to Listen

I skipped Friday’s FWL post for two reasons…one, I was so busy working on my new PMDD website I didn’t even realize it was Friday until mid-afternoon and two, I already had it in my mind I wanted to continue this theme of listening. Last Sunday I talked about the importance of having one, just one person who will listen to you, your joys and sorrows, hopes and dreams. More than one is always great, if only to give your listener a break (smile), but also to provide different perspectives on whatever it is you are sharing.

But only one will do, if that person is a true friend and a good listener. Still, there are so many people who don’t even one person in their lives they can count on to listen to them, just listen. So if you have one, consider yourself blessed beyond measure. And if you don’t—be the change you want to see in your life. Try listening, really listening, to someone else first. I think you’ll be surprised at the results :).

I find that talking things out with a listener helps to clarify things in my own mind. They don’t even have to do anything but listen, either in person, or on the phone. The same is true of writing. When you journal, your “listener” can be anyone you choose. I like to think of mine as God. I’m sharing my thoughts with God, who has proven to me many times over that He does indeed listen.

Then, on Wednesday, I talked about listening to your body. I think a lot of us forget we even have bodies, unless some part of that body is making life uncomfortable or inconveniencing us. We operate mostly in our heads, and ignore the needs of our bodies for healthy food, rest, relaxation, and exercise. Instead we fill our bodies with whatever food is handy, quick and convenient, load up on caffeine and energy drinks to keep us going, and give lip service to wanting to relax and exercise more.

I don’t exercise because I want to, trust me. I exercise because if I don’t, my body will let me know it with aches and pains and stiffness and creaky knees. Oh, and an overall sluggish feeling that makes me long to lay around and just do nothing. Which, when I give in, gets me nothing but more aches and pains and stiffness and creaky knees.

Just another example of how our bodies speak to us, letting us know what we need to stay strong and healthy. So listening to them is important if we want them to serve us well.

But today I want to talk about another kind of listening. Listening to that voice within. Some call it God, some call it Tao, some call it Mother Wisdom. Whatever you call it, it is vital that you take some time out every day to listen to it. Otherwise you’re nothing more than a hamster on a wheel, running, running, running, with no sense of where you’re going, and getting nowhere. Every moment of your day is filled with doing, not being. And when you fall into bed exhausted at the end of the day, you have no sense of being further ahead than you were the day before…whatever your “ahead” might consist of.

My favorite time for listening is just before and right after I open my eyes after sleeping. I tend to rise to consciousness slowly, and find my best thoughts of the day are the ones that float into my mind before my brain takes over, kicking in with my mental to-do list for the day. Some of my most creative thoughts occur then, but unless I write them down, once my day starts, almost always those thoughts are forgotten within minutes of getting out of bed. Still, I know that’s when I listen best. I also know that if I don’t wake up that way, if the alarm or phone startles me awake, I miss out on that early morning moment of peace and feel grumpy. So I try to go to sleep at the same time each night and wake up naturally.

Another time I listen well is while driving. To do this I need to turn off the CD player and drive in silence. (Talking on the phone while driving, for me, is not an option.) For those of us who can’t seem to make the time to sit still and listen for a few moments each day, listening while driving might work. You bring yourself into the moment and focus on nothing but what you are doing right then—driving. For most of us, driving is automatic, so our minds are free to listen. The same can be done while doing dishes, or folding laundry, gardening, or cleaning.

You don’t have to stop and literally sit still to hear your inner voice. Nor do you have to take up meditation or yoga to hear what’s in your heart. Life gives us many opportunities to listen throughout our days. We just have to learn to relax and accept them.

Silence is a great source of strength. ~ Lao Tzu

P.S. I wrote this post yesterday morning. Imagine my surprise when last night I went to Mass, and the priest who substituted for our regular priest gave his homily on this very subject. He talked about turning off our phones and ipods and all those things that supposedly keep us ‘connected’ and taking time to just listen, instead. I'll take that as a message that I'm on track :)

On PMDD and Cravings -- and All Chocolate is Not Equal

I have no guest author scheduled for today, so you're stuck with me and what's on my mind :). So sit back, have some cyber chocolate and enjoy!

Having come freshly off a week of spending up close and personal time with The Alien, who kicked my butt so badly the last day she was here I had to take a three-hour nap in the middle of the day, on top of getting a full night’s sleep, today I feel uber-qualified to write about how it feels to experience PMDD. The thing is, now that the episode (aka her latest visit) is over, it’s the last thing I want to think about.

I look around and see all that didn’t get done over the last week, the laundry piling up, the floors that need to be cleaned, the clutter of all I didn’t feel up to coping with and simply set aside, and would much rather regain some semblance of control over my life--if only its external appearance--than write about the dark place I inhabited for eight full days and change this time around.

Why such a long visit this time? I think I know. I think it had something to do with the stress of travel, the staying up later than usual, sleeping in strange environments, the change in diet, the miniscule amount of alcohol consumed, although in comparison to my usual alcohol intake, it was a big jump. Let’s see…over the course of two weeks I had three beers, one glass of wine and a glass of Bailey’s Irish cream. More than I’ve had in the last 6 months, since the cruise, and more than I had in the year or so before that.

Still, it was a toxic substance my system isn’t used to. Add that to the copious amounts of caffeine I consumed during the conference and while on the road, the pasta-heavy fare at the conference, and I think I’m getting the picture. At home, I’m usually caffeine free—or close to it. No coffee, maybe a cup of caffeinated tea in the morning, if I feel the need, and chocolate only when “the cravings” come. And I hadn’t had pasta or bread in weeks before the conference.

Why? All of these are bad for women with PMDD, or anyone with a neurotransmitter imbalance. Caffiene, alcohol, sugar, flour, hence the bread and pasta. But why am I so sensitive to their effects? I know women who practically live on caffeine and sugar, others who drink freely, others who love their bread and pasta. Is it possible they feel as miserable as I do, or more so, but deny their misery and continue to self-medicate with food and drink?

Because attempts to self-medicate is what these addictions (for lack of a better word) are. My research is showing there are very few true physical addictions in life. Most compulsions are emotionally or psychologically based. Only in rare cases is an addiction physiological.

That’s not to say we can’t get cravings. But cravings are cravings, temporary urges for some kind of substance to relieve our mental, emotional, or physical discomfort. Cravings are not addictions, although when you are in the throes of one, it can feel like an addiction. But as someone writing a book on dealing with addiction recently pointed out to me, “You’re not going to stick a gun in someone’s face for a piece of cake.”

Cravings are the body’s signals that some physiological need is not being met. You’re low on some vital nutrient, to be exact. Your body is saying, for instance, “I’m low on magnesium,” and you feel a sudden urge to eat a banana, or some almonds, maybe some oatmeal, or, yes, some chocolate.

Chocolate is one of the best known substances we crave. What confuses the issue with chocolate is not only its physical healing properties (of which there are many), but its emotional associations. We associate chocolate with feeling good. But not all chocolate is equal. Some are better for us than others. Much better. Others are almost useless, physiologically speaking. In the example above, a banana would provide as much magnesium as a 1.5 ounce chocolate candy bar, but a handful of almonds or cashews would provide almost three times as much magnesium as either the banana or candy bar.

So why do we reach for the chocolate? It’s as much for the emotional fix as the nutrient needed. More confusion arises when we don’t know the difference between types of chocolate, due to the marketing and advertising claims of their manufacturers. Manufacturers is the key word here. Quality chocolates from true chocolatiers abound with the beneficial properties of chocolate. True dark chocolate is a rich source of flavanoids and antioxidants, with the cacao bean containing more than twice as many antioxidants the so-called superfoods like blueberries, kale, spinach or broccoli.

It’s the cheap, mass-marketed brands that--while they may contain miniscule amounts of chocolate’s beneficial properties—have processed most of the antioxidants and flavanoids right out of the chocolate. To derive any benefit from eating these lower quality chocolates, you need to eat way more than is healthy for you. When this happens, the negatives outweigh the positives—and you could end up outweighing all your friends.

If that’s not enough, did you know that adding milk to your chocolate, or even drinking milk with your chocolate totally nullifies its good effects?

Meanwhile you’re bewildered, thinking chocolate is supposed to be good for me, right? Milk is healthy for me. Isn’t that what the ads say? By eating chocolate and drinking milk, I’m doing something good for my body, right? So why do I feel so miserable?

Because all the chocolate in the world isn’t going to solve your problems, honey, and while I may crave it like mad at times, neither is it going to make my PMDD, or Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder, go away. For all its mood-enhancing abilities, even the finest Belgian chocolate won’t “cure” dysphoria.

Dysphoric is the opposite of euphoric. Euphoric means happy, dysphoric means depressed. As in depression. But only pre-menstrually, which I suppose can be considered a blessing.

In some atypical cases, however, the dsyphoria can come AFTER a woman begins her period. Lucky me, I’m atypical. Mine usually starts on Day 3, if it’s going to come. It doesn’t always come. Which is what drives me batty, trying to keep on top of what I need to do--or to avoid--to keep it from returning. I lead too full and rich a life to keep being knocked flat by this unwelcome change in my body. It makes me feel like I’m constantly behind—on everything.

As women, we all know “it will never all get done,” but to have something come along and steal a full week or more out of your month, something that no matter what you do or don’t do seems to be totally beyond your control…it’s more than frustrating. It’s crazymaking.

I’m here to tell you you’re not crazy. I’m here to tell you there are scientifically proven physiological reasons for why you crave the things you do—like carbs--and what happens to your body as a result of that. I’m here to tell you there’s help, and hope, but it’s far from easy, living in a body that seems to have a will of its own at times, and a manufacturing and marketing culture that promotes unhealthy foods as healthy because of their base ingredients, while completely ignoring the toxic effects of their processing processes.

That said, the first step is to forgive yourself for falling short of your own expectations, and to understand that what is happening to you is as involuntary a response as an allergic reaction. You can not control it. You can try to mitigate it, to be sure, by living a universally healthy lifestyle, once you understand what that truly is, but you can not control it.

Nor can you deny it and simply plow through it, as most women do. We have commitments, responsibilities, schedules and deadlines. We have people counting on us to be there for them.

But first, we have to learn how to be there for ourselves.

More on this, when I get a chance.