Rubbish!

I just read the most annoying and irresponsible study and I just need to complain about it. 

Entitled Home grocery delivery improves the household food environments of behavioral weight loss participants: Results of an 8-week pilot study, you can tell it’s useless just from the title—8 weeks? Nearly every diet/fitness plan in existence looks successful at the outset, and turns out to be unsustainable over time. And they even admit that no one was planning to continue the program after the study.

Gist is this:

Two groups—control and study—spend 8 weeks following a health regime of calorie restriction (1200-1500 daily), low fat (<30%), minimum 150 minutes weekly exercise. Study group were told to buy their groceries online and have them delivered, and the delivery fees were covered for them. At the end of the 8 weeks, the study group had fewer unhealthy food items in their homes than the controls.

That’s the title about “household food environments.”

More important:

They did not lose more weight, or show any difference in health improvements.

In addition to ordering online, they also got an individual session with a nutritionist who gave them tips on what to buy—hello, that is gonna have a bigger impact than shopping online!

They all said they would stop ordering online after the study, “perhaps” because they were unsatisfied with the price of food bought online. Can confirm, we ordered online groceries during covid, and the prices were a lot higher, in addition to the delivery fees. Having the fees reimbursed doesn’t make the groceries cost the same. 

Perhaps the study group had a better household food environment because they couldn’t afford treats or any extras at online prices? Perhaps having a session with a nutritionist was a factor? The authors of the study don’t even consider how these two huge factors would affect the outcome.

Groceries online are a huge pain. Definitely less likely to buy fresh produce—both because you can’t predict the quality, and you generally can’t control the quantity (they’re giving you 7 brown bananas, when you only wanted 3 green ones).

Useless study, and I’m annoyed to see it promoted in a newsletter I received. Blecch.

You know the best solution to avoid impulse purchases at the grocery store? Walk. And carry stuff home, We do it every week, it’s exercise, and at a point you say, “basket is too heavy, we’re done.” Of course not everyone has that luxury (similar to... the luxury of being able to get delivery…) but that’s a rant for another day.

An exercise in will power

I have eaten a lot for the last while—blaming hormones etc.—and Wednesday is always a big eating day, because usually there’s also more exercise since I’m in the office (so the day is bookended by bike rides), and it is also nachos day. Here’s a typical day:

Screenshot cuts off some of the actual food but the totals are there

More calories than technically needed, and half of them from dinner. Not only that, but typically I’m ravenous by dinner time Wednesday, so I consume those nachos in under 4 minutes. And then my tummy hurts.

Today, working from home, I made a concerted effort to not just eat all day, and to eat my nachos and a normal pace instead of wolfing them like a starving castaway. 

And I did it! Honestly I think it’s more the fluctuating hormones than any great moral victory on my part. But I’ll take it!

It is happening.

Well we’re on, looks like. 

Spotting Sunday, nothing Monday, definitely a period starting last night (while I was out, natch—so glad I had supplies buried deep in my bag).

Doesn’t seem heinous though. No waterfall or severe cramping. I shouldn’t say that; I’ll jinx myself. 

Hmmm

Spotting today. Fresh looking. Just making a note of it here because I need to keep track somewhere. 

Is it happening?

So years ago, I went to my doctor with an array of symptoms—headaches, bad acne, night sweats, general misery—you can guess what that was about. They put me on low-dose birth control, as a sort of “HRT-lite” for perimenopause symptoms. 

And it was great! I got my period maybe twice a year, felt fine, symptoms went away, I was my old self again.

Well, the last time I tried to get my prescription renewed, they said I was too old and it was no longer safe.

I can’t remember if I posted about the last time I stopped taking BCP.

It was December 2021. I had just gotten my prescription, but got covid before I could fill it, and I was in isolation for two weeks. As soon as that was up, I picked up my pills, and waited for my period to start taking them (way back when I started, that was the instruction: start the pack on the Sunday after your period starts).

So I waited and waited. Months go by. I thought maybe I was free. But then in April, it comes, and it’s a doozy. “The Waterfall” is what we call it. Utterly brutal and I had no supplies. I spent a week clutching a hot water bottle to my belly, never straying more than a few metres from my bathroom, just in case.

A doctor friend told me, “Sometimes there’s one last big one and then you’re done.” So I didn’t start the pill right away, in hopes (again!) that I might be free. 

Nope.

After Waterfall #2, I got back on the pill and have been on it ever since. Until now.

And I’ve started having symptoms. Food cravings, pimples, some I won’t go into here, but what’s really getting to me are the headaches. Excruciating headaches. I was flabbergasted for a couple of days until I remembered, oh yeah, this was one of my symptoms at the start of this whole process.

Trying to remember if I had headaches back in spring of 2022, but I probably would have assumed it was covid-related back then anyway.

I am just really, really hoping there is no repeat of The Waterfall.