In my life, that always ended badly.

But still, I’m giving it a shot.

The past few days have proven to me that I can say all the right things:

• Eat only when you’re hungry
• Pay attention to how full you are
• Drink lots of water
• Stick to one glass of wine

But the DOING of them is lagging behind a little.

Because I’m not writing down everything that I’m eating or counting calories, it’s beyond essential that I finally master the art of eating only when hungry and stopping when full. I didn’t realise how far I was from being able to do that.

It turns out I still have diet shaped attitudes.

• Am I allowed that?
• Do I have enough Points/calories left to eat it all?

My body’s needs and my appetite don’t get a look-in!

My diet-driven thought pattern towards dinner last night was:

• cook something “I can eat”
• eat all of it – regardless of how much my body wants or needs.

As I was choking down the last bites of a lovely meal, completely stuffed, I found myself thinking,  ”And you thought you were over this behaviour…..”

So it’s a matter of continuing on with the basics.

Am I hungry?

Am I still hungry?

And the answer to “Can I eat that?” is YES.

Although I can talk “goal weights” with the best of them, my fantasy weight loss goal is actually having food be a complete non-issue.  You know – like when they ask a celebrity or a chef what they ate on a “normal” day and the answer is something like:

For breakfast I had a cup of espresso and a slice of mango.  Lunch was a a couple of biscuits with a chunk of really strong cheddar and a cup of tea.  Dinner was grilled salmon with new potatoes and green beans from my garden and a glass of white wine.

Yeah sure – and a packet of 40 cigarettes.

I KNOW it’s not true but it’s still my fantasy to have healthy eating “just happen”.

But how do I balance that goal with my long and sordidly unbalanced history with food?

• Step One: Remove as many “diet trappings” as possible.

What does that mean?  No more weighing of self.? No more journalling?  I guess it’s essential to decide which elements of the dieting trap are toxic and which are helpful.  This is purely personal; one woman’s help is another woman’s poison.

Toxic – Interesting exercise.  Turns out toxic is a state of mind.

thinking about food all the time.

ruining happy social times with thoughts of “I can’t eat that”.

tying my weight to any concept of success or failure of me as a person

behaviour that leads to guilt about eating

allowing myself to get carried away by short term results aka dieting euphoria

To sum up : negativity and obsessing of any kind.

Helpful – but only helpful if they don’t lead to the toxic stuff above

weighing self

measuring waist

weighing and measuring ingredients and portions

journalling food

How do I use those helpful tools in a non-toxic way? That’s the cruncher. I guess my question is my answer. To be non-toxic, these things have to be tools rather than obsessions. It will be a day by day assessment as to how I’m using them -or avoiding them, for that matter.

So here’s the plan:

For the first 3 weeks, I’m going to put away the weighing and measuring of food and trust what I’ve learned over the past 3 years about good ingredients and portion sizes.

I will weigh myself occasionally but only if it’s helpful to see if I’m not gaining.  Loss is going to be difficult to assess when I’m aiming to lose less than half a pound per week.  There will be no “weigh-in day” – just assuring that I’m headed in the right direction.

That’s enough to start.  I’m not sure if there’s a Step Two – I’ll think about that over the next couple of days.

Stay tuned.

Yesterday, for the first time in forever, I went for a mind-clearing 5 mile walk – in under 72 minutes, I might add – and found myself thinking about where I am today with my weight/body/mind insanity sanity.

It’s almost three years since I stepped on the scale and realised that I’d put back on all the weight I’d worked so hard to lose for a big family wedding.  I’d done it many times before, but this time I also heard a voice from deep inside that said, “NO MORE”.

I didn’t feel any sense of thrill about dieting; I just knew I had to do it. Surrounded by supportive cyber-friends I decided to combine hard work with writing about the weight loss process – no “click”, no dieting euphoria.  That was the start of breaking a cycle that I had been perpetuating in my life since my teens.

So what about now?  How is it possible that the first 20 pounds has stayed off and I’m on my way to the last 10 being gone forever?  I’m not talking about losing the weight – dieting is not a problem – I’m talking about keeping it off.

• No whining.  No excuses.

Ah, BCB.  If I hadn’t learned this, I never would have learned that there was no one but MYSELF who was responsible for the amount of fat on my body and for the negative way I was feeding my body.  Years of food/body issues can make a person take on a victim role.  No excuses means the following: If there’s junk food in my cupboard, I put it there.  If there’s wine in my belly, I put it there.  If there’s fat on my body – I put it there.  There’s been lots of complicated life stuff to sort through, but in the end, if I feed my sadness/anger/boredom  (fill in your own favourite state of mind), then I will gain weight. I may not be able to fix my life, (just call me Queen of Understatement), but I CAN choose how I deal with those emotions.  I’m not a victim.

• Permanent change.

For the first time ever, I realised that this couldn’t be a “diet” followed by “normal”.  It was all a new normal.  This meant that I actually bothered to find new foods to love not just new “diet foods”.

For the years and years and years (30 plus) that I regained every pound lost through dieting, I can see now that I simply didn’t want to change.  I didn’t want a new way of eating.  I didn’t want to not eat when I wasn’t hungry.  My body proved quite dramatically that these weren’t great decisions but it took me a long long time to work out the (obvious) connection.

• Move for the sake of your health, not for weight loss.

This is a new one for me.  Years of earning “Points” have led me to equate exercise with being allowed to eat more.  This past year I’ve been learning to eat according to what by body needs – to feed my body so that it can move well.  This is quite a leap from moving so that I can drink more wine. 

• Write

For some reason, writing about this process has made it happen. Or helped it to happen. I suppose it’s a combination of my temperament and my talents but getting it all down on paper makes the process more understandable.  It’s as though, for all those years and through all those diets, I just wanted to do it without thinking about it.  I didn’t want to think about why I stuffed myself with food when I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t want to think about my body shape or how to dress myself.  I didn’t want to think about how food and relationships were all tied up.

Writing has helped me to hang onto the “A-ha” moments of this process, to cement the permanent changes rather than just rushing through a diet as fast as I can so that life can get back to normal.  Writing about it all has helped to establish a new normal.

Is that really all there is to it?

• No whining, no excuses
• Make permanent changes
• Eat to move – don’t move to eat
• Write

Of course, each one of those involves a whole lot of trying and failing and figuring out and quitting for a bit then starting again where I left off.  It’s meant getting to grips with the woman in the mirror and the body in the changing room and I’m still a work in progress.

A work in progress.

You don’t use food as a drug for 30 years and “just change” over night.  If someone had told me, back in the summer of 2008, that three years from now I was still going to be working on this, I’m not sure I would have just said, “Well let’s get on with it anyway!”  I didn’t know at the time what was going to happen in my life.   But I was SO SICK of feeling like a failure over something that I knew was within my control.

And so I keep on writing and working and looking forward to the new phase ahead.

I was supposed to be updating my progress with ProPoints but I hit a wall and have been metaphorically collapsed on the pavement for the past week or more. I’m pretty good with hormones as long as they come alone.  But when they bring with them their other little gang members – like stress, worry or crappy life events, then I’m usually beaten to a pulp and left lying in the gutter till they go away.

The result is that I have NOT felt like counting points or restricting carbs to the level that the new Weight Watchers plan wishes us to.  Just the thought of it makes me feel cranky.

Thankfully, I didn’t turn into a bingeing mess because (hugely thankfully), bingeing is a very very rare event these days.  I just needed more than 29 points a day to maintain any form of sanity.  I also needed (oh dear – this isn’t going to sound great) a couple of glasses of wine.  So I didn’t lose any weight because I didn’t follow the plan.  This is not to say that the plan doesn’t work.  Of course it works: it’s a diet! And when I want to lose those last 6 pounds (count ‘em! ) , I will follow ProPoints to the letter and they will slip away.

Another “thankfully”: I’m finding it hard to adjust to the new plan – not because I like the old plan better – but because I’ve finally figured out how to maintain my weight loss on NO PLAN.  That’s a minor miracle for a woman who has been losing and gaining the same 30 pounds for 30 years.

Dare I say that I may have stumbled on my own secret to permanent weight loss?

• Write and write and write for a minimum of three years till you can’t think of another thing to say.
• Fall down and get up countless times but never, ever, ever give up.
• Alternate losing with maintaining for a long slow journey.
• Replace the dieting mentality with the “eating to live” mentality.  Enjoy food.

This isn’t a valedictory address of any kind, because I haven’t actually taken off the last of those 30 pounds, but I’m so changed from July 08 when I started this journey that I feel the need to talk about it. Trying to follow ProPoints has just highlighted those changes.   This probably needs a new post.

I’m on a new “whole woman” kick with a handful of things to accomplish before I’m 50.

• Read the bible through from cover to cover like a book.  I’m almost through Numbers with the help of YouVersion as my home page and on my Blackberry.  I’m using the 90 Day Plan but have adjusted the dates to give me till the end of April and it’s been an amazing experience so far.
• Sort out the emotional eating – the one thing that trips me up again and again and again.
• Grow out my dyed hair to its natural colour.  It’s an adventure and I’m excited and terrified in equal measures.
• Change my eating plan.

I’d better say a little more about that.  I’ve realised that when I say I like “slow weight loss”, what I’m really saying is that I’m happy with the rhythm of losing some weight quickly then maintaining that loss for a while before finding the energy to do it all again.

When I did try “slow weight loss” with the Maintenance Diet, I got almost instantly frustrated by the lack of results.  But I’m still very attracted to the idea of just eating for the size I want to be six months from now.  That means settling for a pound and a bit per month, not per day or week.  I want to be the person who can do that.

What would have to change for me to be that person?

• I’d have to conquer the stress/boredom/any other emotional eating.  Really.

• I’d have to see my life as a whole – moving every day and really delighting in eating smaller portions.

• I’d have to really really really knock the dieting tendency out of my life.

I figure that I haven’t lost anything lately partly because I’m just bored.  I want to weigh ten pounds less than I do right now.  My body is willing but my psyche just can’t be bothered to get all caught up in the thrills and spills of the “losing phase”.

So maybe I’m past it.  Or maybe I need to ride out this phase and wait till I’m ready to go into losing mode again.

That’s possible – but, as 50 approaches, I’d rather be who I want to be for the rest of my life.

I want to be a person who doesn’t have to feel full all day – a person who eats to satisfy hunger, enjoy company, delight in tastes and textures.  I want to be a vibrant person who doesn’t crave more calories than a body needs to stay slim and healthy.

I’m done rehearsing.  I know all I need to know about myself and food.  The challenge is to relax and trust myself and my body.  And to keep moving.

So is this actually a plan?  Does it have a form?

• I’m going to put into practice, to the best of my ability, all the expertise I have in the area of cooking and eating good healthy food.  The “controlling” factor won’t be a food journal but a desire to live well. That’s the bit that could go terribly wrong – but it will free up my time and energy for the next element.

• I’m going to distract myself with things I want to do – writing, reading, doing things.

• Keep moving on a daily basis – especially incorporate some weight training into my week.  I’ve stopped running because I dread that “need” for the endorphins.  But I miss them too.  This all ties in with my dread of enthusiasm.

Three points is enough.  I’ll stop by periodically but I’m going to do what I can to genuinely embrace Slow Weight Loss.

I’m not writing much because my real work has taken over my life for a bit.  That’s a good thing because real work pays real money. In my pretend life, where I write, contemplate and ponificate full time, I get paid pretend money. So there’s no argument about which gets priority just for the moment.

And I can’t quite get the food thing on track – or, at least – on the exactly right track to do this bloody thing that I promised myself oh so very very long ago.

While clearing out drawers and cupboards at my Mom’s, I found a Christmas letter from 2002 which mentions a wedding in the Higlands of Scotland.  The invitation to that wedding was the catalyst which caused me to make a promise to myself to get to a certain (as yet unspecified) weight and stay there for a whole year. So let’s say the invitation arrived in the spring of 2002. That’s eight and a half years of thinking about that promise.

It’s now been over two years since getting serious about working hard and writing my way to a steady weight.  In many ways it’s worked.  Through the most stressful two years of my life, I have taken off 25 pounds and stayed within five pounds of that goal.

But my promise was about something else.  I’m fully aware that the top of the bmi range is still overweight for me.  I’m not as “big boned” as my mother used to say.  I look ok.  I may find that I don’t like what I look like in the middle of the bmi range. I may find that it’s just impossible to maintain that weight while enjoying life.  But I’ll never know unless I get there.

So, I’m going to start Talking It Off again -doing the work and seeing if I can’t keep that promise.  However.

Yep – HOWEVER, I’m getting bored with this promise thing so I’m going to make it “time sensitive”.

If I can’t be bothered to lose those last 10 pounds by my 50th birthday, my new promise is that I will be happy with whatever weight I’m at and put my energy into being the fittest and healthiest slightly chubby 50 year old I can be.

I’m also getting mighty bored with the diet-head conundrum.  I can repeatedly state that I’m not on a diet, that I’m just changing my eating habits – but the fact remains that dropping one to two pounds per week requires a different mindset than maintaining my weight.  The result is that I still find it very difficult to get the weight loss/weight gain pendulum to come to a complete stop. So I’m going to experiment with SLOW SLOW SLOW weight loss and just start eating to maintain a weight that is 10 pounds lighter than I am right now.

The problem I foresee is that it’s going to take a while to tell if I’m being successful or not.  I reckon I will lose around a pound every three weeks which might get obscured by normal monthly fluctuations.  It will probably be two months before I can see any permanent change so I’d better prepare myself for the non-dietness of it all.

More on this through the week………

I’ve taken a few days off – mostly because I’ve got deadlines – but partly because I needed to stand back for a bit to get some perspective.

I’m one of the few people I know who like installation art and one of my favourite installations is a collection of supposed fragments from a bombed out museum.  In order to look at it, you have to get very close to see what the fragments are,

then you have to stand way back to get a sense of the enormity of the piece.

If you stand back even further and watch people looking at the installation, you see a sort of slow dance of people walking up to the wall then backing away, then up and back again and again.

And I think that’s what this blog has become: you can see me peering carefully at my behaviour and my motives for a while and then watch me take a few steps back to try to get to grips with the whole picture.

I’m in that last week of my 3 months in this country and have so many deadlines and appointments that my first plan of action is to crawl back under the covers.

My second plan of action is to walk carefully through the next few days, acknowledging that I’m stressed about meeting up with the liver specialist and stressed about getting my business finances in order and stressed about chasing up late payments (WHY do the larger institutions treat the little guys so badly?).

I also confess to feeling stressed about not being where I wanted to be with the weight loss – but really, there’s nothing I can do about that so I’m going to relax  for the moment, stand back and take a good look at the big picture, ideally without the company of unrefined carbohydrates.

I will also go for a run or two or three despite the weather and despite my sincere desire to stay in my pjs and watch endless episodes of the Gilmore Girls.

Thanks to the weighing every day exercise, I’m now unmoved by the little ups and downs – but a lack of progress these past few weeks has really started to get to me. So I decided to look back at my most successful times of weight loss and do what I did then to get the same results.

What started as a straight-forward quest for information turned into a chance to stand back and see the big picture of these last couple of years.

Jan 2008 – Jul 2010:  The Show So Far

Jan 2nd 2008 – Weigh in heavier than any non-pregnant weight.  170 lbs

Jan, Feb, Mar – work really hard and lose 12ish pounds for a family wedding. (That’s from memory as I only kept my starting weight) 158ish lbs

Apr, May, Jun, Jul – Ditch gym, stop journalling (ie stop trying) and gain back all but 5 pounds. 165 lbs

On July 21st I step on the scale and something changes in me.   I weigh 165 lbs and am fed up, but I’m then galvanised by something Mardee writes over at BCB.

Aug & half of Sep – I lose 9 pounds by working hard and writing about working hard. It’s the first time I can see real change in my attitude towards the process of losing weight.  I’ve looked back at my NutraCheck journals and I was eating 1600 calories a day and counting things like cleaning and shopping as “exercise” – but I lost steadily over those 6 weeks.  Interesting and not sure what to do with that information.  156 lbs

Mid-Sep, Oct, Nov - I rush home to Canada to be with my dad because my mom is taken ill.  I lose a further 6lbs by simply being too busy and anxious and sad.  I’m also never alone in the house, so don’t engage in the usual bingeing behaviour brought on by that sort of stress.  I continue to lose a couple of pounds in November (148 lbs) once it’s decided that I need gynae surgery which leads to…….. 

Dec, Jan 2009 – Yes it’s Christmas and the kids are home and it’s festive – but I’ve also decided that I’ve lost weight so easily these past 5 months because I’m actually dying of cancer.  I start to eat to prove to myself that I can gain weight.  And guess what?  I do!  Up 5 lbs between Christmas celebrations, health insanity and then recuperation time. 153 lbs And then….

Feb - At the end of Jan, just when I’m starting to feel like myself again, my dad dies.  I fly home, go see a brain injured mom every day and sit alone in his empty house for a month – and eat my grief for both of them.  Walking saves me from anything worse than a 3 pound gain but that’s 8 over all and I go home feeling like I’m starting again – only this time I’m sad as well as determined. 156 lbs

Mar, Apr, May, Jun – Go back to Weight Watchers and lose 5 lbs in 4 months.  But I’m at the gym a lot so my body is changing and I’m not frustrated by the slow weight loss.  The net loss for 12 months is 21 pounds.  149 lbs And what a ride.

Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct – Back to Canada for the summer then return to the UK and Weight Watchers.  I’m playing with the same pound or two.  I’m no longer writing, not excited about the old Bootcamp board and in need of a change.  I know that WW isn’t really the answer for me even though I love the people. I am faffing around and going nowhere – so I decide to start this blog.  150 lbs And then…..

Nov – I lose 7 pounds in a month and look great.  I’ve also got chronic stomach issues and am once again flung back into the medical system.  Looking for gall stones, they find “something” on my liver.  Here we go again with the, “It’s been way too easy to lose weight, I’d better eat to make sure I’m not dying” thinking. 143 lbs And guess what?

Dec, Jan 2010 - It’s Christmas!  And I’m eating to prove I’m not dying and I gain weight.  This is not a pattern I expected to see.  It’s very interesting that the two times I’ve been down towards the weight I want to be, I haven’t been well so I bounce away from it as fast as I can. 147 lbs

Feb, Mar & half of April – I sort of try but am pretty caught up in either seeing doctors or worrying about seeing doctors.  I really do lose my mind when my health is out of wack. Lose 3 pounds  – mostly in a couple of weeks where I paid attention. 144 lbs

Apr, May - I’m worried about the fact that I lost weight while feasting over Easter so yet another episode of “eat to prove I’m not dying”.  Then back to Canada to sit alone in a house, not grieving this time but worrying about the thing on my liver. I have this mindset that, if something’s seriously wrong, then why bother with worrying about eating and exercise? I gain 5 pounds in the process. 149 lbs

May - There’s an awful lot of thinking about the weight loss process but not an awful lot of  DOING. I’m tempted to call “failure!” but the fact is that I still didn’t gain significant weight.  And this time, just seeing a couple of pounds up made me recommit to doing something for myself – to getting what I want rather than sitting around talking about what I want.  148 lbs

Jun, Jul  (ie now) I decide to go for what I want and what I want is to weigh in the 130′s – anywhere in the 130′s will do.  I also decide that, if I end up really sick, I want my body to be in the best shape it can be. (I’m still waiting on the official plan of action re: the liver) I’ve been running and feeling stronger and breathing better.  I know that I can get results with the weight loss if I don’t let my social life get in the way. Today I weigh 145 lbs.

And that’s the show so far.  Two and a half years from seeing that 170 on my scales.  Two years from deciding to write about the process of stopping the weight loss/weight gain pendulum.

Have I stopped the pendulum?  Not completely, but the swings are much much smaller than they were two years ago.

• I know that a 25 pound weight loss doesn’t happen on a straight road. Life means curves, switchbacks, deadends and hellish hairpin bends.
• I no longer do “all or nothing”.
• I no longer think in terms of on and off wagons.
• I know (boy do I know) that life just gets in the way sometimes.
• I know that it’s possible to keep going anyway.
• I know that sometimes weight will apparently fall off me – usually when I’m stressed.
• I know that exercise helps me stay emotionally balanced.
• I know that I can do this.

I have every intention of being where I want to be when the calendar ticks over to 2011. God willing. Health willing.

Am I the least bit embarrassed that it could take 3 years to lose 30 lbs?

No! Just incredibly grateful for the chance to sort out issues which have affected my life since childhood. And, when I say “sort out”, that doesn’t mean I have illusions of perfection. It means I know it’s possible to be sane and balanced and content with my body and my eating.

“Peace not perfection”  is the slow weight loss motto.

What do you think of this article?

For a long time, I wanted to be in the “Diets don’t work” club.  I love the idea of telling everyone that I will never diet again – but I quickly learned that meant being fat forever.

Hala El-Shafie says: Diets set you up to fail; they should be banned. Eat small amounts of the right food. Eat regularly and well. Get moving: exercise helps. Think about why you eat. Accept your body shape and who you are; size 8 (4 US) jeans will not necessarily make you happy.

Yes! But,where I come from, if you’re used to eating whatever, whenever and however much you want, Ms El-Shafie’s approach to not dieting IS dieting. There are about a thousand steps between where I started and where she wants me to be.  I’ve been working at this for years and I’m not there yet.

For me this is a “just do this” statement and about as helpful as responding to malfunctioning light switches with, “just rewire the house”.

In my experience, “just do this” statements are used by people who don’t want to share your problem with you.  They offer solutions that reflect well on their own behaviour – “Well I could rewire my own house!”.  Well bully for you – as my mother would say.

Instead, I favour the “acknowledge how messy life is” response.

• Start with figuring out the problem – it might take some time.
• Then think of little tiny things that are going to help you climb out of the muck and mire.
• Finally – keep trying and making mistakes and falling down and getting dirty and asking friends to help you up.  Suddenly you find that things are going generally in the right direction.

There’s no timetable – this might take years or just a few months.  I can’t imagine it taking less than a few months. Just be prepared for stretches of hard work and results to be followed by cruising and consolidation as you regroup or just enjoy your success so far.

And while you’re doing all this figuring out, it will probably help to have some tools on hand that other people have devised – maybe Weight Watchers or Nutracheck or a Low GI diet (I’ve never tried that one but it always seemed sensible).  As long as we treat them as tools and not religions, they can be helpful rather than harmful.

I’ve also got a collection of books that I dip into when I need encouragement or sometimes I just read through blogs of people who are also figure this food/body/mind thing out.

How do we asses whether or not it’s working?  I think the only way is to think back to the beginning of the process.

• Am I further ahead than I was 30 years ago.  Yes – by many many many steps.

• What about 2 years ago? I’ve learned SO much about myself in this process since I started dropping down from 170lbs.

• What about last month? No- I haven’t made much progress for a couple of months.  I guess it’s time to push forward again.

What does “push forward” mean in this part of the journey?  It means getting the last few pounds off and starting the “forever” process with maintenance.  Can’t say I feel particularly psyched.  My stomach bothers me every day and I find myself eating what I think will make me feel better.  I need to be more mindful about what does make me feel better and construct a plan around that.

OK – This life has huge capacity for “Day 1′s” and this is yet another of them.  Losing another half stone (7lbs) can’t make my health worse and it just might make it a bit better.  So here goes.

I’ve been thinking – wondering really – about why this time has been so different.  Besides the writing, I think that the biggest difference has been a new “forever” mindset.  I’m trying to think of a good analogy to explain what I mean.

In all my previous attempts at weight loss, I was like a person going on a trip.  I’d pack a huge suitcase full of expectation. I’d buy a ticket to a certain destination and have a timetable for getting there.  But I wouldn’t expect the unexpected and I’d always come home before I got to where I wanted to be because I couldn’t handle the very nature of travelling.  “There” remained unexplored and “home” was a place that was ugly but comfortable.

I think middle age has taught me to pack light – ditch the expectations, the presumed destination and the timetable.  Home is no longer an option – I sold that house and have taken to the road! This time I’m wandering around the world and I’ll know “there” when I see it.

I’m pretty sure I couldn’t make any money telling people that the best way to lose weight is to aim for an average of about a pound a month.  But, with the huge benefit of hindsight, I’m very happy to be 25lbs lighter than I was 25 months ago.  If I had repeated my usual on-off-on-off dieting behaviour, I’d certainly weigh more now than I did in January 08.

Maybe I should submit my idea to Carl Honoré and we could launch the “Slow Diet” movement.  That’s not such a bad idea.