I AM LOSING IT

If you've been around here much, you might've noticed I do more ranting and bellyaching than musing--especially in the last year or so.  'Course it's a wonder I muster the energy to do any of it, what with all the fanning going on.  One memorable night I decided to annotate my state: every 20-23 minutes from 10:30 pm to 7:40 am, I had a hot flash. I'll leave the calculation of how much sleep I actually got to you.  Can you imagine how charming I was at work the next day? 
I finally got fed up  ranting and bellyaching on one particular topic (see The Fattest Tuesday EVER) and decided to do something about it. Turns out, neither whinging nor weeping in your doctor's office about persistent weight gain does a damn thing about it. (Go flipping figure!!)   Cute Persian doctor's dismissive 'you're menopausal; it's gonna be harder to lose weight!' was no great help either.

I bought this book for a buck at Salvation Army and have read just enough to know just how my hormones are conspiring against me: with estrogen depletion, your fat cells get fatter.  That's right.  Without your eating any more or worse than you typically do, as your body accommodates to the estrogen shutdown, it decides to store reserves in your fat cells.

Were I in the business of criticizing the Almighty, I might be inclined to call this a design flaw.  Not that I'm in that business; I'm just saying...

Regardless of wondering why I'm at this stage and many my age and even older than me are not; regardless of how embarrassing it may be to be suddenly bathed in sweat while exercising no more than my mouth; REGARDLESS of that smug, startled expression that passes over some women's faces when they recognize what's happening and silently thank Big Pharma for suppressing these natural goings-on in themselves: I. am. not. going. to. accept. gaining. 10. pounds. or more. per year. any more. Vanity, thy name is MtnGrl (clearly a little long in the tooth to be dubbed a grl, but, gimme a break, wouldja?)


I made my BEFORE shot -- me and my twin chins-- my laptop's wall paper.  Now THAT's some motivation staring you in the face!

Buy the book if you want-- the upshot of it is, to mitigate menopausal weight gain, (which, as you might recall is in addition to the slower and slower metabolism you start to experience around age 30) you gotta move your ass.  Bellyaching burns no calories, as far as I know.   If you're not sleeping, you better be working out.  I basically eat egg whites, salmon, spinach and spring mix, with the odd 100 calorie Wholly Guacamole snack pack slurped down for good measure, and I weigh 8.6 pounds less than I weighed one month ago today! Anytime I start to think, well, that's not so much, I envision Oprah pulling those pounds of meat in a wagon; it adds up-- (it's .8 less than I weighed yesterday!)   I'm not tracking inches so much, but my size 10s are getting mighty loose in the waist and hips--and I've almost got Michelle Obama arms!
Sweaty or not, here I come!  I see svelte in my future.