Thoughts on the Process » Talking It Off

What the Numbers Say

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Nov 082009

My previous weight loss attempts have been so short lived that the only data I have are a small pile of old Weight Watchers cards which show that I lost weight. Then it ends and I have no idea what happened next. Well I do know – I obviously put all the weight back on – but I don’t know how long it took me or what was going on in my life to make me give up so quickly.

This time I have 22 months of numbers because, even though I’ve had struggles, I haven’t quit. I haven’t quit!!!! That’s a shout-it-from-the-rooftops fact. So I can see how what was going on in my life affected my weight and vice versa. Here’s what it looks like so far split into five different “eras”.

January – June 2008

Jan -4

Feb -5

Mar +1

Apr +1

May +1

Jun +1

- 5

I can remember seeing pictures of myself at Christmas and feeling a little stick. That’s when I stepped on the scale expecting to be around 160 but really saw 170. I was also alarmed by my elderly parents’ lack of mobility and realised that I needed to start working on that immediately rather than wait until it was a problem so we joined a gym and really got working hard. I obviously worked at it for a couple of months then petered out and started to put it all on again. I don’t really know when the pounds came back on but I do know that five were still off the next time I weighed myself in July.

There was a big family wedding that May which included hours of video and thousands of pictures. There was no escaping that I had more work to do but I was so so fed up with dieting.

July to November 2008

Jul -4

Aug -5

Sep -3

Oct -3

Nov -2

-16

It was in July that something snapped and I realised there was no way I was going to spend the rest of my life dieting, getting bored and putting it all back on again. The start is documented here and the concept of Talking It Off was born. I wrote and wrote and wrote and worked hard. We had workmen in the house for the summer and no kitchen but I was SO determined that nothing was going to halt the process.

Then life happened and I got “the call” to fly home because Mom had had a terrible accident. I spent September and October living with my elderly dad and trying to sort out getting my brain-injured mom back home with him. (Sadly, that didn’t work and she’s in a care home.) The weight kept falling off, partly because I walked a lot and partly because I was in that very rare state of being too stressed to eat.

Then, I had my own health issues and, when the weight continued to come off easily, I panicked and decided (as you do) that I was dying. The next phase reflects all that.

December 2008 – February 2009

Dec +5

Jan 0

Feb +3

I had lost my appetite so much that I forced myself to eat with the obvious results. I finally had surgery in January which gave me the all-clear but, two weeks into my recovery, Dad died suddenly. I spent February alone in my parents’ house, both of them gone in different ways, and I ate my grief. The gain was limited by daily walking and the fact that I kept checking in with my friends and trying to find a strategy for dealing with the apparently unlimited food in my life.

March to August 2009

Mar -1.5

Apr 0

May -2

Jun -1.5

Jul 0

Aug 0

-5

I have since found myself in a bizarre lifestyle of two or three months in my own house with my husband and my work followed by a month to six weeks alone in my mom’s house 5,000 miles away with a completely different routine. The six months from March to August this year were a regrouping time characterised by sudden flashes of grief, some interesting times with peri-menopausal hormones and inconsistent exercise.

But the weight was coming off again and I didn’t give up because I knew (and know) without a doubt that there is nothing in my life that can be made better by being ten pounds heavier. Nothing.

September 2009 – Present

Sep +1

Oct -4

Nov -1 so far…….

This final era is a work in progress. After a wreck of a September, I feel like getting down to the hard work again – which means both watching the food and getting in the exercise. From the beginning, many years ago on the BCB site, my strap line has been “still keeping a promise to myself”. That promise was to get to a sensible weight and stay there for a whole year and I still have every intention of doing that. I’m still not quite sure what that lower wieght should be but I want to figure it out by the end of the year and have 2010 actually be that year of keeping my promise – of allowing myself to learn to be smaller and learn what it takes to keep off the weight.

Fear of Failure or Fear of Success

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Nov 052009

Can fear of failure and fear of success be the same? The reason I ask is again because of that post at BCB. I’ll read one person say how they have a fear of failure so it leads them to do XYZ. The next person says s/he has a fear of success and it leads them to do the same XYZ. Is it possible that one person can fear both failure and success and that the clash of these two fears lead us to where we currently are – which for me is in stasis. I’m neither moving up nor moving down. I’m afraid of failing so I don’t gain the weight back, but maybe I’m afraid of succeeding so I can’t seem to take any more off. An object that has 2 equal and opposing forces on it will stay in one spot forever, or until one of the forces overcomes the other. I guess I need to figure out how to tip the balance one way or another. Just as long as it gets me back on the ‘losing’ side.

What’s Going to Be Different This Time?

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Nov 052009

There was so much in this post over at BCB that I don’t want to let it drop. The main topic of conversation is basically, do we fail to lose weight and keep it off because we are afraid of success? Or at least afraid of what is on the “other side” of weight loss.

For anyone who has lost and gained back their weight more than a couple of times, this is the Golden Question.

So why, over the last thirty years, have I regained the same 20 – 30 pounds so many times? Except for a couple of pregnancies, I put weight on because I don’t allow myself to become the thinner version of me. It’s like “goal weight” is a bright and colourful object at the bottom of a deep pool. I work really hard to dive down and retrieve the object then float right back up to the surface again. I have no means of anchoring myself to that weight – just an idea that that’s what I should weigh and a diet which can get me there. And who wants to be anchored to the bottom of a pool anyway? The whole picture is wrong and impossible.

Instead of thinking of a weight as the goal, I am trying to think of maintaining a lifestyle as the goal. Yes, in order to be a slimmer version of me, I have to weigh less; I can’t change that. But the numbers on the scale are only a tiny part of the change that is taking place. I need a machine to measure attitude to food, self-perception, reaction to others – all those things that we don’t deal with so we put the weight back on.

I used to work in a prison – a real Victorian jail full of not the nicest men on earth and many of them in there for the umpteenth time. When we talked, it became clear that they didn’t have any strategies for what they were going to do differently on the day they got released. Many of them admitted that they were going to walk out the gates, cross the street to where their drug dealer would be waiting and spend their discharge grant on heroin.

That story tends to make people judgemental because we can see clearly what their problem is. They need to walk right past the thing that keeps them in the loop of self-destruction and they need to work out that plan before they get released. What makes me so different? My drug of choice is food and I can’t give it up completely, but my attitude is exactly the same.

I hit some fairly arbitrary number, get released from my diet and run right back to the thing that got me locked up in the first place. Heroin addicts see the drug as part of their freedom. Dieters see unmeasured calories as part of their freedom. We have to redefine freedom.

OK…..so here’s the freedom I want.

I want the freedom to try on clothes in a dressing room not feel disappointed in myself.

I want the freedom to walk upstairs beside someone 20 years younger and not be puffing and sweaty at the top.

I want the freedom to feel my stress/anger/sadness and not stuff it down with food.

I want the freedom to love food.

I want the freedom to be a slim & fit person without feeling that there’s a fat one trying to get out.

Because this weight loss journey has been so slow, I’ve had time to get closer to a few of those freedoms. I may always be a work in progress but I do finally know in the depths of my heart that there is nothing in the fridge that will help me meet a deadline or pay my Visa bill. And if you don’t understand what an achievement that is, you’re probably reading the wrong blog.

Afraid to Succeed

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Nov 042009

I had a new thought occur to me yesterday, about why I sometimes fall into binges. Then on BCB this post really hit home. There’s a lot of good thoughts in that thread.

As I explain in that thread, it occurred to me that maybe I binge as a rebellion against trying to control everything in my life. Over the last month, I feel like I have no control over anything and it is seriously disturbing my calm. The renovations put my house into a mess, now work has us transitioning to new systems and I can FIND NOTHING!!!! Seriously, my reputation of knowing all and being able to do everything is in serious jeopardy. Which led me to wonder if my need to have control at all times is what is causing me to subconsciously go off track. My way of telling myself that it’s a little unhealthy to try to control everything and therefore I overeat to prove that I can’t really control myself. <sigh> I’m having a hard time explaining what I mean. The concept is just at the ends of my fingertips and I’m struggling to understand it.

But What About the Cookies?

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Nov 032009

I used to think that, if I could just get the weight off, I could be the kind of person who has a biscuit tin and takes a biscuit or two with a cup of coffee then puts them away.

I’m pretty sure now that vision of my future self is never going to become real. Instead, I’ve faced up to the fact that I’m a problem eater and biscuit tins won’t ever be playing a part in caring for my future self and keeping weight off.

Why? It’s probably a lot to do with having been comforted with food during stressful family times as a child. My mom certainly ate her feelings. When my children cried, she offered them “Ice-Cream Therapy”. I have no hard feelings about that at all because I’m also counting on the fact that love transcends flawed parenting. We all have our stuff.

But identifying a problem doesn’t make it go away.

Years ago I read a book called The End of OverEating which advocated having all the tempting food on hand to normalise it. No more Good Food and Bad Food. It acknowledged that people would probably put on a bit of weight then just get used to the idea that all food was available at all times.

I’m afraid it wasn’t a great experiment for me. And these days, the idea just makes me angry – why should anyone be encouraged to eat all manner of crap in the name of “self-care”? Yikes. OR…..being honest, maybe it just scares me.

The problem for me isn’t Good and Bad food. If I really want chocolate, I usually buy a 35g bar of Green and Black. (I used to buy a 100g bar or a huge bag of Maltesers so that’s some progress.)

The problem is that no bag, pack, box ever goes unemptied. Ever.

Is it because I DO think of it as Bad and have to get rid of it?

Is it because I think of it as “the last” because I’m going to be “Good” tomorrow?

Is it just because I’m greedy?

My intellect shouts NO! But my heart cringes a little at those questions.

OK – as I’ve been typing I realise that I REALLY want to be the kind of person who can have a cookie jar and not empty it in an evening. One day, I want to be the grandma who can bake and not look like she bakes. So rather than just cave into the “problem eater” thing, I want to make progress towards that.

But that’s another post.

22lbs in 22 months

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Nov 022009

This has been the weirdest weight loss effort of my life and, for that reason, I have hope that it weill be my last.

Almost two years ago, after a sartorially uncomfortable Christmas, I knew I’d put on a little weight and said something like the following to my husband:

“I think it’s time to take off a few pounds. I’m glad that I know when I’ve got to that point. I seem to just “know” when I’ve got to 160.”

Let me assure you that what was going on inside me was not so calm. I carry most of my extra weight on my torso. My bust and midriff get bigger faster than my hips. I hate sitting because of the spillover and I don’t feel at home in my own body.

So I stepped on the scale and saw 170 pounds. So much for knowing my body.

Since then, I have lost 22 pounds with a few more to go. It still shocks me how I didn’t notice my body getting bigger and bigger. I blame lycra, but that’s beside the point.

The point is that it’s taken me twenty-two months to lose twenty-two pounds and that’s ok with me because it has been the most stressful time of my life. The first stress was a three month renovation on our house. We’d been unpacked for less than three weeks when my mom suffered a brain injury and I went to Canada to stay with my dad and try to get things ready for a very changed Mom to come home. I returned to the UK to find that I needed surgery, and, while recuperating, my dad died. Essentially, my life has been turn sideways, if not upside down and I’ve had to learn how to eat through stress and grief and fear and frequent jet lag. I am thrilled that I have lost an average of a pound a month through all that.

Of course, the average really represents both losses and gains and the biggest gain of eight pounds happened during the 3 months of Christmas/surgery/living alone in my dad’s house after he died. I’ve also had months of maintaining and it’s been exciting to find that by walking more in daily life and just being careful about food choices, I CAN keep weight off.

I’m not “there” yet – and am still not quite sure where “there” is. It might be five pounds away. Or two or ten. I’m hoping I’ll know when I get there. But the one thing I know is that this is for life. The lovely thing about a twenty-two month journey is that so many things that I use to consider “on programme” are simply real life.

Like eating olive oil.

Getting in at least 5 fruits and veg a day.

Noticing the alcohol consumption.

Saving bread for a treat.

Eating more fish.

Asking for dressing and sauces on the side in restaurants.

These are genuinely enjoyable parts of eating now and I’m ready to see where the next couple of years takes me.

Scale Insanity

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Oct 312009

How I feel about stepping on a scale is a sure way to tell if I’m living or or dieting, balanced or unbalanced.

When I’m sane and balanced and taking care of myself, I can step on a scale and think, hmmmm, interesting. I feel like a scientist gathering a little more information about an experiment. I could step on it every day and marvel at how it goes up and down and stays the same and never feel anything in particular about it. It is just a tool to help me stay healthy.

When I’m unbalanced and in on/off diet mode, I either avoid the scale altogether and gain weight or allow it to rule how I feel about myself. At my very worst, if the scale hasn’t moved in a favourable direction, I eat to punish myself for not having lost weight.

And I know a lot of women who react the same way, a temporary insanity that is brought about by dieting and a sure sign that we are stuck in an “all or nothing” attitude about feeding and caring for ourselves.

Right now I’m pretty balanced, so talking about the other scenario is like describing some unusual creature of the night who emerges occasionally in daylight to drink at a specific watering hole. You know what I mean. I feel detached – not like I’m actually describing myself and something I am fully capable of falling into.

Happily, after two years of very hard work and Talking It Off with my buddies, I rarely suffer from scale insanity. But I do still weigh myself regularly – at least once a week.

Why?

Why not?

I know there are very good arguments for throwing away the scales especially if they trap you into a dieting mindset. However, after losing 30 pounds, throwing away the scale, then gaining the weight back countless times, I had to do something different.

The use of a scale doesn’t define me as a dieter any more than the use of an oven defines me as a chef. It’s what role I give the scale in my life that defines me as a dieter. As long as it’s just a tool to give me information, then I’m sane. When it starts determining my self-worth, that’s a problem!

So my advice is, keep the tool and change the mindset.

Everyone has to figure out the best use of this powerful tool. The only weight I pay attention to is first thing in the morning with no clothes – can’t slip into any mind games or worry about taking off a wedding ring or how much coffee I’ve drunk.

I only use a digital scale and never weigh myself on anyone else’s scale. If I go to a Weight Watchers meeting, I consider that weight unofficial and for their records only.

If I’m not feeling very good about how I’ve been eating, I see stepping on a scale the same way I see opening a bill when the finances aren’t too healthy. It’s WAY better to know what you owe than to keep on spending in blind hope that it’s not too bad.

Other people don’t own scales and only weigh themselves at Weight Watchers. I say – do what works for you. There is no absolute truth when it comes to the use of scales. Play around and figure out what helps you stay sane and balanced. If the scale is telling you something other than your weight, change how you use them.

No more scale insanity!

Rhythm of (Middle) Life

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Oct 282009

I’m sailing on a calm pool this week. The perimenoapausal hormones and accumulated minor anxieties which combined to send me round the bend last week are at a standstill today and I feel like a completely different person.

This is how I know that I have finally made it past the half-way mark in life.

I certainly don’t feel older* and, in the right light, I frequently get mistaken for younger than I am. (Note of thanks to the “Because I’m worth it” people.)

But there’s a new rhythm of life that screams, “You’re middle aged baby - get used to it!”.

The tidal motion of hormones is something I’d better get used to. When I take the time to pay attention to what’s going on with my body and my emotions then I come through the storms pretty much unscathed. But those weeks when I’m already stressed by work and the husband does something which may be just a little annoying and the kids don’t phone – or they do phone and they NEED me – well, that’s when my “crazy head” runs all over the place screaming that the ship is going down – swim for your lives!

Instead, I need to stand still and think. Is this a real life crisis or a hormone wave? If it’s the latter, I need to make myself do the very opposite of what I feel like doing. I need to move. I need to eat well and drink water. I need to laugh.

Of course, I’m saying all this sane stuff while I am happily becalmed on a sunny day. I’ll let you know how it goes next time the big wave hits.

*I was going to say d’une certaine age but the linked article cast some doubt on whether or not I’m quite there – though the French definition is intriguing.

Move to Eat or Eat to Move

Exercise, Thoughts on the Process 1 Response »

Oct 272009

Thinking about the diet/non-diet thing again and how exercise reflects my frame of mind.

When I have my diet head on, I exercise to eat. I see my hour on the treadmill as earning calories. I think that attitude comes largely from Weight Watchers which does encourage exercise as “earning Points”.

But my non-diet head strives to eat to live and I want exercise to simply be part of living. So yesterday, before I went to the gym, I ate a tablespoon of peanut butter on a ryvita and drank a small glass of milk. Of course, I barely burnt off enough calories to cover that, but I felt great on the treadmill.

Even writing this, I’m wondering if the difference is so subtle that it doesn’t matter. As long as you exercise, why fuss about the reason?

But I’ve always failed at maintaining weight loss because of the on-diet/off-diet attitude and exercise gets tangled up in it and disappears when I’m “off”. So maybe I need to be strict with myself for a while and only eat to exercise because that’s the attitude I want to take with me for the rest of my life. I want to eat to fuel my body and enjoy social times without ignoring that. I don’t want to exercise like mad because I’ve got a dinner coming up where I might want to stuff my face.

What do you think? Do you eat to move or move to eat?

A Little Self-Discovery

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Oct 262009

I have thrown out all of my fat book except three and have recently taken them out to have another browse.

The first is Dr Pamela Peeke’s Fight Fat After Forty and I’ll write here periodically about what it’s making me think.

Yesterday I didn’t get past the first chapter without a major revelation. I am always curious about what real positive thinking would be like. I’m married to an “it’ll all be fine” guy and appreciate how much he balances me out. I’ve always described myself as “realistic” which generally means that I hold back on my optimism and always prepare for the worst, even while knowing that it will rarely happen.

Through some very hard work and having a faith, I’ve got to a point of trust in my life where I’m willing to take risks and live with the risks that my entrepreneurial husband needs to take in order just to feel alive. But I never quite dare let go and believe that, no matter what, everything is going to be fine – despite the fact that time and time again we’ve been provided for in extraordinary ways.

What does all that have to do with weight? At the deepest level, I simply can’t accept that I can conquer it, lose it and keep it off and not have weight-loss be part of my identity for ever and ever amen. I’ve heard a lot of talk about women not believing they are worth it – not worth being fit and healthy. That’s never been a problem for me. I know without a doubt how much I’m loved. I understand my gifts. I understand my weaknesses. And I still feel loved because I have been loved and loved well my whole life.

What I don’t do is use my gifts to their potential because I live with an underlying current that everything will NOT be all right in the end. It’s such an integrated part of my being that I don’t actually have negative thoughts – just a permanent inkling that it’s best to get ready for failure.

Join this fact up with Dr Peeke’s book and you get the revelation. Here’s a passage from the first chapter, “The Stages of Stress”:

The greater the chaos in the young girl’s life, the greater her propensity to seek an anesthetic to numb the pain later in life. For many, food is the preferred substance. So the seeds of Toxic Stress are often planted during childhood. Eating habits, perception of body image, self-worth, and the response to stress triggers in general are formed in the early years and flourish dangerously after the age of forty.

Reading that passage I had the clearest flashback to a moment in childhood. I was five years old, sitting in my best friend’s living room, surrounded by her family and I was crying and shivering because I had received the news that my dad had been taken to hospital. The shivering is a particular memory because, to stop it, they let me wear my friend’s fuzzy pink sweater which I had long coveted.

That’s a memory I’ve always had but the revelation is that I was genuinely in physical shock, hence the shivering. And it wasn’t unwarranted; everything changed for my family from that day and I changed too. I began to imagine terrible things had happened to my family. On the way home from school, I would imagine that my house had burned down and then enjoy the feeling of relief when it was all ok. I still do that! After a holiday, just before turning into our street, I imagine the smoking rubble of my house. I don’t seem that crazy on the outside!

And the point of all this? I won’t have permanent weight loss until I can believe that it can be done. I need to conquer my natural inclination which is to fear the success of reaching “goal” because “goal” means that failure is just around the corner.

Phew. I’m tired. It’s a lot to think about. But it sure explains my last post.

Older Entries Newer Entries

Talking It Off

What the Numbers Say

Fear of Failure or Fear of Success

What’s Going to Be Different This Time?

Afraid to Succeed

But What About the Cookies?

22lbs in 22 months

Scale Insanity

Rhythm of (Middle) Life

Move to Eat or Eat to Move

A Little Self-Discovery

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