Since I'm not in the mood to write a whole, big, thing about why the Winter made "the exhaustion thing" worse than ever, I'll save that for another time. Ridiculous as it seems to say this in the middle of July, I can now finally say that knowing that I got to where I don't need to worry about getting the legs and back used to walking a few miles again (as long as I don't have to carry a bunch of extra stuff/weight in my bag), I've decided that I need to address the matter of "the exhaustion thing" (separate from whether or not I go out walking or do any workout DVD's).
I'll probably get more into "the exhaustion thing" some other time. It has been something I've been kind of managing for quite awhile now. In most recent times, I've been "managing" it the way many other people do (or at least as I've read in a book about adrenal fatigue) - with nicotine and mild coffee with lots of light cream in it and, in recent times, with sugar at least in the first tall mug full. There was a time when I mostly drank only tea but would get coffee out. Then there was a time when I started to drink instant coffee with half-and-half and no sugar. At some point, tea started to give me heartburn, so I switched to my own mild coffee and eventually started using light cream instead of half-and-half. My own coffee (again, mild) with cream in it keep me from getting jittery (the way I do with stronger coffee).
I've often joked (although it's not a joke at all, really) that the nicotine gives me "mental energy" to be able to keep managing all the "mental files" well, without letting some of what needs to stay safely within some of those "files" start "leaking out" as a result of mental exhaustion; while the cream in the coffee (fat in cream) is calming, and the sugar in it gives me physical energy. It also keeps away any tendency to get heartburn (which has never been a big problem for me at all, but which has been more of one in recent times).
Oddly, I'm otherwise someone who doesn't do all that badly when it comes to eating healthy foods. In more recent times (but even in less recent times) I could probably use more of certain vegetables. Generally, however, whether it was my own eating or my kids', my policy was pretty much not to eat anything that didn't provide nutrition.
I've also often joked that I eat like a six-year-old. Actually, I've always kind of figured that six-year-old children kind of have the right eating attitude (except for some of preferences they tend to have), which is to eat when one is hungry (and otherwise don't spend a lot of time thinking about food, eating food, or otherwise spinning one's wheels over food). While I know there are families, or cultures, where people make a big deal about food and eating tons of stuff; I come from a family in which that wasn't the case. We had plenty to eat, but sweets were either a small treat here or there, or else something for holidays and birthdays.
In any case, it's always seemed to me that six-year-olds who don't come from food-focused cultures/families tend to care little about food unless the child is one with a big frame, in which case it seems to me like bigger-framed kids tend to need to eat more.
Since my own children were all small-framed kids (the kind with the narrow backs and shoulders), it just seemed to me once girls got past six their interest in food may slightly "improve". Boys (of all frames) seemed to start caring about food more, mainly because they generally seemed to need to eat more.
Anyway, I'm a picky eater. Based on so much of what I've seen on the Internet, as well as things I've heard in "real life"; it does seem as if nobody likes a "picky eater". It can seem as if a whole society has been raised to think someone gets "more points" if he's someone who "will eat anything". I, on the other hand, see that as "not being very discriminating" at best, and at worst, being more interest in food than one should be.
In fairness to people who "can eat anything", I've always just kind of assumed that some people (like small-framed women, for example) aren't particularly designed to accommodate (digest) big, heavy, loads of foods (particularly harsh or "strong") foods.
None of this is to say that I have any particular problem with foods. I like the occasional holiday binge as much as the next person does. (Well, I suppose, maybe, not QUITE as much as some "next persons" do.) For the most part, my binges tend to be a little less "binge-y" than some other people's. They also tend, I know, to be a little more picky when it comes to whether something is way-too-sweet "for the sake of being sweet"; or whether it meets my pickier standard of not being all that sweet at all.
Just last evening, I had a new kind of snap peas in the freezer and thought I'd have those for dinner. They were so sweet I couldn't eat them. Somehow, to me, if I want "sweet" I'll eat candy. If I want peas I want "sweet" but not THAT sweet. When it comes down to it, I pretty much can't tolerate much "sweet" at all - which is why the sugar in the coffee seems like a good delivery system for getting sugar into me if I'm feeling that "borderline nauseous" that one can feel when blood sugar gets low.
Anyway, in recent times (but particularly last Winter), I've got my whole system messed up. I know that. Not being able to get out in the sun and fresh air probably has meant the usual Vitamin D deficiency that so many people who live in Northern regions so often have. I do have the "advantage" of fair skin; but that doesn't help the person who doesn't get out in the sun from one end of a week to the next (and it's not as if there's ever a guarantee that the sun will even be out when one does get out).
Another side to the whole food thing, though, is that a small-framed woman of my age really doesn't need as much food as someone much younger does. Then a gain, of course, there is "food" and there's "nutrition"; so I'm not going to get more into that other than to say that I know that by the middle to late Winter, I wasn't just eating nothing but junk, but I was ONLY able to eat junk if I ran into those days when I couldn't get what I needed, ended up on a downward spiral to complete lack of appetitie AND inability to even be able to imagine drinking anything but mild coffee with a "ton" of light cream in it.
In my "real" life (my "pre-bizarre situation life" and particularly, my "pre-last-Winter" life) I'm not someone who snacks or who can even eat if I'm not hungry. I'm also someone who doesn't need to eat much in one sitting. In fact, there's where I feel most like a six-year-old: If I go to a restaurant and the meal is the usual kind of big load of food that is served in restaurants, right off the bat my appetite kind of goes away. It's not that I don't know from the start that I'll be bringing home a couple of meals' worth of the dish later. It's just that I don't want to look at a mountain of food in the first place. The other thing is, if I'm out eating with someone else I'm more interested in talking to them than eating - which is why I like coffee out with someone better than I like a whole meal out.
Not long ago I watched the PBS program on gender identity and related issues. They had people (experts) addressing the subject from a number of a different "angles" (areas of expertise). It was mentioned that brains associated with "female-ness" did tend to be more prone to anorexia. ("Anorexia", without the "nervosa" attached to it, means lack of appetite. My mother, who was on a mix of medications in the last years of her life, went through times when she absolutely could not eat.)
I know that no anorexia and/or particularly Anorexia Nervosa or other eating disorders are not joking matter. But, over the course of my adult life I've occasionally (and without forgetting the sobering and disastrous reality of eating disorders and problems) joked that it would be so easy for me to "be anorexic" because I didn't have a big appetite in the first place and cared so little about food/eating,
For the most part, I was content with my reasonable eating habits. I've always been someone who easily forgets to eat (until the "sugar shakes" set in, as they sometimes do). Under extreme "life crisis" the appetite does seem to be the first thing to go, but I mean "crisis", not just "extreme stress". I'm someone with good coping skills, and I tend to manage most stress (even the complicated and/or extreme kind) reasonably well).
When I started to think more about complete loss of appetite has been a couple of situations over the last year when I was in circumstances that were particularly frazzling (and for "legitimate" reasons). But, more noticeably and dramatically, last Winter when I had more and more days on which I either didn't have that light cream for coffee and/or couldn't smoke as often or as much as I needed in order to "feel like me" (clear-headed, reasonably energetic much of the time, even if I wasn't up for tackling any big, physical-labor, projects and hadn't been for a long time).
Even before Winter, I'd already developed some bad eating habits because I was running out of steam and started to notice getting those "sugar shakes" more often. While I once made sure I kept one candy bar in the refrigerator and left it there until I really needed it, I'd started getting that low-sugar weakness more and more. Before Winter, I was generally getting to the grocery store at least one day/evening during the week and one day on the weekend. Once in awhile (toward the end of "before-Winter" I did get to a store by walking, and once in awhile someone would give me a quick ride to one store or another).
Without all the details about what I'd buy and when I'd buy it, or whether I used up something (like light cream) more quickly than I'd planned; the main point about before the Winter is that even if I ran out of light cream, it wouldn't be too long before I'd get out and buy some. It was the same with nicotine. Since my general aim has been to cut down, and ultimately quit, for a long time now (although since what has happened has been, instead, an increased need for nicotine); I had been picking up a few e.cigarettes for in-between times. Depending on the circumstances, sometimes I'd cut back some. Other times, I'd load up on nicotine "as needed" in order to "feel like me"; and then I'd do without, sometimes, for a day or so.
Because I'd been trying to kind of slow down and get more rest than those previous nineteen-hour days I'd been having; but also because one leg or another needed me off it long enough to really get some rest, I'd started trying to sleep more. For the most part, and in spite of any number of other things that were contributing to "the exhaustion thing" (at least some of the time), I was doing what I could do to try to kind of rest more
With Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas in the "pre-horrible-weather" months and weeks, there was pretty much always some candy for the sugar shakes if they happened (even after I gave quite a bit of it away). Most of the time I was able to make sure I had light cream, or else someone else made sure I had some if it was going to snow, or had snowed. I tried to keep some boxed milk in case I ran out of cream, and coffee with that in it was better than nothing. Like tea, coffee with milk in it tended to cause heartburn, or just kind of a borderline-nausea thing. I can't really drink other hot drinks for the purposes I drink coffee.
For a long time I've joked that I have "a drinking problem" because, like an addict, I start worrying about running out of light cream if it seems like I'm anywhere near doing so. I'm OK with instant coffee, coffee bags, or whatever other version of coffee there is. And, if I at least have half-and-half that's better than nothing. Other than that, if I don't have some version of coffee that works for me I'm in trouble because I just can't always drink something cold (again, however, this depends on when it is and what the circumstances are).
So what happens with me is that if I can't get the coffee that isn't sickening I'll go with tea. Honey is less likely to cause heartburn than sugar or substitute are. Tea with no sweetener just makes me sick. Sometimes I prefer tea - but that's not when it's coffee with light cream that I need.
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