Friday on the way to the gym with Rob I told him how I had been Googling (is this even a fucking word?) all of my meds and that I found out that Lithium has a few side effects I don’t like I always knew it was a drug that could cause weight gain, I just didn’t know why. Turns out, for some reason it gives you increase appetite and thirst. I laughed out loud because the day before I was telling my mom I am NEVER full. At least now I understood. I had been telling my friends the hunger was like pregnancy. FEED ME OR DIE PEOPLE. Aside from that, it had the obvious side effect of being kind of sedating. So add 20lbs of food and a new habit of putting the treadmill down to 3.0 instead of 5.0 or 4.0 or even 3.5 and you’ve got FAT ASS! I didn’t weigh myself for almost a month. I wanted to see what would happen. Would I lose more weight if I wasn’t stressing on numbers? Well it was impossible to tell because the day I stopped weighing in was the day I increased my meds. I told Rob I felt like I was at a loss here, was losing weight so important that I would possibly go off my meds? Was gaining weight so upsetting that it was counteracting the good my meds were doing?

When we arrived at the gym I got on the treadmill and Rob went over to the weight section. When I was done I met him over there and saw my trainer Ryan too. Well he was my trainer, I can’t have him back until my taxes come, but he still talks to me, checks on me and goes over anything I might need. Rob found me and told me he had been talking to Ryan. He asked him if he thought I should take the money from savings and pay for him now, or if I should wait another few weeks for taxes to pay. Ryan said that he had talked to me the week earlier about my meds and his feeling was paying $250.00 for training was a lot of money if he would spend all of his time fighting my medication. He already knew what Lithium does for weight and moral, he’s studying to be a physician’s assistant and then a doctor. He always tells me trying to go to the gym while on Lithium is very very similar to giving someone seven bong hits and then telling them to stay away from the 7-11 donut section and go to the gym instead. And once you get to the gym you have to MOVE on the treadmill not SLEEP.

In the end I was told I have two options. Keep working out and stay healthy but maintain my weight, or go off of my meds and then try losing weight. The flip side to that is, going off my meds has the potential to make me binge eat, emotional eat, stress eat, or whatever eat again. On one hand I’m tired of just looking at my cute Lucky Jeans, I want to WEAR them. But at the same time I’ve gotten to a pretty decent place where I’m not all yelly and assholish all the time. I’ve been doing more around the house, and I have been noticeably nicer to my husband. Brandon hardly ever tells me I’m mean anymore, and I don’t even remember the last time I had a panic attack.

I am going to talk to my doctor today but I’ve already started coming off the Lithium. I know for sure I need to stay on the Wellbutrin for the OCD and mania etc. As far as the mood stabilizing though, I might be on my own since I’m sort of refusing to take the drugs that treat my problems but that are primarily used for seizure control. Maybe the last drug wasn’t work right but I’m thinking that if I’m able to get it in my head that taking an anti seizure drug when I don’t have seizures will cause headaches which will cause my brain to swell and then kill me, that those kinds of drugs probably aren’t for me.

In he mean time I’ve started tracking my calories again. I was using Sparkpeople for a long time, and I still like it but this weekend while screwing off on my iPhone I found a new ap called Loseit. It is similar to Spark, but it takes exercise into account. For example: For me to reach my goal weight by losing two pounds a week I can do so by eating 1098 calories while sitting on my ass. However, if I input 30 minutes on the treadmill it ups my calories based on the calories burned that day. I like that. I also like that it allows me to say I walked 20 minutes on the treadmill at 3.5 vs having to say I did a 15 minute mile or whatever. If I’m on the treadmill for 30 minutes and I forget to look down and see how far I’ve gone then I’m stuck. Plus, figuring out those miles per minute things involves math and I DON’T DO MATH. The other great thing is it stores all of my info alphabetically. Spark didn’t do that. So if I put in my own food it listed as date ordered. Searching for the bread I use through 90 different things was a big pain in my fucking ass. The final super awesome thing is that it is set to remind me to post my food. That is how I had been slacking lately, I would forget or get to busy and then at the end of the day I couldn’t remember what I had eaten so I just made up happy fluffy calories. Not this time, this time it tells me to put in my food.

I hit up the store last night and made sure to buy MYSELF some food. I’ve been so concerned with money lately that I’ve mainly bought food for dinner, or the boys lunch. The problem with that is, I don’t eat meat and I realized worrying about money has left me with a lot of side dishes for dinner and side dishes = carbs, fat, butter, butter, fat, butter. I decided to load up on things that would encourage me to eat salad again, make big fun sandwiches for lunch and plenty of snacks. I concentrated on season specific snacks. Like celery and home made dip, cold things, rather then stuffy winter food.

I hate talking about this stuff mostly because I hate when people ask about it. Or, no, not ask about it but get judgy about it. I hate putting this out there and then knowing that if I take a day and decide to have a donut or something that the whole world is going to look at me and suddenly become some kind of judge and jury. I hope I can do this. I’m toying with the idea of posting pics again but that would involve POSTING PICTURES which would involve FAT JELLO COTTAGE CHEESE FAT GROSS RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN