Being a Size 2 Does Not (Necessarily) = Happiness

As I said yesterday, I came across an article about Bachelorette Ali wanting to lose weight...15 lbs. to be exact. On last week's episode, she donned a bikini (see below) and I thought to myself at the time, she looks really good. Healthy. Confident. But not SUPER skinny as many women have tended to be in the past. I actually thought, now there's a girl who is an inspiration to all women in the sense that she's not afraid to show her body on national TV (and she's not a size 2).

The article stated...and I quote..."She’s a size 6 and not meant to be super tiny, but she wants to lose weight.” Okay, I realize by many peoples' standards in America (and elsewhere) that size 6 is not TINY but it's pretty dang small. I'm sure she weighs no more than 125 lbs. This struck me. I went to save the picture (to post it later) and when I clicked to save it, the word "fattie" actually came up as the title. WTH? When I went to look at the article again today, Hollywood Life (consider the source, I guess) had re-run the article and I found this picture:

Okay, I'm all for good health and feeling good about yourself through fitness and diet, but she looks great! And happy! Just another day in the life for us women... having our confidence shattered in the name of "beauty".

Misery Loves Company

So. Despite the fact that I don’t have much to report in-as-far as progress, I have been looking forward to writing this all week. I’ve just been crazy busy and frankly, more tired than usual. Could it be…oh, I don’t know…the hundred and ten degree weather here?! So sick of it already and summer’s barely even started. But I digress.

I am down to 158 as of this morning…God only knows how. Although I haven’t been counting calories for the past couple of weeks (maybe longer), I’ve somehow managed to maintain. I’ve consistently stayed between 159-161 the past several weeks. I do realize that my goal at this point isn’t to “maintain”…in case you’re wondering. But the way things have been going, I’m just glad I haven’t ballooned back up to 170. Feels like I should have. And now for my confession. Forgive me father for I have sinned. I have had approximately 6 diet Cokes in the past 2 weeks AND I have only walked on the treadmill ONCE in the past 8 days (I did walk/run today for 30 minutes though). Sorry, that’s my strict Catholic upbringing rearing its ugly head.

On another note, I watched the new show Losing it with Jillian Michaels last week (I tivo’d it this week but haven’t gotten around to watching it yet). At any rate, although I think Ms. Michaels is WAY over the top, so many things she says resonates with me. Unlike the Biggest Loser, which I admit I have only watched about three episodes of during its entire run, her new shows focuses more intensely not just on the weight and exercise part of the equation, but on how these miserable people got to where they are. The family she visited was Italian and they were all significantly overweight, with the exception of the daughter who had had gastric bypass and was at a healthy weight now. The opening scene is of the family meeting with their doctor. She tells them that as obese as they are, they are at high risk for heart attack, heart disease, stroke…the list goes on. She reveals that the mom’s body fat is 56%. I didn’t even think that was possible. Throughout the show you find out that the couple had lost their first son a month after he was born with serious complications and they had never really grieved his death. The father refused to talk about it AT ALL to the mother, which in turn, left her feeling depressed and alone. He couldn’t even bring himself to buy a gravestone for the poor baby. Enter Jillian. She takes them immediately to their neighborhood gymnasium for some sweat-inducing agony. Within minutes, both the mom and the dad are ready to throw in the proverbial towel. Jillian screams at them. Their daughter screams at them. Finally they relent and run after Jillian telling her that they promise they will persevere if she’ll just give them another chance. There is a lot of counseling throughout the show, and by counseling I mean the family sitting around with Jillian crying and discussing their feelings. I cried through the whole damn show. I could relate to so much of what they said. And in the end, none of them felt worthy of good health. It really dawned on me as I was watching that the reason I probably stayed overweight so long is that I too, never felt like I was good enough to look and feel good about myself. My fat was literal padding to the outside world and to my emotions. Deep. When Jillian came back six weeks later (their goal was to lose about 50 lbs. each prior to the daughter’s wedding), they had all reached or exceeded their goals. Talk about motivation....

I also read a story about the Bachelorette today that really upset me…they actually called her fat even though she’s a size 6. Not cool. This is what makes girls and women in our society ultra-obsessed with dieting, plastic surgery, etc. I will write about it in the next day or two. Promise.

My AHA Moment

Okay, I’m finally almost back down to where I was two weeks ago (I weighed 159.2 this morning). Over the holiday weekend, I ate and drank many, many things that no self-respecting “healthy” person would. I had numerous beers (Berry Weiss…mmmm), strawberry shortcake (the cake was sugar free – I wasn’t paying attention to the label apparently but in my defense, I was in a bakery, not the diabetic snack aisle at Walgreens), a cheeseburger, French toast…the list goes on. AND to make matters worse, I only walked on the treadmill for 30 minutes ONE day last week. That means I did not meet my goal of “walking at least 30 minutes every day”. Far from it. I did, however, take the stairs every single day at work last week (an average of 4 times per day…in 4” heels, no less) and did 20 reps of reverse sit-ups and push ups one day, thank you very much. There you have it.

You know how I lament almost every week about the fact that I don’t understand why I sabotage my efforts all the time? Well, I think I finally figured it out. Okay, I didn’t figure it out ~ it was pointed out to me by a newcomer to my blog. Thanks J! “J” is a very analytical person. She has a way of separating herself from the underlying nonsense and taking things for what they are…it’s her job, after all…and she is very good at her job. At any rate, she works with our company and was in one day last week when the subject of my blog came up. She emailed me the next day saying she had read it and pointed out the following. J says, “When we talked this morning, we agreed that motivation is EVERYTHING (with that, all else is possible). So the trick is sustaining the motivation. It seems like the motivation to sustain the diet (aka lifestyle change) is different than the motivation to start the diet. To start a diet, I have to hit a point that I call ‘the limit of self-loathing.’ But this disgust goes away once I look a little less bloated. Then I need some other kind of motivation to continue (e.g. near-term event involving photos that will be shown in perpetuity). This doesn't last of course, so the overindulgent eating resumes...” It’s so simple…so true, yet I couldn’t connect the dots until now. Once I lost 15 pounds, I started feeling better about myself. My clothes weren’t tight anymore; I liked what I saw in the mirror, etc. so some of that “self-loathing” dissipated. Hence, I would start eating worse again. I’d think to myself…man, I look pretty good…one burrito can’t hurt. Bingo! If I was in a cartoon right now, there would totally be a light bulb above my head.

Now…how to motivate myself to CONTINUE eating right while I start to feel better about my body. Well, one BIG motivation is the fact that I have to endure wearing hideous clothes every day right now (most circa 2008, gasp!) and the few outfits that aren’t hideous, I’m forced to wear twice a week. Since I gave away my wardrobe (or at least most of it), I have pledged to “make due” until I lose another 30 lbs. and can restock my closet. That in itself should be a huge motivator. I mentioned the pictures we’re having taken in October…another motivator. I would love to have a picture of my husband and me where I don’t look like an oompa loompa (e.g. our wedding pictures) and a family picture I’d actually WANT to hang on my wall. In general, I would like to stop threatening anyone who points a camera in my direction. Other than that, I will have to dig down deep to find more inspiration to keep going down this road. It’s a long journey….like walking across America or “finding yourself.” It’s a journey that I hope ends at 130 lbs., like it should, and not with me taking a detour to a burger joint somewhere out in the boondocks.

The Ugly Truth

Sorry it's been a while. I really have no excuse other than to say that life sometimes gets in the way of my extracurricular activities...blogging being one of them. I am also sorry to say that I am up 3 lbs. from this time last week. Again, I have no excuse. I have been eating poorly, drinking cocktails and skipping the workouts. I am just in a funk and need to snap out of it NOW. I won't go into the gory details but here's a brief list of my indiscretions this past week: I ate TWO Hershey bars (shared them with my son but let's be honest, I ate most of them), three slices of frozen pizza on two separate occasions, chips and salsa, a piece of fried chicken, Coldstone and a bowl of ice cream at home another night. I also had at least 5 beers (most were not light either) and 3 vodka drinks.

As I just typed all the stuff I ate/drank last week, I feel sick to my stomach. Why oh why would I do that? Why is it such a struggle to continuously eat well? If I had eaten ice cream once and a slice of pizza, that would be one thing. But I ate crap every day last week and I can't for the life of me grasp why I would derail myself like that, especially when I was doing so well.

But I can't dwell on my "off" week. I will pick myself up, dust myself off and get going again. I have had an extremely difficult time getting up to walk this past week and have only been on the treadmill once. It is my goal for the rest of the week to walk for at least 30 minutes every day. That means tonight too since I "slept in" this morning. I did take the stairs this morning at work (we're on the 6th floor) and plan to take them the rest of the week as well.

Originally, my goal was to lose 40 (44 to be exact) LBS. prior to turning 40 next May. The deadline has moved up folks. I just scheduled a really great photographer (shout out to Laura @ Laura Winslow Photography) to take family pictures on October 24th. That gives me 5 months to slim down to my old, photogenic self...6 lbs. a month. I think that's doable and I'm happy to have an "event" to strive for.

Good Riddance

For the last few posts I’ve been talking about how big my clothes are. Yes, they were still somewhat wearable…my pants weren’t around my knees or anything...but last weekend I discovered that I could pull down my jeans without unbuttoning them and my shirts were all starting to look like throwbacks to Flashdance. So I decided to take the plunge and give most of my wardrobe away to a friend. I got rid of almost everything (with the exception of t-shirts and a few sundresses, etc.)…even gave her some winter duds that I know will be WAY too big by the time they’re back in season in AZ. There’s no turning back now. When I told my mom she said, “Maybe you should’ve held onto them…just in case” to which I replied, “no, no, no, no, NO!” I will never be that weight again ~ trust me. So I went to Target (where else does one buy cheap, disposable clothes?) and got myself THREE pairs of drawstring linen pants in - WAIT FOR IT - size MEDIUM and a pair of size 10 jeans. I have bought exactly one pair of size 10 pants in the last several years and I have to believe they just ran big. It's these little milestones that keep me going, kids.

I never get that. You hear about people losing 80 lbs. or 100 lbs. or even more and then gaining it all back. And although I’ve gained back lost weight many, many times, we're talking about 15 or 20 lbs. – not 100! It seems implausible; like if you gained back 10 you’d say to yourself “self - this is not good…must start diet again”. Maybe that is the real difference between “dieting” and permanently changing your eating/drinking habits. If you start eating pizza and tacos for every meal again, you will gain it back. As I’ve said before, so much of losing weight is a state of mind. I'd argue that at least 85% of it is mentality. If you’re not “ready” mentally to lose the weight, you won’t…at least not long-term. You can do the "work" but you won't make it for the long haul and you won't keep it off. I think that’s why losing it slowly and still indulging here and there helps to really ingrain good eating habits into your daily life and keeps you from falling off the wagon and doing irreparable damage later.

Speaking of indulging – I did enjoy a few adult beverages last Saturday night. I had two Leine's Summer Shandys and a vodka soda. Now for the (really) bad part. I made a Tombstone pizza and ate half in my muddled state. When Sunday morning rolled around, I had a massive headache. That’s what happens when you drink as little/rarely as I do. I was over at my parents’ house in the pool and all of a sudden it hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew what I had to do. I don’t keep soda in my house anymore (for good reason) but the 'rents do. I had a Pepsi Max (no calories, no sugar). No kidding. It really helped my headache and it was nice to drink something other than water or carbonated water for a change but I also found it sickly sweet and didn’t even finish the whole can. There you go. I feel much better having confessed my sin - as usual. I wanted a Diet Coke yesterday (here we go again…) but didn’t have one. And I know I won’t have any again for a long time…or at least for the foreseeable future.

Was down to 159 today. Like I said, slow but steady.

Finally!

Well, I finally hit my short-term goal...dropping below 160. My weigh-in this morning revealed the lovely number of 159.8! This means I am officially the thinnest I have been in about 10 years...maybe even 12! I couldn't be more surprised! After my big "cheat" day the other day, I expected it to take another week and I was feeling pretty depressed about that. It is just not fun losing weight, gaining it back and then having to re-lose it again the next week. I'm sure many of you can attest to this.

I ate really well yesterday though - stayed at around 1,000 calories. I didn't walk on the treadmill last night as I hoped to...it just got too late once the kiddo was in bed. At any rate, before bed last night I thought, I'll just weigh myself quick. I know that weighing yourself at night (when you usually weigh the most) goes against all logic but sometimes I do it anyway...just to see how much I'll lose by the next morning or to motivate myself for the next day. Sometimes I'm just curious to know how much I've gone up that day as a result of the hamburger I ate for lunch. Stupid...I know. But I'm sure all you "dieters" out there can relate...sometimes you just get obsessed with the scale. Sometimes I weigh myself 3 times a day - just for fun. So anyway, I get on and it says 159.8. I try to contain myself. I feel shock and disbelief. I immediately picture my future self in size 4 jeans. I go downstairs and calmly tell my husband the magic number, adding "IF it's accurate". Now there's really no reason my scale wouldn't be accurate - it's brand new. But I am having some difficulty comprehending the numbers at certain times. For example, yesterday morning I weighed 162.2 and I thought GREAT - now I get to re-lose the same pound and a half again this week/end! Then last night - 159.8. WTH?? How can I go DOWN that much during the day?! My friend at work tells me it's absolutely possible. She says that sometimes "it just takes time to catch up with you". I guess I can buy that.

I walked on the treadmill for 30 minutes this morning (even though I had planned to do an hour) and weighed myself again before my shower. Still said 159.8. I'll be damned! I guess the thing IS working. I told my husband YET AGAIN this morning and he replied, "I know...you told me." I'm just so excited! I've told anyone that will listen today...it's a BIG deal!

Note to self: Do not watch cooking shows while walking on the treadmill.

My Birthday (Food) Hangover

hang·o·ver   
–noun
1.the disagreeable physical aftereffects of excess

Okay...as some of you know, yesterday was my birthday. Two weeks ago now, I planned lunch out with a friend and happy hour after work with some girlfriends. I never made a conscious decision to take the entire day off from "dieting" though until I woke up yesterday morning. The day did not start on a good note. I woke up too tired to work out and decided I'd let myself sleep in...after all, you only have one birthday a year right? In the shower that morning, I suddenly thought...hmmmm....a Starbucks coffee and one of their old-fashioned doughnuts (my favorite) would just start the day off perfectly. Unfortunately, I had such a stomach ache by the time I was near a Starbucks that I skipped it. Fate?!

So lunchtime rolls around and my friend asks where I want to go - "anywhere" she says..."my treat". Well, if I'm going to cheat, I might as well go for the gold...so I choose Teepee...my favorite Mexican restaurant. I'm so hungry from missing breakfast because of my tummy ache that I proceed to eat half the bowl of chips slathered in their amazing salsa. I order two sour cream enchiladas and rice. Back in the day...before I was eating healthy, I often thought that two of these babies was just too much. I'd be full all afternoon...like miserably full. But I ordered two anyway telling myself that I would not get to eat this again for a VERY LONG TIME. I guess I am a glutton for punishment...what can I say? By the time we get back to the office, true to past experience, I am miserably full. So full that when happy hour rolls around at 3:30, the thought of having a drink is not even pleasant in the least.

I get to happy hour and order a raspberry lambic, one of my favorite beverages. It's kind of like a cross between a beer and red wine - malt liquor. My girlfriends order a pub board that has soft pretzels, cheese, nuts, etc. I have to try one piece of the pretzel with a little cheese...it looks so good. I am still full (although I'm not miserable at this point). Then I order another raspberry lambic. All in all, happy hour is not a disaster. Like it really matters at this point anyway. I probably ingested 2,000 calories (or more?!) at lunch.

After happy hour I pick up two thin crust gourmet pizzas for my birthday dinner with my family. And 9 mini Tammie Coe cupcakes (my absolute fav). I eat a piece and a half of the margherita pizza (it was cut really small though). Then I have one mini cupcake and a couple of bites of my son's. Oh, and some of my dad's frosting. He scooped most of it off - just wrong.

All day yesterday and last night I felt bloated and gross. I woke up this morning still feeling that way. If there is such a thing as a food hangover, I definitely had one. I haven't worked out yet today but hope I will muster up the energy to walk on my treadmill tonight. You see, I'm not a morning person AT ALL and 5:30 a.m. is just tough for me...although God knows I really try. I had an internal tug-of-war this morning about whether to weigh myself or to just wait a day or two when I've had the chance to try to minimize some of the damage. I'm sure you already know what I did. Yep, I weighed myself anyway...couldn't help it. Now for some strange and totally unrealistic reason I half expected the scale to go up like 4 lbs. It went up 1 since yesterday morning.

I hope I learned a lesson here. Gluttony is one of the deadly sins for a reason. And if that's not enough, it's just not worth feeling yucky for a day and a half.