on visits, visions, and voodoo

Well, mostly that's a melodious title, but I did go visit my mom in my hometown last week, and there was SO MUCH EATING. If I saw it (hence the vision), I ate it. I'm quite fond of Mexican food and my hometown is full of Mexican food, and we ate some fanTAStic food, lemme tell ya. Also fantastic barbecue. Oh, and fantastic Frosted Flakes - um, maybe not in the same category, but it was yummy and I was obsessed. And it was out on the counter all the time. Or on the top of the fridge. So I ran into my old friend, see it/eat it, and my new friend, control/remember, apparently had been left on the airplane...

So. So why is it that impulsivity is so hard to control when I'm out of my house? Also, why did I eat so much in my old house? (That one's not hard to diagnose - old house, old rules...chomp chomp chomp) Here's part of the answer, and it is ironic - when I was younger, even after marriage, my mom never complimented me on my looks. Now, it turns out she was only following the old pattern set for her by her own mom and family...sometimes being able to explain and feel compassion for the source of one's issues does help...but that is just the truth, no positive feedback. Now, LOTS of positive feedback! I came downstairs wearing one of her shirts (very pretty, I must say) and jeans, and she said with great enthusiasm, that looks gooooood! Here I am, literally the fattest I've ever been, and NOW she decides to compliment me??? ; )

Of course, I appreciate it both emotionally and intellectually. She does, I think, finally see ME and not what she WANTS me to be, which is great. And I can look okay in the shape I'm in, sometimes at least, so that's good too. But the thing is this - not only does my inner child so crave those compliments that she's afraid to move away from the body that gets them (though my mom would also love a skinnier me), my crocodile brain responds to the old positive reinforcement and wants to maintain the behavior that elicits it. See?

But in fact, it is NOT good healthwise to be in this body. My cholesterol is fine, which is just genetic luck. But my blood pressure is still too high for one so young, and my feet still hurt too much for being just walking-around feet, and my energy levels could be higher...etc etc etc. It's also not good lookswise and esteem wise to be in this body. My friends are AWESOME and have never said a mumblin word about my looks. But I'm not dumb, and I am high in "interpersonal intelligence," and I know from the few questions or discussion points, etc. that they wish for me a healthier, better looking body.

My spouse is even more awesome - he has never said anything and he is willing to embrace, literally, my stomach and back and butt and all the fat parts. He has never made me feel badly...but I will LOVE the day (and notice the optimism there!) that I can use my body in new ways during lovemaking that right now are just too embarrassing (fat rolls NOT GOOD), that I can put on beautiful lingerie that right now feels silly (silk purse sow's ear), that I can wear beautiful clothes out and about and feel his eyes on me not just because I'm ME but because I'm SEXY. And I would write this even if I didn't know he'd found this blog...hi honey...it will be a gift for him for being the absolute best spouse ever in the history of the world.

So. So the scale, to get to the voodoo part, says 245 even after a few days of serious indulgence. I'm choosing to believe it. I'm exercising, but I want to bump up the frequency and intensity. I'm going to enroll our family in a karate class. I'm going to check out a local martial arts gym that has more than just karate for myself. I'm going to get on this wagon now and use the pool in the summer to continue working out while my kid plays - laps are good and I enjoy swimming, so that will help.

This road is hard, and I don't have a good reason why it's so hard for me, but it is. But I'm walkin it. I'm walkin it.

To misquote James Brown:

I don't feel good, and I DIDN'T know that I would(n't)! Okay, it's mangled, but the point is this - I have had a junkfood weekend, and I am surprised to find out that eating junk makes me feel like junk. Now, why wouldn't I know that at the ripe ol' age of 41? Well, I can't remember a time of being mindful enough of my body to feel and observe these effects, nor do I remember a time of eating so healthfully followed by such bad choices based on impulse.

So it's another Monday, another chance to turn back to the right eating path, and now I know WHY I'm doing it aside from the intellectual reasons. I just feel yucky when I eat yucky, and I actually don't enjoy it! This is new - the taste experience is really not worth the cost of feeling crappy on the other side. I need to remember that feeling - I know I will forget, because I'm a food addict, but I want to remember this discovery.

See how it is. I have been lax these last five days, not blogging and not focused on the goal, and have gained back some hard-lost pounds. sigh. In the same way that I get obsessed about food I must also be obsessed about NONfood, about stopping and not going.

But what is it, this impulse to eat? Some of it is indeed visual, which in turn reminds me of the taste and drives me to taste it again. Last night I made pasta with sautee'd shiitakes and onions, all in basil pesto. It was so yummy that when I saw the uneaten portion in the pan I just scarfed it all down. Meaning of course I had about 3 servings' worth of it, meaning extra carbs and olive oil (at least olive and not peanut, but I digress) way too late at night to be good.

Shit. Shiitake.

But some of it, maybe, is this continued irrational fear of failure. Maybe part of this blog is shock therapy - I'm out here now, failing in front of at least 2 of you, if I do fail. Of course those two are nearest and dearest, but perhaps others will stumble in here too...I don't want to fail. I don't want to be fat anymore. I do want to lose weight, feel better, look better, be healthier, be able to run and play with my kid. But if I stay put, the status quo is familiar and paradoxically comfortable, even as it is uncomfortable in its size.

I'm listening on CD to "The Mermaid Chair," and this character is breaking OUT of comfortable and familiar in ways I would not choose. But maybe the difference is in our personalities - I opt into remaining comfortable by default, she breaks out in dramatic fashion. Two sides of the same coin, maybe.

Well, things are up and down - 245.8 today, not bad at all, but then followed by partying tonight at a bar. My cousin's "rest of your life diet" (check this site: http://www.extremelysmart.com/andmodest/loseweight.php) suggests that my eating habits be guided by one shining principle, which is whether I want to eat/drink/do this behavior for the rest of my life. In this case, the behavior is once a week have donuts from Dunkin, and once a week go out to a bar with friends and have a couple of beers. Yep, those ARE two things I want to do until I'm 100.

So, okay, how to compensate? Well, Mary points out that this isn't rocket science - more food = more weight, unless compensated for with exercise. So if I want to do this for the rest of my life, I must plan for the rest of my life to exercise to counteract. Well, okay, now I can say I'm ready to make that trade. I was not even 2 weeks ago, but I am now.

Except. Except that yesterday and today I was feeling punk, under the weather, etc, and DIDN'T exercise.

This balancing act is tricky. I guess I'd be willing to compensate by eating less tomorrow and the next day, or at least more veg and fewer carbs, and then really exercise when I'm able. Okay, that sounds reasonable.

The overarching question - do skinny people have to go through this kind of algebraic rigamarole, or do they just do such things instinctively?

Anyway, the party was fun, much money was raised for the Avon cancer walk team, and my spouse's band played well and were well-received. I'll just go with that for now. : )

245.8. Woo!

good eating goes bad and it HURTS

Hmm. I think I'm experiencing the effects of a bad day of eating after many good days. Much bloating and cramps, lethargy, and malaise. So tomorrow I'll jump back on good health and see if this improves any...GasX has helped so far, but what's interesting is that the pain really has kept me from going any farther. My bad behavior included too much milk through honey nut cheerios, a bag of popcorn (at least it was light), mexican eggs benedict (yummy, though), and a few other things. Nope, the ol' abdomen was not happy!

So. We will see if a return to oatmeal and veggies helps this phenomenon cease.

fat day and its effects

Okay, so I'm having a fat day. You know fat days, some of you - tired for no good reason, all food looks good, clothes seem tight in some new places...sometimes fat days are brought on by premenstrual or just plain menstrual body effects, but not mine today. I'm just feeling bleh. My stomach is full of protein from supper so I'm not in fact hungry, but I do have that "all foods look good" issue so I'm squirreled away up here on the blog.

Besides, the consequences of giving in are, at this point, actually noxious enough to keep me here and not there. I really don't want to eat the cupcakes until they're gone - I really will not feel better and it won't help. I'm reading my dear friend's latest novel for her, a draft to be sent off, and the main character is an emotional eater to a T - turns out that I'm not so much emotional as bored or just visually stimulated to eat. If it's on the counter and is tasty, I want it. But I don't run off to eat to make myself feel better, at least not very often.

So my eating is more reaction to stimuli than to emotional desire. I wish the fat cells generated from that would be smaller than the other kind, but no, still in the same boat.

Hmm. Hard to know how the last two days have really gone, I've not been concentrating so much on my food intake. I can safely say I have NOT exercised, which is NOT good, and I will remedy that today.

This exercising thing has gotten much easier, even with just a week of consistency. Now I don't hear the little "quit" voice until at least 2 songs into the ellip, which is about 8 minutes. Not bad, considering. I wonder if I'll ever NOT hear that voice...maybe that's part of the journey - not that the voice goes away, but that my ability to ignore it functionally makes it mute.

I did realize that I'm really following a Weight Watchers' core plan without being on it officially - I've limited my sugar intake, increased my complex carbs while dropping bad carbs, and really increased veg and fruit intake. That's all good! I'm even beginning to crave oranges rather than just thinking of them as second-rate, second to a nice piece of chocolate. My salad intake has increased DRASTICALLY, though I guess from zero to anything is drastic... ; ) We'll see how this goes.

Things I look forward to - getting to size 20, then to size 18 (beyond which i can't even imagine right now); fitting into all those pants I've got lying around; beginning to hear folks ask if I'm losing weight; hearing Craig say it too. I do already have more energy, I've found.

goals for this week - taking my meds consistently. It's not that I avoid them - I have never been a good med taker, even on birth control when arguably one SHOULD be consistent! So I'll do that for sure.

onward and up, I mean, DOWNward!

Week two begins!

Well, it's been one week since ya looked at me...wait, that's a song. It's been not so much a song for me this week, but I have had success, I've lost 2 pounds. Last night was quite a night for me, a really fun DESSERT party hosted by one of my fave five, and her husband mixed some martinis that were, well, STRONG. So I had one or two too many, and not all that dessert stayed down...oy. Come on, I'm 41 for cry-yi! But it was really fun, and I'm fairly discrete with my drunk haze, and even discrete in porcelain worship, so no awful embarrassment. My pal does get to give me shit for it, but there you go.

So yep, 2 pounds lost. Not bad. Exercised 5 days (one with just arm weights but ellipted the other 4), and feel pretty good at this point. I'm curious about the week -

Do you know this link? http://myvirtualmodel.com - you can set up a picture of yourself at current weight and at goal weight! Wow, it's kinda crazy. I'm gonna see about putting my virtual picture here for y'all to see - I'm not quite ready to reveal the real me just yet.

the exercise conundrum, and the idea of being full

Well, exercising sucks but does keep one on the up and up. I did my 30 minutes on the elliptical in my home today -

Does anyone else struggle with this? The feeling, only a few seconds into exercising, that one will die, that it's too hard, etc? Now that I've been doing this for a week I at least can tell myself that I've gotten through it before and can do it again - but those first few minutes are very mentally hard for me. Physically it's all right, relatively speaking. I have found a great set of music that I "ellip" to (since it's not exactly running, not exactly walking), and we have a squeak in our machine so I can actually time the movement to be on the beat, and that helps tremendously.

But the mental game, that's the tough part for me. About 10 minutes into it I start having conversations with myself - "Man, maybe 15 is enough..." "NO! Half-hour, you can do it, you did it two days ago" "But I'm tired" "Sure, but you can go half an hour with no problem, you'll feel great if you do" and the talk rages on while my feet just keep going. The music helps mask the "conversation" and encourages my feet to keep going.

Is it, perhaps, that skinny people don't have this in their heads? Like the same way I envision them actually saying, no, I really don't want the chocolate, I'm too full, statements that might as well be in Mandarin for all the sense they make to me.

Anne Lamott wrote an essay about learning to feed herself, struggling with the concept of actually BEING hungry and, conversely, actually being full. Weight Watchers' core program helps you learn to tell when you're full, too. Maybe that should be my new focus - really helping myself grasp the idea of being full and really trying to internalize the idea that you might NOT eat chocolate if you're full.

monument

I'm thinking that when, WHEN, mind you, I grow down out of my size 22's I'm gonna nail them to the wall in the room where I work out at our house. Not all of them - just one, like a skin of some animal I've hunted down and killed. Hmm - interesting imagery - (I find I discover things about myself by writing and seeing what comes out of my fingers) - I am, I suppose, hunting down that 250 pound animal. "Kill" may seem extreme, given that it is ME I'm talking about - but as I'm sure you know, death is not restricted to physical death. The thing is, though, death is often if not always followed by some kind of grief - what will I grieve about that woman, that 250 pounder? and maybe whatever it is that I grieve, that will tell me why I stayed in that body for so dang long. Perhaps more on that will come when I've written it to myself privately.

Meanwhile - each size I grow down from then will be tacked on top of the prior, making a cascade down the wall of smaller and smaller jeans, to remind me of how it happens (slowly, one pants size at a time) AND how I got out of it (slowly, one pants size at a time!).

I'm pondering pictures today, taking them, that is. Maybe tomorrow.

Oh - 248 today. Not 250. ; )

inner vs. outer view

If you just looked at me, sitting as I was about 2 minutes ago, you wouldn't know. Eyes closed, head on hand, looking sleepy, sitting cross-legged in front of a warm heater, completely still. Warring factions raged, one side urging for no good reason a trip to the kitchen with mouth open and hands outstretched to grab and scarf...one side yelling about weakness, fat, health, beauty, sexiness...one side sitting quietly and rocking rocking rocking, unable to stop the war and unable to get past it, unable to understand the urge and barely hanging on to control the impulse to let that side win yet again.

Which is where this blog comes into play. Somehow putting this into the public but anonymous blogosphere is a fourth force - pulled me up from the crouch, snapped the head around of the kitchen brigade, stopped the little girl from rocking, and silenced the chorus of worry/concern/self-loathing/failure.

So that's why I'm here. It's becoming clearer to me - the tool that is different enough from the programs, new enough to motivate, familiar enough to be comfortable.