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Week 27: Progress Is Measured In Small Steps

Oct10

This past weekend was an event I look forward to attending every year.  It was a total blast, and I’m looking forward to next year’s event already.

The reason that I mention it is because one of my concerns with events like this is mobility.  There have been times when I have been in such pain, because of my knees, that just walking a couple hundred feet was pure agony, if I was able to do it at all.  Six months ago, when I began this journey, I dreaded going in Walmart because just walking to the door from the parking lot was a huge trip.  When every step is painful, any distance seems like it takes an eternity.

Well, Friday night, our group decided to walk over to a restaurant that was just down the street, because no one wanted to drive.  I immediately felt some anxiety over this; it wasn’t more than a couple hundred feet, but it was up and down hills, across parking lots that were more pot hole than concrete, and not only was I not sure about walking, but I was afraid of falling.  I live in fear of falling, because that’s what sent me to arthroscopic surgery several years back: a hard fall to one knee broke loose a small bit of a bone spur, and it lodged within my kneecap. Both of my knees have a number of bone spurs again, and I really don’t want the same thing to happen.

I sucked it up and walked.  And I did it.  Not only that, but I did it with no problem, and I kept up just fine with everyone else.  That left me with a huge feeling of accomplishment.  I also did this without my leg brace, which can, at times, cause more problems than it solves.  I was able to get around pretty easily all weekend.

Not only that, but I had yet another confirmation of why using a scale as your primary marker of success is a bad idea.  Last year, I mentioned in this blog that I’d bought some short that then fit perfectly; I was at 285 pounds at the time.  I’ve been wearing those same shorts for a while, now, including this past weekend, and they’re bordering on being big on me… at 298 pounds. They fit me looser at 298 than 285, and I know without a doubt that the reason for it is because I’ve been exercising for the entire six months of this current effort.  That wasn’t true last year; I finally started exercising, in part, because I wasn’t losing weight and felt like it was finally time.  Without going to check, I think the lowest I got last year was 283… so I am essentially a smaller size now, at a heavier weight, than I was last year.

WIN.

Week 26: Half a year.

Oct3

Half a year.  6 months of working on making myself better through diet and exercise.  26 weeks of improving my lifestyle. That’s pretty awesome.

I try not to think too far down the road, but I will admit that hitting that half-a-year mark gives me thoughts of where I might be in another six months, or even a year down the road.  I’m starting to allow myself to think about participating in events that require a bit more physicality from me, as well as losing more weight.  I do have to reign myself in and remember that this a day-to-day process, and I can’t depend on the next six months producing another 36 pounds off… but I confess it’s still a nice thought to believe it’s possible, and it is.

I’m very glad to have made it this far, and at the moment, I am strong and confident that this effort will continue.  I have good reasons to want to become healthier; incentives to hold in my mind on days when my confidence is flagging. One of the events I’ve been looking forward to is this weekend; it’s an outdoor festival that I attend every year, and it requires a fair amount of walking if you want to fully enjoy the time there.  I can hardly wait!  This is a reward for me.

What will the next six months bring?  It’s up to me.

Fear of Thin

Sep26

I’ve been doing a fair amount of thinking on something that I’d like to share with you.

My most successful weight loss effort resulted in 140 pounds lost — and probably 100 or so of that was in the first year. I dropped weight quickly. What I was doing worked.  Mind you, it helped that I was a bit younger than I am, now, and more capable of a wider range of exercise, which sped the process.  At one point in the second year of loss, though, things slowed down considerably and I had a lot of difficulty achieving further losses, and finally ground to a halt at 140.5 pounds lost.  In my mind, it just couldn’t be good enough.  I was grateful, yes, but I was also angry because I felt like I was doing everything right and not getting results, and even the slightest backslide resulted in an immediate gain.

There are probably 413 different physiological reasons for why that happened, and I’ll likely never know many of them.  So instead, in this effort, I’m working on what I can control, which includes the psychological reasons for blocking my own success.  On some level, I really do think I was terrified of being thin and being noticed for it.

I still feel that fear. An online group I belong to was discussing mental reasons for weight issues, a while back, and while I’m usually pretty emotionally removed, I actually started crying when I typed out the words that  I think I might be afraid of being thin.  Whoa!  It just hit me in the gut.  And I’ve been doing a fair amount of thinking about that, and I believe I have a lot of head work to do in this regard, because I think that might be at the heart of why I’ve held myself back in the past.

I haven’t always been heavy, although like a lot of girls and women, I’ve always thought I was heavy.  As a young adult, I might have been twenty pounds overweight, at most.  I didn’t become obese until after marriage.  Unlike many who have been obese their entire lives, I’ve experienced life as a thin person.  I’ve walked for miles on end for the sheer joy of it.  I’ve hiked, sailed, spelunked, biked, played tennis.  I remember a time when I didn’t ever worry about finding clothes that would fit, wondering if I’d get squeezed into a restaurant booth, being embarrassed by not being able to ride a carnival ride because of weight. Those issues meant nothing to me.

Now, they certainly do.  Being morbidly obese brings with it the awareness that size can be an issue every single day of my life.  I’ve been over the weight limit for using a tanning bed. I’m unable to sit on bar stools, in part because of my knee, but mostly because of my weight, and have had to ask friends to sit somewhere else because of it.  I was looking at cars recently, and got in one for a test drive, only to be thoroughly embarrassed when I couldn’t adjust the seat enough for me to be able to safely drive the car.  I’ve felt claustrophobic in social situations where I’ve been seated in crowded bars, and been in a position where I couldn’t have gotten out of the restaurant without asking people to stand up from their seats and move for me. These are actually the smaller issues at hand, but still some that people of normal size rarely if ever encounter.

There’s also that sense of being singled out because of size.  I just might be one of those women some have pointed to, over time, and thought to themselves “at least I’m not that fat!”  Photos with friends embarrass me, because in my mind’s eye, I’m happy and equal to my friends, only to see the truth of a photo that shows me to be huge in comparison.  These issues are just the tip of the mental iceberg the morbidly obese must deal with.

The 140 pounds lost came off fairly quickly; quickly enough that people could see a difference in my size from one week to the next.  I crossed a line into normalcy, and at that point, people started talking about how concerned they had been about me as an obese woman.  Some were only concerned with health; some bordered on rude in their comments on how much better I looked as a normal size woman.  Regardless of size, I’m still a human with emotions. Simply put, that shit hurt.

Along with the weight loss came some pretty phenomenal physical accomplishments.  People started to hold me up as an example, a success story, not only for weight loss but for physical strength.  There were expectations of me.  I found myself as defined by my weight loss as I had been by my weight, and I started to rebel against that.  I got pretty tired of people constantly asking how much weight I’d lost, expecting a larger number every time.  In the small town in which I live, strangers actually used to stop me and talk to me about my weight loss.

I think it triggered a fear that I’d never be normal, and that unless I moved somewhere where no one knew me, I’d always be defined by something that I was trying hard to escape. In addition to this, those who didn’t know that I’d formerly been such a fatty treated me much differently than they would have treated me, a hundred or more pounds heavier. Most of that was good, but frankly, some of that was scary, too.

Although I was thin as a child and young adult, that was decades ago, and my brain has to relearn what it’s like to be thin.  I think my body was far ahead of my brain.  I didn’t know how to deal with the different input, existing in a different world with different rules.  I’d catch myself realizing that I’d avoided a gap between chairs at a restaurant because my brain gave me basic input that said I wouldn’t fit, when I’d fit easily — that happened a lot, but it’s not even really that.

While I was far from thin as a 200 pound woman, I was within the range of what people considered to be normal, size-wise.  People don’t really realize that they’re treating someone differently; even my friends changed in how they addressed me or dealt with me. Some wanted to pull me in and get me to do all the things I hadn’t done with them, before; others subtly reminded me that I still wasn’t thin.  And, frankly, there were some who decided I wasn’t friend material anymore.

I’m trying to lay this out for those who may read it at some point, and as a reminder to myself: I was in the unique situation of having lost so much weight that I’d say hello to someone I knew as a large woman, and they wouldn’t recognize me.  This happened many times.  On the surface, it felt good.  But I think now, on some level, it added to this insecure feeling inside of me that said I was just faking it.  That I didn’t deserve the good changes I was experiencing.  That I didn’t deserve the differences in treatment, the ability to shop for clothes without worry, or even to simply sit down at a restaurant and order a meal without being judged for it.

Somewhere inside me, I felt like a fake.  Like an imposter, hiding out in a body that wasn’t mine and I didn’t deserve.  I felt like people were surely laughing at me for believing I could buy clothes that weren’t plus sizes.  For whatever reason, my brain couldn’t accept that I really was doing all those things, and I hadn’t somehow cheated to get there.  If someone complimented me, I didn’t want to accept the compliment without some sort of explanation for not being thinner.  If someone flirted with me, no matter how harmless, I wanted to run and hide.  Inside, I was still very much a morbidly obese woman. I could not convince myself that I had already achieved what I firmly believed to be unachievable.

It’s quite the eye-opener to realize this about myself, and to have to accept that if I want to get back to being thin, I have to find ways to incorporate those thought processes as my own.  I have to accept that many things will change for me as I continue to lose weight.  I have to believe that I deserve it.  That’s probably the biggest hurdle of all.

Week 25: Tortoises

Sep26

Here I am on Week 25, a bit surprised and thankful to not only have stuck with this plan for nearly half a year, but to also be just one pound shy of the loss I accumulated during my last large weight loss effort.

I’m pretty happy with where I am at this moment.  I’m feeling well, I’m confident, and I’m not a blathering headcase like I have been in the past.  I’m not obsessing over every little thing.  The methods I’m using are sustainable in the long term.  I’m waiting for my blood work results from last Friday’s doctor’s appointment, and I’m anxious to see if or how my doctor changes my thyroid meds; his goal is to help me feel better, and I’m in for some of that!

My most successful weight loss effort resulted in 140 pounds lost — and probably 100 or so of that was in the first year.  At this rate, I might be 50 pounds down at the end of one year.  While I’d love to wake up tomorrow and be in size 8 jeans, I’m really totally okay with this rate of loss.  Like that fabled tortoise eating that hare’s dust, it may take me a long time, but I will cross the finish line.

Week 24: Goal Pants and More

Sep23

Please notice: my weight loss has been updated! I’ve now lost 27 pounds.  I’m happy about that.

However… I’m not quite in the goal pants, yet.  I was weighed at the doctor’s office, and it came in at 307.  Hooray!  And mind you, when I weigh at the gym, it’s first thing in the morning, with a bathing suit and cover-up on, before breakfast.  While I had to fast for the doctor’s office, I did drink a little more than a quart of water before I went in, and I was fully dressed, including my leg brace.  So, there’s probably a few pounds of variance, but regardless, it’s a loss and I’m counting it as a 10 pound loss since the last time I weighed.

My doctor is diving deeper into seeing if he can bring my thyroid numbers more into alignment, so I’ll feel better and perhaps not struggle as much with weight loss.  I’m happy about this.  It may not be the absolute solution, but if we can get closer to where my body is operating in a normal state, I’ll be thrilled.

My pants are definitely looser than last week.  I swear I spent about three cumulative hours peeing this week, so that probably had a bit to do with it!  If I have another couple of good weeks, I’ll be picking out my next goal pants. 😀

Week 24: No More Bench Sitting

Sep19

No more bench sitting for me.  I need to be back in the game, and I feel like I’ve been sitting out and not participating like I should be.  I think this is the reason why I haven’t been seeing the progress I was hoping to see.

Today, I’m back at it.  I’ve already been down to the gym, and my food intake so far has been on target.  My goal this week is to get back to clean eating, as well as a regular exercise schedule of five times a week.

I have a fear of falling off the wagon; of just sliding back into not exercising, since I hadn’t been to the gym in over a week, and of going back to sloppy eating, because frankly, there are areas I could clean up.  I want that part of me that tells me that I might as well jump off the wagon and stay off of it, to STFU.

That part of my brain has been nagging at me, lately, and telling me that I’m fat and undesirable, and I’ll never be good enough.  That I’m still the fattest person in any given room, that I’m still judged for it, that I’m not making progress — so the solution is to just give up, because it’s easier to just let myself go back into a depressive state and tell myself it just doesn’t matter.

I know with every fiber of my being that the solution to still being fat is NOT to allow the behavior that promotes it, but there’s that dumbass part of my brain that insists that the effort isn’t worth it and I should just eat whatever I want, and sleep in.  I’m reminding myself that this is a battle I’m engaged in, and that changing my lifestyle will take the investment of my time and energy for months and years to come.  Those thoughts that sabotage me, that make me feel like I’m not good enough, need to be dispatched.  Yes, I’m recognizing that those thoughts exist; but I think I need to, in order to work against them.

I’m almost half a year into this effort.  I’ve put in a lot of good work.  I’m sticking with it.  Yes, I’m still the fattest person in the room in many situations.  Yes, there are those who judge me for it, or think to themselves “at least I’m not as fat as her!”  The mental boost I derive from knowing I’m doing something positive for my health, regardless of how it may appear to those around me who don’t know, is so much better than the mental state of recognizing that my size is an issue and knowing I’m doing nothing. And as long as I keep at that good work, there will come a time when those situations are no longer a description of me.  I know that’s possible; I’ve done it, before.

It’s time to get off the bench and start the next inning with my head in the game.

Week 23: Life Throws Curveballs

Sep15

These last couple weeks have been a bit trying, but this past week was probably the worst.  My husband’s father passed away after struggling with Parkinson’s Disease for many years.  As can often be the case, his death was both a relief and the surprising emotions that come with finality after watching him decline for so many years.

In part, I’m bringing this up because it delayed this week’s post.  And in part, I’m mentioning it because things happen that are unplanned, regardless of how strong you feel you might be in your weight loss journey.

I found myself in a real mental war.  Normally, in my carb and calorie cycling, my low days are on weekdays, and higher days on weekends.  But that’s really only when my food choices are totally in my control.  They really weren’t for several days this past week; while I normally don’t have any problems with turning away from potluck foods, it would have been awkward and rude to do so when people were supplying food as a condolence offering to the family.  There are times when you just have to shut up and deal with it, and not make a fuss over it.

Yet at the same time, I was mentally flogging myself for not eating well, for not exercising, for not staying true to the course I’ve set for myself, feeling as if I was backsliding somehow.  With all due respect… WTF? Why on earth do I do this to myself?  Really, truly, the worst thing I had in days was a smallish piece of cake.  My carbs were above my goal range for several days, but my calories were within acceptable range. And here I was, berating myself for not choosing better foods, even though they weren’t available.

Honestly, if I’m investing in a lifetime plan, there will be times when I chose to alter my eating and exercise plans.  While this one was unplanned, it’s not the end of the world, and there’s no harm done.  The world didn’t end.  I didn’t gain 20 pounds from having a couple amaretto sours the night before a funeral.  (There, I probably could have made better choices.)  I have to learn to cut myself the occasional break, or I’ll get back into that punishment mindset that makes me sabotage myself.

So, if you’re standing at the plate and the pitcher throws you a curveball, you can watch it go by and strike out looking, or you can do the best you can.  Any ball player will tell you that striking out swinging is better than to be caught looking; and for you non-baseball people, this is a metaphor for saying that you can either let crap bog you down, or you can try to make the best of it.  😉

Even though I just posted this today, I’ll keep up with my goal pants tomorrow, and hope for the best.

Week 20: Goal Pants, and a Brief Look Back

Aug26

My goal pants are consistently getting just a tad closer to fitting each time I put them on.  I really like the feeling that gives me.

Last year, about this time, I bought a lightweight jacket; it was just the tiniest bit snug when it arrived, and I lost a few more pounds after I got it, so by the time I fell off the wagon last year, it fit okay.  Not perfect, but okay.  Then I fell off the wagon and put weight back on, and couldn’t wear it when I needed it.  Yesterday, I tried it on again, and it’s very close to wearable; it’s a little tight in the upper arms, which is where I had the problem last year.  I think, though, that as long as I stay on course, it’s going to fit just fine when the weather cools off.  Here, that’s still a couple of months off.

Also, last year, I was buying things with the intention of fitting into them later, and then I let doubt creep in.  Now, I’m totally okay with things being a little snug, because I know with confidence that it’s just a matter of time before that article of clothing fits.  It may not be tomorrow or next week, but it will fit.

So far, I’ve gone a full month further than last year; but mentally, I think I’m far beyond that point.  I re-read some of my posts in the last few weeks of last year’s effort, and I noticed several things; key among them was allowing myself to be sabotaged, and that I was scale-obsessed.  I was giving reports of gains/losses and why I thought they happened, and that’s where my focus was.  I allowed myself to become frustrated, and I can see, looking back, the signs of impending failure. I blogged through Week 16, but I think I mentally jumped off around Week 12.

I also seemed to be hung up on whether or not other people would notice my loss, and whether I could just stop before they noticed.  Boy, was I ever playing head games with myself!  Granted, it’s nice when people notice, but I’m in the mindset right now that I just don’t care if or when they notice.  I’m not doing this for them, and I don’t need their validation.

It also serves as a reminder to me to be mentally diligent; every time I’ve lost weight, I’ve believed that I’ve done better than the previous time, and yet, if I’d found the answers, I wouldn’t be where I am right now — losing the same pounds I’ve put on numerous times before.  I think I’ve learned something each time, but the one thing I have to really get through my brain is that my brain controls everything: whether I’ll eat something off-plan, whether I’ll get out of bed to exercise, whether I’ll talk myself into a state of mind that makes backsliding easy.

I’m glad I made the decision to keep those old posts in this blog.  They’ve served their purpose.

Week 20: Feeling Good

Aug22

I’ve made it through the mental hurdle of beating the number of weeks I was on plan last year, before I bailed out.  I’ve made it through some mental head games I was playing with myself over recent weeks.  And now, here I am at Week 20.

I’m a slow loser.  I’ve been at this for over four months; I haven’t lost a tremendous amount of weight, and no one has noticed.  I’m not complaining.  I’d love to lose 100 pounds overnight, but that’s not realistic.  And right now, I’m all about being realistic.  Even if you calculate no more than the 17 pounds I have currently listed, that’s still roughly 4 pounds a month, and if I were to continue at that rate, I’d be nearly 50 pounds down in a year.  And I’d be thrilled with that.

In the long run, it’s just plain stupid to give up because of slow loss.  Even if it’s slow, it’s still loss.  Even if it’s slow, I feel a ton better physically than I did when I started.  Even if it’s slow, I’m fitting in smaller clothing, and moving easier.  And maybe the most important part: even if it’s slow, I’m glad to be doing something that’s benefiting my health, instead of feeling bad about myself and beating myself up for being too weak to stick with it.  Been there… for the better part of my adult life.

It’s quite freeing to be able to let go of the burden of failure.  I’m not failing, no matter how slowly things change, and in all honesty, it’s really not that slow.  I think sometimes we get so hung up on what we think should be happening, that we mentally choke and start sabotaging ourselves.  That sense of failure, that sense of making excuses because of this circumstance or that, raises its ugly head.  We become our worst enemy because we allow ourselves to judge our success by indicators that aren’t even the most important ones.

I’m glad, right now, because I’m currently in a place where I am accessing all of the indicators and not just one or two, and I am most definitely one that lets the number on the scale rule out everything else.  In part, I blame a society that stresses weight more than anything else, when the facts are that unless someone tells you their weight, you’d never know for sure.  If we can look at someone else, and see that they’re fit, healthy, strong, look good, fit in their clothes, and think we’d love to be in their exact spot, would knowing what they weigh change anything?  So why does it when we’re accessing our own levels of success?  It’s just one indicator among many, and shouldn’t be the derailer that it often is.

I’m happy with keeping that number away from myself, right now.  It’s working.

Size Matters

Aug16

This morning, I ordered new bathing suits in a size smaller than the ones I’m wearing.  These are bathing suits I wear for pool workouts, and the chlorine destroys them pretty quickly.  There’s a little wear left in the ones I have, so even if the new ones don’t fit immediately, I can get by until they do.

I’m wearing size 24 in a lot of things, now; my starting size was 26.  I’ve gone from 3X to 2X in tops.  I’ve been thinking forward; while I am a slow loser, I don’t think it would be totally out of the question to be a size 18 or 20 by this time next year.

While I believe clothing size is just a number, there’s also a big mental aspect to making that Plus Size jump.  Several years ago, before I first did Atkins, I wore size 32 jeans that I had to get at Catherine’s, and at the time, I think it was either the biggest jean size on the rack, or close to it.  It may only have been that was close to the top size for zip-up jeans; I refuse to wear jeans that don’t have a zipper, and some women’s jeans are just pull-ons.

It was a hayooooooge deal to me when I lost enough weight to be able to shop at Walmart for my clothes.  The top Plus size generally available at Walmart is/was 26.  When I could fit in size 26 jeans, I was thrilled to death.  I could buy jeans for $20 instead of $50.  Not to mention, most of the clothes in extreme plus sizes are ugly beyond measure.

When I worked my way through the plus sizes and landed at the top of regular sizes, I was in absolute disbelief.  This meant I could go into just about any store and find clothes that would fit me.  I could wear cute clothes.  Sure, I still had a lot of weight to lose, but being out of plus sizes was a goal I thought I’d never achieve.

So, having slid back into plus sizes, and worse, topping out the plus sizes at places like Walmart, was quite the wake-up call; especially when my size 26 jeans got tight.  Tight enough that I shouldn’t have been wearing them, but I absolutely refused to go back to places like Catherine’s for jeans.

Managing to get below the top plus sizes is encouraging to me.  While I am a slow loser, I think that being in a size 18 or 20 by this time next year is totally reasonable.  Regardless of what the scale says — and mind you, I don’t really know what it says right now, anyway — I’m delighted to be working my way back down through the numbers.

A final note: if you happen to be a plus-size clothing designer and you’re reading this, or even better, a buyer for a major department store, please see to it that cap sleeves on plus-size tops die.  Thanks.