Moments from Menopause

Remember when you were about 14 years old and whenever your parents looked at you you'd either: a. fall into a tear streaming crisis b. scream at them to leave you alone c. want to curl up into a ball and hide or, d. want to run away from home? If you do, then you know how it feels to be in the moodaltering era of menopause. Yesterday I went postal on a telemarketer. Instead of simply hanging up like I usually do, I actually cut the woman off mid-schpeal and started demanding to know how she got my number, who did she think she was calling me when she didn't even know me, and I ended by telling her to get a real job and leave innocent people alone. The woman was calling from the Susan Koman Center for Breast Cancer research. When I scraped myself off the floor after landing there when I hung up the phone, I dried my voluminous tears, took a deep breath and said a prayer for forgiveness, vowing if the foundation ever called me again I'd make a sizable donation. I...

It is absolutely amazing how quickly a body can get out of shape - especially one that wasn't  in the best of shape to begin with. I think I shared that when I was on Nutrisystem last year and menopause hit me hard - almost a knockout! - I actually started gaining weight on the diet.  Now, no sane person ever wants to gain weight on a calorie reduction diet. At this point in my menopause struggle I was ready to jump off a ledge. I'd been exercising like mad, eating the nutrifood and nothing else and here I was creeping up the scale. So what did I do? I'll tell ya: I did what any self respecting moody and flashing woman would have done if faced with the same situation : I gave up. On everything. The diet. Exercising. Basically, life. How did that work out for you, you ask? Not well. A year later and all the weight I lost came back on and my muscles can't be detected under the fat anymore because I stopped moving them. I'm sure with my psych background of knowled...

Hey all you menopause peeps...it's been a while since I last posted. Lots LOTS has happened in my life since we last met. More about that later, but one thing that hasn't changed is I'M STILL IN MENOPAUSE!!! Okay, it's a little better I have to admit, since I broke down and went on some estrogen drugs last year. It came to the point where I needed to be talked off a ledge between the continuous hot flashes, the upending mood shifts from crying to mania, the non-ending weight gain, and the lack of sleep. After a week in which I was on the Nutrisystem diet and managed to GAIN 6 pounds, I knew something had to give. So. I buckled down, saw my GP and started on low dose estrogen to try and combat some of the symptoms. The flashes stopped, the moods evened out, I still don't sleep ( and probably never will) but the weight kept coming, so much so that now I am officially 35 pounds over the weight limit my heart needs to be healthy at. This is the reason I've resu...