health

So. About the weight I lost

February 20, 2016 by Susanne Leave a Comment

Today my post about not having asthma any more appeared on the Fettlogik überwinden-Blog which makes me rather happy. And then I realized two things: 1. I think I will need to write about that weight loss journey a bit but not today because I am extremely busy today even for me, and 2. I never posted the obligatory before and after pictures. Well, really they are before and during pictures because I plan to lose five more kilos (11lbs.). And no, that won’t make me too thin, that will bring me down to the weight I have always felt best at, and down to a healthy, normal-weight BMI in the low range of normal.

Behold before September 2013 at about 98 kilos:

And this was taken last week at 68.5 kilos :

And yes, I know that fat Susanne on these pictures looks much happier than thin Susanne but you’ll just have to believe me that this is just because the first picture was taken on a really fun day hiking with my family, and the second one is a rather hurried picture taken to document a finished new sweater.

I have been trying to not talk too much about the whole weight loss thing because I was a bit afraid of comments, and I felt a bit vain, and I thought I was doing something unhealthy, and was afraid of how the whole thing would turn out because everybody knows that diets are bound to fail anyway, and all that but I think it’s time to talk about it anyways.

But I promise I won’t make anyone lose weight against their will.

And then the asthma went away – just like that

February 1, 2016 by Susanne 1 Comment

So I had this asthma attack in 2008, and years later I found out that I had exercise induced asthma. And every since I’ve been using two different inhalers, one with a steroid that I take every single day, and another one that I use before exercising or doing something strenuous.

And the last time I visited my pneumologist he looked at my latest spirometry and told me to try out what would happen if I only took half the dose of the steroid.

And I did, and what happened was – nothing. I felt fine. Which was great, especially since that particular inhaler costs me 47 Euros every time I need a new one which used to be every six weeks but has become every three months now.

Two weeks ago I went back to the pulmonologist for my regularly scheduled spirometry, and this time he said, „You might want to try out how you feel when you stop the steroid. Oh, and you can also try to stop using the other inhaler as well. You’ll have to wait a few days for the effects to show.”

So I stopped using the steroid. And nothing happened. And a few days later still nothing had happened.

And then I stopped using the other inhaler. I was quite nervous when I went jogging that day, and monitoring myself for signs of an impeding asthma attack but what happened was – you guessed it – nothing.

So I am now completely off every kind of asthma medication. And that makes me really, really happy.

And I think that maybe (but I don’t know for sure, of course) this has something to do with me losing a total of 28 kilos. In the book „Fettlogik überwinden“ the author cites a study about asthma and weight loss that came to the conclusion that weight loss reduced asthma symptoms in every single case.

Who would have thought? Not me.

Now I don’t know how the whole thing will feel once allergy season hits my respiratory system but I guess I won’t feel as bad as I did before.

I am still carrying my inhaler everywhere. I’m still not quite convinced. But the possibility of living without the permanent danger of keeling over for lack of breath is exhilarating.

Every morning when I brush my teeth without having to use the inhaler first I grin like a maniac from ear to ear. And when I want to run after a train I can do it. Just like that.

Why I spent most of the last weeks in bed reading

July 15, 2014 by Susanne 2 Comments

and also why I haven’t posted anything.

It all started when we weregoing to Crete on Pentecost. The days before were a little stressful what with the usual things, and a friend staying overnight, and all the packing and preparing for a week away.

On the flight to Crete I was somewhat cold, and regretted not taking a scarf. The next day my throat was sore, and I felt the beginning of a sinus infection. So I spent the first day of vacation in bed, didn’t go to the beach, and hoped to be better the next day.

Which I was.The next day we walked six kilometers along the beach to Rethymnon which is beautiful, and went sightseeing there, and had fabulous lunch, and then walked all the way back with our son protesting loudly, and in the evening my left ear hurt. I took some ibuprofen, and hoped I would be better the next day.

The next day we had booked a guided tour to Knossos and Iraklion and such. My ear hurt very much during the night, it reminded me uncomfortably of all the middle ear infections I had as a child but otherwise I was feeling alright. No fever. Although it was a little hard to tell with all the heat and sweating because not only was Crete a little warmer than I had hoped, our hotel room also didn’t have airconditioning, and tended to get hotter and hotter during the day until we ad a choice of sleeping in an oven at night, or be woken up every few minutes by dogs barking, and goats and sheep baaing in a field right next to the hotel.

The guided tour was very nice, only we went from the really chilly airconditioned bus to the really hot Knosses site to the bus to the hot town center, back and forth. Because my ear hurt so badly, and it was windy all the time I had put a piece of tissue in my left ear by then. When I pulled it out some time during the dayt looked rather gross, a little bloody and by now it was really clear that there was some kind of infection raging in my ear.

When I googled my symptoms back at the hotel I found that yes, this was a middle ear infection, yes, my ear drum had ruptured, and also that there wasn’t much I could do. I was not keen on finding a doctor and trying to talk to someone who probably could speak Greek and not much more, so I kept taking ibuprofen, and also some of the nose spray my husband takes, and on top of that the antibiotic that we had happened to have lying around at home, and had taken on vacation as a silly precaution.

At that time I couldn’t hear properly with that ear as well but I thought that would become better once the infection would be gone.

So after that it was clear I was really sick, and we spend the rest of the week at the hotel with short walks to the supermarket, and while my husband and son went to the beach swimming I spent my days in the shade reading, away from the wind and sun, or in our hotel room sitting in bed and reading. I did try knitting and spinning but mostly it was just too hot.

I did stay deaf in that ear for the rest of the week which was rather disconcerting and inconvenient.

We came back after a week, and were very happy to be home again, I unpacked all the things, spent one night in my own bed (without goats blearing, and much cooler), and since I was still sick, and since I still couldn’t hear much I went to my ENT on Monday morning.

He told me that yes, I was almost deaf in that ear, that I had a toxic inner ear which sounded rather ominous, that the antibiotic I was taking would not help against ear infections even though it said so on the package, and also that I needed a tube in my ear drum, and infusions, and that I would go home, pack a bag, and go to the hospital over night.

So I went home, told my husband who was desperately wrangling laundry at home, and dealing with a week of neglect in the garden that I would go to the hospital now, and stay over night, and then I went to get my toothbrush and pajamas and such, and repacked a bag.

The doctor had told me I only had to stay one night but I would have packed fresh clothes anyway, only I didn’t have any fresh clothes. Laundry hadn’t happened just before we went away, and therefore I was wearing my last set of clean underwear.

I went to the hospital, got admitted, got my tube put in by a really nice young doctor, and it only took four or five tries, and that one time when he almost didn’t get it out again, and then I got a nice bed, and my own TV, and prednisone and antibiotics via IV, and the doctors told me that I could surely go hometwo days later.

My hearing got somewhat better with the tube because there wasn’t all that fluid clogging up my ear but there were still quite a few frequencies I couldn’t hear properly, everything sounded as if I was sitting in a tin drum sloshing with water but I pretended to be patient.I also called my husband and asked him to bring me fresh clothes, and all the chargers for all my electronics.

And then I spent the next three days sitting in bed, reading until the battery of my ebook reader gave out, and knitting awkwardlybecause I had an IV in my left hand. (I have really bad veins, and at first the nurses had wanted to put the IV in the back of my right hand which would have meant I coudn’t have done much of anything.)

Fortunately I had a room to myself for most of the time because otherwise I would have gone crazy. Also nobody told me that prednisone makes you unable to sleep, and rather hungry, I only wondered why I was so restless.

On the fifth day after arriving in the hospital I could finally go home.That day I wondered why I felt so tired, and exhausted, and weak but by now I can tell you that that are the effects you get after you have taken large doses of prednisone because then your body has to make its own again, and that takes a few days.

So I went home, spent the next few days in bed reading, and continued taking antibiotics.And being grateful that it was still Pentecoste break because if your self-employed it is a little hard to spend a week in the hospital. But since I didn’t have to teach anyway I was good.

Then I started teaching again, without most of my hearing in my left ear, and that made students sound rather badly but it couldn’t be helped. The bad thing was that my hearing wasn’t improving. So I went back to my doctor, and he suggested another round of prednisone shots. Which I had to pay for myself. So I went to the doctor three days in a row, on a weekend, and got more prednisone. With the not sleeping on that weekend, and the subsequent crash the next few days.

By then I was growing a little desperate because I still couldn’t hear properly. I didn’t want to go anywhere, and I didn’t listen to music, and I wasn’t playing any music because t all sounded horrible. And all in all I had taken antibiotics for about three weeks in a row because the infection wasn’t going anywhere as well.

So right when I was about to resign myself to stay half-deaf for the rest of my life I went back to the doctor, did my sixth hearing test in two weeks or so, and found that my hearing had actually gotten better. There still was the tinny sound, and I still had a tinnitus but I was almost hearing properly.

So right now I’m hoping to get my hearing back, once that tube is taken out. Which will happen tomorrow. I am not thrilled by the prospect of having someone poke in my ear again, especially since it is really, really loud when someone is working on your eardrum but I hope to get rid of that cheap sound in my ear for sure.

Sorry this is so long but now you probably understand why I wasn’t doing much of anything in the past few weeks.

I told you so – the asthma story

February 22, 2011 by Susanne 3 Comments

So I spent a bit of time these last weeks going to doctors and such. First of all I was determined to get to the bottom of my breathing problems. Some of you might remember that in the fall of 2008 I had what I thought was an asthma attack. I went to the doctor, and he couldn’t find anything. He did say to come back if it happened again but there never was an attack as severe as that one time. Mostly because I never ran after trains like that again.

So I thought it was all due to me packing on weight, and not exercising much. But still, something was weird with my breathing, and I felt like somebody was sitting on my chest a lot. But then I really was out of shape. My mother suggested that I had high blood pressure. Nope, not the problem.

Then I found that I became breathless immediately when walking around in the cold. So obviously cold air doesn’t agree with me. And there was this feeling of somebody sitting on my chest that was certainly not usual but not really alarming as well. And I thought that I was short of breath because I was so out of shape. And I often cough when I smell something irritating like cigarette smoke, or perfume, or chilies. Nothing unusual there.

And over time I just got used to it. When walking outside for errands in the winter I just walk very, very slowly. I feel like a fool, mind you, overweight with all my bags, walking at a snail’s pace but at least then I didn’t have to be afraid to keel over from lack of breath. And when somebody is smoking on the street I change to the other side. And when somebody is smoking on the train platform (it’s not allowed but people do it anyway), I go to the other end. I got really used to this until finally I watched myself and realized that my life is really defined by these things. Changing sides three times on a five minute walk because there is somebody smoking in front of you is not normal behavior. Walking at a snail’s pace wheezing when you’re only 43 is not normal either.

Then I started jogging. It was almost exactly a year ago. Since I felt so ridiculous about it, and since I knew I can’t stand to exercise in the cold air I started jogging up and down the annex corridor. Yes, it does feel a bit weird, and yes, that corridor has only ten meters but still. You know those overweight people that you see huffing and puffing while being all red in the face? The ones where you can tell that they just decided to take up jogging after spending years on the couch eating potato chips? I knew I would be one of them so I started to run in the safety of my own home. That has the added bonus that I can stop at any time if I don’t feel up to it. That hasn’t happened often but still.

So after a few months of running I was still short of breath when walking up the hill to the grocery store, and I thought, “This is odd. I’m in better shape now than ever, so why is it so hard to breathe?” It isn’t always hard to breathe, mind you, when I’m sitting on the couch in front of the TV everything is peachy. But it was odd.

Then I taught this knitting class, and after one class I had to dash to the train station. There was a student whom I knew to be going in the same direction, and I thought we could walk together. And then she said that she had to walk very slowly because it was cold, and she has exercise induced asthma. I had never heard of something like that before but there are actually people who mostly get their asthma attacks when exercising, or walking uphill, especially in the cold. That was really interesting. Did you know there was a thing like that?

So I went to the library and got some books on asthma. And there it was: an asthma attack can of course be wheezing, and gasping for air but it can be as mild as having a coughing fit (throw a chili pepper in the frying pan and watch me), or the feeling that somebody is sitting on your chest. Duh.

So I went back to my doctor. He did the whole routine again: blood check, cardiogram, ultrasound, spirometry to check whether the lungs work properly, and everything came back normal. Since he is a cardiologist he looked at my heart twice, and everything was fine. I was slowly getting frustrated, there was obviously something wrong but all my tests showed that I’m perfectly healthy.

Then he did a spirometry while doing a stress ECG, and wham. I knew I’d feel lousy but I went for it. A stress ECG is not a pleasant experience. You’re taken to your physical limit so you always feel like you’re going to die even when you’re in good shape. So I sat on that ergometer pedaling away until I had the feeling I couldn’t breathe any longer. One of the weirdest things was that sensation that my muscles, and my heart were perfectly fine. I could have pedaled much harder, and my heart was far from beat. I only started wheezing, and gasping for air. The nurse asked me how I felt, if there was any pressure on my chest, and all I could do was nod vigorously. Then she fetched a doctor to watch over me while I finished the test. It’s an interesting feeling, working out like a maniac, topless, while hooked up to two machines with two people watching you intently because they’re afraid that you’ll have a heart attack or something.

So. Now I officially have asthma. When I told a friend she said, “Only you can manage to be happy about having asthma.” But that’s not the point. I’m not happy about having asthma, I’m happy that I have an official diagnosis with the possibility of treatment instead of the constant feeling that something is wrong. And I never could be entirely sure if I were a hypochondriac or maybe dropping dead the next minute.

After the first elation about the diagnosis and the shiny new inhaler, though, I started realizing that, yes, I now have a chronic illness. And while using the inhaler is great because for the first time in years I could just run without feeling like breathing through a tiny little straw; it doesn’t make the asthma go away. There is no pill to cure it, there is only better days, and worse days.

Still, at least now I know what I’m dealing with. And you know, I told you so the whole time. What I learned from this is this: when you know there is something wrong go to the doctor, and then go again, and then tell him, “I know you didn’t find anything last time but every time I walk uphill I feel like somebody’s sitting on my chest.” and then get some books, and talk to people, and go back to the doctor again. Because if I hadn’t thought that he wouldn’t find anything anyway I could have gotten that diagnosis far earlier.

The Goal

January 30, 2011 by Susanne 4 Comments

So after trying a multitude of things to change my life and me for the better I’m trying to stick to one goal again. The Goal. I don’t do all that well with goals. While deadlines usually help me a lot (if they aren’t too tight.) In my experience I just state goals, get all enthusiastic about them, and then wander off. At the end of the year I often don’t even remember what I started out to do. Goals like: get to bed on time, lose weight, exercise more, become a tidy person get stated on a daily or weekly basis, and then abandoned.

But this year I thought I’d give it a try again. My one (not only but most important) goal for this year is:

Lose 10 kilos of weight or more.

I know. Pathetic, boring, and unexciting goal.

I thought I’d do it properly this time, think about my goal in advance, make it public, hold myself accountable, and such. Well, I did state it in December, I told my husband that this time I was adamant about losing weight, and that I would start January 1st. And I did. I made a few rules for myself because this time I am actually going on a kind of “diet”, and I did pretty well for about, um, two weeks. I will keep on trying, though, because defeat is not an option.

Now you might think why is my weight such a big deal? Well, for one I am heavier than I have ever been in my life. That would be quite okay if I hadn’t gained weight steadily for the past three years. While I might resign myself to be a somewhat overweight person, I can’t resign myself to be a really fat person in the near future.

I did lose weight between 2005 and 2007. My lowest weight in the past years has been about 70 kilos in the summer of 2007. this year on January first I weighed 89.9 kilos. And there were days when my weight was even higher. I could just see myself go over 100 in a few years. (And just for comparison that means that I went from a BMI of 23.1 to one of 29.7 which is quite overweight.)

Of course I had thought that if I just lived a bit better – getting enough sleep, exercise, and eat real food – that my weight might just drop by itself but it didn’t. Even adding running to the mix didn’t do it.

So after a year where I focused on becoming a happier person, I know want to focus mainly on becoming a slimmer person. My rules are:

No alcohol but on special occasions. (Like my husband’s birthday and such. I found throughout this month that there were quite a few special occasions which meant an average of 1 1/1 beers per week.)
No sweets but an occasional piece of dark chocolate.
No crackers.
No potato chips.
No grazing all afternoon or evening.

At the moment I just don’t buy any foods that I tend to binge on. After almost a month of this I did buy some gummy bears for my son again but I don’t get to eat any of them. I used to store some snack foods in my studio for afternoon snacks but I cleared them all out. Now I have to go to the kitchen, get myself an afternoon snack, and that’s it.

And yes, I feel a bit defeated because I need to do this, and when I succeed I want to do it for yet another year so that in the end I might just feel like myself again. Also I want to be able to wear dresses in the summer without my thighs rubbing against each other, and I want to be able to run without my knees hurting. I’m fine so far but of course all this extra weight strains my joints.

I’ll be using this blog to hold myself accountable but I won’t turn this into a diet blog. Just know that as of today I’m weighing 88.9 kilos, on kilo down. When I started this I had told myself that if I didn’t lose at least a kilo by mid-February I would have to join Weight Watchers.

While I’m happy to have lost any weight at all, I also found myself getting lax with my rules after about three weeks. One reason was that in the beginning my husband also didn’t drink any alcohol. But then he went back to his glass of wine in the evening. One reason is that I am obviously not able to stick to any rules for any amount of time. Well, that means I have to forgive myself and do better today. And tomorrow. And the day after that. For the next few years.

I just have to be all “only today” about it, otherwise I’ll be driving myself crazy.

I still long to be a person who just eats, and that’s it but so far it hasn’t worked.

February update on my year of happiness

February 10, 2010 by Susanne 1 Comment

So, yes, I am definitely happier than I was last year, I’m doing something right here. Of course, I’m writing this now after a night of completely uninterrupted eight hours of sleep. If I had written it yesterday it might have turned out a bit different since I had 4 1/2 hours of sleep that were interrupted four times.

As I told you last month I made a bunch of resolutions. Those were:

Go to bed on time.
Pick up after myself.
Write 500 words of fiction at least six times a week.
Think about the things I love about my family, students, and friends.

And again, I didn’t manage to go to bed on time very often but still I have slept more than the months, or years, before. I find that I have to cancel watching DVDs most evenings. In order to get enough sleep it’s a very good idea for me to go to bed very, very early, and just read a bit. That’s seriously cutting into my knitting time but still, every single day I manage to sleep enough or nearly enough I feel happier the next day.
I’ve been doing very well on the “picking up after myself front, and that makes me happier as well. There are still heaps and piles in some areas but I’m getting there. And I manage to do a bit more housework which my husband appreciates very much.
I did write 500 words of fiction (or sometimes more) about five times a week. It seems that there’s always something coming up, and that six times a week is very hard to accomplish. But still I have several thousands of words more of my story than I had before January. It’s great.
I didn’t do that well on the “thinking about the things I love about my family, students, and friends”-front. Especially with my son I got decidedly cranky. But I can say that his sleeping is getting better. It did take a bit of a threat, though, I have told him that he is not to come to me at all until morning. Since he wants me to leave both his and my bedroom door open all night so I can hear him I told him if he so much as calls me throughout the night I will not only close the door but lock it. Apparently that was just the thing it took. You might want to wish me luck, we’re currently working on the “debate everything your mother says”-issue.

The other thing that makes me happy is that I’m starting to lose weight. Well, to be honest I’m down by 100 grams over the last month but still that’s something because over the last two years my weight has been climbing up every single month. Losing weight is something I hope to achieve through becoming a happier person but I’d say the goal of happiness is much better than the one of getting slim.

The thing that makes me even happier than losing a hundred grams is that I might be starting to exercise again. I did some yoga on Sunday (very slow, very easy yoga that made me realize how much out of shape I am), and yesterday I did my very first ever “Couch to 5k”-workout. See, I’m decidedly not a runner. I’m not built for it, not even when I’m a normal weight and fit, and I have never been able to run for any length of time. But when I was thinking about what kind of person I want to be I found that I’m really envious of people like my husband who just put on their running shoes and then go off jogging through the fields for an hour or so. And then I thought about what Mel had started some time ago, and then I read Kris’ post about how she managed to run a marathon, and that got me motivated.

I didn’t know whether I should talk about it here because all I’ve done so far is alternately walk and jog for a total of thirty minutes once, and I did it at home just staying in one spot (and I know that’s not quite the same as moving forward while doing it, but trust me I did work out and I can feel every single muscle in my lower body right now). I’m not about to go out on the street with this anytime soon, and I’ll never run a marathon for sure, ever. But still. I feel pretty amazing having tried out something new. I plan to do the next session of walking and running tomorrow in the morning.

So this will be the fifth resolution in my “happiness project”, exercise three times a week or more.