Some Good With Some Bad

I went to Queens to pick up my new orthotics yesterday. I was so anxious, I couldn't sleep the night before, which is an indication of how excited I am to finally have an answer, and an END, to my chronic pain. One thing I didn't even remotely consider, though, is that something would be wrong with the orthotics. But that's what happened. The orthotics are too narrow in the toe so it's kind of like wearing flip-flops where your toes hang off the edge. The orthotics have to be sent back. My doctor sent me home with them to try walking around to see if anything else needed adjusting and I think he may also have to tune up the mechanism in the orthotic itself. My plan is to travel back to Queens tomorrow morning and turn the orthotics back in and get taped for the coming week.

I will admit to you all that I was just flattened when the orthotics didn't work like magic on the first try. (I know I said that I wasn't pinning too much hope on them but...I lied.) After I'd had a snack, I realized that my whole situation has changed drastically from the days of despair I was feeling back in early February. I have tasted living pain free and I know I can get back there again. It's totally different than when I thought chronic pain was simply my lot in life. If I have to tape my foot every day for the rest of my life to be a functioning, active adult again, so be it.

So, I'll keep ya posted.

Today marks my first official weigh-in on the South Beach Diet and I lost four pounds in the first week. The first phase of the diet is pretty restrictive, no bread, fruit, or other starchy grains. No alcohol (I KNOW!). The goal of it is to break you free from your dependence on processed, high fat, sugary foods.

I didn't actually maim anyone or commit any other felonies, and now I'm over the worst of the cravings and hunger. I didn't cheat ONCE. (For me, once I cheat on a diet, it's like the thin edge of the wedge...then, the next time I can justify a little more cheating, etc. until I'm not even following the diet. I really want to take back my body so I seem to have some added discipline this time. I even stopped taking Flintstones vitamins because of the sugar!) This marks the first time since some time in the eighties when I have gone on a diet and stuck to it for more than...well, um, half a day. (Hey! Weight Watchers Online! I want my six million dollars back!)

Honestly, it was an AWESOME exercise in looking at how my eating had evolved (or DEvolved, I guess) into grabbing a slice of bread or a handful of chips instead of planning a nutritious meal for myself. Dudes, I don't know when I started treating myself like a total aside but that's certainly what I've been doing. When you're eating the half-eaten bagel that your daughter didn't finish as your own breakfast, you are officially an afterthought.

And it was really good for me to feel so strong and healthy and resolute --it made me proud of myself that I could serve everyone in the family Ana's birthday cake and not feel like I was entitled to a piece. Because you know what I'm entitled to? I am entitled to feel good again in my skin. So, even though there were a good four days there when I hated everyone in the whole world and was using some language (in my head) that I didn't even know I KNEW, at the end of this first week, I find that I like MYSELF a little bit better. Go me!

(A big thank you to my friends Tiffany and Gerri, who actually encouraged me to vent to them, and obsess to them and to act, in general, like the spastic, OCD, crazy person I am. Tiff did tactfully add me to the contributors on her blog devoted to getting healthy in an effort to spare my regular readers from all this kvetching. Isn't she nice?)