My Fitness Pal Blog - Day 2 - And Trying Not to Panic

No gym today - my work schedule is keeping me up nights and then I sleep from 10am until about 4, sometimes later. 6 hours is really not enough sleep for me, but it's all I can justify taking. I did walk briskly - almost a jog - for 35 minutes, although that was sort of by default; mom borrowed and misplaced the NYPD hoodie I wear to run, and when I went to the garage I had to wear the lightweight cotton spring / autumn one - not nearly warm enough when it's -5 Celsius.

There won't be any gym tomorrow or Thursday either; tomorrow I have to go to the post office, buy Christmas presents, get my hair cut and bake something for the class party we're having Thursday. Fibromyalgia is a bitch. When you have quite a nasty version of it, the way I do, it's often all you can do to get the necessary things done, and a lot falls by the wayside. You have to prioritise. In my case, my exercise schedule and my social life have been smashed to smithereens. If you have six things to do and only enough energy to do three of them, your energy goes on things like looking after mom and bathing and grocery shopping and school, and the stuff like exercise and dating and keeping in touch with friends disappears. I don't really have many friends anymore. They all vanished when I was dying last year. I just didn't have any time or energy to offer them - it all went on taking care of mom and staying alive.

I spent a miserable day today staring at nutrition labels. I used to go by the mantra that if it needs an ingredient and nutrition label, I probably don't want to be eating it, but that was back when only processed foods were labeled. These days, everything has labels, so I actually have to read them.

Early in the morning I discovered that the pizza I like to eat once a week or so - my main food indulgence - contained nearly four thousand calories in a pack. Four thousand! For cheese, flour, eggs, butter and marinara sauce! Even a mouthful would have more calories than I like to eat in a MEAL. Pizza had to go. (I didn't actually throw it out; I've been poor my whole life and still can't bear the thought of throwing food away, but I did put it in a bag to offer to the neighbours tomorrow.)

Tonight I was struck down by killer PMS - making this the second time in five weeks, after almost six years of my mirena coil making periods almost nonexistent; clearly the hormone has now run out - and found myself staring mournfully into the freezer to see if there was some chicken or something I could oven-bake. We're almost out of food stores in the house, so no chicken. On the plus side, when I looked at the pizza box again I realised that tiredness and stupidity earlier had caused me to read the kJ instead of the calories, and that there were 800 kCal in a pack rather than nearly 4000. At 800 calories, it's still not a food I can eat often, but I don't have to ban it from the house upon pain of death either.

I cried. I blame the PMS, since I am not aware of ever having cried about food before. Then I ate some pizza.