My mind is weird

[serene]

Something I forgot to mention, but that was significant for me today, is that typically, when I get bad health news, my immediate impulse is to start thinking about dieting. I know better than to listen to the impulse, but it's stronger the worse the news is, because (this is my theory, anyway) I want to be able to control things.

Another reason that Dr. Peng is awesome is that I asked her if diet and/or exercise would have any effect on my condition, and she thought for a second and said, "No, not really. I mean, the better your health is, sometimes the better you can [tolerate the annoying symptoms], but really, I wouldn't knock myself out about it if I were you."

This really helped me shut down my sick diet impulses today. I only ALMOST bought a diet-and-exercise tracker in the Kaiser pharmacy. ;-)

Comments

[firecat]

My life has been rough lately, and my way of exercising control has been to meticulously set up a new application for reading my RSS feeds.

[deakat]

I tend to forget to eat when I'm stressed, so my focus goes the other way: keeping track of food to make sure that I'm staying relatively nutritionally balanced and getting enough calories.

Also, I make lists, everywhere. I think I have four or five going right now. Maybe I should make a list of my lists. ::grin::

[aquaeri]

I think this is a useful insight for me. I know when things are rough I look for things to control, but diets have just never done it for me. I suspect understanding that it is for some other women may help me be more empathetic with them.