The crumbling corpse which I carry around with me took another turn for the worse about six months ago, and so in an attempt to stop myself progressing from pre-diabetes to actual diabetes I'm making some more changes to my life.
I'd already made some, and think I have hit on the best way to manage my inflammatory arthritis (as well as taking medication obvs). Despite the professionals telling me at different times to rest and to exercise, none of them seem to have hit on the reality that the key to managing it is to increase your exercise *and also* to rest more. So I'm walking like nobody's business but also going to bed when I feel like it.
Perhaps the thing most horrifying about it is the realisation that I honestly don't think you have enough time to manage this illness and work a full time job. I was much worse when I was working and unfortunately having an active job is not the answer because you have no guarantee when it will put you in bed for a day.
It will help with the arthritis but I'm also working on losing some weight to try to avoid diabetes. I've been making diet changes for some months but after trying a couple of apps that really weren't going to work for me, have hit on the NHS weight loss app which is very simple and I'm getting on better with.
Strangely something I'm finding helpful is the experience of having stopped smoking in the past. It feels very familiar to be moving to a place of actually making changes. There's also a strange irony in that having worked with people with anorexia for years I knew all about how to lose weight (both dangerously and sensibly) but actually doing it was something else.
And as we know witchcraft is all about making change happen!
Losing weight (and keeping it off!) is tough! Our bodies can't seem to figure out why we aren't still out there chasing down wooly mammoths with spears. (Can you imagine! Us chasing giant animals like that?!?! Most certainly not!) I too struggle with too much weight for these weary bones. At my physical peak I was also at my darkest. I was in a destructive and exploited state of being. I worked fast-paced low wage jobs that barely paid the rent and I stood for hours on the bridge defying the will to toss myself into the river. I knew everyone would get over my death, but not my mother. Killing me meant killing her and I couldn't do that. Instead, I got a cheap gym membership in the most dangerous part of town and every day after work I worked out for 6-8 hours. I lived off of bowls of rice with a pat of butter, salt and pepper.
ReplyDeleteWhen I became fat, I became invisible. It's nice being invisible most of the time. I was able to come into my own and not be judged by the male gaze anymore. Now when I start having success at losing weight and people start making comments about my body, I falter. I roll back up into myself. I'm a fox in a hedgehog's body.
I think you know me well enough to know what a compliment it is when I say your comment is an excellent summary of virtually the whole body thing in our society!
DeleteI often wonder what I would be like if I was a woman and while my life as a man has mostly been spent trying to get the fuckers to leave me alone as a woman I see myself as much more intentionally visible... so they can see me coming up to them before I knee them in the ground!
- groin, even. Damn you autocorrect!
DeleteThank you for the compliment! Being a woman is exhausting. Sometimes I envy my spouse. No one programmed him at an early age to anticipate the needs of others with precision accuracy.
DeleteYup and they don't like it if you stop anticipating their needs and expect them to be grown up do they?
DeleteI think you're right in that the time required to manage one's physical (and mental) form as we become less young is getting on to be a full time job in itself! I hope your time management is up to snuff and that you can keep weight and arthritis in the out-tray. Will the extra walking mean some photographs from your travels, perhaps?
ReplyDeleteOh no, are you an old crock too? We must compete.
DeleteNow of course you've unleashed a string of posts of pictures of things I see as I hobble around and old ladies stop to ask if I'm ok.
I won't post the things I see as I read pirated books on a cheap tablet on the canal bank. That's read on the canal bank. Not cruise. Absolutely not cruise. 😆