Tag Archives | weight loss
December 5, 2012

3



Midlife Changes, Random babble, Women's Stuff

Trusting my body

This is quickly becoming one of those weeks, where I wish I could press the rewind button and start it all over. However as we all know life doesn’t quite work like that, so all we can do is carry on and do the best that we can to maintain sanity in the midst of madness. Part of me maintaining my sanity is making time for me, oddly enough that includes taking time every day to write whether it is in my journal or in this humble little space. Today I am in this space.

While the list of things I could bitch about is ever growing, I realized a few days ago that actually there is a bright spot. Earlier this year, I gave up my relationship with Weight Watchers; don’t get me wrong Weight Watchers didn’t do me wrong in anyway. Hell, I actually took off almost 50 pounds with WW and maintained that loss for several years until I got sloppy by their standards and eventually I gained back almost 20 of the 50 pounds.

I had planned to get back together with Weight Watchers this year but found myself resistant; the truth is I wanted to learn to trust my body to make right choices without concern about points or that dreaded weekly meeting. It’s been a journey this year as I embraced the idea of intuitive eating and trusting that my body will make the right choices.

Well after months of feeling stalled and wondering if my body didn’t know how to trust itself, all of sudden it seems my body has gotten the memo that she is a capable being who can choose what and when to eat and doesn’t need the weekly meeting or those points. I don’t know exactly when this all started to happen, but I know that I am no longer freebasing desserts daily, a simple dark chocolate square is often all I want when I feel the need for something sweet.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I baked exactly one pie, and in the end I had one slice of that pie and ended up throwing away almost half a pie. Oddly enough I didn’t feel any which way about that either. I find my body craving more fruits and veggies than ever before as evidenced by the fact that I was way more enthusiastic about the vegetarian café that opened up near my job, than I ever would have thought it possible.

I don’t step on the scale often, but I do know that all of a sudden my bigger clothes, the ones I reluctantly bought this fall now have room in them. After realizing that all my large clothes have room, I did break down and step on the scale and was pleasantly surprised. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, last year I read several of Geneen Roth’s books and learned about intuitive eating and knew that initially it would be an adjustment, one that might even cause the numbers to rise but that eventually my body would find its sweet space…guess we are heading to the sweet spot.

In the end who knows what all this means, but I admit I am digging my veggies, yoga and walking, now if I could get my seven year old to join me in the veggie love. Then again maybe I need to trust that her body will guide her and that eventually she will want to eat good healthy foods and lose her love for all things meaty and swine. Trusting my own body might actually be easier than trusting my child’s body, but that is a post for another day.

July 12, 2012

7



personal growth, Random babble, Women's Stuff

Fabulously fit for 40 and beyond…a journey in progress

Once upon a time in a life far away, I used to care a lot about both my looks and my weight. Then life smacked me upside the head and there was little time to care about such things. I eventually gained weight, took it off, kept it off and gained some of it back. Pretty much that shitty struggle many of us have. For the past several months I have been on the fence about actively doing anything about the weight, instead committing to just finding balance in my life with regards to what I eat and how I move my ass.

Yet as I slowly edge closer to 40 (less than 6 months away now) I have been in serious talks with myself about how I want to treat this temple known as my body. Frankly it depresses me to think about ever returning to Weight Watchers or any diet program. While the idea of just living a life compatible with the health at every size ideology resonates with me, after a few months of playing around with it, I must confess it simply isn’t working.

I figured this out recently when after a few months of not limiting myself in what I ate but also realizing my clothes aren’t fitting and that I feel like shit physically. Turns out carbs hate me and my daily carb fest is packing on the pounds. Also when left to my own devices and not being intentional I hate exercising, then again I was the kid who managed to fail gym in high school multiple times. I love yoga but yoga is a mental thing for me and while I am flexible as hell these days and can do all sorts of silly party tricks with my body, my body is like move me lady!

At first all this body shit was coming from a place of vanity but now it’s about living well and living long. My gene pool to be frank sucks ass. On both my mom and dad’s sides of the family, people don’t live long and it’s not just a few people. Neither of my dad’s parents lived to a ripe old age, my mom’s dad checked out at 54, and then my own mom kicked the bucket 4 days after turning 50.  None of which is exactly a winning endorsement for any expectation of a long life for me.

One common thread in my family is that none of my relatives took care of themselves. Most were overweight and affected with ailments such as diabetes and hypertension and problems that eventually morphed and claimed their lives. Looking at all the women in my family with the exception of my mom, we all share a certain build, one that predisposes us to carrying weight smack in the middle. Apparently carrying extra weight around the middle is bad.

I am going to be honest I had been mulling all this over and making some baby steps which have me seeing some results but a call last night has me now fully committed to changing my lifestyle. My aunt, my mom’s remaining sister (another sister died at 34, collapsed and died) is barely in her 50’s and suffering from congestive heart failure and it’s not looking too good. My aunt much like my mom and many other relatives who are gone now, enjoyed life, ate, drank, smoked and got merry. Now like her 2 sisters before her and a brother she is facing a premature death.

Maintaining optimal health for me is unfortunately tied to my weight, and I admit that is a hard pill to swallow. But I don’t want to end up swallowing pills on a daily basis to stay alive like most of my family so the alternative is a shift in mindset, so as I wrap up my 30’s, I am kicking off my personal quest to be fabulously fit at 40 and beyond because I want to make sure my 40’s aren’t my last full decade of life. I want to do everything possible to ensure that my kids don’t know the pain of losing me when I am still relatively young. I want to live to see my kids grow up (okay I am technically halfway there with the 20 year old) and I want to see grandbabies. I want to be the fabulous Grammy in her 70’s and beyond. So while I am not quite ready to run back to Weight Watchers or anything like that I am getting serious about this maintaining health thing.

To keep myself honest I will periodically share my journey in this space which I expect will have its ups and downs but that’s the thing about a journey. It’s a process and while in my case the end goal is important, so are the lessons I learn along the way.

For readers 40 and beyond, I would love to know if you made any lifestyle changes as you got older that you never would have considered when you were younger?

April 16, 2012

3



Random babble

Foot in mouth…my thoughts on fat acceptance movement

This is one of those posts where I suspect I won’t be able to do the subject justice and will come across all wrong and inevitably piss someone off though that is not my intent.It was brought to my attention that I may have conflated the Fat Acceptance Movement with the Health at Every Size movement, I will admit that despite the fact that the Fat Acceptance Movement has existed for many years, it’s only in the past year did I become familiar with it. So I am stating upfront that if I misspoke something, please understand it is not intentional.

Since my late 20’s after what was a lifetime of never worrying about my weight, I entered a phase that is still with me where my weight and I have a love-hate relationship, though I am working hard to love it. After a year hiatus from Weight Watchers I recently went back since the 16.1 extra pounds I am carrying around just won’t go away…damn pesky pounds and I realized that despite my ambivalence, Weight Watchers works for me, I need that extra bit of accountability though it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

Bodies and weight are a sensitive topic. In a world obsessed with thin bodies when you don’t have a thin body it’s easy to feel invisible or judged, trust me I know. Almost a year after my daughter’s birth, a picture my husband took of me,  that photo had me asking who is the fat chick? Turns out I was the fat chick! I was caught up in the glow of a new baby and frankly didn’t have time to nurture my body and ended up heavier than I had been during my pregnancy…damn breast-feeding advocates lied to me! They said if I breastfed, I would lose weight; I suspect they didn’t mean I could have that Dorito and coke habit I had at the time. I have shared on this blog before, how I ended up joining Weight Watchers and over a several year period shed damn near 50 pounds. I did a great job of keeping it off until a pesky abdominal surgery had me laid up for weeks and I fell back into some old habits, once again involving carbonated beverages and chips. I admit, chips are my weakness, fuck that, they are my kryptonite.

Last year after some hemming and hawing, I decided to get serious about taking the weight off and a month later, said fuck it, I just didn’t want to deal with it. So I have spent the past year living in the 160’s which I suspect is my body’s natural weight range if left alone. As I recently told a friend for the most part, with my walking and yoga, I can eat what I want and neither gain nor lose weight. All in all, not a bad place, yes I am overweight, but I am active however a recent conversation with one of my oldest friends made me take another look at the situation.

My friend B who recently turned 44 and has always carried an extra 20-40 lbs. was diagnosed with some serious health issues that are directly tied to years of carrying extra weight. He’s a big man, always has been but as he told me, taking a shitload of drugs is not his idea of fun and so he is actively trying to get the weight off and bring his body back to where it needs to be so he can live sans the drugs.

Reason I am sharing this, is because in the past year the Fat Acceptance Movement has grown thanks to the internet. I have seen more than one blog post advocating that all bodies are beautiful and that fat judgment, bias and shaming need to go. I agree, the standards of beauty are indeed limited, beauty comes in all shapes and sizes just as wellness can come in all shapes and sizes. However I think some who claim to be part of the Fat Acceptance Movement have it all wrong when they say campaigns such as Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign are nothing more than a bullying campaign.

There are real consequences to carrying too much extra weight on our bodies, trust me I can feel the difference. While I like to say it was the less than flattering picture that made me lose weight, the real wake-up call was that walks started leaving me winded, that truly got my attention. Barring respiratory issues, there was no reason for me, a thirty something year old woman to get winded while walking my kid and I knew I needed to change it.

In thinking of writing this piece, I did some poking around and there are clearly some in the Fat Acceptance Movement such as Kate Harding who make sense, Harding gave up the up and down life of diets and now is a healthy size 16. The problem is there are some in the Fat Acceptance Movement who confuse the message of beauty and wellness at all sizes to mean do nothing. I have had the pleasure of knowing in my offline life a few folks who are huge advocates of the Fat Acceptance Movement who state they are happy being overweight yet admit they have limitations due to their weight. If your weight limits you in a negative way, it seems to me that acceptance of that weight and doing nothing to at least shed a few pounds is not a healthy choice. Accepting who we are is always good; don’t run from reality but at the same time, we do have choices.

Dieting sucks because frankly it’s a short term fix, instead a lifestyle overhaul is far more effective. Look, I like chips and while I know I can’t eat them every day, I know that by adding movement daily and really ramping up my intake of fruits and veggies will allow me to enjoy a bag at least once a week.

In many ways unhealthy weight in the US is a health crisis, Americans on average are a lot heavier than we used to be, there are a lot of ideas about why this is the case. Excess weight over the years can take a toll on the body and that is a sad fact. I think the reason we are seeing people like Michelle Obama talking about this is because much like smoking years ago, we are dealing with a public health crisis. For every one overweight person who isn’t facing diabetes, hypertension, joint issues, etc., my guess is there are two or more who are. No amount of downplaying it makes it any less true. This is where the Fat Acceptance Movement in my opinion needs to do a better job of explaining that what they are really about is wellness, health and beauty regardless of size.

Bodies are not all the same, some of us no matter what we do are always going to be thick, but there is a fine line between acknowledging beauty at any size and saying it’s okay to be heavy enough that you face the chances of your life being shortened. Right now the movement seems to lack a unified message; instead some are using Fat Acceptance as a way to skirt personal responsibility. No one deserves to be shamed or mistreated because of their body size but let’s not kid ourselves, in some cases that extra weight can truly be harmful as my friend B learned the hard way.

Personally while I make light of the reasons why I am trying to lose weight the fact is at 39, I am already pass the age my mother was when she was diagnosed with hypertension. Mind you my mother never weighed more than 130 lbs. in her 50 years on this planet, but my family history on both side’s is one that the older I get, I know the extra weight is not a good thing. Most people in my family don’t live past 60 and frankly I want to break that streak, so for me, it’s about wanting to do a little better than other family members.

 

 

 

 

March 31, 2012

2



personal growth

Oops, I did it again! Return of the chipmunk

A little bit of cockiness combined with taking my eye off the prize has bit me in the ass once again. Oh I can blame this or that, but the truth is I got cocky and sloppy and last night I got confirmation from the Spousal Unit, I have gained weight or to use our code which means red alert “Your cheeks are starting to look a tad chipmunk like”.

I admit last night I fell into a restless sleep asking myself what went wrong. I practice yoga several times a week and while it won’t take a ton of pounds off, I do some walking as well. I eat relatively well, had been maintaining my weight more or less except for a few extra pounds but clearly I have crossed the line.

Then it hit me! Back late last year when my dreams to move my agency to larger and nicer location became a reality and a lot of hard work, I fell into some old traps. Not eating properly, skipping meals and my old nemesis, portion control. The old, well I didn’t really eat breakfast so I will eat a larger lunch. I realized I have been doing that more than I care to admit, of course I know skipping meals is never a great idea but I didn’t think I had been doing it that much. Add in the fact that my office is now mere steps away from a pizzeria that gives a generous discount, yeah, it didn’t take long to figure out where I went wrong. I admit though that having stopped my weekly baking habit as well as giving up calorie laden coffee drinks, I figured I was all good to go. The truth is I set myself up for this plain and simple. Also after year of working with no snacks at my desk, I must confess at this moment, there is an organic chocolate bar, a bag of granola and a bag of hot chips in my desk.

I have toyed with going back to Weight Watchers in the past, where I hold a lifetime membership and this morning I realized I really need to go back. Weight Watchers does one thing for me that I know I need help with and that is accountability. Something about paying $12 a week to be weighed by someone who won’t let me explain away the numbers is what I need at this moment. Based off my visit to the bathroom scale, I would say I have 20 lbs to say good bye to, while part of me is saddened about this, the truth is I have not gained back even half of the almost 50 pounds I took off some years ago. So despite this set back to the land of chipmunk cheeks, it’s okay, weight loss and maintenance like much of life is a journey, sometimes it’s good and sometimes….well you just look for the next day.

I have been public over the years in sharing my struggle and journey with my weight but I admit I didn’t plan on sharing this, I felt a bit of shame. Yet this morning when I realized I felt shame, I knew that was more a reason to share, to keep myself honest. Hell, most of us at some point in life gains weight, shit happens. Now let me get back to my tasty salad!

December 29, 2011

2



Health, personal growth, Random babble

The struggle to accept my body in 2011

This post will conclude my public review of 2011…come on; ya know I can’t share everything! 2011 has been good in many ways, professional growth, dealing with old demons and a host of other things. There is one area though where 2011 wasn’t quite as good and that’s my body! After losing damn near 50 pounds and keeping it off for several years, my weight situation came to a head in 2010 thanks to what turned out to be double hernia repair surgery. What was supposed to be a quick fix and move on situation, had me laid up damn near six weeks and for months afterward I was still physically limited. You know the song…I gained weight.

I pretty much gained the weight while laying around, relaxing on pain pills spending too much time indulging in bad television and snacking. I figured as soon as I was back to full mobility, I would drop the weight. It didn’t happen and somewhere along the way after years of being a devoted member of Weight Watchers, I got tired of the weekly weigh in drill and said fuck it! Weight Watchers can be a good program, but I feel that it’s a crutch, for me the idea of weekly weigh- ins and tracking every morsel I put into mouth for the rest of life is frankly depressing.

So for the first time in heaven knows how many years, I have seen very little of Weight Watchers this year. Yay for me! Or maybe not! I am approximately 15 pounds over my “goal” weight according to those handy charts that tell you what you should weigh and I am struggling. On the one hand, I seem to have stopped the weight gain, for many months now I have maintained my current weight, I strive to eat decently and occasionally even move my ass. I admit work and family get in the way of my desires to move.  It seems the downside of living in a small town/city is that most exercise classes are pretty much offered in the evening, same time I am at home trying to get in quality time and dinner with the six year old.

I am a big believer in self-care and certainly taking care of my physical needs is self-care however as the parent of a small child, I am simply not comfortable being gone 1+ hours in the evening. Especially because on days I work from the office rather than from home, we have exactly 3 hours together. Some may say I am making it harder than it needs to be, but I know my child and considering her intensity, we need our time together. Instead I take a morning yoga class and try to sneak out for the occasional evening class but it most certainly isn’t weekly. Granted my yoga practice is more mental and spiritual than physical.

So I have been in a funk over the body, since this extra 15 pounds has gone straight to my ass, hips and lower belly necessitating the need to go up a few sizes. Growl. Lately though I have been pondering the mental issues of weight gain, why does my personal opinion of myself dip if I gain weight or soar if my weight dips. Am I not the same person regardless of my size? Mentally this makes sense but emotionally I am struggling.

I end 2011 not with the goal of losing this weight but with a desire to make peace with this body that houses my soul. To know that I am more than a set of numbers either on a scale or the tag of a blouse, to accept that who I am does not change just because I have a little more padding. I am tired of having my self worth tied into my appearance. Just as I struggle to accept my weight, it’s starting to hit me that I am aging. In my mind, I am still that lithe 20 year old, but that body does not exist. I admit in a society that prizes youth, accepting that one is aging can be hard. But again, am I not more than this physical container?

The older I get I am convinced that true wellness starts with our minds and rather than fretting over my physical state, I want to get my mind right and trust that my body will do what it needs to do when it’s ready to do it. In the meantime, I accept and acknowledge that it is a struggle.  So maybe in the end 2011 wasn’t as hard on my body as I initially thought.

May 24, 2011

2



personal growth, Random babble

Reunited…back to Weight Watchers

Don’t ya hate when you make a public declaration about something you feel passionate about, only to have to retract it a few months or years later. Well I am there. Earlier this year I admitted that I was done with Weight Watchers, that after a multi year affair with ole WW, even becoming a lifetime member, I was tired of WW, tired of the faux perkiness, tired of the rule changes and tired of that fucking scale.

After reading Geneen Roth’s book Women, Food, and God I felt inspired to get off the Weight Watcher plan since I really was questioning whether going to the meetings felt healthy to me. I felt at that time that Roth’s assertion that our struggles with food is about deeper emotional and or spiritual issues seemed spot on. Well that was back in January of this year, I have worked on a lot of emotional and spiritual issues, in fact I am in a place I have never been before. Truly embarking on a new journey with my life partner and within myself and keeping myself open to abundance in all areas of my life and knowing that change must be a constant.

So, a girl is feeling happy, sassy, lighter and all that jazz but guess what? I have an extra few pounds that needs to come off. Oh I could live with what is about 14 extra pounds, I won’t die but it’s uncomfortable to me. I love me now, but I will be happy to not be weighted down with these few extra pounds and the truth is I pretty much lost no weight this year. Granted I didn’t gain, but I didn’t lose either. Now I might just be at my natural body weight, and while I don’t want to screw with Mother Nature if that is the case I must lobby hard for a few less pounds of me. Hell, the difference between gaining 5lbs and 14 lbs is that when it was just an extra 5 lbs my clothes were fine now I am at that place where my clothes can only be worn wearing torture devices….oh, they call that shit Spanx. Or go up in size. Bad idea as my money is funny and my change is strange, the last thing I need to be doing is buying a new wardrobe.

What’s a girl to do? Well if this weather would stabilize and get nice I will be walking fool (sorry kids, I loathe the gym) which is always a plus sadly the weather is conspiring against me and my plans. So, off I go to Weight Watchers, for some reason weekly weigh in on someone else’s scale with documentation seems to inspire me. Unlike my own weekly check in at home when I can just tell myself the scale is not right. Some of us need that tough love and I guess for me Weight Watchers provides it.

I will say though that Geneen Roth’s book is still worth a read and still valuable, if there is one thing I got out of the book was to be more intentional about what I am putting in my mouth. In other words is my desire for the lemon bars purely about the lemon bars or am I using lemon bars to cover the fact I am pissed about XYZ. Let’s just say I have been baking a great deal less.

So wish me well as I get ready to go back and be reunited with Weight Watchers….it feels so good!

January 13, 2011

4



Food, Health, Random babble

Life without Weight Watchers

I figured I would write a brief post on how life is going since I officially said good bye to Weight Watchers. If you are a regular reader of my blog you may recall I did a post not too long ago where I mentioned that despite being a Lifetime member of Weight Watchers I was thinking of calling it quits. I read Geneen Roth’s Women, Food, and God and it truly resonated with me. Despite having been with Weight Watchers for years frankly I have often felt their program brought out tendencies in me that are just not good. I am almost 40 and frankly I don’t want to live my life always writing down or inputting what I eat on any given day, I am tired of counting points. The changes to Weight Watcher’s program recently were the initial kick in the ass I needed and after reading Roth’s book I really felt much stronger. I also figured worse case I can always go back to Weight Watchers if I fall flat on my ass.

So I made in through the holiday season with no weight gain. I admit I had hoped for a bit of a loss but knowing that I have not been moving nearly as much as I could, that was probably too much to hope for. However making it through a month long period where my holiday baking included Paula Deen’s Red Velvet Cake, Pecan Pies and Cinnamon rolls, let’s face it to gain no weight is a good thing.

It means I am still roughly 13 pounds or so above my “goal” weight yet I am starting to think this place may be the weight my body likes to live at. See, when I first started gaining weight years ago, this weight was eventually where I came to rest for year. It was my pregnancy and  postpartum period that took my body to a place that was truly unhealthy. I knew it was unhealthy when walking became difficult for me and yeah my vain side didn’t exactly like the way my face started to resemble a chipmunk. This weight is also the same place where on Weight Watchers I spent about 6 months after dropping 20+ lbs but still had more to go until I could reach my goal. When I was actively on Weight Watchers striving to get to goal, I basically started living off fruits and veggies primarily to get the numbers on the scale to move downward. I share this to say that I do think for some of us our bodies have a place they are comfortable at.

Right now my goal is simply to start moving more, I strive daily to put a decent share of fruits and veggies in my body and of course the water. But I enjoy food and I want to have a healthy relationship with it and I see more movement which in general increases my mental well being as the key. Not a weekly meeting and not what was almost obsessive behavior over what I was eating. Interestingly this past month during my menstrual cycle, a time where generally I give into whatever cravings I have, I had very few and didn’t see the normal 2-3 lbs period gain that I have had for years.  Now that I am no longer holding myself back, it seems there is no reason to play the food games with myself…if I want  Cheetos, I will have some. No reason needed.

So life is going good without Weight Watchers!

July 8, 2009

0



Random babble

Battle of the bulge

I’m feeling a tad down today, just got back from my Weight Watchers weigh in only to discover that I had not done as well as I thought I had in the past week with reigning in my eating habits. I am a lifetime member of Weight Watchers, I have now successfully kept off the almost 50 pounds I lost last year for a little over a year. Problem is the past few months I have slowly been slipping back into the bad habits that made me need Weight Watchers in the first place.

I guess the bright side is that I still weigh in regularly so I am attempting to correct this problem before it grows bigger, I am also still under my goal weight but unless I do something quickly, soon I will be paying for those weigh in sessions again. (once you hit lifetime on WW, meetings are free provided you are no more than 2 pounds over your goal weight)

The thing is having kids around seems to make it hard it to stay on track. Now that elder boy is home for the summer, we have been eating out a tad more and eating out always seems to be the kiss of death for me. It doesn’t help that I work with kids and snacks are always around, its hard to avoid. Plus thanks to the fact that summer seems to have decided that by and large it does not want to visit Maine this year, we have been stuck in the house with a lot of rainy cool days. The type of days that cry out for home cooking and eating, though in the winter I get my exercise by shoveling snow, with rain there is not much to do.

So, its Wed hump day and I need to turn the soda bottle loose. In other news that memorial service for MJ was actually quite nice, I actually broke down when his daughter spoke…talk about a raw emotional moment.

Anyway sorry there is no deep post today, but hopefully you are having a better hump day then me. Catch ya later!