Navel-Gazing In The Fast Lane

$680 is a LOT of money. 

I have now paid it TWICE. 

To my trainer.

My trainer charges $85 a session, and I take one session a week.  You have to buy 8-week packages and you pay up front. That’s a total of $1,360.00 so far. I have been with him for 9 weeks, paid him $ $1,360.00, and to date I have lost five - count ‘em - FIVE measley pounds. 

That comes out to TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY TWO DOLLARS A POUND. The fact that that’s also the basically the going rate on Ostreta Caviar isn’t much comfort.

According to our suction-happy friends over at Liposuction.com $1,360.00 is also basically the going rate on lipo for the butt, hips/waist, back, or thighs, which are exactly the areas where I most need to lose weight. 

Of course, those are also exactly the areas that, when combined, comprise the entire human body (with the exception of the head and arms), but shut up, that’s not my point.

You may think this is a rant about having an uneffective or overpriced trainer.  It isn’t.  The only person who is wasting my money here is me.  Why?  Because just going to see him once a week simply isn’t sufficient, no one ever said it would be, and I haven’t done enough othwerwise to make his work with me really pay off.  Literally. 

Things have been rough for me this summer, and that has impacted my availability and willingness to focus on myself, and I’m not going to beat myself up about it too much.  Since starting with the trainer 8 weeks ago my Grandmother died, my best friend moved away, our beloved dog died, my parent’s (any my childhood) home got washed away by Hurricane Ike, there have been struggles at home for my husband and I, and throughout it I have also had more work on my plate than ever.

On good weeks, I have spent a total of 3-4 hours in the gym. On bad ones, one or two.  I have been very conscientous about not snacking or eating ANY junk food, but on some of those weeks I had several drinks (under the circumstances that’s no shock to anyone, I am sure), and I haven’t been strict about what my meals were made of.  For someone with my metabolism even just some butter or cheese or fatty meats or salad dressing or oils or white carbs or ANYthing that isn’t 100% lean and clean just cancels out the physical work.  Slacking off on careful control of what I eat means the most I can achieve is to barely break even and not GAIN weight - and I still have to sweat like a pig just to achieve THAT.  It is so disheartening to drag your depressed ass to the gym, clamber onto that treadmill and sweat and push yourself for the lame reward of squishing BACK into those same damn size 12’s that sent you to the gym in the first place.

As I stare at my not-much-smaller ass and my VERY-much-smaller wallet, I have to ask myself what exactly do I think I’m worth?

Obviously I thought it was worth it to pay $85 an hour to be coached and guided and motivated.  So why would I turn around and blow it by eating too much and being lazy about excercise?

I wouldn’t spend $85 on a blouse and then use it to wash dishes.  I sure as HELL wouldn’t spent $1,360.00 on a blouse and do anything BUT pack it in tissue and rabbit punch anyone who so much as threatened to sneeze within a mile of it.  So why would I spend that kind of money on my future and not protect it just as adamantly?

The thing that really got me was catching sight of my reflection in the mirror at the hairdresser’s on Wednesday.  It’s really the only time most of us will ever sit in a chair in front of a full length mirror and really see how we look in that position.   You can’t suck in your tummy when you’re folded at the waist, or arch your back, or drop your shoulders, or turn your hips, or do any of the little tricks we do to look slimmer.  It was just me there, my thighs spread all out, my boobs resting gently on my belly roll… a real vision of loveliness… 

But the actual “WTF??!!” moment occured when I suddenly had the total awareness of the ridiculousness of what I was doing…  I was not at the salon for a haircut -  I just got one a week ago, and it’s pretty cute, all things considered.  No, I was there to talk to the stylist about getting hair extensions because I had the idea that longer hair around my face will mask my jowls and double chin and make me look thinner.  These hair extensions, mind you, will cost me $460 FOR STARTERS and require lots of pricey maintenance on TOP of the usual money I spend for cutting and coloring my actual hair. 

You guys are pretty smart so I’m sure you can already see where this is headed…

We’ll start with the math. 

$1,360.00 for the trainer, $60 a month for the gym itself,  $40 a month for the spray-tan (…oh yeah, of COURSE I do that too - haven’t you heard that being tanner helps you look thinner?  Feel free to roll your eyes now…), plus $460 for some fake hair, and just for fun lets add the $200 I spent at Nike last week on even more workout clothes. 

I have spent a little over $2,000 JUST THIS MONTH ALONE on “efforts” to look better.

But I didn’t go to the gym EVERY DAY, as I know I have to in order to lose fat and gain muscle.  I didn’t control my portions or eliminate fatty and high-carb foods from my diet.  I had alcohol.  I didn’t sleep enough.  I didn’t do ANY of the things that will ACTUALLY affect how I look and feel.

I spent a crapload of money on external things without making the internal commitment to doing the other - FREE - things that would make that investment worthwhile.   And if you’re wondering - NO, my husband and I are far from wealthy.  This isn’t “disposable” income I’m using - its just income.

The hair extensions will be pretty, sure.  But they won’t make me look thinner.  Nice hair isn’t going to make me happier about the size 12 jeans, or reduce my risk of diabetes, or increase my cardiovascular health, or fool anyone.  I’ll just be an overweight chick with nice hair. hurrah.

I do look better with some color to my skin, and the fake tan masks my normal fishbelley-white, randomly freckled, veins aglow coloration - but looking healthier isn’t the same as being or feeling healthier.   It just makes me an overweight chick who is unnaturally brown for a Midwesterner in October.  hurrah.

I do feel more motivated with my trainer and I know that thanks to him I am getting more out of the excercises I’m doing - when I do them - but without using those sessions as merely an anchor for a wider, JUST as committed full regimen of diet and excercise I may as well just take my $1,360.00 and line the cat pan with it. hurrah.

So, class, our Economics 101 Lesson For The Day is about investment.  When it comes to health and fitness and weight loss, monetary investment without personal investment to back it up is worthless.  No, worse that that - Monetary investment without personal investment to back it up doesn’t just get you zero returns, it gets you NEGATIVE returns.

No one’s coming with a bailout for me - I’m going to have to back this loan to myself, myself. 

However, I can assure all of you that I am implementing a series of strict new regulations and oversights and expect very soon to see (much like the current national economy) an ongoing downward spiral in my…er …assets, in the very near future.

…rather than living to eat, has made for an amazingly freeing week. 

On some level, I can’t really take credit for it, as I didn’t make a decision to DO anything other than to heed the advice of my new book and STOP whenever I felt like going to the kitchen, and take the time to check in with myself and identify whether or not I was really feeling physical hunger/thirst or if something far more insidious was motivating me.   

I thought it was going to be more of a struggle, but the fact is that the moment I accepted the truth - that I have been allowing myself to be controlled like a puppet and driven to eat by insecurities and self-sabotages that have NO place in my life - they suddenly stopped having such a hold on me.   Whatever that is - that ugly little voice that keeps reminding you about the cookies in the back of the cupboard and tells you just one won’t hurt, or that you’ll probably never lose the weight anyway… and, more importantly, whatever it is that allows you to just check out while you stuff the empty calories down, as if this wasn’t something being done right now TO you BY you - just up and left the building.

A slightly troubling thing I’ve noticed about this new mindset is that I have a very diminished appetite in general.  If I had to pinpoint what’s behind that, I’d say I’m a little mistrustful of any impulse to eat.  After so many years of reacting to ANY stimulus by eating, my wiring is a little confused, and lately I find myself not eating until my stomach is really growling.  Not such a bad thing, considering that’s the whole POINT of being designed with a stomach that growls - but I am aware that I need to be very on the ball about eating promptly, healthily, and sufficiently when I DO feel hunger.

I know that a lot of the habit of mindless eating is just that - habit - and I believe that every day I go without endorsing that habit is a step towards permanently breaking that habit, but whether or not I stay in this very empowering mindset forever remains to be seen.    For the moment I feel very blessed that - however it happened - I’m getting the chance to so clearly FEEL the difference between eating as a biological (but still pleasureable) function, and eating as a psychological, and ultimately damaging function.

On a slightly different topic - my trainer commented at Monday’s session that he’s starting to see some physical changes.  They’re small, but they’re there.  I don’t think anyone who hasn’t been staring fixedly at me while I twist and turn in VERY (not always deliberately) form-fitting clothes would see it… my husband hasn’t said anything yet, for instance… but that one small sentence out of Mr. Gomez’s mouth practically made me cry from happiness.   It certainly inspired me to go - at long last - and take the Waterworkout class I and my too-small bathing suit have been avoiding. 

The workout was tough, but it was really fun to be in the pool, and I liked both just being in the water and the fact that basically, all anyone can see is your head, so I wasn’t as self-conscious as I sometimes am in classes.  I can’t ever catch my reflection in ballet class without inadvertently making a face of disgust, and it takes some of the joy out of it for me — but in the pool we’re all bouyant little water nymphs, and if I had to stop at Sportmart on the way home and buy a new swimsuit in a bigger size that won’t ride up my butt quite so painfully next week, well, that’s just for me and my Buddyslim buds to know.

My husband’s company is having a thing at the pub tomorrow to celebrate a big project they were awarded, and of course I have no less than THREE backyard barbecues to get through over Labor Day weekend - but I’m not worried. 

I’m AWARE, I’m MINDFUL, and I’m going to have to stay very engaged to make sure I don’t allow myself to slip into old habits in the face of all that high-calorie booze and grub…  but the fact is that one cookie WILL hurt, I WILL lose the weight if I don’t give in to self-sabotage or false doubts, and the only thing, the only person who can derail my having a healthier, more effective future is ME.   

THAT’S the voice I have to listen to.  The damn cookies will just have to find someone else to whisper to.

Here’s a confession.

I lie on Facebook. 

Not about my life, my job, my marriage, my net worth, my politics, my home, my opinions, my successes and failures, or my lifestyle.  I only lie about how I look.

I doctor my Facebook profile photos.  

Photoshopping pictures is part of my profession - erasing crow’s feet and stray hairs, subtly slimming the jawlines and waistlines of clients who need to project a certain image - and over the years I’ve gotten very, very good at it. 

When I joined Facebook, I decided to upload some pictures, and started with stuff from my twenties and early 30’s…  Then I hit the first batch of pictures of me nowadays.  Seeing them side by side like that, I was suddenly so ashamed of how different I look — let me rephrase that… how FAT I look — from even 6 or 7 years ago.  The thought of old “friends” seeing me this way - the mere idea that they might mock, or worse, pity me was too much for my vanity.  And somehow, I had this idea that if people knew I’d put on weight they would respect me less, be less interested in me, or think of me as a failure.

So, I carefully chose pictures fom the past 5 years ONLY from phases where I was in the 140lb range, and carefully did my magic to bring me down to a decent-looking 120lb-ish range.  Took off the double chins, added a bit of cheekbone, created waists, removed back and belly rolls…  Photos like the one I have on my Buddyslim profile wouldn’t even make the cut for “To Be Fixed” entries.  As far as Facebook is concerned, I’ve never been more than 130lbs.

At the time, it felt ok to do it.  On the one hand, 99% of my Facebook friends live far, far away and are in no position to know what I look like, “And anyway,” I thought to myself, “I’m going to lose all the weight soon and then it won’t be a lie…”  What I didn’t bank on was how well it would work.  I wasn’t ready for the “Oh my god you look GORGEOUS!” and “You haven’t changed a BIT since college!” comments…  Every one of them cuts me like a knife.   And I definitely didn’t bank on people messaging me saying “Hey, I’m in town on business next week, I’d love to get a drink with you and catch up!” forcing me to either bite the bullet and show my (ample) face for what it is, or keep a handy list of why-I-can’t-meet-you excuses on file at all times.  

The great thing about all your friends being scattered across the country is that you can use the same why-I-can’t-meet-you excuses over and over.

What troubles me most is that I don’t know if it’s just my (not inconsiderable) vanity at work, or something even more insidious.  We’ve all seen the shows where the hot chick puts on a fat suit and “discovers” that she gets less attention, less support, less respect from people…  We’ve all heard the statstics about how overweight people earn lower salaries, amass less wealth, are less likely to be promoted at work…  Are my assumptions about being rejected because of my weight merely paranoia, or a fact of life?  And worse still, do even I like and respect myself less when I’m overweight?

It’s funny - I don’t think my weight makes me less talented at my job, less loyal a friend, less loving a wife,  less fun at parties, less of any of the things that make me, ME — but I guess I do think that somehow my weight will come between my worth and whether or not the world will acknowledge that worth.  I know that when I am small and strong I feel like I can take on the world - although, obviously, losing weight doesn’t increase my intelligence, competence, sense of humor, self-respect, or ANY of the traits with which I would, presumably, take on the world.

With attention to diet and a commitment to excercise I am working towards the day when the photos I want to post on Facebook don’t require any Photoshopping to make me ok with them — but where’s the gym machine that strengthens the whatever-it-is in me that was so weak as to fake the pictures in the first place?  

I am developing a nagging suspicion that, in fact, diet and excercise addresses my symptoms - but not my disease. 

Which probably explains why I don’t consistently keep the weight off and never have. 

For me, because of a mindset I haven’t examined and addressed, and really only just this moment have ever put words to - have ever even considered - losing weight is sort of just a real-life Photoshopping.   As though I’m just temporarily fooling folks into thinking well of me, all the time “knowing” that my “real” body is different and if they saw me “as I really am,” they wouldn’t be so impressed. 

Come to think of it, as much as I love the feeling of being small and strong, it has always felt like a treat, a weird wild ride in someone else’s reality.  Something not really TRUE to me. 

Feeling like that, no wonder my weight has always gone up and down and up and down…  If I don’t, in my soul, believe that I AM a beautiful person, I never will be.  Not for longer than a few months at a time here and there, anyway.

Now that I think about it, I have always felt surprised by a thin reflection in the mirror, saying to myself, “Who the hell is THAT?!”- and merely depressed by a fat one, saying something more like, ”Well, here we are again…”  

When I have been (for me) very small - in the 110lb range - I never really managed to wrap my head around what I saw in the mirror.  It never felt like I was really seeing me, but more like I’d borrowed someone’s body, someone better than me.  

Now that I think about it, seeing pictures of myself overweight makes me feel naked, exposed, found out…  Like Toto’s pulled back the curtain and now everyone can see the average person desperately pulling levers behind the smoke and mirrors. 

This isn’t at all where I thought this blog was headed today. 

I just thought I was going to talk about my vanity, make some good jokes, be amusing, get it off my chest — but I guess there’s a reason my little head nagged at me to blog about this.  I guess there’s some deeper issues I need to be looking at. 

I guess more than getting to a point where I don’t feel the need to Photoshop my pictures any more, I should be working towards getting to a point where I feel as at home, as appropriate, as safe, in a small body as in a larger one.

How’s THAT for a confession?

So, I have this new book about emotional eating. 

It’s a funny label, because, if you’re like me, during the act of emotional eating the LAST thing you feel is emotions.  When I’m in that mindless stuffing phase of “emotional” eating, what I feel is, in fact, nothing.  Which, as I have recently been led to understand, is the purpose of the activity - if a mindless activity can be said to have a purpose…

The “nothingness” I feel  is a feeling of release - a void where before there was anxiety, or stress, or depression, or loneliness, or whatever drove me to the cupboard in the first place…  Not that I’d really noticed that before…

Speaking of things I never noticed before… I never even noticed that I was an emotional eater, because I’m not that girl I’ve read about who polishes off a gallon of ice cream and 2 large pizzas in one sitting.  “I’m SOOOooo glad I’m not her..” I’d think to myself as I polished off a pint of Haagen Daas and 1 small pizza in one sitting… “I mean, yeah, I’m eating THIS… but it’s not THAT much– not like HER, the poor thing….”

Yeahhhhh…  Somehow in there I’d always managed to overlook the obvious…

Just one pint of Hagen Daas is approximately 1300 calories.  
Just one 10-inch pizza - JUST cheese, no toppings (as if I EVER get just-cheese pizzas) - runs around 1500 calories. 
Add something “healthy” to wash it down like just one glass of juice or milk, and we slap on another 200-300 calories, easy.
In case, like me, you’re math-challenged - We’re now looking at “just” 3,000 calories, give or take, and even the most numerically phobic of us here probably already know that you must burn 3,500 calories to lose JUST  ONE POUND. 

You don’t have to be Stephen flipping Hawking to realize that, conversely, if I have eaten 3,000 calories in one sitting, I have effectively earned myself one pound of weight gain.   Right.  There. 

In the hour or so it would take me to eat my “just this once, I’ve been careful all week” pizza and ice cream idiocy I will have UNdone any work I might have achieved in seven days of concerted effort towards conscientous eating, and excercise.  Gone. Nullified. Erased.  Simple as that.

And with me, it’s rarely as obvious as a pizza and ice cream binge - for me it’s usually little things like grabbing “just a taste” of the side of butter potatoes I made “for my husband to eat” on Monday, having a couple glasses of wine with dinner on Tuesday, oily giardinera topping and melted cheese on my lunchtime sub sandwich on Wednesday… and so on, and so forth  — little “absentminded” sabotages that add up over the days and weeks and months…  Little choices that over time add up to one BIG ass.

People with weight issues like mine often say “I don’t know why I ate that cheese/those potatoes/that ice cream!  If only I knew what made me do it…”  As if THAT was the key. Or rather, as if that was any MYSTERY to us.

We all KNOW what “makes” us do it.  We have a sad place somewhere, from something - past or present - and we try to fix or fill it with food.  Even though we also know that not only doesn’t fix ANYthing, but usually just makes everything seem worse by adding weight issues to our already tough psychological situation.

And ALL the books (including my new one here), tell me that until I have a full grip on those emotions and heal them, I will “never succeed at overcoming the eating patterns.” “NEVER” !!!

Guess what I decided last night?

That. Is. Bull. Shit.

If we actually believe that hype - that until we’re emotionally healed we’re doomed to stay fat - we’re doomed to stay fat. 

I don’t know ANYone without emotional scars, without buttons that can be pressed, old hurts that can be triggered, self doubts and fears about certain things.   Not all of those people try to eat it away.  I do sometimes, maybe you do too.  But my point is, it’s NOT being in pain that “makes” us eat, it’s we who choose to try to ease the pain with food.  We, actually, REALLY, are still in control.  Nothing ”makes” us eat - we choose to.  Some choose drink, or drugs, or yoga, or Jesus, or long walks to get through it - I choose food.

My psychological wounds are pretty standard WE-Channel fare: a rough childhood marked by poverty, neglectful and emotionally abusive parents who didn’t like each other much either,  instability in the home/s, innapropriate advances from male adults when I was young, being put on diets from the age of 10, kicked out of school, on my own since age 19, etc., etc…  I have all the standard reasons to self-medicate, all the developmental patterns of someone with compensation issues, and guess what?  NO, repeat NO amount of journalling in my Dr. Phil notebook is EVER going to make it all better, and Donald Trump couldn’t afford the team of international specialists it would take to analyze me.  Does that make me doomed to be fat?   Of course not.  What nonsense.

And let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that I could wave a magic wand and disperse all the fallout from those old issues.  So what?  Life will bring me a shiny brand new issue in just my size to struggle with before the week is out - maybe it’ll be work related, maybe family related, maybe financial, or maybe a rhinocerous will surprisingly escape from the zoo, catch the Midtown bus, and come trample my house flat.  The world is a chaotic place and all things are possible and who knows what tomorrow brings?   So - in the case of emotional eating - what matters is NOT, I think, whether we have life’s issues identified and under control (as that’s an impossibility), but whether we have our coping mechanisms identified and under control.

I think it will be of great benefit to me to just accept the fact that, whether I like it or not, these factors are at work on me.  And when that false sense of hunger comes over me (emotional hunger) I can take the time to learn to recognize what’s up, and I can focus on the fact that I have a choice whether or not to go eat in response to it, or just say “Ah, there is that old hurt again. It is used to trying to fix itself with food - which has not worked in 30-something years, and isn’t going to work this time, either.”  Does that mean I may have to just sit there and feel the ugly feeling for a few minutes?  Probably.  But that will likely be easier on me in the long run than the ugly feeling I would have to just sit there and feel after having stuffed my face with something useless in response to an emotional yearning I refused to acknowledge. 

We all know THAT feeling — it usually manifests itself in an inner monologue that goes something like “Oh my GOD WHY did I just eat that, I can’t believe I just ATE that, what is WRONG with me I KNOW better, I am NEVER going to lose this weight WHY do I even TRY, oh god I HATE myself, I SUCK, I can’t DO this, WHY WHY WHY…”   

There is an awesome parable, accredited to the Native Americans -

 A father is talking to his son, and he tells the son, “I have two powerful wolves inside of me, fighting all the time.  One of them tells me to be courageous, wise, and respectful of myself and others.  The other instructs me to do dangerous, stupid, damaging and self-destructive things.”
The son is very worried and says, “But father, that’s terrible!  Which one will win?” 
His father replies, “Whichever one I feed.”

I don’t think I need to know, or rehabilitate, or “embrace” my destructive wolf.  I don’t need to journal about him, do twelve steps on him, reconcile with him, forgive him, disect him, “own” him, or take time to do his little family tree to find out exactly where he came from and why, why, why…

All I have to do is learn to recognize his ugly ass when I see it, and just

Not. Feed. Him.

Well, if anyone’s keeping track (what vanity, eh? As if anyone’s staying up nights wondering what I’m doing… Just call me ‘Brangelina’…), they’ll see it’s been seven - count ‘em, SEVEN! - months since I was last here.   There’s been a lot of personal turmoil, family issues, loss of a loved one, taking on too much work and doing tons of overtime during that period… if it’s stressful, it’s been happening… but as I’ve said before, no matter WHAT, we still make the choice about how we’re going to react to stresses.  It was my choice to be sedentary, and less mindful of what I put in my body.

Technically, I didn’t stop cold with the excercise and nutrition.   I kept going to the gym fairly regularly earlier in the year, but then it began to taper off, eventually to the point of silliness (working out once a week isn’t AS useless as NEVER going, but it’s not much better…) and there was one point where I didn’t go at ALL for about a month.  I try always to be mindful about food, but when I don’t excercise I have to cut calories to an extreme just to maintain my weight… and that’s something I’ve never been able to do (and near-fasting is silly, so no one should), AND…. shock of shocks, I put on weight.  A little under 10lbs.  When last I weighed myself I was 163.  I’ve been too afraid to weigh myself since.

I’ve also been afraid to come back to BuddySlim.  Partially from embarassment - I’m a little prideful, and to fail so publicly stings my vanity - but also because I figured what I had to say wouldn’t, couldn’t, be of much value to anyone.

But a few things have changed — or rather, I have changed a few things — that made me reconsider.

Firstly, I set aside my personal feelings of shame about backsliding.  Anyone who has struggled with improving their body and their health has experienced rises and falls.  What we work towards is staying on track, and avoiding unhealthily huge peaks and valleys, so that overall, we’re always heading for the goal.

Secondly, I didn’t give up on myself.  And that was a hard struggle, I admit it.  I felt like just throwing in the towel.  I’m 39, and next spring my husband and I are planning on trying for a baby.  In other words, changing my body, losing weight and etc is extremely hard at this age - I won’t drop 20lbs in a month or two like I could in my 20’s… it’s likely going to be another 6 months hard work at MINIMUM before I lose 20 lbs, and I thought “then I’m just going to get knocked up and fat, and then just be someone’s dowdy Mum anyway, so why bother?”…   But I also couldn’t ignore how miserable I was - am - at this weight and level of UNfitness, and the idea of choosing to spend the rest of my life that miserable, or worse, was even scarier than the thought of wedging this ginormous butt of mine into form-fitting gym pants again.

So, I started by tracking down the toughest (but in a GREAT and very loving way) trainer at my gym, and signing up for 8 weeks of one-on-one, once a week.  This makes me accountable to someone, which helps, and he doesn’t fool around, which means if I don’t go to the gym on some non-training days to build fitness and stamina, I may die in the middle of one of his “Jacob’s Ladder” sets (which, if you’re asking, starts in the plank position, on your toes, arms at full extension - then you drop onto your elbows one at a time, and then press back up to full extension again, one arm at a time, with your abs engaged, glutes tight, and back strong, of course. 10 times. Oh, and no crying allowed). 

In addition to making me accountable, it also made me POOR.  Mr. Gomez costs $85 for each one-hour session. Yeah, you read right. And if seeing that figure at the bottom of the receipt doesn’t A) make me show up on time, B) make me get to every session, and C) give it my ALL while I’m there - then nothing will.

I also bought a couple books, one called “Shrink Yourself, Break Free From Emotional Eating Forever,” which has given me some serious *ahem* food for thought, and a silly-ish one called “Secrets Of A Former Fat Girl” which anyone who wants it can have. Seriously, give me your address and I’ll mail it to you.  It’s cute, but there’s better uses for fourteen bucks (for instance, it will buy you about 10 minutes with Mr. Gomez), and anyway, if someone doesn’t take it it’ll just end up on the shelf next to “Dr. Phil’s Weight Loss Solution” (fitness advice from a fat guy? See paragraph three above…), “French Women Don’t Get Fat” (was anyone else foolish enough to try the leek soup nonsense? Laisse-moi rire!) and “Skinny Bitch” (ohhhhh! ONLY eat free range celery and buy my pants 2 sizes too small and all my troubles will be over? Now why didn’t I think of that?!)… just to name a few.

So here’s me, beginning the process of mining the emotional undertow that drives me to emotional eating, paying top dollar to get my ass kicked once a week by a latin drill sergeant with abs like a washboard, and jumping fat-first into the Buddyslim pool.

It’s nice to be back.

When I started blogging, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t allow this to turn into just another daily account of every calorie to personally cross my path, lists of excercises done or avoided, or mindless minutae about what cute thing my husband said/cat did today/shoes I saw. But above all, I vowed blogging wouldn’t be a bid for attention where I aired all the ins and outs of my (plus-size) laundry in public…

But the fact is, friends, it’s been a hell of a week.

A hell of a TWO weeks, if I’m being honest.

The particulars are not important, because the particulars are no excuse. The particulars - no matter what they are - are never the problem.

The problem is that I chose to let stress be an excuse for shelving my better judgement, and to de-prioritize what HAS to remain my FIRST priority (or what has to at least share the limelight with whatever else is going on).

The problem is that I made the choice to “get swamped,” to “not have time.”  

The problem is that although a million and one things - family emergencies, work, etc. - taxed my energy and my time,  I chose to allow that to take my focus 100% off of taking care of myself at ALL. As a result, I not only DIDN’T lose any weight in the last two weeks, I DID lose what little ground I have gained fitness-wise, and I lost the habit of making regular exercise and healthy eating part of my life.  And that’s the real key to success, isn’t it?  To not make it part of my life-only-when-everything’s-going-hunky-dory. But to make it part of my LIFE. 

I got out a calculator, and discovered that I could have at LEAST found 2, 3, maybe 4 , or even 5 hours for exercise over the past TWO WEEKS.  You know how come I know?  Because there are Three-Hundred-And-Thirty-Six hours in two weeks.  Now, I’m no math whiz - but 2, 3, maybe 4, or even 5 hours is NOT that large a percentage of time to somehow have NOT been able to find.  

Oh, I did find 4 hours to go to the salon for a haircut and bikini wax.  I found time for THAT.  I justified it by saying it was “the one thing I did for myself” last week.  But why wasn’t “the one thing I did for myself” an aerobics class?  Or 2 or 3? What good is a nice haircut if it frames a double-chin? What good is being swimsuit-smooth if I wouldn’t be caught dead poolside? 

And I also found time to go to the pub with my husband to watch Premiereship Football for THREE HOURS. I justified THAT by saying it was the only “together” time we had all week, and “isn’t that important for our relationship?”  But what good is “together” time with a woman who is withdrawn, lethargic, and self-conscious?  What am I really bringing to the relationship when I’m like that?

It also didn’t help that the Guinness Girls were there in all their longlegged, 20 something, plaid ultra-miniskirted glory, prancing around like show ponies offering up unspoken promises and little sample glasses of beer. And who knew that SO many Irishmen had never heard of “this Guinness drink you speak of” and needed to try just a wee bit to see if maybe they might like it?  Amazing.  The husband was very conscientious, and didn’t stare.  Or at least, he didn’t let me catch him staring, which is just as good. 

Does Lane Bryant carry plaid ultra-miniskirts? Unlikely. And even if they did, it’d take more of those teensy beershots than my house is worth to trick the hubby into mistaking me for a Guinness Girl.  Guinness truck, maybe…

What’s really interesting to me is that fact that I KNOW that I physically and mentally just FEEL better when I’ve been to the gym regularly, even if it doesn’t cosmetically show right away.  My body is more alert, and so is my mind. My MOOD in general is better.  And the longer I don’t excercise, the worse I feel - physically, mentally, and emotionally. 

So it’s a simple and obvious equation; I KNOW that if I work out, things will start to improve for me and I know if I don’t, they won’t. 

And yet, the more things get worse, the less likely I am to do the ONE simple thing I know for SURE will give me the boost I need to get through the tough times.

It’s ridiculous.

It’s inexplicable.

And I’m writing this blog STILL having NOT been to the gym in TWO WEEKS.  I have already taken half an hour to sit (SIT!) here tapping away at the OH-so-not-very-fat-burning heart rate of what, 75 bpm? 80? …when I could be heading off to the gym for some exercise - ANY exercise. 

Not that talking about these things isn’t of value - it is - but I see pretty clearly that in a way, I am just procrastinating. Riding the “Poor Me” pony all the way back to the ranch.

Well, hell. 

ALL I have been talking about on this blog since day one has been the fact that it all boils down to my ability to choose - or, rather, my RESPONSIBILITY to choose - how I see things, how I define things, and what I do with that information…

So -

NO.  I choose NOT to be “procrastinating,” but instead to be succeeding in talking myself into shutting the hell up, into to quitting moaning about my unfair lot in life, and into DOING something actually USEFUL about it by going to the gym -

Right.

NOW.

Later, ladies…

Check out my new toy:

This, my friends, is The Omron HBF-500 Body Composition Monitor With Scale.  According to the clever clever folks at Omron’s website, it “features highly accurate, full body sensing technology that measures body weight, body fat, visceral fat, BMI, resting metabolism, and skeletal fat - a complete body composition monitor to see the real shape you’re in. ”

Yup.

For those of you here who, like me, see enough of “the real shape you’re in” just standing in front of a full length mirror (and hey, does anyone else seem to look thinner when the tears blur your vision a little?  No?…  Just me?… ), the idea of a scale that not only announces your weight but also your BMI and skeletal and visceral fat probably sounds like the single most depressing appliance ever invented since the alarm clock.

Well, take it from me… 

No really - please. PLEASE take it from me. Before I throw it out a 6th storey window and fling myself after it.

OK, ok, in all seriousness, I got the damned thing because I thought seeing ANY result from my efforts, however small, might help motivate me.  I know from experience with this slothlike metabolism of mine that it takes awhile for visible changes to appear, and I easily get frustrated and depressed and tell myself ludicrous things like “Oh, it just isn’t working!” as if I and I alone was immune to the positive effects of habitual excercise and sensible eating…

But I think we’ve all been there - that Rotten Moment when you calculate the long hours at the gym, the many cupcakes not indulged in, and quietly say to yourself “I wonder …”    And you go to the closet, get out Those Jeans, carefully slide them over your ankles - heart pounding, lips toying with the idea of a well-earned smile - and then suddenly and rudely come up short as you realize you can either continue to hold onto the jeans now wedged immovable and skintight bunched around your knees, or stand up.  But not both.

That, ladies, is a Rotten Moment.  It can unnerve the most positive booster-note-sender, derail the most rigid points-counter, and send even the hardest core excercise-logger straight into the La-Z-Boy with heart in gutter, and potato chips in hand.

Clever that I am, I thought “Well, between my BMI, resting metabolism, body fat percentage, visceral fat percentage, skeletal muscle, AND weight to choose from, surely SOMEthing SOMEwhere on that scale will always be inching towards the better as long as I keep up my end of the deal.  Surely SOMEthing SOMEwhere will always be there to encourage me and reassure me that All Is Not In Vain, no matter what those overpaid jerks at Seven For All Mankind are telling me.”

Plus, it was on sale.  (Amazon.com, if you’re asking.)

So, I get the thing, I type in my gender, height, and age, and I climb aboard. 

The last time I saw numbers that depressing, demoralizing, and bewildering was shortly after I took my SAT’s and shortly before I went to Art School where they’re just happy if you can find your classroom and don’t show up naked.

Ready?  Drum roll, please….

Weight: 156.2 lb
Fat %: 46.6 % (++ Very High)
Visceral Fat: 8 (+ High)
Skeletal Muscle: 22.9 %
BMI: 30.7  (++ Obese)
Resting Metabolism: 1350 kcal

Oh - just in case anyone didn’t know, 46.6% fat is only SLIGHTLY LOWER THAN THE FAT PERCENTAGE OF A MCDONALD’S FRAKKING ‘OREO MCFLURRY.’

THAT’S RIGHT. 

I AM THE METABOLIC EQUIVALENT OF A DISGUSTING CHAIN FOOD FROZEN MONSTROSITY. 

The McFlurry part I had to research on my own.  The double-plus ( ++ ) designations and accompanying OH so flattering “High/Obese” labels are courtesy of the handy little user’s manual Omron sent along, in case there was any threat of my getting on the damn thing and NOT immediately considering suicide.  

I am 5 feet tall, 156 lbs, and wear a size 10. 

 10 isn’t a size I generally associate with obesity — and maybe that’s been part of my problem.   Maybe the fact that I am relatively compact, the fact that I ”carry my weight well,”  (whatever that means) has allowed me to ignore, or overlook, or not even investigate how truly overburdened my body really is.  How poor my health really is.  How high my risks really may be.

I had also thought that at limiting myself to 1,200 calories a day on my new meal plan, I would lose weight.   But to lose one pound, a person has to burn approximately 3500 calories over and above what is already burned doing daily activities.  So, to lose just ONE pound in SEVEN days, I have to burn a total of 500 calories ABOVE my current level each day. 

If my diet is between 1,200-1,300, and my resting metabolism is 1,350 (that’s how many calories I burn in a day just BEING, and not doing any real excercise - which I’d say is any day I spend at my computer working 10 hours solid and not doing much else, which is how I spent MOST of last week) then all I am really doing at the moment with all my “hard work” is BREAKING EVEN.  

What I have considered to be VERY healthy, conscious, and praiseworthy behaviour is merely BREAKING EVEN.

So, clearly, to make a real difference, I am going to have to really… well… make a difference.   

Most of all, I am going to have to accept that what I had heretofore defined as “really working at it” was NOT really working at it at all, and that I am going to have to ask much much more of myself than I ever have in the past  - and what’s more, I am going to have to deliver.

I have done a little more research just now, and apparently, jumping out of a window only burns 15 calories. 

To lose only one pound I’d have to jump out a window more than 233 times.  Hardly seems worth it. 

Besides if I kill myself, I’ll miss ballet class tomorrow…

For reasons I can only attribute to God’s having a sense of humor, ever since I decided to sort my body and eating and health out once and for all I have been put in situation after situation involving easy access to gobs of fattening eats. I was thinking about why there is such an internal struggle in me NOT to each such things, and of course the word “temptation” kept coming into it.

Since I have decided that one of the keys to my potential success is careful examination of my thinking and how I define all aspects of what it means and what it is to behave and eat in a healthy way, I decided to do a little research…

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “temptation” as: the act of tempting or the state of being tempted especially to evil : enticement. Something tempting : a cause or occasion of enticement

Since “enticement” made two appearances in defining this one word, I figured it needed a good looking at as well.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “enticement” as: to attract artfully or adroitly or by arousing hope or desire.

Arousing hope or desire.

Hmmmmmm.

So, when I eat, say, a Krispy Kreme, what hope or desire could I possibly be fulfilling?… Not the hopes and desires I profess to have; A lean, fit, healthy and attractive body, long life, etc…

Technically, then - by definition - the only thing that SHOULD actually “tempt” me is the sight of a big bowl of salad. Served on a treadmill, preferably.

So, I got to thinking about foods – ones that actually are tempting (despite what Messrs. Merriam and Webster have to say on the subject) and ones that are not.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “food” as: material consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate, and fat used in the body of an organism to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes and to furnish energy.

Hmmmmmmmm.

So, here’s what I think.

I think there is “food,” and there are also Things Which Are Merely Edible.

If the primary purpose of “food” is to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes and to furnish energy, then a Krispy Kreme is merely something edible. It ain’t food.

In the past, I often justified poor eating by saying “But I HAVE to EAT!!! It’s not like smoking or alcohol, that you can just STOP doing! I NEED food!”

And so I do.

And if I just stuck to food, I’d be in better shape. Literally.
But I have had an issue of confusing food with Things That Are Merely Edible. Crayons are edible. Mealworms are edible. According to an episode of “Globe Trekker” that I saw, seal feces is EDIBLE.

Just because you CAN eat something doesn’t mean you should.

Ok.  So, anyone else notice the tendency to define our MORALITY in terms of the food we have eaten today?

“I was so good today - only XXXX calories!” 

 or -

“I was so bad today - I went to McDonalds!”

By this logic, we could broccolli ourselves to Dalai Lama-hood, and I can only assume Hitler must have subsisted on a diet comprised entirely of Original-Recipe-breaded-and-deep-fried Twinkies covered in cheese sauce with bacon sprinkles.

I have been pondering this, and have come to the conclusion that to say/think/teach myself to think of, and express my eating in terms of its MORALITY is a quietly destructive crutch. 

“I was bad..” subtly leads to the mindset “I AM bad.”  And as we all “know,” a bad person does not deserve to succeed, does not deserve happiness.   Not to mention that a person who defines themselves as “good” on Monday and then as “bad” on Tuesday is going to have certain difficulties establishing a strong, enduring, and accurate sense of the wealth of their true human value - and in reflecting that value in the way they support and nurture their physical, mental, and emotional self.

Furthermore, to self-define as “I am being good” or “I am being bad” is the province of children.

Children are incapable of understanding that something they do may have negative ramifications for THEM, so adults protect them by instilling the idea that doing things they have been taught are “bad will displease The Grownups, and result in (seemingly arbirtrary - to the child in question) punishment.   Jr. doesn’t really understand that blindly stepping into the road is forbidden because it may result in his DEATH - but he does understand, very clearly, that it IS somehow “bad” and that if he does run into the street Mommy or Daddy or Teacher  is likely to punish him. 

So when we smilingly announce “Oh, I am being so BAD today!” as we shovel in the hot wings or ice cream, or go out for drinks instead of going out for a walk or a run - what punishment, exactly, is it that we are hoping to AVOID?  In what way, exactly, do we think this behaviour will escape detection? What powerful authority figure is it that we are sneaking around behind?…

None, of course.

Because we are adults.  We know exactly what the real-life consequences of our choices are.

We are adults.  At the end of the day, we have to answer to ourselves for our behaviour.

We know if we step blindly into the street, we can get hit by a car.  We know if we make ridiculous eating and activity choices, we undermine the health, strength, beauty, and efficacy of our precious bodies.

I don’t know of anyone who has shown up at the office at 10:20 am in their pajamas, thrown their files on the floor, and laid down under their desk smilingly announcing “Oh, I am being so BAD today!” (…later explaining that they’ll “make it up tomorrow” by being extra professional…)

So it’s a question of whether or not we decide to bring the same level of daily purpose, direction, maturity, and accountability to our lifelong bodies that we bring to something as potentially transient as a JOB.

Eating intelligently and providing our bodies with the requisite amount of physical activity to keep them fine-tuned is NOT a question of being “good” or “bad”- it’s a question of behaving with reason.  Like the adults we are. 

I suppose we can choose to behave blindly, like a child, and conduct ourselves like unsupervised children - keeping ourselves in a rut of compulsion and regret and the mind-set that in some circumstances we are just prone to behaving “badly” and “can’t control” ourselves.

But we’re lying to ourselves (…not actually possible - only a recipe for even MORE regret and self loathing, by the way…) if we do.

Each and every day we make a million choices that value and safeguard our futures.  We behave like adults, and we ”control ourselves” in all kinds of environments. We choose NOT to do a million reckless and self-destructive things each and every day, and we don’t think a thing about it.  We certainly don’t crow about it.

I have never heard anyone say,  ”I was so GOOD today! I didn’t suddenly leap up on the pew and sing ‘Baby Got Back’ in church!”  “I was so GOOD today! I didn’t grab the cute UPS guy’s butt!”  “I was so GOOD today! I didn’t stuff an entire pot roast up my jacket and sneak out of the Hy-Vee!”  

So, why do we bother to pretend things are any different when it comes to making intelligent and reasonable eating and excercise choices?  What on EARTH does THAT pretension gain us? 

I’m sure I don’t know.

However, all of the above said, I do have it on very good authority that the Dalai Lama eats a CRAPLOAD of broccolli.

Quite frankly, I’m super annoyed that I’m starting this weight loss commitment on day one of the new year.  It smacks of being a “New Year’s Resolution,” which - as we all know - is about the flimsiest contract since Britney and K-Fed’s prenup. 

And considering I’m not merely starting, but starting OVER, gives it that extra whiff of sad-sack “here we go again” pathos.

On the other hand, there is something satisfying about the idea of having the 01/01 ”fresh start.”  If you ignore the fact that calendars are almost completely arbitrary, and Jan 1st is only the “new year” to non-Chinese, Assyrian, Muslim, and Jewish people - and even THAT’s only been true for less than 260 years.  In 153 B.C. The Romans moved the new year from March (Spring Solstice) to Jan. 1,  but it wasn’t officially set there by the Julian calendar until 46 B.C..  Then it was eradicated in the Middle Ages because of its ties to paganism, and only re-established (by Pope Gregory XIII - to coincide with Christmas) in 1582. But the Jan. 1 date still wasn’t adopted in some places, including the United States, until 1752.  256 years ago.

Now, wasn’t that educational? And you thought we were just going to talk about my fat ass. 

But, about my fat ass…   MAN, is it fat. SOOOoooooooooooo fat.   And all because I neglected and ignored it.  I didn’t have to neglect and ignore it.  I could have taken it to the gym regularly, given it interesting excercises to do, fed it things that didn’t spatter it with those ever-so-attractive cellulite bumps, and generally treated it with the love and respect that my one-and-only, always-there-for-me, together-for-life ass deserves.  But I didn’t.

Well, I did for awhile.  Starting about this time in 2006, I went to the gym and watched my portions and avoided junky candy and chips and booze and such, and by summer I had taken it from a 155 lb ass all the way down to a 130 lb ass.  And I must say, it was looking pretty ok at that point.  It wasn’t anything you’d wanna show the kids, but it wasn’t anything to be ashamed of, either.  It did all sorts of marvellous things like go to ballet class, run a 12-minute mile, fit into my favorite jeans… fit into my favorite chairs… things were going great.

And then I made the BIG mistake.  The same mistake I made in 1988 when I worked my ass from 130 down to 110.  The same mistake I made in 1998 when I worked my ass from 139 down to 112.  And the same mistake I made in 2000 when I worked my ass from 140 down to 125. 

I thought to myself, “Whew! Well, you’ve done it! You lost the weight! You’re ‘that girl’ now! You’re fit and healthy! Congratulations - you’re finished!”

And I slacked off going to the gym, I slacked off watching what I ate, I slacked off making intelligent choices, I slacked off staying conscious of what I was doing to my body and what my body was doing because of it.  I just ignored the facts - rather, the FACT - that I can make changes my body will adjust to, but I can’t change my body.

 In other words, my body will always be what it is - shorter, stockier, slower metabolism, prone to weight gain and fat retention, with a family history of diabetes and heart attack.  I can make choices that result in it being slimmer, stronger, and healthier, but I can’t suddenly become one of those people who can eat whatever they want, not excercise, and stay small and healthy (if such people really exist outside of the lies in fashion magazines) forever.

So, the lesson I have finally had to accept - I had LEARNED it already, as evidenced by the ups and downs of the scale throughout my life, I just refused to accept the FACTS of that lesson - is  that I WILL NEVER BE ‘FINISHED.’  I WILL NEVER BE ‘DONE.’  I can never say “Whew!”  I can only say ”Next challenge!”

I am now accepting and appreciating that there is no magic weight or end date when I stop working out, or stop being mindful of portions and nutrition, or abandon reason and consciousness and stuff my face (not to mention my ass) with useless crap, or do any of the 1,0001 myriad things I have done in the past that resulted in having to start over at starting over.

Maybe the idea of never being done sounds depressing to you - but I look at it this way - if I’m never done, then - thank GOD - I will never, never, NEVER have to “start over” again.  And really, is there ANYthing more depressing than our habit of ”starting over” AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN and…

So, although I have more finite goals - like shedding about 30 useless pounds, and getting back to the activities I love - my overall “resolution” (I suppose we MUST use that word, mustn’t we?) is to make this the last “start” of my life.  To TRULY accept that to really succeed at this requires that there be no end to the process - and so I have to come to appreciate and love the process even more than the results.   

So, what better way to stay with the process than to log off, and head directly over to the gym?… None, you say?

How right you are.

Food Log

Exercise Log