Minor Setback

I just got back from visiting with family and my weight is up 4 pounds!  I'm mad and frustrated, and frankly, blaming somebody else.  I have a family member who loves to cook, go out to eat, make sweets, and buy candy for others.  He is a bad influence, and not on just me.  It was a really nice visit except for this one aspect.  In spite of doing tons of walking and yoga, I gained weight.  Maybe what I need to remember is that there was lots of laughter and fun, and a terrific view of the ocean.  I can't let a little temporary weight gain overshadow all the good stuff.

Now that I'm back home, the work on getting it back off starts right now.

Getting My Kids to Eat Healthy, or Who Needs Sanity Anyway?

One of the challenges to having a healthful life has been to get my kids to eat healthy.  My older daughter loves any form of cheese and starch:  mac and cheese, pizza, grilled cheese.  And chocolate—she’s seriously addicted.  My younger daughter craves anything with sugar in it.  Even the “healthy” foods that she eats have to be pretty sweet:  yogurt, cereal, soy milk.  Not surprisingly, she’s also had a lot of problems with cavities, about which I have enough motherly guilt sitting on my shoulders to almost crush me.  The only meat they really like is the unhealthy, salty, smoky kind.  On the positive side, they’re both good fruit eaters, they eat mostly whole grain carbs, and they’ll eat certain vegetables when we press them to.

Every weekday, I walk up to my youngest’s elementary school to walk her home from kindergarten.  Recently my daughter came home from kindergarten with Easter candy.  She asked me if it’s OK to eat it. I said “no” and she proceeded to suck on the jellybean in her hand.  Then she told me that at least the teddy grahams in her basket aren’t so bad.  Funny, I thought, I could have sworn they were cookies.  She asked again if she can have some of the treats once we’re at home, and I pretty much lost it.  I’m just so tired of dealing with the subject.  And why do other people think it’s their business to give my kids candy???  That’s my business.  And if they say to check with me before eating it, then I get to be the bad guy if I say “no”.   Fun, right?

I’m at the point of beginning to dedicate a lot more time to finding and cooking super-healthy foods they will actually eat.  I’ve tried some raw recipes, like berry soup with nut cream, and “cookies” made from dates and nuts ground together.  Not much luck with winning them over with those.  Sometimes I think it’s an impossible task, kinda like the two big tasks for a stay-at-home mom are cleaning your house and raising your kids and the two are diametrically opposed.  If you have kids living in your house, they are probably making it messy, right now this very second.  Likewise, children seem diametrically opposed to really truly healthy food, if they’ve had a taste of the bad stuff.  Trying to accomplish two opposing tasks at the same time is enough to drive any mom bonkers. 

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I just viewed the stats concerning my audience for this blog, and was really intrigued to see that people in Russia and Germany have been reading it.  Wow, that's so cool.  I'd love to hear from you!  I'd like to get some cultural perspective on the subject, since I know that America is a leader in the world for being a fat-inducing society.  I'd imagine it might be difficult to be overweight in another country, though, where it's not so common.  Or even if you're just here in the U.S. and you enjoy my blog, please join up, or comment once in a while so I know you're there!  Thanks.

Be an Exercise Hedonist

Fortunately, I have always enjoyed exercising.  I have to give my parents credit for instilling that in me.  Thanks, mom and dad for throwing me outside when my backside seemed glued to the chair in front of the TV.  Even at the point in my life when I was heaviest, I would sometimes do aerobics, walk to work, walk my dog around the neighborhood and the park, and play games like kickball with the kids I worked with.  Occasionally well-intentioned people would encourage me to exercise, assuming I didn’t because of my size.  But I was, and I probably would have been even bigger had I not.

In recent years, I’ve tried P90X, the Body for Life method of lifting weights, Zumba, Jazzercise, yoga, as well as various classes at my gym.  And from all these, I’ve realized this:  I am not a masochist!  I don’t need the aching knees, and the feeling old because I need a nap in the afternoon.  One class I tried at my gym was called Anaerobics, where we would exercise one muscle at a time for what seemed like 5 minutes each.  Doesn’t that sound like fun (imagine my voice dripping with sarcasm here)? 

What I do like is awesome music (hence my love of dance), moving my body, and feeling strong and sexy. Back when I did Jazzercise, I would actually get a feeling of euphoria.   Euphoria beats feeling like a creaky old woman, IMO.  If I get bored I try something new.  This summer I’m going to try getting back into biking, and maybe even lap swimming if I can learn more skills beyond my standard doggy paddle! 

My Battle Scars

Do you ever find your own ugliness fascinating?  OK, let me explain what I mean.  I don’t think I’m an ugly person overall, but the skin on my tummy is pretty darned ugly.  I have battle scars from this war of the bulge I have fought for so long, and from two pregnancies.  That skin has been through the wringer! 

I can see why women get tummy tucks.  I’m sure lots of women feel the same way I do about their abdominal skin.  But I will never forget an episode I saw of the TV show, “Dr. G:  Medical Examiner”. It was about a mom who had lost weight and decided to go under the knife to fix her loose tummy skin.  Horribly, she died from the complications of her tummy tuck.  I hope I never want to risk my life for vanity.  Losing weight for me was about being healthier and hopefully having more time on this earth with my husband and kids.  And I’m not one to want to wear a bikini again—they were never in the cards for this one-piece girl.  Lastly, and very fortunately, I am happily married to the man I’ve been with since I was 18.  He knows where my battle scars come from and they don’t seem to bother him.

So, I don't want a tummy tuck, but I do have an idea that some may find strange.  For some reason, I’m interested in examining my stomach even more closely. My idea is to take close-up photographs of the flesh there in the hope that they will look like landscapes—maybe even beautiful or interesting ones. To quote Jason Mraz’s song, I’m going to try to see "The Beauty in Ugly”. Maybe I can transform my feelings about my tummy skin this way.  Someday, if the photographs turn out in a satisfying way, and I work up enough courage, I’ll post one here with a follow-up blog entry. 

P.S.  A friend just posted this picture on Facebook, the same day I posted this blog entry.  This is NOT my picture.  But it's beautiful.

Be Wary of Weight Watchers

I joined Weight Watchers for the first time in 1990, and have rejoined many times since then.  Sometimes I had success on the program and sometimes not.  I’ve joined with friends and by myself.  The most I ever lost in one go was about 20 pounds.  I used to think Weight Watchers was the best weight loss method out there.  But I no longer think so.  I do like that they weigh you in, and give you rewards ranging from applause to key chains, if you lose weight.  It’s nice to have that accountability and get praise after working hard to lose weight each week.  And they give you a new blank journal every week to write down what you’ve eaten, which is proven to help people lose weight.

But over the years, I’ve seen an increase in their emphasis on processed food.  The first time I joined, there were either no, or very few of their foods for sale on the premises.  Now there are racks of it.  Last meeting I went to, there was even a segment where people talked about their favorite processed snacks, and brought in their empty snack bags for all to see, like an unhealthy version of show-n-tell.  Ick.

Weight Watchers Magazine bombards you with images of food.  The booklet they give you when you first join contains pictures of luscious desserts (I ripped them out).  The meetings are usually discussions on food-related topics and recipes.  Should an organization dedicated to weight loss really be doing this, when the rest of society is already tempting us with these images and messages?  For Pete’s sake, can we focus more on exercise, or the psychology behind successful weight loss, maybe even the freaking weather?????  The bottom line is that they are a company dedicated to making money, and unfortunately, I believe they are more concerned with that than about people’s health.  Reinforcing overweight people’s obsession with food, and encouraging them to eat non-nutritious salty snacks that they will probably lose control with, is, in my opinion, unethical.

Adventures in Veganism

So, like most women who’ve battled with their weight, I’ve tried many different diet plans.   All that information is swimming around in my brain now, confusing me if I think about it too much.  Is Paleo the way to go (no grains, beans, or dairy)?????  Or the South Beach way (low carb)???  Volumetrics  (lots of watery, fibrous things; few calorie dense things)??? Weight Watchers (anything goes so long as it’s written down in your journal and all “points” have been accounted for)????  It all makes me feel like this:  How about if I just stop eating altogether so I don’t have to worry about it anymore?

Probably the most extreme way of eating that I tried was veganism.  In case you aren't familiar with it, it means eating no animal products at all.  It had the uh…..most humorous effect of all the cuisines I’ve tried.  Warning:  My definition of funny includes potty humor.  I was inspired by Dr. Neal Barnard’s book, Food for Life.  I found it to be a lot of work, lots of chopping of vegetables and cooking.  I only lasted about a month or 2 on that one.  But the positives were that I dropped 10 pounds without even trying, and I had boundless energy in the mornings.  Being more of a night owl, that was really a different experience for me.  I haven’t had so much energy in the morning ever before or since then.  It’s weird that digesting animal products takes so much energy out of you, but it does.

Now, the moment you’ve been waiting for:   The Potty Humor.  (To my husband:  you may want to skip this paragraph)  All that fiber does something to a person, specifically to your gut.  It tends to generate lots of gas.  And poor me, I had 2 jobs where I was up and moving around a lot.  I’ll leave the description there.  So veganism wins the prize for having the most embarrassing effect on me too.  But the bottom line is that I just plain old NEED a real hamburger sometimes (not to mention cheese, ice cream, shrimp, and, and......), so veganism be damned.

Some of My Best Friends are Skinny People

One of my challenges in losing weight has been living with skinny people, namely  my husband and my two daughters.  They don’t eat astronomical amounts of foods, but they can eat whatever they want and stay thin.  The foods they sometimes want are my problem foods.  Then I am the one who eats astronomically.  I am triggered into space-age eating by pizza, cookies, Doritos, cake and chocolate.  A skinny (and athletic AND gorgeous) friend said to me once, “Well, you can have any food, just have a little bit”.  Thinking back on it, it may have been justified to karate chop her.  It just doesn’t work that way for me.  It’s easier for me to not have these foods in the first place so I stay in control.

Now we come to the subject of my hubby, God bless him.  I love him to pieces, and we are very compatible, but not metabolically.  He’s a total health nut now, but the past is a different story.  He used to ask me “When are you going to make me a cake?”, as though it was part of our wedding vows that I had neglected.  Funny, I didn’t remember reciting, “For better or for worse, I will keep him supplied with baked goodies.”  One time, I was making an effort to eat healthier, and in cleaning out the pantry, I had thrown out his new salty treats.  Was he ever maaaaad!  He then informed me that whenever we ate healthier, HE was the one who lost weight.  Our different eating styles were a source of conflict for years.

There is this big jigsaw puzzle that explains why I struggle with my weight, and his influence used to be just one piece of the puzzle.  I’ve learned helpful things by observing him too.  He gets really strong signals from his body on what and how much to eat, and he actually listens to those signals.  Imagine that!

I cannot blame him, or anyone else for that matter.  Ultimately it was ME who gained the sizable amount of weight that I gained in my 20’s.  The positive side of realizing that is that I had the power to do something about it.  Since peaking at my highest non-pregnant weight in my mid-20’s, I’ve gradually, and fitfully, lost about 50 pounds.

The "Fat Line"

You have probably heard of the “color line”.   I think there is a “fat line”, too.  There’s a big difference in the way overweight women are treated versus how normal weight women are treated.  I’ve been on both sides of that line.

In my adult life, I've been pretty darned overweight, and I've been normal weight (at the top of my normal range).  As an overweight woman, not only do you get ignored at times, you get made fun of.  Most of what I experienced was that lovely type of gossip that is done behind your back, but closely behind your back, meaning I could catch a few words and hear the laughing.  For me, it’s my backside that seems to have inspired derision.  I’ve gotten mooing, comments about having a horse’s behind, and gestures that I can see once I turn around.  Most of that treatment came from young guys.  I know it shouldn’t have bothered me, but it usually did, for days.    

Oh, and here’s one that absolutely slays me:  Fat men who make fun of fat women!!!  It makes me want to pull an Elaine (from Seinfeld).  You know, when George, who’s bald, didn’t want to go out with a bald woman, Elaine cupped her hands around her mouth and shouts, “You’re bald!!”  Apparently, it’s a way bigger sin for a woman to be overweight than a man.

When I’m thinner, I get treated better by everyone.  THIS BLOWS MY MIND!!!  I am the same person.  I own all of the past me’s—the fat me and the normal weight me and the just-a-little-chubby me.  Really, I reduce the fat on my body and I’m treated well but if I increase it I’m treated like dirt????   Maybe it’s human nature, to treat people based on their attractiveness, but it still blows me away.

There’s this discomfort between women, the overweight and the not-overweight.  Ever notice that overweight women tend to be friends with other overweight women, and ditto for thinner women? When I’m closer to normal weight, I’ve seen bigger women refuse to look at me, turn away with a big toss of their hair, or even sensed anger.  To be honest, I just don't know how to handle this.  I used to be where they are.  But when I was large, smaller women didn’t intimidate me because I just told myself I looked fine, and believed it.

No matter what side of the "Fat Line" a woman may be standing on, maybe we should all remember that she may have had a long hard road to get to where she is.

Choco-craziness

Here it is, Valentine's Day.  So I am inspired to write about my nemesis, and my love, chocolate.  My obsession with chocolate has definitely helped me pack on some pounds in my life.  One time, as a little kid, I took a huge chocolate bar in my room and ate from it to my heart's content.  My mom later found the remains of the bar and was flabbergasted at how much I ate.  "You're going to get sick if you ate that much."  Nope, not even close, mom.  I was fine.  Never better!!!

I heard a story on NPR one time about how the guy who invented M&M's experimented with recipes until he came up with one that people could not stop eating!!!  See, it's not all my fault.  I would bet that probably a lot of our favorite processed foods were "perfected" this way too.

I won't go into every unsavory detail about every time I've lost control with chocolate, but I will say that it played a big part in my gaining a LOT of weight in my 20's.  Some evil genius put a box full of candy bars in the break room of the bookstore where I worked--an OPEN BOX--and we were to pay for whatever we took on the honor system.  It was a miniscule break room with only enough room for a table, and maybe 2 people.  So I would sit there on break, usually alone, with this damn box of candy bars staring me in the face.  I would lose track of how many I had eaten, then later just shove in a twenty.  I was paying money to this evil genius to hurt my own health.  Ugh.  Not one of my better episodes.

These days I'm doing better with it.  I try to only have dark chocolate, the darker the better.  It actually satisfies me, whereas milk chocolate spurs me on to eat more and more.  I'm trying not to slip backwards into addiction, chocolatey or otherwise.

The Battle Begins, or, It Starts with a Chubby Childhood

My hope for this blog is that it will be a little different from other chubby girl blogs.  I hope it will be more than another blow by blow of "My Journey to Thinness".  It's been done, sometimes really well, but done.  Mine will be revisiting some of the highlights and lowlights of my dieting life (which is the majority of my life), and some possibly intelligent commentary on our society's collective insanity on the subject of weight. I invite you to laugh with me or at me, it's all good.  Or at least read the thing.

Ever heard certain folks described as “naturally thin”?  (yes, I envy/ hate/want to be them too.) Well, I’m "naturally chubby".  Why don’t we hear that term very often, even though some people clearly are?  We seem to acknowledge that some people have thin genes, but if you're chubby or fat, then our culture thinks it's all your fault.  I’m pretty sure my case is at least partially genetic.  My parents were, my grandmothers were, and I have been since childhood.  I have a picture of myself at maybe age 3, playing out in the sunshine with no shirt on, smilingly oblivious to the cellulite on my tummy. 

The first diet I ever went on was around age 8, and it was eating only what my mother approved.  I suspect it was 1970's Weight Watchers style, with a dash of Atkins for good measure.  I remember eating open faced grilled cheese sandwiches, made under the broiler (I've never heard of anyone else doing this) and cottage cheese, and I'm sure a few other equally delectable treats.  At a certain point,  after losing perhaps 10 pounds, mom told me I had lost enough weight so I could stop dieting. I then proceeded to put not one iota of effort into maintenance.  I’m sure I gained it all back. 

Grilled cheese wasn't all I was eating.  What chubby girl doesn’t love Doritos, and sugary cereal?  I was no exception.  Probably as a consequence of my passion for them, my mother rarely bought them.  One of those special, special times that she did buy Doritos, though, I was soon under the kitchen table, Doritos in hand, stuffing my face.  Eating Doritos is a noisy undertaking, even if you are trying to be sneaky kid quiet. She heard the crinkle of the Doritos bag, and possibly the muffled crunching, from wherever she was in the house.  “Are you eating those Doritos?” “No”, I lied, with absolutely no guilt.  None.  Maybe Doritos suppress your conscience, or just arouse your id so much that it cannot be denied, which may be why they are such a successful junk food.  According to Wikipedia (so it must be true) Doritos are a $4 billion dollar a year product.  That is one hell of a lot of Doritos we're eating.

I have to give my parents credit.  They did their best, in spite of their own weight battles, to instill some good habits in me.  Pretty often, they pried me off the couch and away from HR Puffenstuff, or whatever equally quality 1970's television programming was on, and got me outside.  They encouraged me to play with the neighbor kids, on my jungle gym, and in my sandbox.  My dad took me to playgrounds and taught me to ride my bike.  My mom took me to swim lessons, gymnastics lessons, and horseback riding lessons.  And they tried to set a good example by losing weight and exercising themselves.

And so begins my feast or famine story.  I hope you'll stay tuned to see if I've found any middle ground here in the middle of fat country.