Cocooned

I’ve spent three days now mostly cut off from fellow human beings that are not Ted.

It’s not that I’m precisely a horror to be around, but I’m not myself.  I’m headachy, a little dizzy, tired, unfocused and somewhat emotional.

Everyone keeps telling me I will adjust, and I admit that each day it’s a tiny bit better.  However on a calorie count this low I don’t get hungry, I get non-functional.  I went for five hours today without having anything and found it to be a pretty big error.  Walking through the grocery store with Ted I found it difficult to focus past the pain in my skull on what he was saying.

To explain – I’m currently taking in around 800 to 1,000 calories per day.  Most days I exercise, which removes almost 300 of those calories.  One day after subtracting my workout I realized I’d effectively had only 400 calories.  This is basically what the clinic defines as “VLCD” or Very Low Calorie Diet, and yes, you need to sign off on a lot of disclaimers and have blood tests before you attempt it.

You would think I might feel hungry constantly on this, but I’m really not – I’m simply never full.  Being not hungry and being full are actually two pretty different things.

So while I’m trying to get my head back together, I’m avoiding people a little bit.  Adding the energy expenditure of attempting to be engaging and social on top of everything else going on is just not something I can handle right now.

I also haven’t been able to resist the temptation to stay off the scale, I was curious.  After 48 hours I appeared to have dropped about six pounds.  However on the third day I appeared to gain a pound back, and as of tonight I am back to my starting weight.

The up and down going on is utterly mystifying to me and has bred a terrible fear that I’m going to go to the clinic for weigh in on Tuesday night only to find that after six days on fewer than 1,000 calories a day I’ve failed to have lost a single pound.

This is followed by more fear that they will accuse me of cheating (which I have not done) and the even worse pathological fear that there is literally nothing I can do to lose weight, no matter what extreme actions I take.

And all of this led to my first well and true flip out tonight, of course directed at Ted who has been a pillar of calm, strength, love and support since day one.  I vaguely remember it involving me yelling that I absolutely positively cannot sustain this program if I’m not rewarded with pounds lost every week.  Or something like that, maybe with crying.

Of course I realize all these hysterics may be the result of my very lousy digital bathroom scale being wrong, as anyone who owns one knows – those things aren’t exactly the definition of reliable.

So that’s where I am.  Cocooned right now and trying to find my equilibrium again.