I seem to be suffering pretty badly from the above munchies today. Unfortunately weight gain is a side effect of the medication I'm prescribed to keep me in a state of mind considered normal, as well as other trivial things like going outside, getting out of bed and sleeping. Unfortunately last year I hit a bad patch.
Some of you may remember that i'd just come out of a particularly stressful time of my life when my Mum, who had been sick for months and losing weight at an alarming pace and was in hospital for almost a year - in and out of intensive care, was diagnosed with Cancer. None Hodgkins Lymphoma if we're going to get all technical about it. And during her time in hospital, before she even started on the chemo she contracted Pneumonia and was put on the now defunct Pathway programme (And i'm glad it's defunct, it was the most painful thing i've ever seen. Watching my Mum in a morphine induced semi coma be taken off all nutrients and to be allowed to, essentially, starve to death). During that time I was still working, I was eventually forced to take a month off to sit beside my Mums bed during the above Pathway time but before that I was still working. And balancing as much house work I could manage and balancing the books by paying rent etc for my Dad, who honestly didn't have a clue how to work out what money was coming in and out as Mum had always taken control of that. At the time I also got it into my head that I wasn't allowed to show weakness. Dad was struggling, so was my Brother and I was damned if they were gonna worry about me, the youngest, as well. I remember going into work on a day off and my (then) assistant manager commenting on how calm I was being, and how I was taking the fact that my mum probably wasn't going to make it in my stride. I remember shrugging that off, but when I think about the comment today I think about how cold hearted I must have seen to the rest of the world. My mum came through it, and a few months later I had a full on break down. I remember just lying in my bed in the dark one minute, and the next minute all the feelings and worries and anger that I has buried deep down emerged and I just couldn't stop crying. My boyfriend then, who hadn't been with me too long said he was expecting it. I've always been like that, kept things bottled up until they explode out of me in a torrent of tears and (usually) profanities.
This cycle repeated itself when I started struggling with work. Sleeping has never been my strongest asset, and by the time I eventually went to the Dr's I hadn't been sleeping for more than 3 hours a night for coming up to a year. This meant that when I went into work I was essentially a walking talking Zombie and being in a customer service based job did not make that any easier. It's really hard to be chipper when you feel like your dead. I didn't say anything to anyone about how much I was struggling to get out of bed every morning, and how often I just wanted to sit down in the middle of work and cry. Unfortunately, and stupidly of me, I felt weak and embarrassed by the fact that my mental health was deteriorating. I was put on Zopiclone and Sertraline tablets at the time, but the sertraline just exasperated my anxiety attacks and I became somewhat agoraphobic. Now I'm on Mirtazapine.
I can't say Mirtazapine made me fat. I was fat before I started taking them (If i'm honest I cant actually remember being thin) but they certainly contributed to me putting 2 stone on in a year, and made getting that 2 stone (and the 10 more I need to lose) off more difficult. It generally slows down weight loss, but it also makes you want to go all Pac Man on the kitchen cupboards and eat anything that isn't nailed down. Today I'm feeling it's effect particularly bad but i'm counteracting it by water and propointed up bowls of fruit and fibre. It just makes dieting seem even more like an uphill struggle sometimes. But at the same time Mirtazapine works for me, in the sense that it helps me sleep a lot more, and I do seem to more stable now as oppose to feeling up one minute and down the next. I just want to be a skinny minny who takes Mirtazapine in an ideal universe.
One other thing, and on a much brighter note (I simply must stop these deep, down, depressing blog posts, and I'm sorry for yet another) I have currently discovered one way to take away such naughty,nasty mirtazzy munchies is this wonderful bar of goodness.
(sorry it's a wrapper - I didn't have the good sense to snap a picture before I rammed it down my throat hole)
It's the Co-Op's own, 85% Cocoa Ghanaian Dark Chocolate - It's 6 pp a bar, but as it's dark and 85% it is far more satisfying than a bar of Dairy Milk or what ever. Once I've eaten it my Hunger Monkey is satisfied for a while, rather than me eating it and looking around for something else to eat as that so often happens with milk chocolate.
As always, thanks for listening and
Peace Out
x x
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