Hypoglycemic Brain-Roar

As many of you know, I lead a relatively healthy lifestyle.  Healthy Herbalife shake for breakfast, healthy snacks, moderate exercise (which has gone for a loop recently due to a recurring injury) and water or tea as opposed to coffee.  Yesterday though, Eve, Elizabeth’s elder sister celebrated her 50^th birthday, and so they packed in some sugary treats for me today: marbled meringues and a generous slice of lemon meringue cheesecake.  On some plane maybe they knew that I’d be getting news today, news I’ve been waiting a long time for.  I’d been expecting the information to be exactly what it was, but the finality of it clearly messed with my brain chemistry.

Every so often, the company I work for arranges for short training for us – usually it is by the same person, a relationship psychologist who teaches us to apply the skills we already have to improve both our relationships within- and outside the workplace.  His last talk was nutrition-based and how blood-sugar levels affect our moods.  In very simple terms, he explained that if our blood sugar reaches a certain low level, the adrenaline and nor-adrenaline our body excretes has the same impact on our brains as a person seeing a lion.  Judging by the number of calories I’ve consumed already (I’ve devoured every morsel of The Toppie’s homemade steak & kidney and all the sweet goodies Eve packed in for me) I must have a pride of lions on the prowl in my subconscious.

Pic from PetRescue.com

Time for water to flush them out and replace them with delighted, rainbow-farting unicorns, because goodness knows, I can’t pack up and move to Scotland.  For those of you who don’t get the reference – Google is your friend – search for Scotland’s national animal.

Crazy, Dumb Belle?

I’m starting to feel a bit like a Dumb Belle because it’s been ages since I’ve even held a dumbbell, but I’ve got to start somewhere again, right?

In the words of Alanis Morrisette, Isn’t it Ironic?  I haven’t had (well, I still don’t) an appetite for almost six weeks, yet I’m craving sugar. In the form of cake.  Cheesecake, to be specific.  And carrots – not in a cake, but not raw either. And leeks, so much so that I went to buy some yesterday. And a pepper steak pie – a borderline-food-poisoning-garage-pie.  And no, I’m not pregnant. What I am, is tired.  It’s a damn catch-22 situation because if I drink a full dose of the sleeping tablets the psychiatrist prescribed, I sleep for a good eight hours, but wake up tired because the meds have not entirely worked out of my system and if I drink half, I wake up between three and four AM regardless of what time I lay my head down and fall asleep to the beat of my heart thudding in my ears.

In an attempt to entice some kind of hunger for food within me, I’m going back to the gym, under the watchful eye of my friend (and personal trainer), Steve.  I have my first session with him tonight, in thirty minutes in fact.

 

If I don’t post something, even a one-liner, tomorrow, check the local papers for my obituary.  I imagine the headline will read something like Crazy Woman Cardios Herself into Cardiac Arrest with the byline Heavenly Heartrate Reached.

Besides the possibility that I’ll want to fill my stomach with more than just rooibos tea, I’m hoping that physically exhausting myself will allow me to sleep through without the daily aid of the sleeping tablets and that I’ll wake up feeling normal (whatever that is). I’m still a far cry from bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I’ll get there.

Wish me luck!