Hi, THis will be my first post. I am48 years old. I have been seeing a naturopath for 3 years. I am taking estrogen cream - 1 gram containing .5 mg estradiol and 2 mg estriol, daily, and 100 mgs progesterone orally on days 14-28. My naturopath recently upped my estrogen. I was taking only 1/2 gram (1/2 scoop) of the cream on days 5-28. He just upped it to the full gram (full scoop) 30 days a month. I am wondering if I amtaking too much est? If that is why I am feeling so tterribly tense, irritable, obsessive thoughts, depressed, jumpy, touchy. but mostly irritable and obsessive thoughts. In addition,I have kind of self-diagnosed myself with an eating disorder--it's kind of like self starvation. where, because I don't have my grocery list "just right", I put off going to the store, and thus don't eat...don't fix food for myself. What I really need to do is just go to the store RIGHT NOW and get a piece of filet mignon and come home and cook it and eat it. I KNOW i will feel 90% better if I do that. What is holding me back? Want to come home with ALL the groceries I needfor a full week's worth of healthy menus. Does anyone else starve themselves? The main thing I really want to get support for on this board is not even the estrogen question, but the starving myself problem and the having to get everything "perfect" before I'll JUST DO IT! Does ANYONE else have this problem or can relate AT ALL to what I am saying or can soomeone direct me to threads/posts that might discuss t his particular problem?

I actually can kind of relate. A while back a man remarked that I was once a smaller person. That is true. But it hurt. I may be perimneopausal but I would like to look good. So I went crazy working out and really quit eating all but one meal a day. I did this for about three months. Tortured myself. You know how much weight I lost? None.I finally decided that life is too short. I work out about 45 minutes a day and I EAT. Anything I want, in moderation. I may not look better, but I feel better.I feel that you have to eat. Seriously, our hormones are so messed up right now that we can't afford not to eat well.Maybe you could talk to your doctor and they could refer you to a nutritionist,I wish you the best and hope this helps you somewhat.

Dear 'dawnlou'
Can relate one hundred per cent to what you are saying.
When I was living alone I rarely bothered to fix myself a meal and really had very little appetite for anything.I was given Xanax for anxiety and I do just take it as needed but feel that with food I am better with a good breakfast.,fruit or eggs,a medium lunch such as grilled chicken and a salad.I also keep roast turkey on hand for a quick sandwich if do not wish to cook.
I am very careful about my weight but do enjoy the ocassional treat,perhaps a scoop of ice-cream or a cake. Yoga has helped me calm down a lot and have found Herbal teas to be very relaxing.Soup is good too and easy to digest.Never touch soda and have coffee only about once a week
This perfection thing is a menace.My daughter once said to me "Mum would you really want your Headstone to read.She sure was perfect'?Made me laugh but also made me think
It is possible,but I am no Doctor,that you maybe at the stage to try Therapy.
Either way,you are in my Prayers.

Warm Hugs
Elizabeth

I have kind of self-diagnosed myself with an eating disorder--it's kind of like self starvation. where, because I don't have my grocery list "just right", I put off going to the store, and thus don't eat...don't fix food for myself. What I really need to do is just go to the store RIGHT NOW and get a piece of filet mignon and come home and cook it and eat it. I KNOW i will feel 90% better if I do that. What is holding me back? Want to come home with ALL the groceries I need for a full week's worth of healthy menus. Does anyone else starve themselves?

I think that this post is really interesting. I used to have a really healthy appetite before menopause but things have really changed for me. I have become totally disinterested in food. I have no interest in buying or preparing it these days. Some days I plan to shop for food, get distracted and realise that the day has gone, the shops have closed and I have eaten nothing. My body no longer craves food. I have no difficulty in going for 3 days without food. Interestingly before menopause if I ate slightly less I would lose weight very rapidly, now I can eat very little and my weight remains fairly stable. As always I will always blame the thyroid because it controls appetite and metabolic rate.
There are some psychological aspects here. I feel poorly most of the time and I feel betrayed by a body that I tried to cherish over a lifetime. I am feeling a kind of anger against my body and perhaps I am trying to punish it.
At the end of the day psychologial or not, this all stems from a total lack of appetite.
it may be that this reduction in appetite is actually my body functioning correctly. At this time of life less calories are needed otherwise we start to pile on the weight.


XIII

been there and done that.....try making a very short list....and run to the store everyday if you have to until you get everything that you need....

Good idea! Perhaps 2 list? A short list and your "perfect" list. You can also download (for free) on the web, a printed grocery list. You just go through it and check off what you need.


You might consider cooking for the month and freeze everything. Then you always have healthy home cooked meals at your fingertips. Put small portions on a plate or ? and LABEL EVERYTHING

It takes only a few minutes to pull something out and microwave or bake it.

Try what your doc suggested. You can always go back down. You should know fairly quick it is making you feel better or worse.

Shebee



Shebee

Hi Dawn,

It sounds to me that you are describing a 'perfectionist' personality. Does this only apply in going to the grocery? or in other areas of your life as well? I write list for everything these days. IMHO you might combat this perfectionalism by refusing to make a list. Period! Now you become the boss and not the list. (This would work for me because I'm such a rebel, it may not work for you.) Maybe decide to go each day after work for the night's meal. This will be your treat for yourself. Just in case you are trying to punish yourself for not meeting your expectations.

I believe our natures are so complex sometimes yet simple enough that we can self-talk our way into bondage or out of bondage depending on what we tell ourselves. I wish you luck!

"Starving" yourself will only lead you to where I am right now! And, believe me, it is NOT good!

I thought I was eating healthily, but I now believe it has totally messed up my metabolism and I don't know that I will ever get it back up and running the way it should be.

My family has told me for years that I don't eat enough, but you would NEVER know it by looking at me!

I have continued to gain weight that I cannot get rid of and I am severely anemic!

You CAN throw your system all out of whack by not getting the proper nutrients!!

You HAVE to eat!

That's all there is to it!!

i absolutely agree with tw you have to eat to be strong!!!!

Perhaps some Obsessive Compulsive Disorder symptoms have developed? I have a tendency to have these type of symptoms, and it is not about the 'things' (food in your case), but about having it, whatever it is, just right. Do you have these type of behaviors with anything else in your life? In other areas of life I can function just fine with my 'just right' needs, but with something like eating properly, I don't think that I would be able to function, or get by, with my OCD tendencies.

((((dawnlou))))....hope all is going well for you...

I'm doing better. I do have the perfectionist/obsessive tendencies in the other areas of my life. but they are worst with food. As soon as I eat, I feel better, esp. if it was protein and fruits or vegetables. I like what ever one on here wrote to me,and I thank each one of you. I 'm sorry I disappeared after I wrote that post, I never came back to check until now. I am a SAHM and have 2 children under 6, so that explains my business, plus my computer crashed. I especially like what the person who posted this said: Be the rebel against your perfectionist tendencies and go to the store WITHOUT A LIST. ..that way YOU are the boss.

thanks everyone, again. going to post another question over on the depression board......ttyl.

I have OCD where I have to have things "perfect" in order to feel satisfied yet can't ever get there. I obsess over my weight, I was anorexic for 10 years so I still have that same kind of similar mindset which all stems from the OCD part. I went to a therapist that specialized in OCD and knocked out all but 2 issues, I'm still working on the 2 hardest ones to eliminate.
I no longer starve myself like I once I did in my anorexic days but I kinda do calorie restriction.
I understand where you're coming from and the madness of it and the perimenopause only exaggerates it even more.

Me too, me too! I craved sweets up until the beginning of this year, now not so much, I eat at least 98% less sweets except on the rare occasion where I will eat a few of those cookies you see in a deli, the tiny little ones with sprinkles cause they don't taste really sweet. Now I find myself forcing myself to eat something in the morning, just so I can take my AD without getting a stomach ache. Basically I could go all day without eating and I have. If my husband didn't make dinner I probably wouldn't eat that either or I would eat something really light like a sandwich. My appetite has decreased quite a bit but I have also become less active hence not losing any weight but not gaining any weight either. This is weird for me as I was quite the foodie before.

when i was about 20 i developed an eating disorder. hold your gasps when i tell you that in just about a month i wen from about 130 to 96 pounds. i don't know how i survived. stayed at that weight for about 2 years. the eating returned to normal (well, normal for a college student) when i went back to college after a summer at home. i know now it had to do with control. i felt i had no control of anything but guess what? I could control my body and my eating. To me, that's what lies at the bottom of eating disrders. feeling you have no control over certain aspects of your life.

to this day, when i'm under tremendous stress, i cannot eat. everything tastes like sand. six years ago, the month we put the grandmother who raised me into a nursing home, i lost a two pants sizes. also, i will often go through periods when i will bake stuff or bring treats for the entire library where i work but will eat none. 25 years later, the same tendencies creep back up even though i know it's not the way to cope.

people who use food control as a coping mechanism have all sorts of tricks and tendencies that they use. it is possible that the "perfect list" is one of those things. I'm certainly not a psychologist but hope that my pitiful little story will help you.

for the record, i don't know what i weigh now. i threw my scale away eleven years ago because one of the things i did was to weigh myself obsessively twice a day. i don't even let my doctors tell me what i weigh. i refuse now to ride a number. thus, i only know the pants sizes i lost during the aforementioned stress with my grandmother (Momma).

I think there are underlying issues that have to be dealt with in order to finally overcome the addictive mindset. I got completely wrapped up in the anorexia thing for many years and at that time I was convinced that I was actually the happiest that way but at the same time I also continually felt a constant tension feeling from trying to "be perfect". My eating disorder began with childhood sexual abuse and so I still work on some of those issues even today, has taken me a very long time to let go.
Going through this perimenopause has only made some of those issues exaggerated, so I can't really blame every single bit of my problem on peri because there is still the long standing childhood issues I continue to work on every day. Its definitely a challenge! But when you decide that you just won't settle for less you kinda get into an action mode of actually making positive changes, you get more motivated in achieving your very best.
I still have the anorexic thinking and obsessiveness over my looks and weight but the difference now is that I'm actually aware of it whereas then I wasn't and thats always the first step in overcoming anything that has controlled you.
I've been letting go little by little of this "perfection" thing and I daily work on eliminating the OCD. Entering into peri when you have already had a disturbing emotional past is tough but I think things can definitely get better if you decide it can.