Fear of Entropy

Good nutrition is wonderful, it makes my body feel good and like it’s running properly.  However, good nutrition alone is not sufficient for me to shed pounds.  If I don’t move a lot then nothing comes off, plain and simple.

And I don’t mean move a little – exercise twice a week doesn’t do squat for me, I’ve got to work out five to seven times a week to see change.

That’s just the way it is.  Most likely it’s the end result of my body being borked from a lifetime of repeated calorie restriction dieting.  Putting your metabolism into what it perceives as starvation state over and over and over and over again is going to have consequences.  C’est la vie.

So when I get sick, that puts a serious crimp in things.

For as long as I can remember I’ve gotten coughs.  I clearly remember coughing for weeks in grade school and having other kids harass and bully me for it.  They seemed convinced that I was coughing to get attention when honestly at the time I would have given anything just to be invisible.

It’s embarrassing.  It annoys the people around you, they can’t help it.  It’s grating to hear someone cough endlessly and nobody wants to.  The cougher also feels like they’re spreading germs.  You don’t want to cough into your hand because then whatever you touch gets germified, and coughing into the crook of your shoulder or elbow doesn’t seem as efficient.  It also makes your nose run in response.

On Thursday I was doing some filing at work which required bending over repeatedly.  Since every time I did this it made fluid run out of my nose I eventually gave up and crammed tissues up there to serve as stoppers.  Like I said: embarrassing.

Doctors would always diagnose this problem as bronchitis and treat me with antibiotics and cough syrups to no avail.  They did chest x-rays, throat cultures and even took out my tonsils.

A few years ago my MD realized it was never bronchitis at all, but a form of asthma called cough variant.  Instead of wheezing – I cough.  It lies dormant for most of the year, and then seasonal allergies will cause an irritation that sets it off.  After that usually my immune system crashes and I catch a cold, which worsens the condition.  Once the cough reflex is engaged it is very, very difficult to shut down.  The good news is that now that doctors know what they’re dealing with they have managed to lessen my coughing time from three or four months out of the year to one or two.  Coughing for one to two months straight is still no picnic, but it cut the time in HALF and for that I am very, very grateful.

Your body actually does adjust to constant coughing after doing it for a few weeks, but the first couple are extremely painful.  Your head hurts, your throat hurts, your entire abdomen hurts as you tear and pull muscles from overuse.  Although it feels as though rock hard abs should be the end result, that never seems to happen.

Through all of that you’re still annoying the living snot out of everybody around you too.

I have learned to avoid movies or any kind of public show during this time where I will be a distraction to the people around me.  Going to restaurants is problematic because I don’t want to cough near other people’s food.  Sometimes I spend the night on the couch so that my husband can get a decent night’s sleep.

And exercise makes things much worse.  Breath is vital to movement, and during my coughing months I have neither breath nor any energy left to expend for it.

Which means I can either work out anyway and ignore the discomfort, or loose no weight at all during the coughing season.

For the past two weeks, I only worked out once or twice a week, so I shed no weight.  Since I watched my nutrition I also didn’t gain any.  I know that’s good, but I don’t know how much longer coughing season will last and I can’t afford to sit around idle waiting for it to stop.  I’ve got to push through.

I’ve gotten to the point where an inability to do my workouts causes a slight panic because I know I’ll either stay in a state of stasis at best, or at worst put on a few pounds.  I wonder if this is a reflection of the anxiety I know lies in wait for me if I ever do get significantly closer to my goal?

The specter of what was isn’t ever going to leave, my body can’t shed fat cells – only shrink them.  So the potential to bounce back to my set point will always linger no matter where I go or what I manage to achieve.

I fear entropy.