Do I Look Fat In This?

November sailed with continued success, creeping ever closer to another milestone with the hope of never seeing those numbers again once in the rear view mirror.  Even Thanksgiving was easy, keeping careful track of portions and making good choices.

Then came December, cursed month of failure and misery.  It was the worst month emotionally that I have had in forever.  Admittedly and thankfully, no one close to me died or was injured, so there’s that.  Still, wow, what a mountain that beast was to climb.  I’ll save my serial bitching for the journal and stick to the weight related issues here and yes, I do hear all of you sighing happily in relief over dodging THAT bullet.

I exercised maybe 8-10 times between the end of November and now.  Even though that was not a particularly magnanimous contribution to success, it was something and I do shudder to think how things would have gone without that effort.  A Series of Unfortunate Events (capital letters warranted) left me totally bereft and curled up into an ever growing, sniveling mass of comfort eating goo by the time January rolled around.

I estimate that I’ve gained back around 8 pounds or so of what I lost.  Probably 6 of those came from the incredibly impressive flauta binge in which I ate twelve or so of the buggers in a 24 hour period.  Cookies, candy, cookies, real soft drinks and lots of other food married up to the lack of exercising to whittle away quickly at my previous progress.  As I (quickly) sank lower and lower into serious depression, I was comfort eating more and more to the point that I become increasingly uncomfortable if I wasn’t eating at any given time.  Hand-mouth was ongoing.

As the crest of January hit, the fog cleared and I began to feel much more grounded and *back.*  December was like some bizarre, magic mystery tour that sailed me down the River Styx into the Underworld to visit every dark place I’ve ever known.  There were good things and I do not care to minimize those, but wow, the darkness was impressive to the point of almost obscuring them.

Like that same magic, January brought a wave of new hope, new life and a breath of fresh air as the whole New Year’s celebrating world let go of the oppression of 2009 and greeted 2010 with a near desperate anticipation.  I just rode the wave that was already there.

I am still not exercising.  That begins on Monday when the kids finally go back to school.  Three weeks of Winter Break is just too damned long.  This week has been a focus on returning to disciplined eating in terms of frequency, content and portions.  I started taking my Mila again and the taste means success to me, so that was very nice.

I am still primarily using The Zone diet because it gives me the best results and seems to agree with my system well.  The emphasis is on lean proteins and low glycemic index foods.  No potatoes or white bread or refined sugar products.   The feeling of groundedness begins almost immediately.  Water intake suffered greatly and I am working on that as well.

A friend of mine was kind enough to give me the EA Sports Active More Workouts program for the Wii for Christmas and I enjoy it very much.  The response time is far superior than the first version of this game, although be sure to know that these are all new exercises and routines and none of the ones from the first edition are included.  I plan to use those two as my primary work out focus.

At some point, I got the Biggest Loser work out for the Wii and I was completely disappointed.  It is very thrown together and my high hopes for it were for naught.

Speaking of the Biggest Loser, their season premier is tonight and most of the house is eager for it.  For some reason I cannot fathom, Dylan and Delena started watching the show with me last season and got hooked, so the three of us will be gathered around the TV tomorrow morning (I work tonight during the actual airing) to dive into another season.

I feel the weight I have gained will leave quickly.  I have gotten to know my body very well over the past years of concerted struggle with weight loss (as opposed to my previous half-assed struggle) and I know that new weight does not sit comfortably on me and leaves quickly.  I’ll give it 2 weeks at the very most.

I found a wonderful article on sagging skin that impressed me tremendously and gave me great hope, mostly because it blended well with my own experience and what I have learned over time.  It is here.  I am debating ordering this guy’s e-book, but $21 just seems pricey to me.

My daughter-in-law, Valerie, looked wonderful at Christmas.  She had gastric bypass surgery in March and has lost easily over 100 pounds since then.  She and I started out at around the same weight.  She has not exercised much during her process, but her job is such that she is on her feet almost nonstop.  She looks like a teenager now.  Eric was commenting on how little loose skin she has on her arms and face and he’s right.  She looks great.  It’s odd to suddenly see almost half of the person who was there before.  She is 27 and I am 48 (plus I’ve had twice as many babies as she has with 6 to my credit), so I don’t expect miracles, but it is encouraging, even though weight loss surgery is not an option for me.

I had a bit of a smile recently.  I’m in a strange “in between” size where 20-22 pants are way too big, but 18-20’s are a little too snug for good comfort.  I decided to get some sweat pants since they are only $6 at Wal*Mart and since I rarely go any place where real humans see me anyway.  I thought a couple pair of those would get me through my current awkward stage at a minimal expense.  The conflict came in what size to get.  I didn’t feel I would be in 2X for much longer, but couldn’t remember the last time I bought just XL.  This time I did, got home and wow!  They fit and were almost too big!  God bless generously sized sweats!

For those who do not know, the sizes past XL and into numbered sizes (2X, 3X, etc) are when the fashion (and I use the word so loosely it rattles) industry begins to charge you extra for the additional fabric used to make clothing to encompass your abundant girth.  XL qualifies as almost normal sized folk.

Granted, I am not foolish enough to believe I could walk into any store and grab and XL, slide into it and look like it thinks about fitting me, but hey, in the $6 sweat pants section of the Placerville, California Wal*Mart, I wear a size XL.  That’s something like “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.”

For the foreseeable future, long sleeved t-shirts, my black sweater and $6 sweat pant are my “uniform.”  I might actually strip everything else out of my closet and call it good.  ”And she looked upon her closet of $6 sweat pants and long sleeved t-shirts and saw that it was good.”

The sweater is because we fat people often have  no clue how much that fat insulates us and since I had my initial weight loss from earlier in the year, I tend to be cold all the time.  By the time I’m finished with this, the firmness of my body will likely be caused by the fact that my bones and muscles have all turned to solid ice.

Meh, who cares.

I had a couple of days of extreme nostalgia, which was lovely.  I uploaded some older photos to Facebook and remembered how thin I used to be and how fat I thought I was.  I remembered the shame I felt at my size, a whopping, enormous 10/12, 12/14.  I can’t remember a time when I was not ashamed of my weight.  Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies.

I still have not found my mental meditation stone for weight loss.  I’ve done some meditating, some tapping, some praying about it and it’s as though I have no foundation on which to stand to do it (and I am really, really good at it).  I still go through the motions.  I take my beloved Mila every day.  I watch what I eat every day.  I drink my water every day.  I still do not exercise, even though I know I should.  It’s coming and it’s real.  If not before, I know when the kids start school, I will exercise daily.  I can’t help but feel self-conscious working out in front of people, even my children.  When they are gone, I will have the house to myself and can focus.

I don’t feel bad about that.  There can’t be any shame in losing 30 pounds, taking a short break and then getting back to it again.  

The Mila still helps tremendously on so many levels, even after all of these months.  While I was on vacation, Kathy and I would order a small glass of chocolate milk with an extra glass, divide the milk and chug our Mila.  Of course, that meant we had to hand a really nasty, crusty glass back to the waitress and say, “Um, you might want to get that washed right away.”  Kathy had been out of Mila for a few days and said she noticed a change in her sleep quality right away.  To me, that and the absence of any stomach acid or sourness are the best results.  

When Delena and I were working out with the Sports Active before, we did not incorporate the balance board because we were working out together, at the same time, and we only have the one.  For my next exercise stint, I want to use the balance board because I know that there are a lot of different exercises you can do when you tell the game to include its availability.  My goal is to get in at least an hour a day of exercise, plus maybe take a walk.  I will also be using the Wii Fit because I really do miss using it.

Historically, when I am cutting calories as far as I am now plus working out, I see immediate and impressive results.  I have just rarely done both at the same time because I have a knee-jerk resistance to the sacrifice of the comfort eating (a necessity for me if I’m going to stay below 1200-1500 calories a day) added to the exercise, which I’d truly prefer not to do.  I do realize that not exercising right now is a luxury I am giving to myself and one I can ill afford.  On the other hand, I tell myself that I am not under any kind of obligation to go full force, producing a particular and consistent result all of the time.  This is my journey and my process.

Eric is the voice of reason, finally getting his say in last night on my recent lack of progress.  I knew it was boiling up in him and I had deliberately avoided discussing it with him on anything except the most shallow of levels.  He has a lot of ego and personal agenda wrapped up in this because, dammit, he wants a thin wife and that’s that.  It’s not that he doesn’t love me, but he wants what he wants and he has never been one to make any bones (no pun intended) about what he wants.  To his mind, this is something that would make him very happy that I could give to him, but I’m withholding because it’s hard to do.  

We’ve had the “Eric, it’s not about you” talk, and he does understand that, but for each of us, the things that happen to us and around us are, to a great degree, always about us.  He has something he wants.  There’s one person who can give it to him.  That one person isn’t delivering.  He sees me currently drifting along in a sea of basic apathy about something that is a very passionate and important cause to him.  His interest is not just personal in terms of what attracts him and what doesn’t, but because I am also older than he is, he worries that in a few years, the window for me to lose the weight will have closed and the health problems of obesity will take hold quickly.  It’s not an unreasonable prognosis and I don’t blame him for being concerned.  

He also takes this from a spiritual perspective, being that I planted this weight loss in March and harvest starts next week and I’m not out there “in the field” working on those crops, so to speak.  

We discussed the situation in a very heart-to-heart way last night and toward the end, he was talking and I was just processing.  His presentation was so insistent, so absolute, that I had to stop making excuses, stop thinking about it in my head, stop trying to figure anything out about it and just do it.  I can accept that he was in a spiritual place, speaking his heart and honestly trying to motivate me out of what he views as complacency.  What I wanted, of course, was for him to tell me, “You know, it’s wonderful that you’re doing this and I think our lives will benefit from it greatly, but if you don’t or you can’t, it’s OK.  I’ll love you and want to be with you and think you’re sexy whether you’re 90 pounds or 500 pounds.”  In a perfect world, that would have happened, but in the real world, that’s not my husband.  In that moment of listening to him talk at length about how important this is and that I have to do this before I get older, I felt the resistance coming up in me.  Because we were in our spiritual space, I let it flow through me and out of me; not in words, but just in a release and grounding of energy.  I even had a momentary flash of anger thinking, “I will lose this weight and then find someone who would have loved me even if I was still fat and let them benefit from my efforts.”  It was a horrible, dark moment, but it was there.  

In the end, I allowed myself to focus on the part he said about not thinking about it or meditating on it, but just doing it.  The reason it resonated for me is that I had not told him about losing my mental meditation stone and he didn’t know I’d been struggling with that part.  I know his intent, although partially selfish in nature, comes from love.  

I also know that part of my reaction to what he says comes from the frustration of feeling I need to change to be accepted.  One of the reasons I am overweight is because I do not enjoy doing active things.  I like to play softball and volleyball and badminton, but beyond that, there is very little I like to do that keeps people fit.  I don’t swim or roller blade.  I don’t enjoy hiking or skiing or running.  Even when I was fit, it wasn’t my thing.  I ran every morning as a means to an end and I hated every step.  I’ve never been a “get out there and do things” person.  I’ve always been a “watch a movie, read a book” kind of person.  There is a part of me that does not want to become a different person than I am just so he or anyone else will feel better about me, prouder of me or “like” me more.  I feel the resistance in me to that change as well.  I’m not afraid that if I lose weight, I’ll turn into a different person.   I’ve been thin before and I was of the exact same mindset (which is, again, why I am now overweight). What bothers me is that I could (and likely will) lose the weight and then still be what Eric describes as a “reticent” person and that will likely be disappointing to me.  Because he has never known me as anything but a fat person, he doesn’t take me seriously when I tell him that I have never been different in my interests.  I think he believes that it has just been so long, that I’ve forgotten that I was so much more active.

This is a struggle, to be sure.  There are so many hard-wired, built in reactions in place that are like beasts to be fought and bested.  There is the challenge to decide what battles to fight and which ones to let go.  There is the balancing of this as a mental, emotional, sacred and physical quest.  There is the focus on smaller goals while still realizing this is a long, long, difficult process full of pitfalls and false gods and personal sacrifice for a greater good.

Right here, at this point, is where I normally give up completely and get busy putting back on any weight I have lost and then some.  To get different, I have to be different and do different.  I have to see this pivotal point as a sacred moment where all things are possible and then move forward rather than retreat into what is easier and safer.

Thirty pounds is a lot to lose and I’ve dumped most of that since April.  If I can do that 3 more times, I’ll be golden.  I gave birth 6 times.  I’ve moved to a new house countless times.  I’ve been divorced twice (from the same man).  I have released 3 beloved children to go forth into that scary, dark night of “the real world” to begin their lives away from me with another tiny bird poised to fly from the next in the next few years.  I have buried both of my parents.  I have sent a fiance and a son off to war, even though the son did not actually end up going.  All of those things were infinitely harder than doing this.  

I have been given, as gifts from both God and man, all of the tools I need to make this happen.  It has already begun to happen.  Now, I have to move into the next phase and make it happen some more.

That’s two more pounds I hope to never see again.

For those of you who are keeping track, I think that is 26 since January.  That doesn’t count the 2-3 pounds I’ve lost and regained several times.  I am optimistic for this week because I know I am holding some fluid weight that should be gone the next time I weigh.

Delena and I have been walking, but prior to yesterday, by the time she got awake and ready to move, it was just too hot out for a big ol’ thang like me to be hauling up and down these mountains.  On Wednesday, we did the Biggest Loser Yoga work out with Bob Harper.  It’s a good work out, don’t get me wrong, but at some point – and I’m not even sure when – I threw my back out big time.  I think it was likely in the moves that go from plank into upward facing dog.  I didn’t feel anything make damaging sounds at the time, but by 5pm or so, my back was really singing.  It’s the same area that went out on me when I was pregnant with Nathan.  He was a really big baby and also my 6th and around month #8, something just gave out and I ended up spending most of my last month in bed because of it.  It’s right in the small of my back where my uterosacral ligament would connect into my pelvis, that lower back indentation just before your butt crack begins.  Here it is 3 days later and I still am really, really stiff and sore in my back in the mornings and can’t sit or lie down comfortably for any length of time without it really hurting.  Aleve helps a little.  I’m walking like a woman twice my age right now.

Despite that, I was able to work out Thursday and Friday using the EA Sports Active on the Wii.  For those folks who were looking for a less expensive alternative to the Wii Fit, this is it.  It has literally hundreds of exercises and is a great work out.  The balance board is not required.  You just need the Wii and a TV.  I was able to find plenty of exercises that would protect my back and still let me work up a great sweat.  I like that Delena and I can work out together.  It has a function for working out with a buddy and provides a split screen.  We’ve had a great time with it.

I put on my swimsuit the other night to go out into the jacuzzi with Eric and I showed him the leg of the swimsuit.  ”See where the elastic in the leg is stretched out?  My leg stretched that out!”  There was easily a 3-4″ gap between my leg and the elastic of the suit.  It feels really good to see real results, especially when the scale isn’t moving as I’d like for it to.

I am grateful to have lost 26 pounds, don’t get me wrong.  That’s more than I’ve lost in a year in a long, long time.  I’d hoped for more by now; almost double, in fact.  Still, I’ll take the slow, steady progress that I know is going to make a permanent change over the faster progress that may or may not stick around.

Last week for the first time I can remember I went to the movie theater and did not order popcorn.  The smell was absolutely intoxicating, but I remembered well that the last two times I ate movie popcorn, I got really sick afterwards.  By the time I was a third of the way through the movie, I wasn’t missing it any more.

Delena and I have been dividing our food into 5 small meals of 300 calories each.  Since I’m taking the Mila, I have to push myself to eat all of those times, but I know that when I’ve eaten less frequently, my weight loss has slowed down.   I’m drinking lots more water, which I have found is absolutely essential to helping the Mila curb your appetite.  

I went back on the PremPro hormone replacement therapy and after a week at even the lower dose, I’m back to myself again.  I’m grateful to feel grounded, healthy and centered once again.  Being all fragmented and flighty was fun, don’t get me wrong.  I was able to go off in my head and get lost with no problem at all.  Unfortunately, I was more irritable and had trouble focusing to get anything done and that doesn’t fit in with my life right now.  I’m grateful that I can have good results on a low dosage and feel so much better.  Any time I forget to take my Mila, which is rare now, by the end of the night, I have a sour stomach and then I end up not sleeping well.  The day I start taking it again, I begin sleeping soundly through the night and wake up feeling refreshed and ready to start the day.

Because of the good sleep I am getting, I am not sleeping in as late as I expected I would.  I normally wake up around 7:30 – 8:00 (I was figuring more like 9:00 – 10:00) and since my kids all sleep late, I get an hour or two of quiet time before the day begins.  That’s a real blessing.  

I won’t make my goal of being under 200 pounds by mid-July unless something really phenomenal happens (which it did in March, so I don’t discount the idea) and I’m at peace with that.  As long as progress continues and I feel good, that’s all that matters.

I apologize for the delay in updating.  Eric and I have just gone through a tremendously stressful financial time that climaxed (which makes it sound like a pleasant experience, it was not) in the past couple of weeks.  I hate that feeling where despite your best plans, dreams and what you think are very appropriate actions, the world seems to conspire to keep you locked in a perpetual cycle of failures and frustrations.  

In light of all of that, I did not make good food choices and I barely exercised at all.   When I did exercise, there was no real enthusiasm or determination put into it.  I felt defeated and sad and it showed.  

I still took the Mila every day, sometimes twice a day, and that is likely all that saved me.  I did not gain any weight, luckily, but I did not lose any either, which is a shame since that is something that has been easy for me lately.

What happened is I got overly confident because of my progress and did not make the good choices I’d been making.  I’d think that because I was eating so little, I could have a “real” soda instead of a diet one.  I’d have movie popcorn instead of a healthy lunch.  I’d eat fried chicken instead of baked.  So I wasn’t really eating more in terms of volume, but I was in terms of calories.  

That means I pay for that with a couple of weeks of no progress until I got my head out of my sizable butt and figured out what was going on and how (again) I was fooling myself.   I am just grateful that so little damage was done.

Eric said something the other day about my lack of current progress and I said, “Look.  Go to Wal*Mart and pick up a 20 pound bag of dog food and lug it around the store for a while.  That’s slightly less than what I’ve lost so far this year.  From that perspective, I don’t feel too bad that I had no progress for 2 weeks.

Despite our financial woes, I was a selfish mom and wife and bought the EA Sports Active.  It arrived a couple of days ago and boy, it is a heavy duty work out.  I pour sweat when I do this thing.  It has none of the game feel that the Wii Fit has, but is still fun and is very challenging.  I’ve been quite stiff and sore every day I’ve done it.  The only complaint I have is that it doesn’t weigh you (so I have to weigh in using the Wii Fit still) and the response time with the Wii-mote and nunchuck is not nearly as targeted and quick as with the Wii Fit.  That can be fairly frustrating, but the work out is worth it.  I’ve done 45 minutes to an hour each day.

Starting Saturday, Delena and I will be doing the Sports Active and also walking the hills.  Those two things should definitely do the job.  The Mila still dampens my appetite considerably and provides all of the other positive results.  My failure is my own and I am grateful to be back on track.