The Way We Were

Oh, me. MJ has posted that great recipe for black bottom pie.

I know all you girls who are not blessed to be thin are on diets so we can look the way we were in high school by the time of the reunion. This is the second day of my diet to rid myself of Katrina pounds. It took lots of comfort food to make me feel better after that hurricane.

The last time I went on a serious diet BK (before Katrina), I made an appointment with my internist, Dr. Sam Owen. He is a fanatic about people not being overweight, and I knew he would be perfect to help me. I needed to be accountable to someone, and I needed a doctor to monitor me. I had tried the South Beach diet and spent all day every day cooking it seemed. My husband lost 40 pounds in two weeks; I gained 5. I also tried lots and lots of exercise and cutting back on food. Nothing worked.

Dr. Owen said that because of my height and age I would have to be on an 800 calorie a day diet to lose weight and that if I eat over 1100 calories a day, I will gain weight. He has some great information on his website: http://www.drdiet.com/ , including the Prescript Fit products that I used. I needed to lose about 20 pounds.

Dr. Owen's diet for me was simple (no spending all day in the kitchen cooking): 3 shakes (300 calories), 2 soups (200 calories) and 300 calories eating my choice of something healthy. (See good articles on his website at: http://www.drdiet.com/advances.html ) One of the other benefits of this diet is that I feel so much better on the Prescript Fit products. (No, I don't sell Prescript Fit. Only Dr. Owens.)

I kept a chart of food eaten and weight by the day in Excel. I started on March 27, 2004, and was very faithful to my diet. Never cheated. The suffering was great, and I was always hungry. All I thought about, all I talked about was food. I saw the doctor every two weeks. Now you would think that eating only 800 calories a day, I would lose the 20 pounds in a month. No. It took four months, until July 30th. I weighed 104 pounds on that day. My high school weight was 98. My weight for birth of first child was about 118 or less. (I've always been small until the last several years.)

Let's go back a little bit. In about 1998, about two years after heart surgery, I weighed 96 pounds. I was not hungry, and I did not eat much. So how and why did I gain about 25 pounds between then and 2004? It began in another doctor's office when I started crying about some of the post-surgery problems I had and have. He prescribed Zoloft. I felt better, and I gained weight - too much. Aha!

This is my main point in writing here: Zoloft (sertraline) is an SSRIs (selective serotonin uptake inhibitors). So are these: Prozac (fluoxetine), Paxil® (paroxetine), Luvox, (Fluvoxamine) Celexa, Remeron, Serzone, and Effexor. One of their side effects is weight gain in some/many people. See here: http://www.drdiet.com/articles/189.htm . I've also read the same information from other sources, and this has been my personal experience.

After a couple of years, I stopped taking Zoloft and lost some of the weight. Then we had Hurricane Katrina. My reaction to this tragedy was that I was mad - very, very mad. I think the anger began while watching the horrible events in New Orleans unfold on television with people suffering and dying and no one helping. "Won't someone help these people," Shep Smith said over and over on Fox news. He was on the I-10 bridge, near the Super Dome. After about three weeks of news like this plus constantly listening to people pour out their hearts and tell their stories while I was I work, I felt ready to kill - not sure who - but ready. Perhaps the Mayor of New Orleans would have been my first victim.

I went to the doctor and said, "Give me something quick, but don't give me Zoloft. I don't want to gain weight." We settled on Lexapro since I didn't want to take a stimulant like Wellbutrin. Same thing as before. I felt better and gained 20 pounds. Lexapro gives me the munchies - popcorn, crunchy cereal and along with Blue Belle ice cream. I've been weaning myself from Lexapro for months, cutting dose by 1/3, then 2/3, now 1/3 dose every other night, totally quitting next week, praying side effects of weight gain will be gone soon.

I'm hungry. I'm so hungry. It makes me a little crazy. Only 200 calories left for the day. I'm outta here. Off to the kitchen. I'm so hungry.