It Is What It Is

Well, a lot of time has passed, but instead of deleting this blog i decided to keep writing, but 'come out' about the OA element of my plan for recovery from morbid obesity. I was also a little put off by the fact that no one's reading, but then i remembered that i'm doing this for me (at least i should be...).

Anyways, for the past few weeks i've been stuck in self-pity. If i can't lose weight on 1200-1500 calories/day with 45 minutes of exercise 5x/week then forget it. I give up. I'm grateful that that didn't mean a complete abandonment of my food plan and exercise regime, but the meals did get bigger, less healthy and the gym dropped from 5 days, to 4 to 2 last week. And i realized that i didn't feel better, i just felt less hopeful, less healthy and more guilty. I've come too far to throw in the towel now, so i need to find a way to just stay more spiritually centered. What the goddess wants for me, is much better than i am willing to settle for myself. So today, I re-committ. No more excuses about how hard it is for me to lose weight, or how stressful a home renovation is. As a breast-cancer survivor said to me (although she was talking about what to do in the face of a diagnosis of a serious disease) "sometimes you gotta just put your 'big girl' panties on and suck it up!". So that's what i'm going to do. The actions i am going to take to reflect this are as follows:

1. No more self-pity. It will lead me back to the binge without fail. (that's the one thing i never need to find motivation for, it always just finds me...).
2. Curb the complaining. about the reno, the stress, the diabetes, the PCOS....it is what it is. Acceptance is the answer.
3. Drop the scale. I am ceasing weekly weigh-ins until further notice. The plateau has been de-motivating, and is driving me to un-healthier choices. As a result, i'm just going to work on making healthier choices and sticking to my plan every day.

That's it for now. We'll see how it goes, but i feel better already.

Professional Help

I was talking with a friend yesterday about those online metabolic calculators, and said that according to those i was well under the required amount to lose weight, but i wasn't. And she pointed out the obvious - those things are for the average person, and my metabolism and dietary requirements are anything but average. I have both diabetes and PCOS, both conditions that mess considerably with my body's natural processing and functioning of food, particularly sugar and carbohydrates. I can be mad about this, and resentful and none of it changes the fact that i have to deal with it. My friend's advice was that i should talk to my doctor, to get a "professional opinion."

So, this morning i did that. We talked about my food plan and exercise and about the weight i've managed to lose so far. He seemed to think it was great that i was losing slowly, through big lifestyle changes. I said to him that though i considered them to be lifestyle changes (read: long term), i found it exhausting and that i was losing my motivation. That's when the emotion started coming up. Talking about weight issues is always emotional for me (and others, i know) but i get embarrassed when i break down in front of him. It wasn't really a breakdown, but exactly one tear managed to escape from each eye, which didn't thrill me.

His advice was along the lines of 'keep doing what you're doing', 'you're doing all the right things', as well as he added what i suspect were intended to be morale-boosting remarks (You're really doing well. I think you should be proud of yourself). It's kinda what i was predicting. I was hoping he'd say he had some kind of magic solution, even though i know those don't exist. He did offer me Meridia, apparently some kind of appetite suppresant, but i turned it down. After a decade as an obese woman, i know that no appetite suppresant in the world will prevent me from eating, whether i'm hungry or feeding a feeling.

Then asked him why he'd never recommended gastric by-pass to me, and he said "You have to be morbidly obese to qualify for that." Of course, i am still morbidly obese now at my current weight, but at 338, i was the poster girl for it. I asked if the definition for mobidly obese was 100 pounds overweight, and he said that it was a BMI of 40 or greater. Then he clicks on the BMI calculator on the computer, to find out if i am. I'm smiling knowing that the last time i checked, i was in the severly obese category. His calculation confirmed that, even though he seemed surprised. I told him one of my short term goals was to slim into the "obese" category, but he didn't seem to think that was as funny as i think it is...

It's just so frustrating, and depressing. I feel like i'm doing everything right and yet, the numbers hold firm.

The Bright Side

The scale today said 269 again. This plateau seems to be in a strong holding pattern (a month now) but considering i just got through the High Holidays for overeaters, i'm counting myself lucky and grateful.

There are also some other random things i'm noticing that make me feel pretty good. My favorite is that the 'normal' sized towels they have at the gym are almost completely wrapping around my circumference- i can tuck it around my chest, but there's about a two inch gap at my hips. I think back to when i joined the Y how the towels seemed utterly tiny, and usually i just wrapped one around my head and maybe put one over my shoulders, 'cuz it was not going to wrap around anything on me... I'm getting there, the trick is not to give up.

I'm also wearing my new size 22 jeans, which have a little stretch to them (thank goddess for lycra!) with a size 24 blazer. The blazer 'just' fit when i bought it (it was supposed to be form fitting...as form fitting as a big girl would want it to be), but sort of pulled apart when i sat down. Now it's loose everywhere and sort of falling off my shoulders and it's not going to be long before it won't look good.

I want to keep reminding myself about the good, non-scale stuff because typically when i start getting frustrated about lack of movement in the numbers, it drives me headfirst into a carb binge. And i want to keep wearing these jeans, so i'm looking for new ways to handle old feelings. Today, it's working for me.

Deja Vu

One of the things i felt uncomfortable about over the holidays was about my family noticing my weight loss. My mom is thrilled that i've dropped a few sizes, although she doesn't say so. She waits until i leave the room and then tells my partner how good i'm looking. I want her to notice and give me kudos and back pats and 'atta girl's, but it wasn't happening. Then on the 26th, we were at my Aunt and Uncles house for more family fun and i was wearing the size 22 jeans she gave me for christmas as a "goal you can shrink into". She made a big deal about it in front of my cousins and as i could feel the blood rushing to my face in embarrasment, a lightbulb went off.

I'm embarrassed that i'm losing weight.

Sounds weird, but it's absolutely true. I find it humiliating that here i am, 33, making a new attempt at weight loss after trying every year or two to make a new start. It's embarrassing that i'm still at it and even though i used to weigh 338 (although no one in my family believes that is possible) i still weigh 270 pounds. That's a lot of thubby, my friends!

I don't know if this embarrasment will lift as i continue on and prove to them (and to myself) that i can actually get to a normal weight. But there's this nagging fact that i can't get over in my head: The best predictor of future behaviour, is past behaviour. Argh. If that holds true, and if that's what my family's thinking then they can be forgiven a little scepticism...

Nonetheless, lots of things are different this time. I have a workout routine. I have a built in accountability and support network and i have a resolve that it doesn't matter how long it takes, i'm going to continue this fight until i am more thinny than thubby. Mark my words (and remind me of them, if necessary).

Choices and Consequences

Even though I don’t feel like I fell off of any wagons over Christmas, the “New Year” makes it feel like we’re all climbing back aboard one.

Last week, I was missing the safety of my routine. There’s a real safety around food in the very structured Monday to Friday type life I lead. Every day I get up at 5:45, eat my portable breakfast on the subway, work out for an hour, go to work, get home at 6, prepare (or order) a healthy dinner and think about getting workout stuff and healthy food together for the next day. There’s tv-watching in there most nights, to decompress, and sometimes my partner and I will get energetic and do something, but not very often. When I’m not working I don’t usually go to the gym, preparing a more time intensive breakfast is an option, and generally there more time in which to get bored or participate in an activity which leads me to thinking about food. So, last week I was ‘white knuckling’ over food I craved (but didn’t really want to eat). It was everywhere. I really missed being in my routine, which affords me a certain safety around appropriate eating behaviours which are conducive to weight loss. When I am at work I have conditioned myself to view snacks (other than fruit) as inappropriate and simply not part of my day. It took me a long time to get here, but the reward was worth it. That's one of the big reasons that being at work feels "safe" on the food front.

Because I didn’t work out over the holidays (aside from a long Christmas day walk with the dogs, and lots of home renovation-related exercise) I’m worried that I’m going to be up in weight (I’ll let you know that on Friday, because that’s my weigh day…). I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

The other thing I did differently over the holidays was that we ate out quite a bit more than we normally do. I love eating out, and did so as healthily as possible, but I think part of the attraction is that the food tastes better and there’s no mystery to why that is- restaurants use as much fat/oil/butter as it takes to make food taste good, and when I cook I completely minimize the use of those substances.

I know it’s choices and consequences here- I made the choices, and weight-consistency or weight-gain will be the consequence. I really wish my inner baby would stop whingeing about it in my head though (“but I’ve been so good for so long! It’s not fair!). I will suck it up and keep going because really, are there any other options?

Welcome to Thubby

I hate that i'm posting this on New Year's Day. It all smacks too much of a "resolution", when the truth of the thing is that i've been resolved to the kinds of issues i want to talk about here for a long time now. I've also wanted to start writing this blog for some time, so i'm happy to actually have had a moment to do so.

And what about me, you ask? I'm 33 and have struggled with my weight since i hit puberty (although as many family stories attest, i have loved to eat and done so with reckless abandon since i was able to reach the countertop). I weighed 165 at 14, and thought i was the fattest pig in the pen. I reached the dreaded 200 at around 17 and 250 when i entered university. Grad school saw me hit 300 and it's been up and down ever since. My highest weight was 338, and currently i'm hovering between 265 and 270.

When folks ask me what i'm doing to lose weight, i don't really have the kind of answer they're looking for. I attend OA, so really i'm trying to be 'abstinent' from bingeing and the chronically damaging eating behaviours i've engaged in for over a decade. I know it's not for everyone, but for me the idea of dieting is in itself completely de-motivating. My eating plan? As healthy as i possibly can, without beating myself up. 3 meals, 2 optional snacks, trying to minimize white carbs and maximize whole grains, fruits and veggies.

I also worked through some pretty big anxiety to join a gym, and have now been a proud member of the YMCA since March '04. I've been active member since May '05. I've always been the biggest person there, though lately i've seen someone i *think* is larger (i have that fat-girl poor self awareness and am not really sure how fat i am or how i measure up- though who's comparing, anyway?). At any rate, i work out between 4-5 times a week doing cardio and strength training.

It feels like it's taking forever to lose weight and i do think i lose more slowly than the average person. I don't think that really matters, but on days when i am feeling de-motivated it comes up. I'm also a type-2 diabetic and live with the guilt that it didn't have to come to this if i had gotten more serious about losing this weight a decade ago. But a lot of shit happened in that last decade, things that made me turn to food for comfort...a pasttime i know i'm not alone in. In the end, the speed with which my body loses weight is beyond my control- i hate that, but it's true. All i can do each day is exercise, eat right and stay committed.

I'm also doing some spiritual work, though nothing structured or through any church or religion (that doesn't work for me; see rebellious reference above). There must be some kind of reason or explanation for why i ate myself into a stupor and up to such a circus-freakishly large weight. I heard someone say once once that there are holes in you soul that no matter how hard you try you can't fix. Maybe that's true, but i hope to at the very least be able to work around those holes instead of trying to fill them up with food.