The power of hair

On the weekend I wrote about my three favourite ways to distract myself from my depression. There's actually a fourth way I like to shake things up when life feels really shit. This method of depression distraction is so radical at times that I felt it deserved its own post.

As a method of depression distraction, getting a new hairstyle can be a little high risk. Fuck it up and it could make you feel worse. Get it right and, I personally believe, it could be just the ticket to lifting the spirit. Even just a little bit.

Mood reviving isn't the only good reason to get a change in hairstyle. I, for one, have used the ol' cut 'n' colour for a number of different reasons. Here they are:

Making a statement against authority

There have been a number of times when I've made major changes to my barnet in order to make a rebellious statement to the world. But mostly it has been to piss off my parents or to give a big "fuck you" to the private girls' school, and their strict uniform rules, that I attended.

The photos below look pretty tame, but what you can't see under the top layer of hair in many of the pictures is a shaved undercut. These days kids get away with all sorts of  hairdos at school but things were different back in the 80s and 90s. We had to wear our hair tied back with a regulation 2.5cm navy blue ribbon if the length of our hair was below the collar of our uniform.

I wrote a post about my past embarrassing hairstyles back in May. For those of you who were lucky enough to miss the shocking photo evidence here it is! I'd hate to deprive you of a laugh at my expense!

The school years: Never been one to shy away from a pair of clippers, scissors or a bottle of hair dye!

The I can't be bothered with my hair phase

I also go through phases where I just cannot be bothered with my hair and I let it grow really long, don't bother getting it coloured (my natural colour is mousy blonde-brown) and just pull it back in a messy bun or a braid. It's that pulling back in hair elastics that I thought was contributing to my headaches (more on that later). I tried getting it chemically straightened thinking it would make for an easy to manage style but the straightening effect didn't last long at all.

My long natural coloured hair 

The everybody else is doing it so I am too phase

Pink, purple, orange, blue, green, yellow - any colour you can think of really. Permanent colour, semi permanent, hair chalk! Crazy hair colours have been all the rage for quite a while now. Earlier this year I decided I wanted to go pink!

Clockwise from top left: The photo I showed the hairdresser to illustrate how I wanted my hair done;
how my hair actually turned out; big smiles as the dye goes on; worried look as reality hits; posing for the hairdresser;
Bubblegum Princess from Adventure Time; a forced smile at home as I realise I look a bit like a cartoon character.

Argh! I just lost a whole stack of work I'd done on this post when Blogger showed an error message and I stupidly closed the browser without doing a copy/paste of what I'd already written into Word. The paragraph lost was basically about how upset I was at spending 5.5 hours and nearly $400 at a hair salon recommended by the biggest hair blogger in Australia only to walk out of the place with a completely different 'do than the one in the picture that I showed the stylist.

The pink did fade. I washed my hair nine times in three days desperately scrubbing out the dye that was going everywhere: on my pillowcase, clothes, towels. And when it actually got to a colour that I liked that only lasted a couple of weeks, but it never looked like the style I asked for.

Getting back to 'normal' phase

After a while the ends, that had been bleached to create that balayage effect, became so straw like that I had to get them cut off. I ended up going to a different hairdresser to get the good old half head of foils in order to restore any semblance of a decent hairdo.

From pink to blonde

Let's go crazy!

My most recent hairstyle change is probably the most crazy. Ever. From long blonde highlighted hair to short white hair with a few greeny blue streaks chucked in for good measure I sure have made a statement this time. Like I said earlier, I've never been scared to make radical changes to my hair. In fact I get a bit of a buzz (no pun intended - ok maybe a little) out of it.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

There's more to the change in style than trying to cultivate a new look. I have been having headaches that start around my scalp and shoot down through my head nearly every day for the past two or three years. I wrote about these headaches recently when I listed all the symptoms that have landed me here back in hospital. I also talked about my headaches when they seemed to disappear after I went 40 days without eating any sugar.

The pain always gave me this overwhelming desire to shave my head. As if my long, thick and heavy hair was to blame for the pain that's had me popping painkillers like lollies for years. Whether I had my hair back in a hair elastic or out falling down my back, my scalp still ached. Then last week, when I was readmitted to this psych hospital I've now been an inpatient at four times over the last five years, I decided: fuck it! The hair is going.

Have I been cured of my headaches? No. They are still there, messing with me physically and psychologically.

Do I feel refreshed from having a completely new look? Yes. I love that I have an actually 'style'. That I don't just wake up in the morning, throw my head forward, gather up my masses of hair and scrunch it into a hair-band. I love washing my locks everyday. Oh, the freshness of it all!

The moral of the story? Hair is fun, can make a statement, but cutting it all off won't necessarily cure you of chronic headaches.

Maybe I need to start thinking about cutting back on sugar again. Bugger.

Are you a person who likes to change hairstyles with your mood or
do you stick to the same trusty hairdo year after year?

V.

SUBSCRIBE NOW! Enter your email address to receive
babblingbandit.me posts direct to your inbox:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Kiss smart: The BB goals for 2013 - health

We are well and truly half way through the first month of the year and I'm yet to post my resolutions for 2013. Only I'm going to call them goals and aspirations because, apparently if I call them New Year's resolutions I'm less likely to succeed. If a little word change or two is going to help the cause, I'm all for it.

While I am aiming high this year, I also intend to stick to the KISS philosophy with some SMART thrown in.

Both KISS and SMART are mnemonic devices, if you didn't already know, which basically means they have been created to help us remember shit. Being ADHD, I need all the help I can get with my short term memory!

So while Keeping It Simple Stupid, my goals will be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. And because I have a few, I'm going to break them up into seven key areas. Each area will have its own post, otherwise this one post would be so babblingly long no one would ever bother to read it all.

The areas I want to work on this year are:

1. Health
2. For the soul
3. Finances
4. Career
5. Relationships
6. Family
7. Community

So basically I'm breaking down my whole life and setting goals and aspirations for each part.

Without further ado, here is goal area number one:

1. Health

I discovered last year that I heart my body. Yes, that's right, I love this 175cm 82kg body of mine that carries me around all day and all night. I haven't always loved it, in fact I've pretty much hated my body through a lifetime of brainwashing that my body isn't worth loving if it is fat.

Hating my body never helped me lose weight and keep it off so what is the point of that? Feeling shame about my body only served to make me feel shit about myself all the time and because it made me feel like shit I punished it. But I guess that is what we do to people/things we hate - we aren't very nice to them.

While I am now almost 20kg lighter than I was the day I got my lap-band, I am still around 5kg over my healthy weight range and 12kgs from my ultimate goal weight. My lap-band has been instrumental in helping me get to this point and now the rest of the work is up to me.

So hating my body has never worked and my lap-band has pretty much taken me as far as I can go, so the only approach left to take is to flip this hate caper on it's head and try love instead.

Following on from last year, I'm going to continue to love this body in 2013.

How do you treat people/things you love? You treat them with respect and dignity. You nurture them and say kind things to them. You do what you can to make them feel good.

So my health goal is to help my body feel good. Ok, let's aim higher. I'm going to make my body feel great and this is how I intend to do it:

a. Quit sugar... again

I'm currently back on the IQS (I Quit Sugar) bandwagon with one foot dangling off in the sea of temptation. I'm fighting my addiction to sugar with as much strength as I can muster, but I haven't been as strict as I was for those seven glorious weeks last year when Will Power was my best mate. Hell, she was my lover! This year we're getting back into bed together again. Whether she likes it or not!

I've paid up $9.99 for *The Happiness Institute's Boost Your Willpower - 30 Tips in 30 Days email course. I'm up to tip number six and so far, so good. Willpower is relevant for a lot of what I want to achieve so I think it has been a worthwhile investment.

b. Give oxygen to the flames of my cooking mojo

Like the glowing embers of an old fire, my creative desire to prepare food ebbs and wanes in the breeze. I absolutely adore cooking and when I am eating well I tend to cook more and the fire burns brightly. When my diet is shit I get lazy and disinterested in food and the flames are extinguished.

This year my fire will burn brightly with fresh whole foods being at the centre of the flames. Fruit, veggies, quality meat, whole grains and dairy. The only ingredients not allowed are sugar and processed junk.

Too easy. Well, you'd think so but the saying is always easier than the doing.

c. Move

Always the hardest part of a healthy lifestyle for me is to incorporate exercise into my everyday life. It is not because I don't like to exercise, I actually do like it but for me to get right into it, the exercise has to be easy. Not just easy to do, easy to get to, to do. If you know what I mean.

I know this is just an excuse but I very rarely have time on my own where I'm not with either Noo or my niece Mala. But if I was to really look at where I have moments on my own I guess I could find a gap or two to go down to our gym and get the heart rate going for a bit.

There are maybe two mornings a week when my parents are here. I should be at the gym at 6am on those days if I really wanted to work out. 6am. That is bloody early but the gym is in our building. That's right. Two floors down from me is a full gym and pool.

My lame arsed excuses for not going there include:

1. No one to look after kid(s)
2. The times that I could go are the busiest (ie 6am)
3. The times that I could go are too early (ie 6am)
4. I love spin classes but obviously we don't have group exercise classes in this residential building and none of the gyms around here have a creche
5. I cannot afford a gym membership and why should I join a gym if I have one here I can use for free?
6. My knee hurts
7. My foot hurts
8. I need to wait until I have an x-ray and CT scan on my lower back because of my foot (doctor thinks sciatica, I just think my foot is fucked)

What I can probably do is walk more. At least after my foot gets sorted out. Noo and I walked for miles yesterday around the Harbour and Opera House and today my foot is killing me. Stupid foot.

d. Keep this table stable

By table, I mean me, my mind. It rhymes with stable... anyway, I'm feeling pretty good this year as far as my mental health goes. I haven't had any serious mood swings for a while actually. If my mind feels stable my body reaps the benefits.

I think I finally have the right combination of medication and I really like my psychiatrist. Now the challenge is to find a way to hold on to this good feeling and maintain that stable table. Too often have I got here only to plunge again. Never as deep as rock bottom. I've only been there once. But I've dropped down low enough to start doubting myself again which in turn makes me feel too scared to keep pushing boundaries.

To keep things running smoothly I will continue my therapy but move it back from weekly to fortnightly. I'll keep reminding myself everything is ok. I have achieved so much and continuing to challenge the status quo only helps me achieve even more.


So, let's check back in with KISS SMART:

Did I keep it simple? 

I think so...

Goal: Help my body feel great

How: Quit sugar, eat whole foods, move my body, monitor my mind
and continue to challenge the boundaries of my comfort zones

Are my goals smart? 

They look pretty smart to me...

Specific: See above

Measurable: By 30 June I aim to be 75kg and happy

Achievable: With 7kg to lose in just over five months to do it in, I think so

Relevant: Absolutely

Time-bound: Yes, to be measured on 30 June 2013

So that is it for the babblingbandit.me KISS SMART goal area number 1 for 2013. I will check in periodically as to where I am tracking over the next six months.


V.


*Not sponsored! Just wanted to mention it because I like The Happiness Institute.

Linking up with Jess at Essentially Jess for #iBOT.

Sugar free banana bread

I have posted several times about what a fussy eater Noo is. You can read here and here how much his eating habits drive me crazy. I'm always swinging between the emotions of fear for his health and exasperation at the stubbornness of that little kid who is so energetic, healthy and happy, yet so under fed. If Noo sat down and ate an entire Happy Meal I think I'd probably cry with joy. You don't hear that from many parents, do you?

Noo decided last week he liked banana bread again so I was more than happy to oblige by making him some. I would make him anything as long as he ate it and it had no sugar - so I can have some too. Yes, I'm back on that bandwagon.

Last Monday I was up late trawling through Pinterest (go on, follow me!) going through the multitude of 'healthy' banana bread recipes. Egg free, gluten free, sugar free, nut free, with nuts, no oil, with oil, vegan... It was all getting overwhelming but I clicked like on a recipe I thought looked pretty good and repinned it.

The pin then showed itself on my Facebook feed and a mum I know through my online study ventures commented on the picture, chucking in her favourite banana bread recipe. It was so simple! But it included the banned substance. A further comment from me asking if I could swap out the sugar with rice malt syrup prompted a comment from my sister's mother in law who said if I was to do that I'd have to up the flour or the batter would be too runny.

And, voila! I had a recipe to try and I had to try it immediately.

At midnight I found myself throwing the ingredients together and by the time the loaf had been baked it was heading towards 1am but the recipe was a success.

Sugar free banana break mark I and Noo with a mouth full of it

Every last mouthful was eaten and the friends and family that had a taste enjoyed this delicious sugar free treat.

After a few requests on Facebook for the recipe I decided to make this delicious sugar free banana bread again, taking photos as I went to publish here on the blog. What better way to get clicks? Surely that title alone has a whole lotta SEO magic happening. Only time can tell.

Without further babbling, here is the recipe:

Sugar free banana bread

Ingredients

125 grams butter
1 cup rice malt syrup
1 egg beaten lightly
3 small-medium ripe bananas
A sprinkle or two of mixed spice or cinnamon (depending how spicy you like it)
1.5 cups of wholemeal self raising flour


Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease and line a loaf tin.

2. Melt butter and rice malt syrup in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

3. Mash bananas in a large bowl. Add flour and spice.

3. Combine cooled butter and rice malt syrup with egg then add to banana, flour and spice. Stir until combined.

4. Pour batter into lined loaf tin and bake for 50 minutes or until cooked.

Mix it, bake it, rise it, cool it, eat it - super easy sugar free banana bread

That's it!

Let me know if you make it and how it goes.

Yum, yum pig's bum.

V.

Disclaimer: Just because this recipe is sugar (fructose) free does not mean it is low in calories but it is super easy to make and super delicious to eat. It is a treat and should be treated as such. I take no responsibility for anyone who wants to gobble up the whole loaf in one go and then steps on the scales only to find they've stacked on a keg or two!

The BB sugar experiment: Off the wagon and on to Santa's Christmas Sugar Sleigh

I need help! A chocoholics anonymous meeting quick! I'm back on it!

On the Santa's Christmas Sugar Sleigh that is.

Merry Christmas and hand me the chocolate!

It has been 19 days since my birthday when I broke my seven week abstinence from sugar with chocolate birthday cake and I haven't been able to get back on the wagon since.

I ranted and raved about how good I felt being sugar free. How refreshed and energetic and headache free I was. You guys congratulated me and it felt great. I lost 5.5 kg in six weeks and it felt great. My skin was clear, my mind alert, my clothes looked great, I was back in my jeans again...

What the fuck happened? The silly season happened, that's what. Let's point the finger! 

Not only are my headaches back but I'm Hungry. All. The. Time. And Santa, I blame you.

So why is it so easy to fall back into old habits even though the new ones make you feel so much better?

I weighed myself this morning and I've only gained 1kg in 18 days which isn't bad but it isn't great either. And I haven't been binging on sugar over the last couple of weeks but I have indulged in ice cream once and chocolate quite frequently, particularly over the last week.

Chocolate is only in the apartment because of Christmas. I bought some for Noo's Advent Calendar and for donating to our preschool's Christmas raffle prize pool. I refuse to accept responsibility - Christmas decorations and messages of Christmas merriment and cheer are EVERYWHERE and are entering my subconscious as a message to indulge.

It is lucky my mum has got on the quit sugar bandwagon because mum and I can be such bad enablers of each other's addiction at any time of the year. My mum has actually been amazing this time around on a diet. She's there where I was before my birthday: determined to resist all temptation despite Christmas. She has dropped several kilos and is feeling so much better in herself and in her clothes. I'm really proud of her.

But it is Christmas. 'Tis the season of let's get merry and eat. And eat. And eat.

My mum makes the best Christmas pudding, brandy butter and custard in the whole world. No really. Absolutely divine. And mince tarts? YUM! There's no way I can resist such deliciousness that only happens once a year.

Do I give in and enjoy Christmas for what it is and restart on 1 January with a whole stack of New Year's resolutions?

Or do I fight Christmas? Get back on the horse (reindeer?) and rejoin the battle to resist all sugary, chocolaty, festive scrumptiousness?

How do you handle Christmas? If you're on the quit sugar bandwagon are you going to stay there or join me on the Santa's Sugar Sleigh until New Year's Day?


V.

The BB sugar experiment: The emotional stages of addiction

It is three months since I first started thinking about dealing with my addiction to sugar. Yes, despite what some people say, my belief is that sugar is addictive. I have gone through the same emotional stages of addiction in my effort to get sober from sugar addiction as I did when I gave up my other vices.

Just thinking about quitting sugar was akin to me contemplating giving up cocaine and alcohol back in the mid 00s. At first it seemed like a ridiculous idea and likely impossible to achieve, but somewhere, deep in my heart, I knew I had to do something. Too many things in my life were not right and all the indicators pointed to that one substance: Sugar.

I started Googling "sugar", "quitting sugar", "is sugar bad"... Those types of search terms. I wanted to know the truth about sugar. I was looking for a way out. I was in denial about my addiction and I wanted someone somewhere to tell me it was ok to keep eating that delicious substance. Kind of like wanting to believe that a couple of glasses of red wine a day was good for me. Or a gram or two of cocaine on the weekend was just me being young and cool and having a good time when really it was destroying me, one line at a time.

My sister or my mum would make comments that maybe Noo's issues with food were because I allowed him to eat too much sugary crap. I got defensive and rebuked that I didn't give him that much crap food, and anyway, how could they know there would be a connection? Maybe Noo was just a fussy eater. Just born that way! The both of them pissed me off. Plus, I'd already had to give up so many of my coping methods (like drink, drugs and ciggies) and I was getting angry at the thought of having to give up chocolate too.

I bought Sarah Wilson's I Quit Sugar and David Gillespie's The Sweet Poison Quit Plan. I started thinking about just how much sugar Noo and I bought and ate. We weren't just eating the added sugar that is found in bottled pasta sauces and yoghurt, we were also eating a huge amount chocolate and lollies. My lapband had helped me lose nearly 20kg but I'd put 6kg back on which made me realise I needed to do more and I made the decision Noo and I would give up sugar together.

Three weeks into our sugar sobriety I relapsed. I just couldn't let go of my crutch. I started bargaining with myself that I didn't have to give up sugar, I could just get my lapband tightened up and start heavily restricting my portion sizes again, but still get chocolate though. Or I could just accept myself as a fat girl and learn to love myself the way I was. Both of these options, while plausible, still didn't address my feeling physically like shit and my failure yet again to start doing something about my health and my weight was making me feel depressed.

On Friday 21 September I received an email from a friend who had signed up to Droptober - Just lose 2kg. I looked into this program and thought this is something I could commit to. From that first day I found out about Droptober something clicked and I stopped eating chocolate and lollies. A couple of weeks went by and I was eating more fruit and vegetables and good healthy meat. Before I knew it I wasn't even craving the white stuff any more. I became more aware of my body's hunger signals which came around three times a day rather than having that constant need to put something in my gob which comes with sugar addiction.

By the end of Droptober, the penny dropped: Not only had I lost 3.5kgs, got my taste buds back for good food and my cooking mojo returning after a long absence, but the headaches I'd been suffering for years had disappeared too. I'd been to the doctor so many times about these headaches that the next step was going to be a referral for a CT scan.

Five weeks sober from sugar and my headaches were gone!

Then the final proof that my sugar addiction is toxic to me was the return of the dreaded headaches this week after I indulged in my birthday cake on Tuesday and Wednesday and last night. Seven weeks of feeling healthy, energetic, well slept, and craving free came to an end on my 38th birthday.

It is not all doom and gloom though. Oh no. In fact, I couldn't be happier! I have finally reached the acceptance phase of the emotional stages of addiction. I have accepted that sugar (that is all sugar, minus whole fruit) is toxic and the deliciousness of it does not outweigh the cost eating it has on my body. Just like alcohol, sugar does bad things to me, just like nuts might do to someone who is allergic to them. I am allergic to sugar: It makes me anxious, depressed, moody, affects my concentration, gives me dreadful headaches and makes me fat, lethargic and stops me from being the person I want to be.

So back on the wagon I go. Being in the acceptance phase doesn't mean that it is going to be easy from here on in, but it is better than when I was in the denial phase.

Sobriety, whether from booze or from sugar takes constant work and vigilance.

Are you on the quit sugar bandwagon too? How are you going with it? What consequences do you suffer from when you overdo it with the white stuff?


V.

Linking up with the fabulous Grace at With Some Grace for FYBF.

babblingbandit.me does Droptober: It was all about the food

One of the best things about registering for Droptober - Just lose 2kg has been the return of my cooking mojo (for pictures see here). When I came home from London five years ago I lost it. I wrote about it back in 2010 so this has clearly been a long term issue. My cooking mojo has come and gone since 2007 but mostly I have been a lazy eater. Especially this year.

Back when I was working the usual Monday to Friday I always spent half my afternoon (if not more) thinking about what I would cook in the evening for dinner. I looked for recipes online or in my many cookbooks and then I picked up anything I needed from the supermarket on the way home. Preparing and cooking food was a way to wind down after a big day at the office. I loved it.

Post my break down in 2007, as my interest in food waned my waistline expanded - weird, right? You'd think I should have lost weight if I didn't care about food any more. But I replaced my drug and alcohol addictions with chocolate, lollies and cake. I ate whatever was easiest: cheese and crackers for dinner, or pizza delivery or greesy Chinese takeaway or coffee and biscuits. Lots of high fat and sugar loaded, low nutrition food.

I tried Lite n Easy, Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers. None of them inspired me to feel any love for fresh fruit and veggies. I even discussed it with my old psychiatrist: Why don't I care about cooking and eating well when it used to be such a part of my daily routine? She thought I might have an association with the whole preparing/cooking/eating ritual with having a glass of wine or four. But I didn't think that was it. Before I lived in London, I never drank during the week and I was cooking most nights then. There had to be more to it.

Now most of my family are watching their weight in the lead up to summer. Even my parents have a plan to get back on the weight loss bandwagon starting from 1 November. Yolanda was trying to give our mum a pep talk the other day to get her psyched. Yo told mum all she had to do was the following, for just one month to see what happens:

1. Quit all sugar
2. Stop eating butter and cheese
3. Eat red meat only once a week
4. Walk every day

That shouldn't be too hard. Yo didn't say she had to count calories or write down what she ate and calculate points or go to the gym. But our mum, the retired chef, exclaimed: "I'll just have to lose interest in food!". Now that is a weird theory, for sure. It makes the assumption that if you want to lose weight you can only eat boring food not worth having an interest in. I know, and I bet you know, that is so not the truth!

Personally, I believe the opposite and participating in Droptober has helped me realise:

When I feel good and care about myself, when I 'heart my body' and want to treat it right, my love affair with cooking and eating good food is reignited. 

The colour and vibrancy, the smells, textures and tastes of fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and nuts, seeds and legumes and grains... become alive again!

How good does this look? YUM!

So here I am, on the evening of the last day of Droptober. As of this morning I am DOWN 3.5kg since the beginning of the month, far exceeding the Droptober goal of losing just 2kg but 2.5kg short of personal goal of 6kg.

But I have achieved a HUGE amount:

I have gone 40 DAYS without a single bit of chocolate

I have been (almost) sugar free for 40 days

My mood has been stable for the whole month (minus 48 hours last weekend)

My energy levels have been high

The headaches I've been suffering from for YEARS have completely disappeared

And, last but by no means least, I have raised $330 (as of this evening)
for the Droptober charities Variety - The Children's Charity and Kid's for Life.

How good is all that!

Rather than singing yeehah and gorging on the nearest bit of chocolate I'm on to the next challenge: Sarah Wilson's "I quit sugar pre-Christmas program" and the BB sugar experiment continues. Plenty more on that to come.


V.

The BB sugar experiment: I want the truth

Sugar really is the big thing at the moment. Since I started thinking about giving up that delicious white substance after reading this blog by another mum, I have read as much information as I can find about it. What I have discovered is a raging and divisive debate. A debate almost as passionate as the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) issue. Everyone seems to have an opinion about it; whether they are scientists, journalists, lawyers, government bodies, academics, and so many of them are conflicting.

How could all this deliciousness be bad?

I am a sceptic by nature. I'm cynical too. The sceptical cynic! I am sceptical about diets that claim you only have to cut out one type of food and you'll lose weight. And I am particularly sceptical about claims that something natural, like fruit, could be bad for you. And, whoa, if someone tries to tell me that exercise is irrelevant to fat loss then, well, as much as I'd like to believe it, I just don't. I'm cynical about radical claims such as these, especially when people are making money from them.

But who am I to understand what the truth is and who I should believe? I'm just another person caught in the never ending cacophony of noise bombarding us about the human diet and how to stay fit and healthy.

The ABC published an analysis of the sugar debate, which pretty much sums up everything I've been reading, in a really clear and informative way. If you are thinking about giving up sugar, I recommend you read it here. Make sure you read the comments, they show you how inflamed the discussion has become. This interview with David Gillespie of Sweet Poison fame (also by the ABC) is interesting for the comments it ignites as well.

One aspect of the argument that really interests me is whether or not sugar is proven to be physically addictive. Dr Robert Lustig, who seems to be one of the loudest on the anti-sugar side, says that it is (check out this podcast here, if only to hear the dulcet tones of Alec Baldwin who interviews him). But then there's another bloke, a Mr David Benton, who says that there's no real evidence to prove that sugar is addictive for humans. You can read his paper here if you want. The most interesting bit I got was that this paper was funded by The World Sugar Research Organization. I'm not saying that this guy has been swayed by this fact but it puts doubt in my mind.

And that's what shits me about all this. This issue, just like the AGW issue, is political. Money and power are involved which makes it difficult to know who to believe. Well, it makes it me cynical about the players involved.

For me, personally, I think sugar is addictive. I think about it and respond to it in just the same way as I did illicit drugs before I got sober over four years ago. If there's chocolate in the house, I gotta eat it. If I'm feeling anxious or tired or sick or upset I gotta eat it. If I want to reward myself or celebrate I gotta eat it. And when I try to abstain from it I crave it like a crazy woman. I don't think I need more evidence than that!

But what about all the other claims about sugar? That sugar is worse for us than some fats, such as saturated fats like butter and animal fat? That sugar is just as bad for our livers as alcohol is? That it causes heart disease? That sugar is actually poison!?

How am I, or anyone else trying to wade through all this, suppose to know?

I just want to know the truth. But is there a truth? Is the 'science settled'? Just like the human induced climate change issue, I don't believe the sugar debate has been settled either.

I'll be keeping an open mind on both issues until they have.

V.

Disclosure
I am just your average chick trying to make sense of the information that's out there with my layman brain. I am writing this as I make my way through a bag of Darrell Lea Choc Coated Honeycomb. If I have made any misrepresentations of any person or fact it was an accident and I blame the chocolate!

The BB sugar experiment: Sugar crash and burn

Week three of I Quit Sugar? No. Starting week one again of the I have a lap-band let's use it shall we diet. Or maybe I'm back on the big is beautiful and becoming way more accepted just check out these fabo girls here and here for instance so don't bother dieting at all diet.

Either way, I couldn't do it. I just could not give up sugar. I have a host of excuses! I lasted three days last week. Just until Wednesday night. I went out on a date (yes, a date!) Wednesday night with a young man I met on RSVP (why I put myself back on there I do not know!). The date was at a pub. The first drink I ordered was a Diet Coke. Second, a Red Bull. Can't get more sugary than that!

Since giving up grog I've taken to energy drinks as my 'going out drink'. Dating when you're teetotal is annoying. People are suspicious of non-drinkers. It is true! Either you're a wowser or a recovering alcoholic. I don't know what is considered worse to most Aussie blokes out there. The energy drink at least gives me a little buzz to feel included.

Now I could take this post in a number of directions:

1. I Quit Sugar FAIL
2. Lap-band FAIL
3. Body image acceptance
4. Online dating as a single parent
5. Online dating as a recovering alcoholic
6. Online dating as a fat girl with a sugar addiction
7. Online dating as a single fat girl in recovery from poly-substance addiction but still in active sugar addiction who also has a kid that she is raising alone
8. Or maybe I could go to bed early...

Yeah, number eight is looking good right now (even though now, effectively it isn't early, because I've been editing this shitty piece for the last hour!). I ain't making any sense. I'll write something proper tomorrow.

Here's a photo Noo took on the weekend. He doesn't like having his picture taken very often and he's never shown any interest in my phone's camera. Until Sunday. He took heaps of them. This is the best. Totally unrelated to the post but hey, I need something for my LinkWithin widget below.

Batman, Wonder Woman and Spiderman...
Copyright Noo Bandit

Night all.

V.

The BB sugar experiment: Don't quit sugar when changing psych meds

It has been a hell of a week. To give a score out of one to ten, one being an emotionally easy week and ten being the worst week of mental-hell-admit-me-now-I-am-a-danger-to-myself, I'd give this week around a seven. Bloody ADHD meds have f-u-c-k-e-d me up really badly.

Shrink and I decided to increase the dose of Concerta I was taking because I didn't think the lower dose was having as good an effect on my concentration as it did initially. The first couple of days of the lower dose was hard but I pushed through and when it levelled out by day three all was good. I figured the same would go for the higher dose. So wrong.

Day two was pretty bad. Cried a lot. The anxiety was horrific. I pushed on though and by day four felt a little better. By day five I felt terrible again. Took a couple of sleeping tablets because they were the only benzos I could find in the house and figured if I could sleep I'd be ok. Two temaz later and I was still awake and anxious as hell. Three hours after that dumped another two and finally got to sleep.

Now before you start to worry, I can take benzos now without getting all addicted on them like I have in the past.

So that was Friday. Saturday was kind of ok. Noo and I went to the Entertainment Quarter and we had fun in the sun. Saturday night was horrible again. I text a friend I knew had some Xanax and she said she could give me some Sunday morning. I knew then that I had to get off the Concerta. What the hell is the point of taking a drug if you need to take others on top to get past the side effects of the first drug? Fucking stupid as.

So what does this all have to do with sugar?

This cup of sugar had been dumped under a tree in our street just
down from our apartment. I thought it was weird until a Twitter friend
said it was a symbol for my quit sugar experiment.
Then I thought it even weirder!

Well before I reached for the benzos, I had some sugar to help me through. Not much. For me, not much at all, just a bowl of ice cream one night (damn you dad for bringing Connoisseur into the house!) and then on Sunday afternoon, after I'd had about three Xanax throughout the day I took Noo to a chocolate cafe on Glebe Point Road for a big chocolate treat. Not bad on the sugar front considering it has only been week 1 and the I Quit Sugar book says "pare back sugar and refined carbohydrates". It doesn't say go cold turkey!

I shouldn't even be admitting this here. I probably shouldn't have been driving the car on Sunday but I was fine, we didn't have any accidents but I was a mess. My motor skills were just normal but my heart was beating so fast and I was so paranoid that something really fucking bad was going to happen but I knew it wouldn't because I knew it was just the stupid Concerta but still that physically sick feeling I get with anxiety wouldn't go away.

Last Monday Shrink even gave me three different relaxation techniques to use if my anxiety got too bad but I fell back on my old standby - the sugar binge - because the other three never even entered me head.

I went back to the pharmacy today and had the repeat script for the lower dose Concerta filled and all was ok. I am ok. Thank goodness! The teensiest bit of anxiety but so much better than the last week. And I've not taken any anxiety meds or any chocolate. Happy me. Tomorrow should be even better!

So week two: Eat fat. I've stocked up on bacon and lean mince and chicken and lots of veggies. I have bought some fruit. I just don't think I can give up on fruit. I'm going to try for the sake of the experiment but I doubt the 'science' on this part of the whole sugar is the devil philosophy. The other hard part is sweetener: I've bought some Stevia but it isn't as good as the bad shit. I love me some aspartame.

Well this is all I can manage. I'm tired. Tuesday is our big play day so I should get a good night's sleep. This is a crap post I know but my imagination is off with the fairies trying to repair itself after a seven day thrashing by psychiatric pharmaceuticals.

I hope, if you managed to get this far, that you are well. That your brain is kind to you. That your soul is calm. Thanks for reading. All of you. It helps.

V.

The BB sugar experiment: Sugar and me, a little bit off history

Today is day 1, week 1 of mine and Noo's attempt at Sarah Wilson's I Quit Sugar experiment. We have started to cut back our sugar intake. I've only made a few small changes so far but at least that is something.

Noo had his sachet of oats for breakfast, as usual, but instead of adding more honey to the already sweetened breakfast I left it off completely. When I tasted a bit, I baulked. It just didn't taste sweet enough! I didn't think Noo would have a bar of it but he didn't even notice the lack of extra sweetener. I was really amazed. He is doing better than me so far! For dinner he ate two lamb chops without tomato sauce - a miracle.

I had a muesli bar that I found down the bottom of my handbag for brekky. Terribly high in sugar, I know, but we left the house in such a rush that I didn't have time to prepare something more healthy. I will get organised over this week. I did chuck out our car lolly stash (usually party mix or snakes but today it was a whole bag of eucalyptus and honey lollies). When I got my morning coffee I bought a chicken roll rather than a sweet pastry, like I usually do. Dinner was salad, lamb cutlets and some leftover pasta. I had a reasonable serve and was very content.

Now, for the people who have only started reading my blog recently I thought I'd give a little history about my weight issues and what has brought me here doing the I Quit Sugar plan.

Before I started blogging about deep and meaningful shit like who Noo's dad was (part 3 is coming I promise!) and how I was addicted to benzos for a short time, or writing poems about my drunken years in London, I was blogging regularly about my lap-band and my life long battle with weight issues. I think it is about time I revisit that. I'm getting fat again.

Sugar and me: A little bit of history

I'm a [lap]Bandit

When I started this blog on 11 August 2010 (OMG, I'm past the two year mark!), I was a massive 100kg. It was the biggest I'd ever been (actually, I was 104kg the week before Noo was born in 2008). I had tried everything to drop the kilos over the years but my weight always yo-yoed. I felt fat, unsexy, unloveable and unacceptable in a world that is so body conscious and judgemental.

Before lap-band and two years later
For more before and after shots check out this page

When I made the decision to get a lap-band I was worried about my health and my future. Coming from a family where there is heart disease and cancer on both sides, I knew I had to do something. Having Noo made me give a shit about how long I lived and the quality of life I wanted for me and my boy.

In that first post I wrote this:

"My problem used to be booze... I've since given up the devil's juice and have been proudly sober for 2+ years.  The only problem being that I picked up a replacement addiction - sugar!  Sweet anything. Chocolate mainly and lollies, ice cream, cake, doughnuts, brownies, Tim Tams...'

I still have a sugar addiction. I always will. Just like I will always have an addiction to alcohol and cocaine. The difference is, I am in recovery from the latter two. I have completely abstained from drugs and alcohol for over four years. Sugar, on the other hand, I'm in full blown active addiction.

On 6 September 2010 I had surgery to have a lap-band installed. It was drastic but I knew in my heart drastic measures had to be taken. Getting a lap-band was the best thing I could have done for long term sustained weight loss. It was not a lazy way out, like some people think it might be. In fact, managing life with a lap-band is challenging. It can be uncomfortable, if not down-right painful if you get food stuck, and it can be embarrassing if you need to purge the food that got stuck because it ain't getting out any other way. (For stories about getting food stuck in a lap-band check out here.)

But I have managed it - my lap-band. For nearly two years I have managed life with a foreign object wrapped around my oesophegus to restrict the amount of food that can get down my throat and into my stomach and I have lost 20kg. The weight loss was slow and steady (check out my goal list here for deets). I was very good with my food intake for about the first six months but slowly and surely sugary foods found their way back into my diet.

Lap-band basics

The band is like a doughnut ring full of fluid that is clamped around the bottom of the oesophegus to cause restriction around the top of the stomach (see gory pics of my band being installed here) creating a smaller pouch above. Food comes down the throat, sits in the pouch for about 30 seconds and then falls through to the stomach. As the food pushes through the band it puts pressure on the vagus nerve (pronounced like Vegas, the party city!) which sends the message to the brain that the stomach is full, even though it isn't. This feeling of satiety should hopefully occur after only about half to one cup of food.

The fluid level in the band is adjustable: too tight and you can't even get water through, too loose and you might as well not have one. The game a bandit is always playing is 'find the sweet spot'. Because we are all different sizes there's no one size fits all with lap-bands. Each bandit needs the perfect amount of saline fluid in their band: the perfect amount that makes it possible to get food down, but causes the bandit to slow down their eating and restricts the kind and amount of food they can eat. This is done by the doctor injecting into or removing fluid from the lap-band through a port that is just under the flesh around the left side of the body.

Sounds like a pain in the arse, doesn't it! It is. But it was worth it for me. Definitely! I do not regret a thing. My lovely lap-band helped me do what no other diet has done: lose weight and keep the bulk of it off. But...

What's my lap-band up to now?

Earlier this year I suffered a bout of gastro. I was up for hours chucking my guts up. Now, as a bandit, I vomited all the time. Or PBed, as the bandit lingo goes. Productive Burp. Gross, but true. PBing is ok with me. Food makes it to the top of the band but can't fit through. Like bread, pasta, rice. Or a mouthful that is too big or too carelessly chewed. Chucking that mouthful up is no probs for me because the food has not made it down to the stomach to mix with all the acidy juices down there so when it comes up it tastes the same was as it went down.

Proper vomiting, on the other hand, is a totally different kettle of tacos. Once food is through to the other side, ie in the stomach, it ain't getting back up past the band very easily. No matter how hard your gastro-ridden body wants to expel the bug that has invaded it. I learnt about this the hard way. 12 frigging hours retching, my body spasming in pain as it tried to eject the virus, while my lap-band that has been surgically stitched into my abdomen painfully rides up and down with each convulsion.

I should have taken myself to the hospital way before I did but I was scared they'd take all the fluid out of my band and I wouldn't have any more restriction, so I'd start over eating again. In the end I couldn't hack it any more. At 3am I was pumped with morphine and anti nausea drugs and had all but a small amount of fluid removed. The morphine was great and the anti nausea stuff was a massive relief. By the time I was back home again and putting my feet up it wasn't long before I was hungry again.

The sensation of being able to eat anything I wanted without worrying about it getting stuck was so luxurious. Bread, pasta, rice, potato back in my life? Hello carbohydrates! I could eat steak, go out for dinner without worrying about getting stuck, I could eat sushi! And even though the restriction had been let out I still couldn't eat that much. My stomach had shrunk so much I was amazed!

I had a follow up appointment at my weight loss surgery centre and they were really pleased with me because I weighed in at 79 kilos - the lowest I'd been since I'd lived in London and was on a healthy balanced diet of beer, cereal and class As (note sarcasm here). The doctor said I'd reached my ideal weight range and if I felt I could eat responsibly with my smaller stomach there was no reason to add the fluid back in.

I was stoked to say the least! I figured I'd be able to incorporate the healthy carbs (sourdough bread, a little rice and pasta) back in my diet and as long as I stayed clear of the sugary/fatty shit I'd be ok.

What has really happened?

Confession time here, I haven't stayed clear of bad food. If anything, I've been in down right binge mode! This year got pretty shitty for a while. I've talked about it heaps in this blog, but if you're only just reading for the first time - I was really not in a good way during the first few months of this year. I was suffering from symptomatic anaemia which caused exhaustion, low mood, anxiety, restless legs, constipation, hair loss. At the time I didn't realise I was anaemic, I just had the symptoms and I thought my depression was taking hold again. What do I do when depressed? Eat of course! And what kind of food? Sugary food!

So here I am, not far from my two year bandiversary and I'm 85.7kg. There, I've said it! Nearly back to 86 kilos! That's a 7kg weight gain since February this year. I have got to do something about it. I could go back to my surgeon and get my lap-band filled but that would mean not being able to eat bread/pasta/rice. It also makes eating other healthy foods like lean red meat and chicken very difficult. My iron levels have halved again since June so I really can't afford to not eat meat.

Where to next?

So quitting sugar it is! If I cannot make a success of this over the next eight weeks and drop 7kg then I am going back to get a fill. And anyway, this is not just about losing weight, it is about gaining control and repairing my sugar loaded taste buds. Its about not being slave to yet another addiction. It's about helping my mood naturally and stabilising my energy levels. And it is about getting my boy to eat a healthy balance diet so he can grow big and strong.


And so begins the experiment!

V.

Fussy eaters: We need to quit sugar

Noo is one of the fussiest eaters I know. I've heard some shocking stories about other kids too, like the one that subsists on nothing but fruit toast and then there's another kid I heard about the other day that will only eat canned spaghetti. Breakfast. Lunch. And dinner.

Then there are the kids that eat everything. I am so frigging jealous of those kids' mums. We know one little boy who will snack on cucumber at the park while other kids have muesli bars and other junk. Another baby I know eats cold grilled mushrooms. Without being force fed! I'm for real here! I seriously shit you not. Even my eight month old niece, Mala, eats more than Noo does on a daily basis. Noo is three and eight months!

Noo has been a fussy eater since the day he was born. After he eventually evacuated my body after a 39 hour labour, he refused to attach and I had to be hand expressed by a midwife. We were in hospital over Christmas for about six days and he left there 370 grams under his birth weight. For seven long weeks I tried to get that bub to attach but it was no use. I double pumped to express what I could for him but he still wasn't gaining enough. It was terrifying.

I eventually had to put him on formula just to make sure he was eating enough and by the 8th week he finally started to gain some weight. It was slow. And he is no different now. Noo is indifferent to eating. He only likes a few kinds of food. He'll eat most things laden with sugar (chocolates, lollies, cake frosting, ice cream) like most kids. But he also loves sushi. Strange, but true. He absolutely loves those little cooked tuna rolls with soy sauce and pickled ginger. Seriously! And wait for it. His favourite bit is the seaweed on the outside. WTF? I don't even really like the 'black bit', as Noo calls it.

Usually Noo's best meal of the day is breakfast. Most days his grandmother or I can get him to eat a bowl of warm oats with honey. But when he is sick, like he has been for the last week, he just doesn't eat at all. Even chocolate doesn't interest him. He can lose a couple of kilos every time he gets a cold. The weird thing though he is always full of energy and always has a smile on his gob (except when I try to take his picture!).

Check out what we had for breakfast today...

Click on the picture to see it better

For Noo I served dry Nutrigrain which he seems to like at the moment but didn't touch this morning. It was on sale at Aldi so I thought I'd give it a go. It is so sweet I really expected Noo to like it. He drank all his freshly squeezed juice and drained the yogurt squeezie. This I was happy with. Only a couple of strawberries were eaten but he sucked back that antibotics and he has no trouble eating the vitamin chews.

I ended up eating the fresh fruit, washed down with black coffee accompanied by the multitude of tablets I take every day.

Everything on that tray, bar my meds, has been sweetened. Since I first started reading Sarah Wilson's "I quit sugar" a couple of weeks ago, I have been really aware of the fact that Noo and I eat Too. Much. Sugar.

Could too much sugar be making my son a fussy eater?

Tomorrow Noo (although he doesn't really realise it yet) and I are starting Sarah's eight week program to see if we can turn this fussy eating around. Noo and I will spend the next week reducing our sugar intake. I plan to make this experiment a blog series. I've already been doing a stack of research on the whole sugar controversy. And yes, it is controversial because there are so many differing opinions out there about just how bad sugar is to us. And not just sugar. The different kinds of sugar. Its a bloody minefield out there!

I'm nervous about it. Shitting myself actually. Scared about how to deal with Noo and scared about letting go of my one last vice. I am not going to kid myself that this will be easy, or even possible. I couldn't even complete a bet with my mum and sister recently that I could go a whole month without chocolate.

But I'm will to give it a go. It can't hurt. It would be amazing if I could get Noo to eat better and if I could get back on my weight loss journey. I've got 10-15 kegs to go! More on that next time...

Have you quit sugar before? Or do you have a fussy eater? Any tips?

V.