Gasp

Just completed 50 min and 7.66km on the crosstrainer. Had to push hard for most of the was and those extra ten minutes at the end were bloody awful, but it has to be done if I am going to reach my goal of 1 hour every two days.

I am also trying very hard now with regards to what I am eating. A small amount of carbohydrate twice a day, protein at every meal and loads (and loads more)vegetables.

Smug

Much as I hate to admit it to myself, never mind anyone else, when I was a skinny miss I was fairly smug about it. Until about 10 years ago, I weighed 7.5 stones. I wasn't on a diet, in fact I ate a ridiculous amount of cream cakes and chocolate bars. I only put on the regulation 1.5 St when I was pregnant and with no effort at all was back in my jeans when Baby Bear was 3 weeks old. Over the next decade I put on about half a stone ( about 3 kilos). I 'knew' that people who were overweight 'simply had to eat less and exercise more.'

Well I am paying for that smugness now. I use my crosstrainer every two days. I am eating much less....but I am not losing weight. Ha, the simple things in life are not so simple after all.

I have made some progress though. Having come off the pizotifen (which was responsible for the weight gain, but not for the weight staying put), I am now back to a more normal eating pattern. Thze current migraine med, a beta blocker, is not affecting my pulse which makes it easier for me to exercise. Today when I had my nutritionist appointment (well, don't all the best people have nutritionists?)I told him I wanted to move on..

Next goal- increase from 40 min to 1 hour every two days on the crosstrainer, one stone in weight lost. Both by Christmas.

Good migraine news

Initially, I was a bit concerned about the efficacy of
Metoprolol in the treatment of my migraines. I am happy to report that things are now going much better than I had anticipated.

The very positive thing about this drug is that it is having a dramatic effect on the chronic face pain that I have with migraine. This can be low-medium-hight intensity and results in having to take painkillers on an a,most daily basis (I am aware of rebound pain, and for the most part this isn't a problem). I am now having more days when I don't need any painkillers at all than days when I might need one of two doese. This is great. The downside is that weightgain is still an issue with this drug. Darn it! The added problem is that my pulse won't go above about 110, which makes exercise on my cross-trainer difficult. But I am not giving in and in addition I am seeing a nutritionist to help me get back into a good routine of eating, both in terms of what I eat and when I eat it. I am feeling fairly positive about this.

What I am not feeling positive about is my BMI of 28.1. For someone who was skinny all their life, this is an unhappy situation. I am going to calculate my BMI at the start of every month and hopefully it will be on a downwards trajectory.

Losing is winning

When it comes to weight loss,anyway.

As you will know if you hang about this blog, I have migraines. Terrible migraines ( why am I adding 'terrible', I wonder? Let's face it, if you have had a migraine, you know that they are all terrible. Suffice to say, some of them have been more terrible than usual).

I would like to shake by the hand the person (people?)who linked tryptan drugs with migraine prevention/treatment. I take Pizotifen on a daily basis and Zomig when I have an actual attack. As well as the actual migraine itself, I can get a lot of head/face/neck pain which the Pizotifen helps to keep at bay.

However, Pizotifen does have one significant drawback - weight gain. Here's a little something that I found on the net:

Investigating the obese patient
The causes of obesity include:

excessive calorie intake
myxoedema
Cushing's syndrome
polycystic ovary syndrome
medication (oral contraceptive pill, corticosteroid analogues, sulphonylureas, tricyclic antidepressants, pizotifen)
http://www.24dr.com/reference/library/eat/obesity/obesity.htm

I don't know if I have said this before, but one pharmacist rubbished my complaint that when I take 1.0mg I find it hard to stop eating, and when I have to take 1.5mg I literally cannot stop eating. When I went to the doctor here, she was astonished that I had been prescribed Pizotifen, since here they use it to treat anorexia . Need I say more?

Here they tend to use Magnesium therapy . I tried that but it didn't do much for me. However, with the recent upsurge in problems I have started to take it in conjunction with the Pizotifen.

So, what is all this rambling about? Put simply - when I am on high doses of P, I eat like ahorse and gain weight. When I am on lower doses I can fight back a bit and shed some pounds. I have lost 10lbs in the couple of months. If I lose another stone, I will be back at an acceptable weight. This is still the weight that I was when I was 9 months pregnant, so I don't think it will be unreasonable.