I lost four pounds since Wednesday

I lost four pounds!

It doesn’t seem like much. I am very overweight and have a lot to lose, but look here. I lost four pounds. I started Weight Watchers online on Wednesday and I have been following it until today. I am starting again. Whenever I start a weight loss plan I get really excited about it and tell people about it. I started with my family who knows just to be encouraging. In the back of their mind, I know they must be skeptical. They have seen me try and fail and try and fail. They are amazing though. My family gets behind me anyway. They say all the good stuff. They will encourage me and watch while I try to only take one serving. They will also ask me how I am doing. Even sometimes they will hesitantly try and give me some advice. I am not easy to approach with advice unless I ask for it.
Then I tell my coworkers, who are more forthcoming with advice. My friend Tom has lost fifty pounds, he says that the key for him has been adding fruits and vegetables. When he added those vegetables he said that it sort of pushed out all the bad stuff in his diet. He also says focusing on adding things is much more pleasant than thinking about what you can’t have. This makes sense to me.
This is the most wonderful advice I have been given. Sometimes people tell me about their weight loss surgery, the drops they take, the juice fasts, and all the other many other things try. There is camaraderie in losing weight. Not only do most people need to or have lost weight, but they also want to help. Most people recognize the inherent loneliness in trying to lose weight. Most goals are prosperous. You start at a baseline and go up from there. Losing weight is like digging yourself out of a hole. You are starting below the line at a deficit. It isn’t like trying to get a degree, or bag a new job. Those things are something you feel no shame talking about. When you are doing those things you are able to boast proudly, “Look at what I am doing! Bettering myself!!”
Of course I should feel the same way about losing weight, but I don’t. I don’t always want to talk about how I have slowly dug myself into this hole. It makes me feel ashamed that I have repeatedly made the wrong choices. I cower at most conversations about weight, especially if I am not losing at the moment.
When I am losing however, I want to shout it to the world. I think, that even when I am not maybe I should be more open about it. I mean if you think about it. I wear my scarlet F on my chest. No one is going to accuse me of being skinny. If I talked about it more to people who clearly care for me, maybe then I would shame myself into doing the right thing more often.
In this issue, I am so clouded with my shame that I rarely think to put myself in other’s shoes. When I see someone overweight, trying to lose weight. I am excited for them, and a little jealous. It doesn’t matter how they try, unless it is super unhealthy. I am always happy for them. I have learned to at least do that. I think that if we as a nation are going to get through this obesity epidemic, we will all need to be supportive.

Who??? What??? HUH????

Okay, let me start off this blog post saying, I am not a fan of Gwyneth Paltrow. I am sure she is a nice enough woman. She is beautiful, skinny with seemingly glowing skin. These things don’t endear me to her nor do they make me hate her as the cliché goes. I liked her in one movie, “Sliding Doors,” and was annoyed when they put her in Iron Man, but she won me over in Avengers, so there is that. I think that even if I hated her I will feel I need to come to her defense right now. I feel the way she is being discussed is ridiculous and really points to what is wrong with this society of internet commentary.
Let me back up, Gwyneth Paltrow wrote a cookbook. It is called, “It’s all Good.” It is a cookbook of recipes that she feeds her family. Apparently she had a panic attack one day and realized that she needed to pay closer attention to her health. She then took her entire family to the doctor and had them tested for food allergies and found them intolerant to gluten and processed carbs. She also cut out other things that they were intolerant too. So she put together this cookbook to help other families that are having this issue too, which is becoming more of an occurrence than you would think. The result of this cookbook in the media is a steady stream of snark. I was surprised by how much every article I read is really down on and is insulting and accusing her. They are claiming outright child abuse in some articles.
REALLY? In a country where eleven year olds are getting diagnosed with diabetes, we are going to blame someone for doing what the doctor told her too. This book is thick too which means they aren’t starving as one article suggested. To me it seems like you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. I mean we are in a world where they show on TV women who feed their families out of the fry daddy normally, but Paltrow is a trying to feed her children what the doctor tells her too. She is trying to help other people with restrictions and the cattiness is super surprising. Start from this article and then click on the various links it supplies and you will see what I mean.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2013/03/14/gwyneth-paltrow-takes-heat-for-new-cookbook/1986971/

When do we get behind someone? I mean, when are we supportive as a society anymore? Is that a capability?

ARGH!!!

This week is crazy. My husband got a new job. I am trying to complete Nanowrimo, which is National Novel Writing Month. This means that you write an entire 50,000 word novel in one month. I also have a full time job and a part time job writing freelance articles. I have to get up early and go to bed early. My beautiful husband used to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner because he wasn’t working. Now that he has taken this seasonal job, we are rushing around trying to get breakfast and lunch packed, and don’t even ask me about dinner.

He is now working at a place that provides free soda and snacks, which sounds good but isn’t good for someone trying to lose weight. I found myself resorting to the vending machine yesterday too. I am interested in my friends and how they manage a two job household with goals and kids and ACK! What do you do? Can we have a chat? Can I ask for help? Please post here any recipes that help? Any time tips that help? What does a normal day look like for those couples or even singles that maintain a healthy lifestyle and juggle all your obligations? Please respond!!! Help!!!

My beautiful Best Friend

Flawlessly Beautiful

 My best friend is beautiful. Not the everyday in your neighborhood beautiful. If not for her height, she is like Lord of the Rings, Elfin kind of beautiful. She has high cheekbones and beautiful lips with no little dip in the middle, and gorgeous almond shaped eyes, and she has always been skinny. Not model skinny, but average skinny. Well- let’s just put it out there, she will always be skinnier than me. Now I am not the jealous type, but there have been times when she would come over to my house and launch full on into a large bagel sandwich, or eat just about anything with vigor and I would think man, what would it be like to just not have to worry. We had a saying in our house, don’t know how it tastes give it to Christine. You know the saying, “she’ll eat it, she’ll try anything.” She was like a dude. Even though I sometimes looked at her and longed to have that freedom, weight never came up. She is an awesome friend and never brought it up with me, but if I brought it up she would give me encouragement. She knows a touchy subject when she sees it.

We have been friends through countless serious relationships, several major deaths, four or five major job changes, and one catastrophe after another. She is my confidant. She is the one that I go to when I am mad at my husband, or angry at traffic, or my boss smells like cheese. She makes me laugh, sometimes annoyed, but has never made me cry. In all my life, I don’t think there is anyone else who can say that. However, weight has never been an issue. We have never had detailed discussions about weight. We have never had anything other than a passing mention of weight.

Fast forward ten or so years (back off on the specifics) and Christine wants to lose a few pounds, and I need to lose a lot more than a few. I am starting this losing weight initiative, and she is running and eating healthy and doing yoga. I am pretty sure she did that stuff before intermittently but now she is serious. I think she is definitely doing better than I am. She is going through something now that I have been going through for a while.

She is looking up healthy articles and running in the snow. She is talking about the Biggest Loser. She keeps telling me what she learns. Now most fat people have had a skinny person once in a while tell her or him facts about losing weight. I had a guy at work once say, “I been doing Atkins and lost about five pounds, you should try it.”

I looked at him quizzically and said, “Why?”

He said very emphatically, “To lose weight?”

I then repeated, “Why?”

He looked at me incredulously and just stared.

People think that they can comment on a fat person’s weight as if they aren’t aware that they need to lose. It’s as if I went up to someone who wears Mom pants and said You know, they make new pants now that don’t crawl up to your boobs.

Ever since I was in fourth grade when I read my first weight loss book, second grade when I first bent to my first Jane Fonda video, and that’s not counting watching Richard Simmons while eating potato chips years before that. I have been researching the best way to lose weight for almost thirty years. I know about almost every program out there…the healthy and unhealthy. I have gone to doctors, attended meetings at various weight loss institutions, and even done individual counseling. I have done everything short of pills and surgery, which I refuse to entertain.  Let’s not even talk about the countless family and friends that have tried to help me lose weight. Christine never has. She knows I’ve struggled, but has never broached me about. I guess she figures that if I want her help, I’ll ask for it.

So like I said, the other day she started telling me stuff she learned from Biggest Loser. She started the sentence with “Did you know…” I instantly shut down. I am distraught all of a sudden. Is my best friend trying to tell me how to lose weight? Does she think I haven’t researched this? So I told her, “We should talk about the losing weight thing.”

“Yeah,” she said apprehensively.

“I don’t really like to talk about the weight thing. I have read countless magazines. If it came out in Self, Shape, Eating Well, or Cooking Light in the past three years, I have heard it.”

“Well then who do I have to talk about it too?”

It was in that moment that I felt the most selfish than I ever have in our relationship. So yes she is absolutely gorgeous, with a small waist and a perky butt. So yes she is a great and wonderful friend. I am an asshole. She needed someone to talk too, and because of my situation I could only think of my needs. It just goes to show that you never know what people are thinking. In any other situation I would have asked her to clarify, or figured she was talking about herself. Because weight talk makes me crazy, I thought the worst of my friend after all these years. For that I am sorry.

The Saturday Ritual

So much CHEESE!!!!

So last Saturday morning I woke at 9:30 and Brad and I had no eggs, milk, cheese, bread…or anything to make breakfast. I had a writing meeting at 11 am. I hadn’t showered and was really tired. Normally I would just run to Jack in the Box or McDonald’s for an egg-y cheesy dough-yness and fake hash browns. I wouldn’t even have to get dressed. I would take my pajama clad fat butt to my little car, throw on some sunglasses, and head the five blocks to a greasy bag of calories. It’s a simple system, a comforting system. Then I wouldn’t have to dirty or clean the kitchen. Then I could laze about in my jammies for another hour maybe watching a rerun of Enterprise. But this is not the way. This isn’t accomplishing my goals and afterwards I would be a bloated sluggish mess for my meeting.

Instead I woke up, showered put on some clean clothes and headed to the store for our organic milk, eggs, and bread. I hate grocery stores. I mean I despise them and would rather clean the bathroom, or mop the floor on my hands and knees than go to the store. I don’t know what it is, maybe the bright lights, the smell, and the noise. So it is a triumph for me that I went. I know it seems like a small thing. I know people go to grocery stores every day. However, in this struggle against myself, or against my auto response, I think I need to recognize when I overcome. I think I need to celebrate the small victories, because I am not usually victorious. If I am fully aware of my choices, and cognizant of my failures then I really need to remember when I made good choices. Hopefully, these small victories will snowball into more and more small things I can do to make myself healthy. In other words, the more credit I give myself for the good choices I make, hopefully the more choices I will make…good.

The best part is when I got home with my spoils; my beautiful wonderful husband made me a delicious breakfast of over easy eggs on toast. It was warm and filling and didn’t make me feel like a beached whale. This could work for me yet.

Small Changes, yeah right!!!

New hair to help the new attitude…hopefully.

 

My natural Dad died at 54, they believe it was a heart attack that made him wreck his car. My Mom had a heart attack around 49. She is alive, but you can imagine what implications this has for me. My Grandma had a heart attack.  I mean genetically I inherited the heart poor house. That can’t possibly be too good. Add to that my smoking and that I am overweight. If I don’t do something, and soon…                       

Women’s Health this month is calling for its readers to make small changes every day, and then those small changes will accumulate to something that changes your life. I feel like I have been doing that, but it hasn’t been working for me. I make one change like drinking three water bottles a day. I get down that three bottle a day habit, and then try to set up six servings of veggies a day, and then my three bottles a day habit goes to ….well you know. I am really frustrated with my lack of commitment to anything really. I need a kick in the butt, and some sort of awareness of myself. I need a daily shock to my system that would keep me aware of my goals. You would think all these accumulated dangers to my heart would affect my emotions, or logically change my habits.

The thing I have found in contradiction is that people (like myself) care more about the health of others than themselves. I mean, I worry constantly about my Mom and my other Dad who has cancer and diabetes. My siblings want to have an intervention because those two won’t take care of themselves properly. I think, who am I to tell them what to do, when I can’t do it myself. 

I need an overhaul, a complete and MAJOR revamp. I know people say take it slow and you will get overwhelmed if you do too much etc. I am not most people though. I am a person who thrives doing three things at once. I am a multitasking, work while going to school dynamo.  I think I need to refresh my life and stop listening to how other people do it and do it how I feel good doing it.

Advice is good, and I read constantly so I get a lot of advice, but eventually you have to do what you think will make you successful. I need a way to make my efforts everyday efforts. So I have decided to make a daily checklist of the goals I have to do every day. This is my manifesto.

 1.      I will eat fish twice a week.

2.      I will only eat potatoes once a week.

3.      No white pasta or white bread at all.

4.      I will not eat anything that wasn’t grown or raised.

5.   Exercise every day for at least 30 minutes.

6.   Going to eat within my food allotment every day.

 7.   I will not smoke a cigarette.

8.   I will brush three times a day and floss.

9.   I will enjoy time being with my husband, and show him thanks for it.

10. I will write down everything I eat every day.

11. I will drink 3 bottles of water.

12. I will have at least one vegetarian meal a week. 

13. I will submit to one poetry journal a week.

14. I will work on my writing at least two days a week.

                I am going to read this list every morning to keep it fresh in my mind what I need to do. Please pray for me to be successful.

KHAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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And so it goes that if good impulses begat good impulses, I must inform everyone that bad ones are a slippery slope. Not that you didn’t know that. If you’re reading this it’s probably happened to you too. This weekend my fiancé and I decided to make a conscious choice to indulge. That’s the lingo, you see, we made a choice. We didn’t cheat, we made a choice. This is so that I take responsibility for my actions. So this weekend we had a little get together. We were good all week and this actually was a pretty strategic decision. I was pretty happy with myself. We made guacamole, which is pretty healthy and good for you. We had pizza but not too much, but Brad and I made brownies. I ate a lot of brownies over the course of a weekend. Then for dinner we had Chinese food and I made a sensible choice of shrimp with vegetables. I woke up the next day bloated and feeling guilty on the brownie issue, but really not that bad.

However, the bloat and the fact that I didn’t sleep very well made me particularly grouchy. Then I get to work and immediately someone says something snarky to me. I am not one to hold my tone so I snarked right back and that is how my day began.

I was good with my preplanned lunch and my snacks. I don’t think I packed quite enough because I was ravenous when I finally got off work. I had a head ache and I had that tension in your forehead that even when you try to release your wrinkles and deep breathe it doesn’t go away. I plopped into the car when Brad came to pick me up and exhaled into his loving warm arms. And do you think that was enough? No, because eventually he had to drive and let go of me, but mostly because I didn’t feel like waiting for Brad to prep the grill for the healthy pork shops that we had planned. So Brad offered to take me to my favorite fast food in Boise.

Bad Boys. The name is so perfect. I love their French fries. Their wonderful large, hand cut, fresh, hot almost every time, perfectly salty- French fries with fry sauce. Ah, the fry sauce is like the perfect compliment too, it has not too much mayo or too much ketchup. An order from Bad Boys is a little piece of heavenly grease in a paper bag and they live about four blocks from my house. So as you may have guessed by now, we stopped by on the way home. Just the thought of these fries brings me joy. Writing this right now makes me want them so bad; I can literally imagine the taste of these fries. I was already disappointed with myself, but the idea also brought me glee. Like when you have sex with a man who you know is a player, but is really good in bed. You do it anyway cause its fun, but the whole time you know there is going to be repercussions. As we sat in line at the drive thru, I was being cuddled by my honey and he was making jokes, and between that and the promise of fries I was starting to feel a little better. So on the way home we joked together a little and I told him about all the evil hedonistic people I had encountered that day and he listened.

When we finally got home, I gathered all of my trappings from the day: my purse, my backpack, my lunch pale, my spill proof cup that I drink healthy water in, and my portion of dinner a cheeseburger and the exalted fries. I trudged inside feeling the weight of all this and another wave of tiredness hit me, but at the same time a slight oh I am finally home feeling that brought on a large sigh. I headed inside and put my burger and fries on the table and my lunch pale and my purse and finally took off my backpack and as I did, the backpack pulled down the lunch pale that brought with it the bag of magic fries.

Fries spray across the dining room floor. Without thought, I immediately sunk down to my knees in a puddle of sadness. I cried out worse and far more intense than William Shatner’s, KHAN.  My Ohhhhh knowwww had not only that kind of anger, in it was a sadness that included the whole entire day. It was whiney, long and sad and in the end -tears began to fall. I am so lucky my fiancé doesn’t carry a camera phone.

He graciously offered to sweep up the fries off the dining room floor, but I just walked deflated into my room to put on my pajamas and cried in the fetal position on the bed. It took 30 minutes for me to come out and finally eat my contraband.