Reading

Most of my friends are big book readers. I'm a big internet reader. My books require me to leave the state (and sometimes the country) in order for me to have enough of an attention span to sit down and enjoy them. Unless, I'm able to, by some miracle, make it through a book for book club every 6-8 weeks. 

I received this book as a gift from my Amazon.com wish list some time ago. And I'm finally, finally reading it. I've figured out I can take fun paperback novels (my psych book is way too large and requiring of full attention and underlining) to the gym and read them on the recumbent bike. 

As people are pedaling or running around me, I often laugh, or am shocked that my bike is beeping at me that it's time to get off. Books that do that are amazing. So I thought I'd share my favorite page of the book that I'm reading with you. I like this one because the author's philosophy is not unlike my own at this stage. It makes my life, which often feels completely crazy -- sane. 

The book is called The Fat Girl's Guide to Life" by Wendy Shanker.

Eat Me

"I'm not going to tell you what to eat. If you're reading this book, my hunch is you know plenty about nutrition and diets already. I can tell you what I do, if you borrow elements of it, knock yourself out.

I try to eat a balanced diet. That means lean protein (chicken, turkey, fish, tofu, etc.), carbs (whole wheat flour instead of white flour, brown rice instead of white rice), fruit (a real piece of fruit for the fiber, instead of sugary juice), veggies (never enough), dairy (women NEED dairy), a little sweat, a little fat. I try to eat lots of little meals instead of three big meals; I tend to feel fuller and digest food better that way. I eat breakfast every day. I take vitamins. I drink lots of water. I enjoy an alcoholic bevvie now and then. I try to avoid soda. I try to avoid sodium. I rarely eat fast food. I read food labels. I try not to eat a lot of processed or prepackaged foods, especially foods with trans fats or hydrogenated oil in them. I don't like a lot of sauces or dressing or butter, so they're easy for me to avoid. I try not to eat late at night. I try not to starve myself till I'm famished; I try to stop when I'm full.

I try not to deprive myself; I've found that it's better for me to eat one piece of bread out of the bread basket at the restaurant than a whole loaf later. I'm a lot less worried about eating what I want than eating what I don't want.

How many calories do I consume in a day? I guess around two thousand. Do I ever eat more than that? Sure. Do I ever eat less than that? Sure. Do I eat popcorn at the movies? If I want to. Do I eat a hot dog on a whim on a hot summer day? Every once in a while. Do I order dessert in a fancy restaurant? Let's hope so; I never understand people who order the twenty-dollar fruit plate. Do I eat dessert every night? No. Do I eat too much? From time to time. Do I eat too little? From time to time. Do I push back from the table and say loudly, "Oh, I ate so much, I'm really going to pay for this at the gym tomorrow!" Never. No one wants to hear it, least of all me.

Do I feel crazy about food? Much less than I ever have before..."

Psych out

Have you ever done something a million times and thought nothing of it and then you have to do this regular, every day thing with someone you don't want to and suddenly all these reasons why you shouldn't do that thing you've always done overwhelm your brain?

I'm having one of those moments. 

You know, like you go out to dinner all the time, but then you go with someone you love -- but who turns out to be a former wait staff person and goes all uber-critical on your server to her face to the point where you're sure there's poison or spit or worse in your food?

Have you ever been forced to go bra shopping with your grandmother, who has very different ideas (and lots of them) of the kinds of underwear a "good girl" buys?

Or you go to a Weight Watchers meeting where someone joins because she can't lose that last 5 lbs of her size 4 body without a little help, while you're still staring down the 50 lbs you have to go to weigh 50 lbs more than she does? It's not that she's not perfectly nice, but um, at that point you're overwhelmed in your neuroses and want her to reach her lifetime goal and go away. 

Or maybe, you and the rest of the herd of fat people at WW will turn on her ... MacTroll has to have a bottle of Chianti around here somewhere. Mmm, how many points would that be. I'm pretty sure even though they have a possum meat count in the guide, they didn't take the time to figure out "skinny girl."

Anyone whose been reading knows I have a lot going on this month... and that I'm scheduled down to the hour pretty much until August 18. In dealing with that, all my good habits of this summer have gone completely out the window, and I don't seem to have the time and energy right now to crawl back on the wagon (Screw the damn horse).

Seriously, I'm craving cherry limeade, butter tarts and quick food solutions that I don't make myself. I stopped walking after my vacation and it feels like months since I've gone on one rather than a little over a week. The weather is not cooperating for outdoor time. And I really, really want to blow my budget and go buy my kid a cart full of toys at Toys R Us for retail therapy, since the food therapy doesn't seem to be working out so well. 

But I just need to get through it and get over my neuroses... 

I blog...

when I should be mowing my lawn. :-)

Update: Okay, so after I typed the sentence I went outside and mowed the backyard, which hadn't been done in two weeks. I'm allergic to grass, so this is kind of a pain in the ass for me. I'm all good until it starts seeding and then itchy eyes, runny nose and sneezing. 

I pushed the mower for 30 minutes and finished the backyard, which in this heat is great exercise. My mower isn't self-propelled, so I'm bent at funny angles at turns. I was so lazy I stepped around the dog poop. (I'll get that later tonight when X-man is in his sandbox after dinner.)

But the real news is this morning: At 10 a.m. I went back to Weight Watchers for the first time since 2003. From 2002-2003 I lost 27 lbs on WW. When I quit, I did it by myself and really kicked up the exercising. I went to Curves 4 times a week and walked 45-90 minutes EVERY DAY. My weight went from 251 lbs to 200.5 lbs over 4 years of effort at an average of 12 lbs a year. I went from a size 22 jeans and size 18 shirt to a size 16 (nearly a 14) jeans and size 12 shirt. It was the first time since my freshman year of college where I was the same size as most of my friends.

And as every weight loss person will show you here are my obligatory photos.

Before (July 8, 2000)

After (December 2004)

Now, those of you who've always had an easy time with your body will say. Well, of course, you started eating right and exercising -- duh.

But it's more than that for me. There's this scene in "The West Wing" when Leo McGarry talks about his alcoholism that really hit it home for me. It was, don't laugh too hard, the reason I went to Weight Watchers in the first place. Leo was talking about drinking. About how he doesn't understand people who can have just one drink. How alcohol makes you feel great and why wouldn't you always want to feel like this.

I feel that way about food. I don't understand people who have cookies in their house and can eat only one. I have to purchase "snacks" at the gas station to limit myself to a small sample serving. 

I'm also an emotional eater. I get happy, I eat. I get bored, I eat. I get sad, I take myself for ice cream. I eat out way too much. I eat too much. I eat at bad times (like eating a healthy breakfast and lunch and then consuming a whole whole wheat veggie pizza for dinner). But it's also about fitting in to a certain degree. In the midwest there's not a whole lot to do to socialize with people that doesn't take place around food. I'm 1/4 Italian, so I get that from my family too. It's how you bond, where good connections take place. It's fulfilling and it's fun. And it tastes damn good too. 

Now, here's the deal. Outside of the occasional (and I mean 1 a month) pint of ice cream that walks into my house (okay, well, at least I carry it in myself) I don't usually eat crap. There are no Oreos in my house. No sugared pop. The meat we eat is all high-end, lean as can be. I cook primarily from a WW cookbook, or from Cooking Light or Mayo Clinic. 

I didn't eat fast food more than once every six months when I weighed in at 251. I walked a 60-mile walk in 3 days. I trained and ran a marathon -- yes, at 251 lbs. I worked 12-hour days. And every moment I wasn't at work, I volunteered with animal rescue and tried to squeeze as much quality time with my husband in as possible.

My cholesterol is 150-170 on average. My glucose levels have always been normal. And my blood pressure is usually 103/65. 

So when it was repeatedly communicated to me by strangers on the street, my father and other people I know that they equate my obesity (and others') to laziness. I get pissed. 

Want some examples? 

I'm 21 years old. A size 18/20. I walk up the stairs at the metro in D.C. at Metro Centre on my first day of work at my internship. And some middle-aged guy stops me at the top (he had come up behind me on the stairs) and said, "It's so refreshing to see someone of your size take the stairs." I walked to work the rest of the summer to avoid such issues again.

I go home for a visit 2 years later. And my dad asks me what I want to drink with dinner. I ask him what kind of milk he has. He says 2 percent. I ask for water instead. "You know if you exercised more you could drink the 2 percent, and it wouldn't matter."

I'm in Wal-mart standing in an aisle. I'm 8 month's pregnant and my entire stomach has become one big striped wall of stretchmarks. I'm miserable, suffering from depression and staring at the selection of baby crap in front of me as I mentally prepare to give birth (sans epidural -- cause I'm a moron -- to a 10 lbs 2 oz baby). A woman walks up to me with her cart and a toddler in the seat and says, "Congratulations! When are you due? You're so huge! When I had my first I swear I looked like one of those models in the pregnancy catalogs, but you, you look more like I did after my fifth when I had trouble fitting in my SUV."

Yeah, no lie. Jacked up. 

So, now I'm back at it after finally working through my depression to get back on track. I can't eat like my friends. I have to limit what I eat with my friends. And don't think that things just change for me. Nope, they change for the family, too. If I'm going down this road, they're going with me. But mostly what I hate is that it shows another way in which I feel I'm deficient to everyone else. My husband, he eliminates regular soda from his diet and he loses 10 lbs in a month. My friend's mother-in-law freaks out if she gains two pounds. 

I gain 5-12 lbs with each period in water weight. I gained 75 lbs with my pregnancy. No small accomplishment for someone who threw up three times a day for weeks 3-28.  I lost 44 of it in the first 4 weeks. My nurse practitioner said, "That's a lot of water weight!" 

But perhaps like before it will take me 4 years to get back down to my "smaller me" size (200.5 lbs. still seems mega for most people, but seems good to me). Right now I'm at 241. And I'm about to go into battle with myself — one part of my brain against the other. 

I'm committed. I'm vested. I'm a control freak. I have to take this whole thing seriously as if I have some kind of terminal disease. It's very somber, but I also know it's got to be done. I have a kid at home I have to keep up with. I've got exactly zero attraction points that aren't about my witty sense of humor going for me. 

So here I go counting my points and drinking my fluids and walking my ass off. So if you see me around town be sure to give me a honk or a shout!