Category Archives: health & fitness

A narrative of my journeys with diet, exercise, and various healthcare professionals

health & fitness, thyroid Leave a comment

Doctors and Nurses and Others

So much has been going on lately in the realm of health and home-ownership and car ownership that I’ve hesitated to blog about any of it until it’s all resolved. A full story with a beginning, middle, and end makes for a neater and tidier read, after all.

With so much of it unlikely to reach a final resolution at any point in the near future, though, I figured I’d tackle Subject #1: Me. Specifically, my neck and back and overall health (which is generally good, with a few blips).

I’ve mentioned last April’s car accident a few times, but the Reader’s Digest version is that my car got rear-ended by a semi truck, and my neck hasn’t been the same since. I see a chiropractor regularly for my spondylolisthesis, anyway, so adding one more adjustment to my visits wasn’t that big of a deal.

Except my neck never got better. In fact, it kind of felt worse.

To determine exactly what was going on in my neck, my chiropractor ordered a neck x-ray this past December. The results showed that, luckily, nothing was broken or fractured — however, the curvature of my cervical spine has straightened and C5 is slightly out of alignment. Helpful data, but not entirely conclusive.

The next step was an MRI. That happened at the end of January, and I got the results a week later.

The MRI showed that I have a disc bulge between C5 and C6, so that’s what’s causing my constant pain. However, the MRI also showed something else: a 2-3 cm mass in the region of the left lobe of my thyroid.

Wait, what? I’ve got a lump the size of a large grape on my thyroid?
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atheism, weight loss Leave a comment

Mindfulness In Eating

I was talking with one of my Catholic co-workers on Ash Wednesday, discussing the symbolism of ashes and Lent in general. We came to an agreement that the whole thing is mainly symbolic, focusing on the concepts of sacrifice and mindfulness.

(As a side note, she is one of a very few believers with whom I feel I can discuss religious topics. We respect one another’s beliefs — or lack thereof — and don’t proselytize, but actually discuss concepts, their meaning, their history, their significance. It’s kind of refreshing, especially after being bombarded by the standard Facebook fuckery about I’m Right And You’re Wrong And Look At This Meme That Says So. But I digress.)

Thinking about mindfulness in eating for religious purposes — avoiding meat on Fridays during Lent and on Ash Wednesday, or during the daylight hours of Ramadan — led me to thinking about mindfulness in eating to lose weight. I’ve been having a really hard time not living in the moment, and instead focusing on eating right overall and staying on Plan.

What if I devote a single day to mindful eating? In a very secular and non-woo-woo way, what if I dedicate the day to myself, and my son, and my husband, and the versions of us in the future that will appreciate me having been good to myself? Focusing on preparing and eating my food and not doing anything else while I prepare and eat said food?

It can be a mindfulness practice, similar to the Zen practice of Oryoki, but devoted and dedicated to my health. Maybe I can spend some time thinking about how much I’ll appreciate what I’m doing for myself in the future, rather than just blindly feeding my face because I want to.

I’ve also been having trouble with eating after Connor goes to bed. So, I developed a sort of ceremonial closing of the kitchen: fill the dishwasher, make tea, clean up, leave the kitchen. I spend some time winding down — sometimes at the kitchen table, sometimes elsewhere — drinking my tea, and eating a Biscoff cookie as a final treat. I read a magazine or a book, or I write in my Techo, or I blog, and I find myself not pining after a fourth meal like I had before. I also find myself getting up to bed earlier, which I’ve needed to do for a long time now.

It’s kind of ironic, though, that those of us who have a tumultuous relationship with food can only resolve that relationship by thinking more about food, not less.