Deficiency!

These last few days, especially the last three or four, have been ROUGH.  I’ve been feeling resentful and bitter and angry and jealous.  I’ve been a bitch and snarky and barky and generally a jerk to be around. Ray….well…..he’s one of those guys that is repelled by any emotion (his or other’s) that is not “fine”.  But…he’s been a grumpy bear these days also and I was chalking it up to my shitty attitude….not so.  Then this morning after a couple blogs and blog comments a few different thoughts that have been swirling around all came together.

Let me take you back to mid of December for a moment, when Gracie (our boxer) started getting exceptionally irritating.  She would climb into our laps and put her face right in ours and howl.  She’d stand 5 feet away and bark at us for 20 minutes.  She’d get really bite-y when playing.  She refused to get out of the kitchen (which is a skill that we have trained her on, she knows not to cross the kitchen line) unless you pushed her out physically.  We just figured that she was lonely and bored.  Then, on New Year’s Day evening we went for dinner at Ray’s mom’s house and had the opportunity to feed her there.  In looking at her food and then looking at her, it occurred to me that perhaps we weren’t feeding her enough. Now….don’t panic, she’s not starving by ANY stretch…and she’s a big, meaty dog…..but she looked like maybe she wasn’t quite meaty enough anymore.  We fed her another small meal that night and then upped her food a bit (the vet had her on a diet for a few months previous to this) and she is once again a docile, calm, obedient and loving dog.  It took two days.

So back to the human part of the family.  When Tara cut her video and then wrote her post about not having enough carbs during Whole30 to stave off extra depression and anxiety, I foolishly told myself that “I’m not going a Whole30, that can’t be it”.   Over the evening I read Tara’s blog again and then took a step back (turning out to never be a bad move, that “step back”) and assessed what we’ve been eating and how it stacks up against what has been successful for me in the past.

I follow the feeding principle of Whole30 if not the rest of the criteria, eating a meal large enough to get you to the next, times 3.  Limit snacking to not at all or only when needed.  Limit fruit to “occasionally”.  It became clear to me immediately this morning that my awful attitude and inner feelings are because I’m not eating enough.  It also became clear to me that Ray’s bad mood is HIS own bad mood…probably because he’s not eating enough….because if I’m not then he’s not…he’s 6’0 and 220 and eating the same as I am.

So…..this morning I upped our breakfast, packed a bit more stew into our lunches and threw an apple in my bag. I also brought a jar of almond butter to work with me….because when I was MOST successful I used to eat AB out of the jar at work…..not that the AB made me successful….just that if I was doing it and enjoying it at my most successful….then I can certainly do it now as well, no harm!

This all wouldn’t be overy noteworthy….except that I have been a twisted woman these days and I do NOT like it.  I am not a jealous person, I have nothing to worry about and Deanna is not a blonde bimbo, she’s just a woman doing what she feels is right and having camaraderie with the likeminded people she works with….and that includes my husband.  Only…..Ray would eat a plate of grass clippings if you put it in front of him, he places NO value on food whatsoever.  He has lived with and through the last four years of me changing our diet (“diet” being the food we eat), talking about it all the time, sharing my research, teaching him what I’m learning.  And then a friendly woman at work starts talking about similar things……so ya, I can see him coming home and relating the conversations they have…..because it’s the stuff that we talk about.  My nutrition-deficient brain did NOT appreciate that in the manner in which it was meant.  Deanna (and her beliefs) are no threat to me, it’s just conversation.

When I started thinking about feeling under-appreciated I started assessing how things are different in the last few weeks than they have been previously.  Ya, they’re not.  Nothing has changed except my reaction to it.  Enter nutrition depleted brain again.

This all happened before I’d even gotten dressed this morning.  So….I figured it out thanks to Tara’s posts and Lana’s comment on my last blog.  And then, standing naked in front of the mirror, assessing my body while blowdrying my hair, I had this thought:  “Whatever, suck it up until May when you’ve met your weight loss goals, you don’t need any extra food, it’ll just slow you down.”.  So MEAN, that first thought!

I’ve been working hard to balance my life out and to think that I would notice this failing and not fix it would be absurd!  So I can either get a divorce or I can up our intake….more avocado/coconut milk/mayo/almond butter/coconut oil and more beets/carrots/potatoes/turnips/yams/squash.  Our protein intake is pretty good, I think we’re probably on our high end of the spectrum.

So thank you to Tara for her vid and post, thank you to Lana for her honest comment, thank you to the article I saw the other day that talked about BMR and calorie intake, thank you to Robb Wolf’s tweet that said “Don’t trust anyone or anything.  Experiment and see what works.”.  And thank you to myself for taking the time to honestly assess the situation and rank my mental health (and subsequently my relationship) higher than my desire to shed weight.

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