I haven't really been very well this past week but with so much to do I just kept on.The last two weeks are the busiest I've had in a long time. But I thrive in busy situations. I am well versed in keeping up with competing tasks. I have a reputation in my field of work for being able to do so. It's good but today I just crashed. I don't mean crashed to the floor but when I woke up (late) I stayed up for another hour or two and fell asleep again until mid-afternoon! My body just refused to let me go any further without proper rest. Fair enough. That's sensible isn't it? But then I thought. Had I been in the home with other people and they'd caught me sleeping the way I did today they'd have been casting aspersions about how fat people are lazy and sleep all day. I'm not trying to put words into anyone's mouth/s but I have heard it said.
Well, I thought, let me look back at the last month and all the things I've been doing. I'm studying at university full time, I'm running a business as a virtual assistant and I'm writing 2 books. All the while suffering with severe back pain in the middle of it and some sort of bug! I reckon I'm doing more than some skinny people do in a week! But people would still judge me for catching a few hours of sleep during the day today and associate it with my weight! Not what I have actually been doing that has caused me to get so tired I need the sleep. Some might say I'm doing the same by presuming people would say this when in actual fact I've not had anyone say this to me at all today as I'm on my own. But I've heard it before and so I guess I assume that is what might be said about me in the same circumstance. Perception. Me and that word are no longer friends. That word is the cause of misunderstanding. Perception should not be allowed unless followed up with investigation to gain the ultimate fact/s! Too often people stop at perception and act on that as though it were fact. We plus size are the absolute victims of perception. No-one bothers to actually find anything out?
Anyway, I was ill at uni the other day. I hadn't eaten anything the night before, no time for breakfast and so when I had my lunch ( a cheese and ham panini and a packet of crisps) something irritated my stomach that I was immediately sick in the loo. Well. What do you suppose people were saying then? I'd eaten too much! Can you believe it?!! They think I had been doing nothing but eating all day and my stomach had had enough and that was why I was sick! I was sick alright! I'm sick of perception. Because it's almost always wrong!!! So I was still feeling queazy that evening and took some pills that help with nausea. It took such a long time for the queazy feeling to go and I began to think about how plus size people are treated medically. As a child I suffered terrible headaches and migraines. My mother always made sure she understood the signs so she could give me my medicine as soon as it looked like I was on the road to a migraine. They were awful and as a child difficult to handle. My mother felt so helpless in those times. But she decided she would learn more and try to find out how I would feel when I knew one was coming on. I told her about the dancing lights. Every time I saw bright dancing lights in front of my eyes I would guaranteed get a migraine within the hour. So my mother told me to tell her whenever the dancing lights came. When I did she'd give me my pills straight away and put me to bed. I'd wake up with a little headache but nothing compared to the writhing on the floor type pain I would have. When I started to put the weight on in my teens the intensity of the headaches returned. This time I was old enough to know to take the pills myself when the lights came on. But it didn't work. I was putting the weight on and my mother took me to the doctor and he said I had to lose weight. The weight was causing my migraines. Mmmm. Anyway, my mum put me on a diet and I lost weight but it didn't help. The weight went right back on again. My mother talked to me about it and she decided that as I'd got more weight I probably needed more of the pills. So instead of 2 she gave me 2 and a half pills before I lay down. It was incredible. I felt loads better but it was still unbearable. So the next time I took 3 pills and they were just right. We never told the doctor (you should always and I'm not recommending you follow what I did) But it changed my life. I was happy again. I had got the right dose for my weight.
Now, over the years I have always stuck to the dose on the packet. It was only then that we tried that. But lately, I have been wondering if the reason I haven't healed as well or the reason I don't always feel quite right is if because I am not getting the right dose of medicine for my weight? I mean doctors understand that children and adults cannot have the same dose of medicine and this is based on size. So, why has the research never been done to see how much more plus size or obese people should have when it comes to medicines. After all some of us can be up to almost twice the size of a regular person so how can we be on the same doses? This could have a huge impact on the energy and well being of a larger person. I understand the reluctance to encourage higher doses all round. You don't want to have an over dose problem in the end but GPs should say if it is possible for me or you or anyone who is plus size to take just a little bit more. We've a bigger body for that pill to work in for goodness sake! Plus with our systems being 'allegedly' filled with fatty tissue etc. who has done the research to find pills that can enter the system faster. Maybe liquid forms of the same types of medicine are better for us? I don't know. I'm just saying the medical world is failing to really understand the issues plus size people are dealing with.
Lastly, I don't understand why people are always so quick to put me on a diet. I want to lose weight. I do. But I need someone to intelligently understand what causes me to eat and give me a reasonable and achievable way of doing it. I say not one diet like that exists! All diets require immediate reduction in the intake of food. Well that's a diet RayRay you say. Well, let me then ask you, if I was (hypothetically) addicted to drugs and I go to my GP. He does not recommend I immediately stop taking them. Well he does but what he does is replace the drug with a drug that simulates the drug I've been taking and gradually lessens the use of that until there is no longer a dependency issue. I think (not sure) this drug is call methadone or something like it. They know that with counselling and replacing the lethal drugs with something similar so the body doesn't feel it's missing anything is important to the success of coming off drugs. Well diets meann you miss something straight away so the success of it is doomed in the end. You will miss it now or later. When an anorexic is so ill they are in a hospital do they immediately shove cupcakes and high calorie foods at them? No, they are drip fed so that the anorexic doesn't feel they have betrayed themselves by eating orally and give them counselling until such time they start to feel better to try to eat. Plus size people? We're immediately told to reduce our intake of food and eat foods that are foreign to our bodies and exercise? Where is the understanding that the addiction to food is no different to the anorexic or drug issue? Where is the understanding that I can't just reduce what I've been doing systematically for years? Where is the patience for me to get well emotionally like the anorexic?! What are people thinking? Seriously. Have you thought about it yourself? To just immediately come ff my food habit is nigh on impossible. I've tried it, lost some weight but it comes back on and more! I need the same foods made with less calories and counselling. I need similar tasting foods and I need counselling. No shame there. Something changed in me that I started to eat that way. I am a normal well balanced woman in every other way but I have to admit that I don't eat well. So I need help. But I don't think the help out there is well researched or good enough. Maybe if I was given the same help and understanding that anorexics and drug addicts were given I might achieve more success with my goal to lose weight.
Houston! We have a maths problem! We have more diets and diet companies that exist in the world today than at any time ever before in history yet we have more plus size people and the numbers are increasing. With all these diet companies why is there more obesity? Ask yourselves.
My advice? Learn about your own body. No-one knows it better than you. Do your homework and research. Talk to you doctor. Challenge anything they say which doesn't make sense but also be willing to accept any help from them. Learn about your different body aliments. What works for you. Learn about the foods you like but can't/shouldn't eat. Is there an alternative? I should say be always working with your doctor though. Write a diary about what happening with you body and share that with your doctor. Not your mind. That's a different diary. Just your body. I could never remember all the things I wanted to say to my doctor by the time I got there so now I write a small diary. It helps him. I'll write in my next blog the things I am have been discovering about mine and the foods I eat.
Stay beYouteefool bigYoutifuls!
RayRay xx
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