Bright Ideas

No, Thank YOU!

Something I was not prepared for when starting this journey is the realization that, in a lot of ways, the diet and exercise is the easy part. Changing your fitness schedule and your eating habits is a lot more straightforward than changing your attitude toward yourself and your self-image.

The mental is by far the bigger battle. Despite coming up on 80 (EIGHTY!!!) pounds lost and having gained a much more healthy appreciation of and respect for my body, I am still finding it hard to really believe the people who tell me how great I look or the friends who threaten to cut all my hair off in my sleep so that they can compete with the “skinny bitch” I have become.

It’s never been easy for me to see myself the way others do and I always expect them to think the worst. I’ve gotten into the habit of pointing out the worst in myself before others can, rejecting myself before others can and assuming that others will not like me, want to socialize with me or find me attractive.

I find compliments suspect and I dismiss them as mere niceties devoid of any sincerity or factual basis. And, even though I DO believe I’m pretty awesome, I just cannot accept that anyone else TRULY thinks so, too because I am stuck in the habit of thinking of myself as a fat girl. And (I am convinced) nobody likes a fat girl.

I need to knock that shit off!

I am not sure HOW I am going to do that, but maybe just recognizing that I do and trying to interrupt the negating thoughts that inevitably spring up when I receive a compliment will help.

I am also going to try to be more open and trusting of others - which is a huge chasm of scary for me! - but, I think that it’s necessary in order to move forward. I think I need to be a part of a community or I am always going to be apart from it.

From My Notes

Wherefore art thou, cheese?

I love cheese.
Cheese is the one thing I don’t want to give up.
Is that precisely why I should?
Will that be somehow symbolic of all those things I thought would never change, but it was really just me that needed to.

This program has a rad auto correct.

**(that last was unrelated)

Where was I?

Scrolling up…
I need to change my thinking.
Maybe I need to give up cheese to prove I can.
What do I want more cheese or… What DO I want?
What do I want?

Breaking the Mirror Curse

When I was about 8 years old, I broke 3 mirrors in three different stores in a very short amount of time.  In my memory they fell over without my touching them.  Of course, I have never been what you would call graceful.  I have always been unintentionally destructive and I dearly loved nothing more than to watch myself in the mirror (usually performing some song, dance or character).  

At least I did until I gained enough weight to hibernate comfortably for a few winters (lucky bears!)  Once the weight went on, everyone stopped looking at me.  Including me.  

I know it seems counterintuitive, but the bigger you are, the less people notice you. You’re like a piece of furniture, the eyes glance past you, never taking you in or registering you as being worth note or even as a person.   And this is preferable to the alternative.  Preferable to being noticed.  Noticing meant pity, judgement, disgust, shame and eventually an entire bag of kits kits (have I mentioned how much I miss kit kats?) 

But, today, while walking down the street, I glanced at myself in the plate glass windows of the businesses I passed by and I liked what I saw. And I started thinking about how much I have APPROVED of myself lately.  Not only approved, but reveled in myself even.  Let’s be honest, although I understand it’s a work in progress, I am completely enthralled with my body.

I am constantly amazed by the way it is changing and shrinking and relieved that it is doing so in a uniform manner- a little is constantly toning and coming off of everywhere.  I can see changes in me every day.  I can’t stop touching the muscles that didn’t exist before, turning in front of the mirror to view myself from all angles, prancing about in my underwear and trying on clothes which are getting smaller than I ever imagined I could get into and when I see myself now in a group of people, I’m not much larger.  I fit in.  

Oh, my God.  I fit in.  I fit.  

15 minutes and a good cry later…

So, anyway…what I realized today is that I broke my curse.  The 20+ years of bad luck that my childhood self wrought upon me in a fit of destructive enthusiasm and showmanship is over and I can’t wait to watch the mirror to see what I will do for the next 20. 

What Goes Up…

The past few weeks have been great!  I went on vacation to the Florida Keys with my Mom and Aunt and spent a week reading, lounging by our own pool or looking out at the Atlantic 100 feet from our deck.  

Then I came back to work calm and refreshed, had an awesome yearly review, averaged about 1200 calories a day and went to yoga 4 days in a row.

At my weigh in this past Saturday, I gained 3 1/2 pounds.

This week has not been so great.  I can’t stop obsessing over those 3 (and a half!) pounds.  I can’t stop looking at myself and thinking I’m gaining it all back.  

I’m back to hating the way I look and being embarrassed to be seen in my yoga clothes. My critical eye is tearing myself apart and all I can think is that no matter what I do, how little I eat, how much I exercise, my weight is just going to continue to go back up, that I am a failure, that I will never reach my goal, that all people will ever see when they look at me is a fat girl, that all I’ll ever see when I look in the mirror is a fat girl.

And the worst part is I KNOW it’s destructive and I KNOW weight fluctuates and I KNOW that in all likelihood, that weight and more will have magically disappeared this week.  Weight is just a number.  It does not reflect how healthy you are or how well your program is going overall.  I KNOW this.  But, still…THREE AND A HALF POUNDS?!?! 

Frienemies

Here’s a secret:  When I talk about how much weight I’ve lost, I am just guessing.  I didn’t even own a scale until about two months ago.  

This is because fat people both fear and hate scales.  They are a concrete reminder of what a failure we are (and society gives us enough clues as to how unappealing and second class we fatties are without bringing that mocking judgement into our homes).

But I do regret not actually knowing where I started.

Now that I own a scale, I have a love/hate relationship with it which breaks down exactly as you think it would.  When I’ve lost weight I love it and when I’ve gained, I feel awful.  

When I started taking my diet and weight loss plan seriously, I read a lot of articles about what worked for others and how to be healthy and most of them said to weigh yourself every day.  

Well, I am here to say,

DO NOT WEIGH YOURSELF EVERYDAY!!!!! 

Your weight fluctuates daily with any number of variables (stress, sleep, water retention, loss or gain of muscle, hormones, alcohol consumption, etc.) and daily weigh ins can actually be more discouraging than helpful.  

Here’s a great example. About a month ago, I helped a friend move.  I had weighed myself the morning of the move and had gained a half a pound since the previous week.  This made sense since I had spent the previous week eating crap and drinking with my friend to drown her sorrows.  We spent 12 hours moving her that day carrying load after load up the stairs to her new place.  

I weighed myself the next day and had gained SIX POUNDS in 24 hours (likely due to water retention since all we drank was beer).  But, damn, six pounds in one day?!? It’s enough to make you give up! 

And this is exactly why I didn’t run out and get myself a scale first thing and why I only get on the scale once a week.  Even weighing myself weekly, I often find the results vary unpredictably. Lately I’ve found that one week I’ll have gained two pounds and the next, I’ve lost 4.  

So, at the beginning, I decided that, for me, it was more important to watch my body for changes and to mark my progress by the fit of my clothes.  These are far more concrete to my mind than the digital readout of that devil box we call a scale.  This also had the added benefit of forcing me to really look at myself which in turn helped me to become more comfortable with my body.  And this peace with myself is my ultimate endgame regardless of what weight I end at.   

Book Report :: American Psycho

I’m a fan of Bret Easton Ellis.  I like the subversiveness, the excess, the seedy underbelly of the upper class.  I dig it.  But, when I started reading American Psycho, I was…bored.  Seriously, bored out of my mind with the incessant descriptions of what everyone was wearing and the chapters wholly devoted to the analysis of various rock albums of the 80’s.  

I couldn’t WAIT for him to start killing people.

And then he started killing people and torturing hookers & bums & dogs and it was HORRIBLE and depraved (I was surprised that an author could - not would, *could*-  go there) and truly sick.  And I wondered if I would be able to finish it (I REALLY hated the dog stuff).  

And I kept reading and, even though the killings got more and more violent and sadistic, the focus on the mundane, the minutiae of etiquette and status and dress still remained and I began to get it.

I began to enjoy the dichotomy between the two worlds of Patrick Bateman and the unraveling of both and the fact that each part of him was necessary to maintain the whole.  And the book.  And that’s a pretty impressive feat for a writer.  

So, while I can’t say I loved the book, I admire the storytelling and it will stay with me.

Oh, Also! It just so happens that I had read another Ellis novel, Rules of Attraction, earlier in the year and in reading American Psycho, I realized that Patrick Bateman is the brother of Sean Bateman from Rules of Attraction.  I enjoyed that, too. 

Under Construction

In a lot of ways, losing weight is exactly how I imagined it would be.  The euphoria of buying progressively smaller clothes, of having your old clothes, that you were once so uncomfortable in (because you were uncomfortable in you) be too big to wear anymore, of having all those boys who wouldn’t give you the time of day before be interested in what you have to say (like they’ve never met you before - assjacks) but in some ways (damn, let’s end this sentence, Henry James) it is wholly unexpected. Period - see, I can finish a sentence.

Where was I? Ah, yes!  The unexpected.  

I know what it’s like at the beginning (I don’t have the emotional distance to say anything pithy about that yet) and I know what it’s like to succeed (and that feels like Tiger Blood!)  What I didn’t expect is how I’d feel in the middle. 

One hundred pounds is a lot to lose; it’s an Oompa Loompa, it’s a supermodel, it’s a lifetime supply of Rice-a-Roni.  It takes a long time to lose it in a way that will keep it off and train me to maintain it (because let’s face it folks, my biggest obstacle has always been me.*) 

So, here I am, nearly 60 pounds in and I’m sometimes amazed by the difference and I feel AWESOME about myself and sometimes all I can see is the work left to do.  I definitely won’t be wearing a bikini…ummm…ever, but more often than not, I look the way I want to look (clothed, anyway, but this isn’t *that* kind of story).   

This is a story about the war.  

No, it’s not that, either.

It’s a story about change, I guess and how change is both exhilarating and scary and how you can never tell from day to day which is going to win. 

I worry sometimes.  About gaining it back, about whether I am obsessed or becoming so, about being able to stop, about getting weird diseases (but I think that last is likely unrelated).

I worry that I can’t lose it all.  That I’ll never get to my goal.  I sometimes think that I’d be pretty happy staying here.  I can comfortably tie my shoes, ride roller coasters and airplanes, buy clothes in the Women’s section, cross my legs, climb stairs…

But my body isn’t done yet.  Why come this far and not finish it?  So, I guess I’ll get there the best I can and try to figure out what’s next once I do. 

*don’t go getting all superior, now, you’re your own worst enemy, too - nobody else gives that much of a damn about us, but I digress

Happy Hour at Orlando Power Yoga

This past Friday, I took my first yoga class…in a hot room…a completely full hot room filled with people who clearly had been there before…mainly fit people who had been there before…and were dressed appropriately.  To say I was intimidated is a understatement.

If it weren’t for the fact, I came with my friend Rhia, I would have run away immediately.  But I stayed and I tried and almost cried and I sweated more than I can ever recall sweating in my entire life and I made it until the end.

Let me tell you, people, Orlando Power Yoga is no joke. 

It’s 3 days later and I am finally able to sit down without pain.  I’m not sure what I did to the back of my thighs, but damn.  I also managed to make my forearms ache.  I wasn’t even aware that you could do that (keep your dirty jokes to yourself, please).

Although I was clearly out of my element, everyone there was really helpful and encouraging and the instructor told me that most first-timers don’t stay in the room the whole class which made me feel a lot less ridiculous.  I also have to say, she knew most everyone by name which I like in general.  You *should* know the people that keep you in business!

But for me, the real test is will I go back?

I want to.  It still scares the crap out of me and there’s a lot I can’t do, but I can see how great it is for your body and it was pretty interesting (when I was not gasping for air or hoping alternately to die and not to pass out) to see the varying skill levels of other people in class (Rhia, by the way, was amazing - whore!) and maybe, just maybe, what I *might* be able to accomplish in the future. 

Before I go again, I will need to acquire less clothing that fits better (small, tight clothes are so not comfortable for fat girls ::sigh::), a mat towel (you can’t stand if your feet slip out from under you) and maybe a Xanex…or two.

Pain in the A$$

Warning:  TMI in progress!

All of a sudden, my butt has started to fall asleep while I’m sitting.  Is this because I have less padding nowadays?