My Diet History, Part 1

When I started losing the weight in September 2003, it wasn’t my first attempt at low-carb dieting.  I had tried it once before, about 14 months previously, and actually lost about 25-30 pounds at the time.  Why did my September 2003 attempt at weight loss succeed when my July 2002 attempt failed?  I don’t know for sure, but I have a few ideas.  When I “fell off the wagon” in 2002, I started back eating sugar & junk food.  I’d been pretty perfect in my adherence to low-carb right up until the point where I wasn’t perfect and then after that first taste of sugar & junk, I reverted to eating it all the time again.  Looking back, I can see a recurring theme – all or nothing.  On or off.  Good or bad.  All or nothing-ism one of the things I think works least well for people trying to lose weight although dieters seem to aspire to it beyond all else, it seems.  But that a different blog post.  For now, I’m just trying to highlight the fact that there was something to learn from my failed diet attempted.  If I look back at my dieting history, there is something to learn from most of it.

Here’s my dieting history and some of the things I’ve learned from it.

My first diet was getting a calorie counting book at age 10 from my mom.  My two girlfriends and I all got one, we were going to diet together.  Honestly, I don’t remember what happened, I just know it didn’t solve the problem.  Maybe the lesson here is that children can’t do it on their own, the family needs to change how they eat, not just the overweight child.  Maybe if my mom had changed what food was available to us to eat it might have made a difference.

My second serious diet attempt was at age 12.  I was pretty close to my full height, and weighed about 160 lbs.  Now, I’m within a few pounds of that now and am pretty happy with my weight, but at age 12, it was on the heavy side.  Mom took me to a diet doctor.  The diet doctor taught me about calories and how gram for gram fat had more calories than protein and carbohydrate, so I should cut back on fat when I could and eat leaner meats and lots of vegetables.   I was successful on this diet, I lost about 25 lbs, and got to 135ish.  My junior high school was pretty high on physical fitness and we ran a lot.  It turns out I liked running, did it outside of school for additional exercise as well, and by the time I finished losing the weight, I actually got an A in gym, one requirement of which was to run a mile and a half in 12 minutes in our regular 12 minute run tests.  My memories of my childhood aren’t the clearest, so again, I don’t remember much of exactly what I was eating, though I know it was less and I was exercising a lot.   The other thing I distinctly do remember was telling my mother I’d never be fat again. I just knew too much about what to do to be thin, and I never wanted to be fat again.  What I take from that is that I liked running, feeling fit and to never say never.  I was indeed fat, I was morbidly obese for much of my life, even though I theoretically knew the right nutrition and that I had to exercise.  Knowledge isn’t always enough. 

How did I come to start gaining weight after that weight loss?  Our family moved from Ontario to BC.  I don’t know if it was the fear of moving and making new friends or the disruption to my routine or what, but I started to gain weight right around the time we moved.  From that now see that circumstances change and I’d better be ready to change with them and actively work at keeping good habits through them.  I can’t assume that just because I’m in a healthy groove now that I’ll always be in one. 

The third time I lost weight I was about 18 years old.  I was in my first year of college, and a couple of things came together at once.  First, I was having terrible asthma flare-ups, so I went to an allergist.  He told me I was allergic to wheat, dairy, mold and yeast.  Second, I was living with my step-father who was a recovering alcoholic.  He suggested I try Overeaters Anonymous and there I was encouraged to abstain completely from my binge foods, which for me was sugar and junk food like chips.  Between not eating sugar and junk food and cutting out wheat, dairy, molds and yeast, I was left with meat, rice and vegetables.  And that’s what I ate.  It was easy, I didn’t have cravings, I didn’t want to overeat.  In Overeaters Anonymous, we called it pink cloud abstinence where refraining from bad eating behaviour is easy.  And I lost a lot of weight, about 80 lbs, going from 215 lbs to 135 lbs again. 

I remember the day I started to regain the weight – I was at a friend’s house and they didn’t have any diet drinks, so I drank a sugary lemonade.  I wasn’t very far into that before I decided that I could have a potato chip or two.  Within a few months, my weight was climbing fast.  All or nothing-ism again, I could be perfect or I could be overeating, I just couldn’t do anything in between.  I had exercised a lot during this time, too, running again.  I would later figure out that exercise was key for me.  What I can see plain as day now, and had absolutely no way to recognize then, was that I was on a low-carb diet then.   The easy abstinence from overeating I felt then probably had more to do with not having sugar and refined carbohydrates in my body than it did with “working my program”. 

For almost twenty years after this, I didn’t have much success in weight loss.  I tried a few times, but didn’t succeed.  On and off the wagon, over and over.  I started to assume the problem might be psychological, and in retrospect, I was depressed at the time, though I didn’t recognize it.  I started to see a therapist, sure that if I could work out why I was emotional and using food to stuff my emotions, I’d lose weight and feel better.  Therapy rocked.  Truly.  Best money I ever spent in my life and I highly recommend it to those that need it.  I lucked out with the best therapist and she helped me find my own worth and to accept and love myself.  I had had the worst self-esteem, I was a slavish people-pleaser and had absolutely no self-confidence.  My therapist helped me through that and after a few years of hard work, while not perfect certainly, I was functional and pretty well-adjusted emotionally.  I was also still obese.  I have learned from that period in my life that eating is not always about emotional issues.  It can be, sure, but it isn’t necessarily so.  I wrote about that in another blog post The Stupid Therapist Might Have Been Right After All.

I made lots of short-lived attempts at weight loss and dieting after that, none successful for very long, including a gastric bypass surgery to make my stomach smaller.  That one looked promising for a while, I lost 120 lbs, but eventually the weight loss slowed and then I started regaining.   What did all of these attempts during this period have in common?  I tried to be sensible.  I tried to control my portions.  I tried to be good.  I tried to exercise.  I tried to be different that I was.  It never worked.

When I started that eventually successful weight loss trip in September 2003, I really had no idea that it would be successful.  I honestly figured it would probably fail eventually, too.  I had just had a particularly embarrassing and humiliating trip to Six Flags Darien Lake amusement park with my family and was feeling grotesquely fat and felt I had to try again.  I went back to low-carb because it’s the only thing that I’d had some success with.  I didn’t even really try very hard in the beginning.  I had an apple the first day.  You don’t have an apple on a strict low-carb diet.  I think it was my half-hearted attitude that eventually helped me because I’d given up on myself so much that I’d given up on needing to get it perfect.  It wasn’t going to work, so I might as well not deny myself completely. 

This is getting way too long, so I’m going to wrap up today’s blog post here.  In Part II, I’ll tie it all together and review a lot of what I have come to think of as “my truths”.  The rules, maxims, and theories that seem to be true for me with regard to weight loss and weight maintenance and all the attendant issues.  I’m pretty slow when it comes to learning about what works and doesn’t for me in weight loss, but over the last five years, I have had a few things hit me over the head over and over enough that I finally figured them out.  And just seeing something work and comparing it to what didn’t has taught me a lot.  

I’ll work on that post over the weekend and try to have it up for Monday.

 

 

What Colour Is The Sky In Your World?

Yesterday I came across a website that was a food tracking with community discussion groups that I hadn’t seen before.  I decided to sign up to check it out.  As I’m filling in the data, they ask my gender and height and current weight and then asked me to put in my goal weight.  Their suggested range for a goal weight was 133-141.  Choke, cough, spew!  What colour is the sky in your world, I wondered.  Not in my wildest dreams do I ever expect to see 133-141 in my lifetime.  I’m 5′7″, 166 pounds on the scale this morning and I feel pretty fit, healthy & good.  I’d love to lose another 16 pounds, my ultimate goal is to weigh 150, but I consider those kind of vanity pounds. 

Now, my sister is the same height as me, with the same basic body shape and frame size as me and she’d consider that goal range of 133-141 to be perfectly acceptable. 

Why do we live in different goal weight worlds?

At my highest, I was 340 pounds.   I wouldn’t want to guess at my sister’s highest weight on the internet like this, but let me say that other than her two pregnancies, the woman has never bought a piece of clothing as big as a size 12.  She’s always been slender.  As her 40s approached and arrived, she’s struggled a bit and wants to shed a few pounds, but at her heaviest, she’s far slimmer than I ever have been.  I think this is the difference.  Perspective.  For me, weighing 166  is *thin*.  Very thin.  Compared to weighing 340 lbs, this is a dream come true.   For my sister, if she ever got up to 166, it would be the heaviest and fattest she’d ever been. 

I wonder if age doesn’t play a part in that, too.  I lost weight when I was 18/19 years old.  I was always a heavier child and teen and by then, I was up to 215 pounds.  I went on a diet at 18 and lost 80 pounds, getting to 135 pounds, right within that goal range.  It seemed like a good weight at the time.  Actually, at the time, I still was heavier than most of my friends. 

Like how to lose weight, what tools work for us and which don’t, I think figuring out where we want to end up is a very personal and individual goal. 

I have to admit though, that these differences make it hard for me to relate to those with less visible of a weight issue than I’ve had in the past.  I recently read Losing It by Valerie Bertinelli. I was surprised at how affected she was by her weight and how badly she felt about it when she had a body that I would have given anything for when I was 340 pounds. I always thought she looked gorgeous. I always wanted to look like her.

And then again, I have friends who say they’d be perfectly happy to be my weight and I’m trying to lose 15 pounds more.

Perspective. And I guess the bottom line is that we all have our own perspective and that’s okay.

Refuse to Regain (Or At Least Try Again if You Do)

One of these days, very soon, I’m going to do a blog post on my resources, all the places I go to for inspiration, motivation, support and stamina while on my weight loss and maintenance journey. In the meantime, I’ll point you towards one of my resources while I make a different point.

One of the blogs I keep on my RSS feed to check on daily is Refuse to Regain, a blog aimed at maintainers. It’s a fabulous blog.

Recently, there was a post from one of the blog writers about a woman who had lost weight, maintained for a year and then regained. She was now looking at her journey and wondering how she’d find the strength and courage to do it all over again knowing that weight maintenance isn’t guaranteed. I wrote a comment sharing some of my experience and ideas and while most of the post isn’t really appropriate here (though you can read it on their blog), I’m going to repost my last paragraph. I think it sums up things.

You are going to have to live the rest of your life one way or another. Why give up? It doesn’t get you anything. Give it another try. At least that way you have another shot at figuring out how to make maintenance work for you. None of us knew that this would be the time it worked. I went into my last weight loss attempt scared that it was futile, too. You can’t win if you don’t play and the reward is *so* worth the effort.

I put that Japanese saying on the masthead of my blog for a reason. Nana korobi ya oki – fall down seven times, get up eight. I’m planning to have it tattooed on me soon. It’s one of my core beliefs in this whole process, that we have to keep trying, never giving up. There is that old saying that you have to be in the right place at the right time. Continuing to try is the right place to be and if we stay in that mindset, we’ll be there when the right time for us comes around.

If I Knew Then…

Subtitled: The Bliss of Ignorance

If I knew then what I know now, I’d be far less happy & healthy today.

There is a belief floating about in some low-carb circles these days that suggests that exercise is not helpful for weight loss.  Five years ago, if you’d made that claim, you’d have been chastised and ridiculed on the same low-carb forums, but recently the idea was presented by Gary Taubes in his article for the NY Times, Does Exercise Really Make You Thinner?

Gary Taubes is a bit of a hero in low-carb circles because he wrote a book, Good Calories, Bad Calories  that reviews much of the science of weight loss and he comes to the conclusion that obesity & overweight are caused by excessive carbohydrate consumption and that a controlled carbohydrate diet is the best solution.  And everyone loves the man preaching to the choir, so we low-carbers tend to think he’s the bomb! And now, he suggests exercise isn’t helpful in weight loss, and people are listening.

Fortunately for me, I started exercising seriously before this article came out.  Back in 2004/2005, the exercise dark ages, when I was in the later stages of my weight loss and starting to find my way in maintenance, I finally adressed the issue of exercise.  As it was the dark ages, everyone was still pushing exercise all the time and buying into that belief, that exercise was essential, I decided it was time to start.  I was already walking sometimes for exercise, occasionally using my mini-trampoline, but I wasn’t disciplined enough to make myself do it regularly.  But be assured, I was doing it for the weight loss. No other reason. I was learning maintenance, but I wanted to be losing more weight, not maintaining. I was hoping exercise would help me pare off a few more pounds.

I was walking downtown with my soon to be husband and as we walked by the local running store, I asked if he’d be interested in taking a Learn to Run course.  Jim already exercised frequently, playing hockey a couple nights a week, and riding his bike or going for walks the other nights.  Jim, also oblivious of the useless nature of exercise, was always gently prodding me to do more, so he agreed to do the class with me.  I’ll confess, the only reason I chose to try running was because I figured that to get in enough exercise to be worthwhile, I’d have to walk an hour a day and I didn’t want to *waste* that much time.  I figured I could get the same benefits in thirty minutes of running. 

Well, about four years later, I’m addicted to running.  It took a while, but I grew to love it.  There are so many benefits to exercise for me.  I’ve been prone to depression in the past and I find that running keeps my mood up.  My general fitness level is better, I don’t get winded going up stairs or tired on long shopping trips.  It’s a great stress reliever.  I get to wear lots of cute running clothes.  I do get a runner’s high, that endorphin rush, sometimes that makes me feel on top of the world.  I’m assuming the other benefits of exercise, like better cardiovascular health, improved insulin sensitivity and retention of bone health are happening.  And, I get to eat more (and a few more carbs) than I would without burning off the extra energy running.   And most people that I’m aware of that have lost significant weight and kept it off exercise regularly.  Not all, but most.   

Did the exercise help me lose more weight. No, not really. I have to confess, Taubes is probably right. Running does increase my appetite a little. I didn’t gain from exercise, it was just weight neutral. But go back and read the previous paragraph. I got lots from exercise. In the end, any weight loss would have been icing on the cake, not the cake.

So, of course, this doesn’t negate, but rather supports the assertions in Gary Taubes’ article.  Exercise might not be helpful for weight loss necessarily, but I don’t believe it’s harmful to weight loss and there are lots of other benefits to exercise over and above weight loss.   And I’m glad that for those that can’t exercise, they can have the reassurance that their weight loss efforts are not in vain because of it.  I’m not even an exercise pusher, sometimes it requires all of our focus and determination to stay on track with our food choices, and adding an additional burden of starting a new exercise regime is just too much change all at once.  And I know there are plenty of people who will live happy & healthy lives never exercising a day in their life. 

I know exercise isn’t mandatory.  I just kind of miss the days when, in our ignorance, we pushed exercise to help people lose weight.  It might not have helped people lose weight really, but I think overall, for many people like me that were “tricked” into exercise thinking it would help us lose weight, it’s turned out to be a wonderful thing.

98% Gorilla

I just listened to a podcast by Jimmy Moore from his Livin La Vida Low-Carb Show where he interviews a doctor with a new diet book.  The two-part interview was pretty interesting on a couple of levels, but I think my biggest takeaway from the interview was the doctor’s assertion that humans are 98% the same as a gorilla.  I’m assuming the doctor meant that our DNA is 98% the same as gorilla DNA. 

My whole Find Your Own Weigh philosophy is that we are all different and we all need to find our own best way to lose weight.  What works for me won’t work for you necessarily.  People are generally quick to accept that we are all different in our thoughts, feelings, reactions & emotions, but don’t accept that we are different physiologically.  If a diet works for them, it is the best diet in the world and the world should be following the same diet.  Low-fat, low-carb, calorie counters and all variations thereof, all their proponents think that the world should be following the same diet they do. 

But, if we share 98% of the same DNA as a gorilla, an animal who, while like us in that they have two legs, two arms and can also walk upright, is so different from us that we aren’t even the same species, doesn’t it stand to reason that the even with the minute DNA differences between humans that we could be so different that our physiological systems could react really, really differently from each other?  After all, isn’t that why we have so many variations of some drugs?  Some people react well to one drug but not the other.  Some have terrible side effects to a drug and some don’t have any.   If someone can have a peanut allergy so bad that it would kill them, yet I can eat peanut butter by the truckload and be fine, then why is it hard to accept that some of us would function better with a lower fat intake or a higher protein intake than others?

I’m just glad my DNA is different enough from a gorilla’s that I don’t have to eat leaves and bugs.

I’ll Never Be Fat Again

I wish I had a dollar for everytime I said this. I’d only have three bucks, but I could make buy a couple of Diet Cokes.

I’ve lost enough weight to consider myself normal, or darn close to it, four times in my life. The first was when I was 13. Newly educated about choosing lower calorie foods over higher calories ones, cutting out sugar and junk food and being forced to take up running in my junior high gym class, I lost enough weight to be slim enough to blend in with my thirteen year old schoolmates. I proudly told my mom I’d never be fat again. I knew too much about nutrition and fitness now. Problem solved at the tender age of thirteen, lucky me.

Fast forward to my first year of university and I found myself about 80 pounds overweight. I found Overeaters Anonymous and was diagnosed with food allergies at the same time. At the time, I attributed the 80 pound weight loss I had that year to dealing with my food addiction by working the twelve steps of Overeaters Anonymous. Looking back, it may have had more to do with the fact that I gave up wheat and sugar. I gave up wheat when I was told I was allergic to it. I gave up sugar at the same time because I was trying to lose weight. After giving up wheat and sugar, I lost 80 lbs pretty quickly. I said again I’d never be fat again. I had worked my program and dealt with my food addiction, I had the problem licked. Lucky me, again.

My next major loss happened much later in my life, about 15 years later. By this time, I’d gained enough weight to hit 340 lbs on the scale. By now, years of failed diet attempts left me with a feeling of hopelessness that I could ever lose weight again with dieting. I turned to weight loss surgery. Thinking it was the only way, I had a gastric bypass operation. I lost 120 lbs after my gastric bypass. I was ecstatic at first, so happy to finally have found the solution. I wasn’t there quite yet, I still had about 70 lbs to go, but by golly, I was never going to be really, really fat again.

Imagine my dismay to find myself back up to 300 lbs a few years later. I was completely defeated, nothing worked for me. I was sure I’d never solve my weight issues and be fat forever. It’s not like I didn’t try, I tried everyday. Every single night I promised myself to start my diet the next day and it rarely lasted until 10am, let alone a few days, though I had a few good runs and would lose up to 30 lbs occasionally. I’m not sure why I decided to try it in September of 2003, but I tried a low-carb diet. I lost about 100 lbs in that first year.

The big difference in this last weight loss trip was that this time I knew I could gain it all back. I even felt it was likely that I would. I couldn’t fool myself into thinking that I had any guarantees this time. I couldn’t guarantee low-carb would continue to work for me. I couldn’t guarantee I would have the strength to stick with it. I couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t get sick and need a medication that put on weight. I decided it was best if I never forgot that I could regain each and every pound, plus more, if I wasn’t diligent about my food and exercise programs.

I have kept that 100 lbs off for four years (a maintenance record for me with any weight loss) and I even lost another 30 lbs during my four years of maintenance. I don’t know if that attitude of staying aware that I could regain my weight at any time has really been a factor in my maintenance, but I think it has been.

I sometimes cringe when I see people proclaiming they will never be fat again, especially if they are new in their weight loss. It reminds me of the times when I said the same, for me a little too cavalierly, blithely assuming it was easy now. I feel lucky that I’ve lost that blind faith in myself. I think having a healthy fear and respect for my past obesity, and being very aware that I could be back there really easily keeps my head in the game. I’m certainly not perfect in my food and exercise choices and I screw up more than I want to admit, regaining a few pounds here and there and having to re-lose them. But knowing I’m always *this* close to being 340 lbs again keeps me coming back to making the right choices.

I love my size 12 jeans too much to give them up now.

The Stupid Therapist Might Have Been Right After All

I’ve struggled with my weight all my life.  Or at least from age ten.  I tried everything I could think of, that seemed worthy of trying, to fix it. Most of the things I tried worked for a short time – or not at all – and then I reverted to my old habits and back to the weight I started at or more. 

 

One of the more involved things that I tried was therapy.  Surely there were deep-seated psychological issues behind my obesity.  Surely therapy would help me figure them out and then with a newly healthy psyche, I’d be able to lose weight effortlessly. 

 

I consulted one therapist that disagreed with my assessment.  We talked and he told me that he thought that my self-esteem issues were a result of my obesity, not the other way around.  Lose the weight, he said, and you’ll feel a whole lot better about yourself, your ability to solve a tough problem and you won’t have any more problems with self-esteem. 

 

I left his office absolutely furious.  That was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard.  I didn’t have these emotional issues because I was obese; the obesity was the result.  I had to solve the emotional issues first.  That was obvious.  I’d never heard such poppy-cock.  Everywhere you turned in diet & fitness, people were talking about how you had to handle emotional eating, the reasons you overate, the feelings you were stuffing down with the food in order to succeed at weight loss.  You couldn’t just lose weight and find those issues went away.  Wasn’t the problem that I needed food to deal with those life problems?  Didn’t I turn to food when I was upset?  Didn’t I eat emotionally when I was under stress?   I never went back to that quack, obviously.  He was an idiot.

 

I did find a good therapist and started seeing her regularly.  Therapy was one of the best things I ever did.  I think it saved my life, I was desperately unhappy and a few years of therapy, with an absolutely fantastic therapist that I’ll be forever grateful to, changed my life completely.  What didn’t change was my weight.  At all.  I might have even ended therapy at a heavier weight than I was when I started.   I was happier, stronger emotionally with much better self-esteem, but still very overweight.   I did deal with issues that were a problem for me, but in the end, dealing with those issues had no impact on my weight. 

 

My self esteem wasn’t perfect, but it was good.  I still couldn’t accept that I couldn’t solve the weight issues.  It was way too easy to buy into society’s belief that there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t control my weight, even though intellectually, I knew better.  I had never found any self-esteem around men, I couldn’t conceive of any man being interested in my 300 lb self. 

 

Then, the year before I turned 40, I lost the weight.  Nothing had changed emotionally or psychologically to make that happen, it was finally finding a good fit of a diet that worked well for me.  The surprising thing was that as I lost weight, my already mostly healthy self-esteem flourished. I felt good about myself.  I lost the free-floating anxiety that had come from feeling like there must be something wrong with me that I couldn’t lose weight.  I found I was confident enough to start dating, even though I was still overweight and my body wasn’t perfect. 

 

This made me re-examine everything in a new light.  I realized that in my 20s, I had bought into the belief that my obesity was caused by or kept going by deep-seated psychological issues.  I figured if I could solve those issues, I’d solve the weight problems.  I was completely flummoxed later to realize that after I’d dealt with the issues I did have, obesity was still there, a separate issue that had to be dealt with.  And I was further surprised at how easily my self-esteem increased just by losing weight, not by doing any other kind of therapy, self-assessment or personal growth.

 

Our society seems to assume that obesity has got to be a psychological issue.  After all, who the hell lets themselves get that overweight without having some psychological issues?  We must be using food for comfort or to make ourselves feel better or to distract ourselves from past traumas or repressed issues.  At the very least, we must not value ourselves if we let ourselves get to that weight.  Don’t we have any self-esteem or self-worth? 

 

But doesn’t everyone has psychological issues?  No one is perfectly emotionally healthy at all times.  Everyone has issues or things they have trouble dealing with.  And people deal with those issues in negative ways sometimes like eating, drinking, gambling, shopping or anger.  But one those stress relievers become a huge problem on their own, the answer is to stop the negative behaviour, not try to make your life stress free and hope the behaviours go away on their own. 

Twenty years later, I was surprised to figure out the stupid therapist was right all along.

Guilty Pleasures

I watched the season premier of The Biggest Loser last night.  One of my guilty pleasures is reality TV, specifically weight loss shows.  I love watching people have the kind of body transformation that are typical of TV shows like X-Weighted and The Biggest Loser.  I know these types of shows are routinely dismissed by many as crass entertainment preying on the weakness of others, but I genuinely feel their inspirational value.  Weight loss is hard.  Really hard.  The sad fact is most don’t succeed at losing the weight, nevermind keeping it off for any length of time.  Sure there are elements to these shows that I dislike, but in the end, I think their merits outweigh their defects.  

I know there are lots of people watching these shows that have given up, feel hopeless and trapped in their obesity, sure that they are destined to be that way forever.  I know that there are people that have felt that way and then watching The Biggest Loser has given them hope that if those contestants can lose weight, they can, too.  For this reason alone, I think these shows are great.  In keeping with my Find Your Own Weigh premise, I know they aren’t inspiring to everyone, but they are inspiring to some, and I’m glad they are there to help those that they can help. Not giving up hope is the first and most necessary step in weight loss. If we don’t have hope, we won’t try.  As long as we keep trying, we have at least have a shot at figuring out our answers and getting healthy.

For myself, not only do I find these shows inspiring, but I find them entertaining, too.  Maybe that says bad things about me, that I enjoy watching others struggle, feel humiliation and pain, but to me, it’s all part of the story.  It’s not fine literature or classic film, but the stories of these people are real and I do connect with them and come to feel for them. 

On a different note, can I say that while I’m usually mature about it and enjoy watching people lose weight, do well and get healthy, sometimes I get jealous, especially when a woman starts at about the size I used to be, loses weight quickly and gets down to a weight substantially below what I have been able to achieve.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled with where I am, weight and size-wise lately.  I look pretty normal and I’m healthy and active and everyday I wake up and am not wearing a size 30/32 is a miracle to me.  But… sometimes the vainer, more demanding part of me surfaces and I realize that at my weight (average 170lbs-ish these days), standing at 5′7″, I’m still overweight.  It’s an acceptable (to me) level of overweight, but there is room for improvement.  I love how I look & feel right now, but often I think how much more I’d love how I look and feel if I weighed 20-30 lbs less. 

This actually suggests to me a good topic for another blog post, the difference in expectations when one comes to the weight loss struggle from massive obesity and when one comes from being overweight or just edging into the obese classification – expectations are different for these two classifications of dieters.

Anyway, though I love this part of the new season of The Biggest Loser, what I’m really, really looking forward to is the finale, where we see the complete transformations, the difference that the last 20-30 lbs makes to the finalists where they have erased the last signs of their former weight issues and they look like the ones that never had to worry a day in their life about the scale.

 

 

 

Scale Break, Revisited

I posted ages ago about taking a break from the scale. I couldn’t do it then. I was very tied up in needing to know what my weight was. To be fair to myself, one of my big fears is regaining all my weight, so I didn’t want to start fooling myself into thinking everything was okay if I was slowing gaining weight.However, last spring, I hired a diet coach, someone to help me work through things to figure out why I’m having trouble taking off the last 20 lbs I want to lose. The story of that will have to wait for a later blog post, but for now I will say that one of the best things I got from that experience was to try getting off the scale again.

I really was far too emotionally invested in the scale. My weight was bouncing around a five pound range, which is fine, but I was getting upset if it was in the high part of that range, and often that would show up in me making poor food choices. If my weight dropped down to the lower end, I’d want to keep that loss and try to diet harder to capitalize on it.

My diet coach suggested I get off the scale for a while to take those daily ups and downs out of the equation. I was hesitant, and unsure I could do it. I had to ask my husband, Jim, to take the scales (yes, I had two) out of the house.

Cue the symphony, fireworks and applause. I am amazed, constantly amazed, completely surprised, wonderously befuddled, to see how much better I feel not weighing everyday. It’s liberating, it’s freeing, it’s like skinny-dipping in a glassy lake it’s so exhilarating.

I was, without realizing it, letting the scale number determine if I was good or bad each day. Even if I’d made excellent food choices, had a great run, lifted weights and had an excellently healthy day previously, if the scale was up in the morning, it wasn’t good enough. Or worse, it wasn’t helping, so why bother making healthy choices. Inevitably, I’d eat poorly that day. If the scale was down, I’d try to eat less than I should that day to keep the loss. That just led to dieting that was too restrictive and rebound eating.

Without the scale, my daily decisions on what to eat or whether to workout are now based on how I want to feel, whether the choices will make me healthier in the long run, not on whether I’ll be rewarded on the scale tomorrow.

It’s quite a revelation, actually. It only took me five years to figure out I was addicted to the scale.

Find Your Own Weigh

I guess I should explain the title of the blog. Other than being a cutesy play on words, it sums up briefly one of my overriding beliefs about lasting, sustainable and successful weight loss and maintenance. We have to find our own way to make it work.In one of his many books, actually, I think the first one, Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution, Dr. Atkins made reference to the fact that the Atkins diet wasn’t the “Atkins” diet, but the “Atkins & You” diet. He encouraged people to experiment, find what worked for them and what didn’t. He gave guidelines, of course, but encouraged us to find a way to make his guidelines work in our life.

I’ve heard others say the same idea. An online diet coach, Sandra Ahten of Reasonable Diets has a podcast I like listening to and she’s said a couple of times that it’s not so much about what you should do when you diet, but what you are willing to do. I’m paraphrasing, so don’t quote me on that one, but it’s a powerful message. Sure, I should exercise an hour a day every day according to the government recommendations, but am I willing and able to commit to that? If nothing but perfect is acceptable, I’m passing up all the great benefits of working out three times a week for 30 minutes.

My belief is that we have to find out what works for us. I’m not a morning person. If my diet book tells me I have to work out in the morning, I won’t succeed. Perhaps mornings would be better, but working out at night is better than not working out at all. I hate tofu. If my diet plan is based on tofu, I’m not going to last long. Yes, we’ll have to make hard changes in order to succeed, but my point is that we have to change bad habits and choices to be successful, we won’t be able to change our entire personality.

This is a big issue with me, I think we have to find a way to work with ourselves, not against ourselves, in order to succeed.