Pain, etc

Today is damp and raw.  Lovely June weather.  I spent last night in a great deal of pain, sigh.  The meds kicked in this morning, so it's not as bad as it was.  My therapist keeps reminding me that I have arthritis, I will be at the mercy of the weather and I can't do all that I think I can.  It's a fresh amazement every time, I'll be honest.  I was in denial for a very long time, and honestly, I just got the diagnosis fairly recently.  I do NOT think of myself as someone with arthritis.  This is probably because it's in one place, not my whole body. Sometimes it makes me angry, because I can trace when and why it started and it was due to vanity and insecurity and was completely unnecessary, possibly even slightly illegal (what?  Someday I'll go into it).  Most days I just deal with it. 

Also I've now lost on the order of 15 pounds.  If I put my hands on my waist and push, I can feel my hip bones.  I find this fascinating.  I go back and forth on whether or not there was a psychological component to my weight gain--was I hiding?  Covering something up?  I've gone that route in the past, I think partly because it absolves me of being a complete glutton.  But lately, since I've been eating so much less, I'm forced to concede that well, maybe I was a glutton.  I'm probably still a closet glutton, or a glutton who's not giving in to gluttony. 

But this is about the time when weight loss starts to gain momentum.  I've made progress, it's gotten more routine, and things are starting to happen.  So there are gains (sorry) that I don't want to lose (sorry again) and so I'm more apt to stick to eating right.  By the way, I agree with every single person who says that this is not a diet--this is the way I have to eat forever.  Do I feel like I can eat like this forever?  Yeah, probably.  I don't feel as though I have a lot of choices.  I'm curious to see what the doctor will have to say when she sees my weight loss, because it's irrefutable.  You can't argue with the scale, either up or down. 

Last night, though, all I wanted to do was eat.  I could barely hobble into the kitchen, and I wanted to hobble in there, and then eat bread with butter, cookies, chocolate--not to mention eat another meal of last night's tortelloni.  I managed to hold myself to my bowl of fruit with yogurt, though.  And I'm a better woman for it this morning, I suppose.