Talking It Off » encouragement for battle-weary weight watchers

Obsession or Only Way to Get the Job Done?

Nov 292009

I had a friend comment yesterday that this all seems a bit obsessive and I’m not the kind of person to brush off the concerns of friends.

So I’m going to think this through in writing.

Blogging

I’ve now been writing about this process almost daily for 16 months, first on BCB and now here. But writing about stuff is easy and doesn’t take up a lot of mental space for me. I’m happy to miss days and I have no expectations of perfection. I’m simply doing something I enjoy and which has helped me hugely with the weight loss so no, it’s not obsessive.

Measuring Food

I’m not meticulous. The milk in my tea might be 1/4 cup or it might be 1/3 or 1/8. As long as I can lose weight while not being obsessive over things like that, then I’ll carry on as I am. But for now I do weigh and measure most things that I journal because I want to lose weight. I’ll be interested to know how slack I can get and still maintain. When I go out, I DON’T take along the food scales. I don’t ask people what they’ve put in their recipes and I don’t get agitated when I’m not in control. So no – not obsessive here.

Journalling

This takes up the most head space and feels most obsessive to me. But, for me, it is the single most important thing I can do to lose weight. If I don’t journal, I don’t lose because I very quickly lose the ability to be thoughtful about what I shove down my gullet. One day, I hope to be able to maintain weight without thinking but, until that magical time arrives, I intend to keep writing it all down. Thank goodness for online journals like Nutracheck. I just write it down and they do all the calculations. I don’t think I could do it any other way.

Exercise

Hahahahahahahahahaha Where’s the little smilie lying on his back laughing kicking his legs in the air? (But that will be another blog post as I have been there and am quite afraid of exercise euphoria.)

Weighing Self

This is what prompted the question. For about six weeks now I’ve been weighing myself every morning and recording it. YES this looks obsessive. But the thing is – that’s a childish phrase but I like it. The thing is, I’m not getting on the scale with fingers crossed, hoping for a loss. I’m getting on the scale – looking at the number and writing it down. With six weeks of stats I can now see the normal fluctuations throughout the month due to hormones, eating a heavier meal and actually losing fat.

If I were a person with no food/body/weight issues I would look at Millie and think, “She’s a little obsessed”, no doubt.

However, as a person with a lifetime of food/body/weight issues, I can only say that it beats the hell out of getting up every morning, feeling disgusted by the body in the mirror and eating my weight in carbs to compensate.

If I start talking about how many calories are in a carrot then please slap me. but, until then, what you call obsession, I call hard work for a purpose.

What’s the Goal Here?

Keeping Going, Thoughts on the Process No Responses »

Nov 282009

When I realised that I wanted to lose weight finally and forever, I had in my head the “goal” weight of 143lbs. I think it was based on the tricky scale-insanity based mathematical formula which states that the personal goal weight plus two pounds equals the WW goal weight which is equal to or lesser than a number ending in zero or five.

Not that I thought about it much or anything.

I also picked a weight which was well away from any “wall” like the infamous 140lbs of 2001. I remember going to WW week after week stuck at two pounds from goal and finally giving up and agreeing that I would never weigh less than 142. That number was on a gold card in my wallet until very recently.

Fast forward a few years and we have a new generation of goal-setters. Now, canny weight watchers set their goal at the highest possible healthy BMI so that they no longer have to pay for meetings once they’ve reached that number. So my new gold card is going to say 10 stone 9lbs. This is actually a pound less that my highest acceptable BMI because I have the psychological burden of being bi-cultural in the weight loss game and wanted to keep it below 150lbs.

Not that I thought about it much or anything.

So what’s my real goal -besides, obviously, getting some decent psychological help?

Last week I decided to head for 138, not because of any of the above but because my goal has been revised to include a health waist size. I’m guessing that I’m going to have to lose that much more weight to get there because, when I say waist size, I mean abdominal size – measured right around the navel. That’s different from my much smaller “technical waist” where my jeans used to sit in 1979.

Of course, back in the early 90′s, before the BMI Revolution, my upper goal weight was 139lbs. That was the weight I would have been aiming for all along. Now I KNOW that BMI is supposed to be about health, but at the top “healthy” weight of 150lbs, my waist size puts me at risk for all sorts of things – even though I can wear Gap size 8 jeans.

The point? The point is that I need to find a goal set by me for reasons that I can trust. I trust the waist measurement science more than I trust BMI science. So that’s where I’m headed. For now. Not that I’ve thought about it much or anything.

Oh yeah – the reason I started on this topic: I hit 143lbs this morning.

Making Adjustments

Body Image, Keeping Going No Responses »

Nov 262009

OK….big deep breath……I think I finally see the body changes.

I went into town today and tried on some wool trousers. As usual I took a size I knew would fit and a size I thought might fit. The little ones were almost too big.

I repeated the exercise in another shop with the same results.

At one point I muttered to myself, “You’re almost small.”

Doesn’t sound like much but it’s quite a big deal.

NOW…..here’s what usually happens when I get to this stage: I don’t take the time to look carefully at my smaller self and get used to what I look like. Instead, I get focused on the farcical idea that “the diet is over” and I start eating anything I want. Before I look in the mirror again, the moment is over. And six months down the line, I’m back to where I started.

So this time, it’s all going to happen SLOWWWWWWWLY.

I’m going to keep trying things on and remarking that I am almost small.

I am going to keep journalling what I’m eating.

I’m going to keep noticing until, well, I’m not sure until what. I’ll let you know when I get there.

Vanity Sizing- Who’s the Dupe?

Body Image 1 Response »

Nov 242009

When I weighed 125 pounds and was running 8 miles at a time, I wore a size 10 and once, for about a week, I squeezed into a size 8.

Today, with 145 pounds of middle aged “shapeliness”, my size 6 jeans are getting a baggy.

It’s wrong! Nothing more than a cynical marketing ploy to keep the baby boomers spending money.

And I rarely miss the opportunity to rant about it.

However………

after reading a couple of articles, I have to confess that, just maybe, the only “wrong” is that women choose to believe that a size 10 today is the same as it was twenty-five years ago. If we are the intended dupes of this marketing strategy, then we’d better get smart and let them know that we’ve caught on.

The truth is that our old size 12-14 bodies are now size 6 or 8 and I need just to get over the new number and not be distracted by how small it seems. If I need to be a Gap size 4 to have a healthy waist size, then I need to be a size 4. And I also have to accept that, if I wear a size 10 today, it’s the same as the size 16 of my youth. There’s no way around it.

Of course, in better quality stores, I wear a bigger size – which arouses my cynicism again. What’s the motivation behind: “the cheaper the store, the more generous the sizing”?

I guess the bottom line is that we can’t rely on clothing sizes to let us know if we’re losing or gaining weight and we can’t actually say with confidence, “I’m a size____” without qualifying what that means. All we can do is find clothes that fit us and flatter us and cut out the labels. I will not be duped.

Forgiving the Fat Child 2

Things to try, Thoughts on the Process 1 Response »

Nov 232009

Yesterday’s activity wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I took it to the gym with me and tried to picture myself every year from the age of 6 or so and walk through a painful fat moment from around that time. Then I looked my young self in the eye and told her that she was forgiven for being the size she was.

Some memories came up that I hadn’t thought about for years. I let myself look at them like a movie and forgive all the people involved whether they knew they were causing pain or not. It was quite a long process which took all my gym time then some.

Was it worth it? I don’t think forgiveness is ever magic. I didn’t feel released or somehow lighter because I didn’t really “feel” burdened by it anyway. It was just something I needed to do for the next step of keeping the weight off and allowing myself to be thin.

I was interested by the fact that the two people who were hardest to forgive were Miss McBirney the ballet teacher and Mrs Smith my Grade 3 teacher.

The former announced in front of all the other eight year olds and their mothers something like, “Millie, as you have a 32 inch waist, I think perhaps it’s time you took up the piano.” Mortifying is a pretty good word. Exam results prove that I wasn’t a bad little dancer but my shape overshadowed my ability.

Mrs Smith looked like a pig – I just checked the class photo to make sure that’s not a completely false memory. She also had a habit of giving the birthday bumps and commenting on how heavy the birthday child was. The bigger children suffered most and I was so desperate to avoid that humiliation that I made myself sick that day. Unfortunately, I made myself so sick that I missed a week of school, selling Brownie cookies and had to postpone my own birthday party.

I’ll forgive them -but maybe you could harbour a little righteous anger on my behalf.

The exercise also brought to mind the lovely supportive people.

I had amazing friends who didn’t use my weight as a weapon to get at me. That’s a huge thing to say about girls.

We had a great phys ed department at school who were always encouraging because they could see my sporting potential and I wasn’t afraid to work hard to get in shape. I just didn’t have the tools to keep weight off.

There was a lovely mom on a three week exchange trip. I had obviously and unknowingly lost weight while I was away from home and she was the first person who ever told me that I wasn’t nearly as big as I thought I was. Then she took me out shopping all by myself and helped me to buy great clothes for my shape and made me have a really good look at myself in the mirror. Well ahead of her time, she was Trinny and Susannah all rolled into one. Again, I didn’t have the tools to keep the weight off and that lovely outfit become a symbol of who I could be if I could only lose the weight.

And that’s the story of my life that’s going to end with the next stage of this blog.

God willing, as I write and live and laugh and enjoy the good and slog through the bad, I’m going to develop the tools to keep the weight off.

Last laugh to me Miss McBirney; 40 years later I have a 32 inch waist again. And it’s getting smaller.

You say challenge, I say…invitation to sabotage myself?

Thoughts on the Process 4 Responses »

Nov 222009

I was thinking about challenges the other day, and why I have never been able to succeed at one. I start off with high hopes, plenty of motivation and a desire to do well, but eventually down the road, my motivations sputters and eventually comes to a grinding halt.

It’s not like I’m not competitive – just ask any of my siblings when we’re playing board games. But for some reason, even though my competitiveness springs into play, it’s not enough to withstand that little craving voice that’s constantly lurking in my head.

So no challenges for now. I’ll just keep plugging along and try to remain stable. You know – as I wrote that, it occurred to me that maybe that’s why challenges and I don’t mix. I do best when my diet and exercise remain steady – no ups and downs, no deviations off course. Maybe the challenge is enough of a deviation from that steady course that it throws me off. Hmmmm….something to think about.

Forgiving the Fat Child

Keeping Going, Thoughts on the Process 1 Response »

Nov 222009

Yesterday I wrote something positive on another site then felt bad all day. Surprisingly, I didn’t let that feeling lead to overeating but, on a different day, I might have. I see from other people that it’s pretty common to do some out-of-control eating after mentioning how well things are going. I also see that it’s common behaviour when things are not going so well.

Last week’s tiny loss after a perfect week felt awful and I had to fight the “what the hell?” feeling.

Yesterday’s loose jeans and cumulative loss felt great but talking about it left me with the same feeling.

I guess these are just learned responses over time. I’ve lost weight and put it back on so many times that I sabotage good results right away because, in my mind, it’s going to happen eventually anyway.

Because this is a lifelong battle, there is emotional junk related to being fat stuffed into all the corners of my inner self : playground insults, family teasing, horrible old ladies, and especially agonising teenage self-consciousness. I need to forgive all those versions of myself and let her know that the fat was really such a tiny part of who she really was. I need to forgive all those people – most of them were commenting because they wanted something better for me but didn’t know how to help. Except Sandra; she was just mean.

Seeing as it’s Sunday – I think I’ll get down to the business of forgiving right now. And I suppose Sandra should be top of the list.

NOTE: This isn’t where I thought this post was going. I thought it was going to be about learning to work hard whether I was happy or disappointed with whatever was going on with weight loss. I never know where this blogging thing will take me.

More About Sugar

Food, Thoughts on the Process 4 Responses »

Nov 202009

Gracie’s post has got me thinking hard about why I’m no longer addicted to sugar. There are still times when nothing but sweet will do – but they’re not nearly so bad or frequent as they used to be. I can satisfy the craving with a bit of chocolate rather than a huge bag of something. I do know that it’s still hard to stop at one sweet treat and if I buy a large bar of chocolate, it’s going to be gone in one sitting rather than eked out over a week. So I guess I’m not in any way “cured” – I just don’t assume any willpower around sweets.

OK – I think I’ve found the thought that stops me from eating junk most of the time: It’s the phrase/knowledge/conviction that “It’s not worth it”. The calories ingested are in no way equal to the pleasure gained.

Now a glass of lovely wine is worth it, but I’m not allowed to drink right now so that’s moot point.

A can of Coke is not worth it.

A small Green and Black’s butterscotch chocolate bar is worth it sometimes.

Maltesers are no longer worth it – especially the large bag that I used to cram down between the grocery store and home.

Pink grapefruit gelato is worth it, especially during a long walk along the beach.

Grocery store ice-cream with its “non-dairy fat products” (ie frozen vegetable oil) is NEVER worth it – especially for breakfast. I know – not a good habit.

Restaurant desserts are almost always disappointing so not worth it.

A good cappuccino with a teaspoon of sugar is often worth it – and nice with a bite of whatever the husband is having.

I’m still not quite sure how I got to this point of peace without sugar. I know that if I felt deprived it wouldn’t work. Instead, I think I’ve finally really internalised the idea of choosing which FREEDOM I want. Every once in a while I want the freedom to eat sugar and fat combined into a luscious something. But mostly I like the freedom of my jeans zipping up and being able to run.

I can’t say that this is a permanent situation and there’s no way I would casually have large quantities of sweet treats in the house without a crowd of people to finish them off. But one day I hope to be a grandma and I want to be the grandma with cookies in the cookie jar – rather than the grandma who meant well but ate all the cookies before the kids arrived.

Oh yeah – yesterday wasn’t a superb day as my ulcer or whatever it is was making me feel really ill. Time to get this sorted out.

TO DO

Keeping Going, Thoughts on the Process 1 Response »

Nov 192009

I have lists on my Blackberry, lists on my laptop, lists in my brain and lists on paper.

Christmas list

Packing list

IMPORTANT for work list

This Week list (which is now over 3 weeks old)

Blog ideas list

Things to ask the doctor list

Meal planning list

Grocery list

If I didn’t have the lists, I probably wouldn’t sleep. However, having so many lists gives me pinball brain and that is never good.

And what does this have to do with weight? Everything. Pinball brain gives me pinball appetite. I bounce from cupboard to fridge to pantry looking for something to eat which will magically make the things on my list get done.

So I’m writing this down as a commitment to just do the things on the lists rather than eat the nervous energy caused by having so many things to do.

Since starting to write this, I’ve paused twice to make phone calls and send emails and already the “This Week” list has shrunk. So it works.

Oh – I forgot to put colour roots on the list.

Pinball.

Oh yeah – Hormone Week Day 3 went well – if a little overshadowed by feeling ill with a suspected ulcer. Life, eh?

Saying Goodbye to Old Favorites

Health 2 Responses »

Nov 182009

That’s what it feels like I’m doing since my blood sugar issue began–saying goodbye. But it’s turning into a much longer goodbye that it ought to be. I really believed that I would take responsibility for my health when the chips (no pun intended) were down. But it’s turning out to be harder than I thought to take care of myself. This needs to be a “pull off the bandaid quickly” kind of thing, not a long drawn out process. How do I make that happen?

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