I think I might be broken

April 12, 2010 at 8:46 pm (Weightastic)
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My therapist called me a few weeks ago, to let me know that she was going to have to leave town indefinitely; her sister is sick so she had to move to go  and take care of her. We agreed that I was probably okay without transferring to a new therapist, since we’d already cut back to once ever 3 weeks or so. My Big Giant Underlying Anxiety seems to be relatively in control (by which I mean I’m not chewing the fuck out of my cuticles and laying awake nights obsessing over all the ways I had probably offended my friends that day), and when I told her I was dieting but not going crazy over it, she cheered for me and told me she thought I was going to be okay.

Fast forward through the next few (incredibly busy but super awesome) weeks. Still doing the Weight Watchers thing, working out more, taking my vitamins, not having any weird crashy symptoms or hot flashes, feeling great all around. Lost a few pounds, gained back a fraction of one of those pounds, then all of a sudden it was April and our anniversary was here and whee, time to escape to our favorite bed and breakfast in Julian, the town where we got married.

Julian is not known for health food and exercise. It is known for comfort food and pie and apple cider and wineries and relaxing. So here is what we did when we went there: we ate fresh, homemade breakfast that involved thick slices of bacon and the best scones ever; after buying half a case of wine, we ate barbecue pork in the sunlight, then strolled down the road to get dessert (pie for Kevin and cinnamon ice cream for me); I drank wine on the patio while reading a magazine; we took naps and snuggled and read really, really old issues of National Geographic; we ate a leisurely dinner involving giant shrimp and an apple galette that was a lovely way to finish the meal.

I dutifully entered it all into my nifty little WW online tool and it told me that OMG I ATE TOO MUCH!!! DANGER ZONE!!! TOO MANY POINTS! And I said “Meh” despite the fact that the scale this morning said that the weekend had knocked my weight up a pound or so. I looked at what I ate and yeah, it was probably more than usual but it was all real food, homemade and crafted by people who care about serving unprocessed, creative, nutritious food. And I refuse to feel guilty about eating food that filled my soul as well as my belly.

And today’s little uptick on the scale could be me retaining water because I’m PMSing. It could be because I didn’t drink enough water this weekend, choosing wine and fresh pressed cider instead. It could have been because I hadn’t pooped yet. Who knows? And honestly, who fucking cares?

Because I don’t. I’ve said it before but I don’t think I really meant it. I know this because today, I do mean it.

(Before I go any farther, let me say one thing: This isn’t me preaching about fat acceptance or getting on my soapbox about HAES (both of which are awesome and have better people than me speaking for it). This is me taking responsibility for accepting my own damn self and being proud of it.)

How much am I going to demand of myself before I say it’s good enough? How thin do I have to be? How small does that number have to be?

Here are the facts: In 2007, I weighed 318 pounds. A day at Disneyland exhausted me, there was no higher size of Lane Bryant jeans that I could buy (at least not in the stores), I eyeballed plastic chairs with trepidation, and I spent most of my time either feeling guilty about what I just ate or planning what foods my next binge was going to involve. Today, as I have for about 6 months,  I vary anywhere from 220-228. (This morning, I weighed 226.8) (I told you, I do not care about that number anymore. And therefore, I do not care who knows it.) Yes, this is 25 pounds higher than my lowest weight after surgery. It’s also 90ish pounds less than I weighed the day I went in for my gastric bypass….the surgery I had almost 3 years ago.

So I’ve kept NINETY POUNDS off for 3 years. When I think of it that way, it’s kind of stunning. It’s stunning and amazing and it makes me more than happy. It makes me proud.

I did not have this surgery to be a special butterfly for the rest of my life. I did it to be normal, to be someone who wasn’t completely obsessed with food and the consumption thereof, to have a body that felt good after working out, to be able to keep up with my incoming niecelets and nephewlings, to have lower blood pressure and cholesterol and higher activity levels, and to be able eat the same food as everyone else without feeling guilty about every bite I eat.

Check, check, check, check, check and also, check.

But I’m an American woman, and I’m a size 16/18 and I’m supposed to hate my broad, jiggly hips and the fact that my arms are somewhat winglike and my belly is floppy even though I’ve never had a baby. I have the boobs of a woman who breastfed twins (seriously, I compared my boobs to a friend’s during a bridesmaid dress changing room situation and she breastfed twins and I did not but we had the EXACT SAME BOOBS) (and thus ends tonight’s TMI section) but I have Really Great Bras so who cares?

In other words, I’m broken. I don’t care! I’m still fat according to everyone and everything and I don’t give a shit because I’m way less fat than I used to be and I run and I look GREAT in dresses (a fantastic side effect of the weight loss) and tonight I walked a mile or two to go pick up dinner just because it sounded like a nice idea and the weather was lovely and the dog needed a good walk.

And yet I’m still going to keep keeping track of what I eat with my nifty WW online tool because I have to admit, the whole keeping track of what I’m eating does keep me aware of what I’m putting in my mouth, and that is not a bad thing. I feel better than I have in a few months, simply because I’ve been taking my vitamins and drinking more water and not having weird hot flashes and sugar crashes from eating too many carbs and in general feeling great. My bloodwork is all still awesome, and I signed up for a trail run next month (3.5 for my 35th birthday!).

So basically, I’m saying fuck it all. Fuck the number on the scale, fuck the BMI number, fuck the fashion dictators, fuck societal norms. I don’t give a shit anymore about any of it.  It’s enough, the weight that I’ve lost. If I lose more, so be it. If I don’t, that’s cool too.

As long as I keep being able to run farther, I’m happy. And if being okay with weighing 226 pounds makes me broken and weird and not normal, that makes me happy too.

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My head is harder than it looks

March 17, 2010 at 2:30 pm (Friends, Weightastic)
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Remember how I went and had weight loss surgery? And then I lost all that weight and was all “WOO, I’m done! I never have to think about it AGAIN!”

Man, I am delusional.

But even the best delusions come to an end for me, so last week I buckled down and admitted that hey, I need to DO SOMETHING to get myself back on track with the whole eating right & keeping fit deal because good intentions were not getting me very far. My good intentions were instead getting my ass a bit bigger, because even if I don’t absorb all of the food I eat, if it’s mostly carbs and processed junky food, that food that’s being absorbed is still going to add back some of the pounds I lost. So even though my doctor says I look good and my bloodwork says I’m super healthy, I decided to go on a diet starting this week.

I know. I thought I would never have to be on one again either.

I remember the day I found out from my surgeon’s office that I didn’t need to go back to any Weight Watchers meetings because my surgery had been approved. I threw away all of the materials, and I felt so very good doing it. I never had to sit around and listen to people talk about how good that fake cheesecake recipe was! Or be told I was going to be disappointed with myself because I gained half a pound! Or listen to them talk about good foods versus bad foods and then watch my own binge eating disorder rear its ugly head on my way home from weighing in.

(You can probably guess where this is going.)

Yesterday I signed up for Weight Watchers Online, and I spent the day remembering one simple fact: Dieting is hard, yo. Thinking about what I’m putting in my mouth and deciding if it’s worth it. Weighing the difference between a scone (yum!) or a spinach wrap (also yum but not scone yum). Paying attention to portion sizes and vitamins and how much water I’m drinking (a lot, by the way). Telling myself that no, I’m not actually hungry, I’m just bored.

I would rather be back in Managerial Accounting, quite frankly, and I dreaded that class.

Before I told her I was doing the WW Online thing, Sheila suggested that I join an in person program that she is running, and I had to tell her I couldn’t. For one thing, it costs too much, but for another (more major) thing, I realize now that I cannot do that group diet thing. I cannot be told “This is good and this is bad” and listen to other people’s tricks and manipulations and weird food issues because they just trigger me to do my own tricks and manipulations. And that kind of setting has never done anything for me other than make me rebellious and bingey and unhappy. And I don’t want to be unhappy.

But this time I have a friend to help me through the “Dude, this SUCKS” part that always happens at the beginning of a diet, and I have a plan to follow without anyone policing me and most of all, I have an actual true desire to turn my behavior around. Dieting is hard, and it sucks, because it makes me be responsible for what goes in my mouth and it makes me think about things that I don’t want to think about and it makes me stop finding weird justifications for everything.

But weirdly enough, for the first time ever in all my years of dieting, I feel good about this. I feel good about eating a salad with tuna and going for a brisk walk at lunch because I know tonight’s dinner will be full of tasty, tasty calories. I feel good about finally taking my vitamins and drinking my water and eating breakfast.

Most of all, I feel good about being able to acknowledge that dieting sucks and is hard and does not feel good but still not considering giving up. Sometimes, uncomfortable can be a good thing. I get that now, in a way I never was able to before.

My therapist will be so proud.

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This is what I sound like in real life, too

March 10, 2010 at 3:39 pm (Friends, General Gobbledygook, Schooling, Weightastic)
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So hey, how about that February that just whizzed by? That was good times, right there. I think I did some stuff and saw some people and maybe did some homework in there somewhere. OH! I definitely went to LA and gave Shawn  the best birthday present EVER (the 1980 Black Barbie, complete with ‘fro, pick and pantsuit!) I also greeted Patrick at the airport with a giant obnoxious sign and ate cupcakes with Trish and Jared. And hung out with my dog and my husband and the little asshole cats.

In other words, I did the whole day to day life thing.

And then March came and Weetacon was finally here and real life went far far away and I cried in a bar about how awesome Wendy Bix is and I ate chicken fried steak at 2:30am (MISTAKE) and I drank the best home brewed beer ever and dropped my Nano in my bathtub and lost my voice and didn’t show my boobs, not even once. And it was magical and sparkly and awesome and then I came home and had to work and ugh.

I have to say, for someone who actually usually enjoys her job and its flexibility (hello, I am writing this entry while scanning business cards), I am easily annoyed by it. Maybe that is why I was told during my review that I tend to be “discourteous when feeling under pressure.” (Apparently that bothers me more than I let on, since I have told that story to oh, 50 people now.)

But I mean come on. There was apparently drama about who was going to answer the door while I was gone (our facility is locked down and people ahve to be buzzed in, whoo whoo TOP SECRET SHIT HERE), because apparently everyone else is JUST TOO BUSY to answer the door. Amazingly enough, they discovered that having to answer the door constantly means that a person gets interrupted all damn day. HELLO, WELCOME TO MY WORLD. Ask me again why the Big Giant Filing Project isn’t done. It’s because I am basically chained to my desk until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, that’s why. And this is why I’m getting an MBA, so I can get unchained from the front desk (By the way, I totally aced Managerial Accounting somehow.)

So anyway, I got to come back and listen to the fall out from that drama and I really just wanted to tell everyone that they were grown ass adults and to stop complaining about it because damn if it’s going to keep me from going on vacations (especially now that we have found out that my coworker is basically the best petsitter ever in the history of the world.) But then I remembered that I really like my coworkers and I really like my hours and I really, REALLY like the fact that my company is actually successful in these uncertain times, so I shut my mouth and ate some chocolate.

Speaking of chocolate, have I mentioned that I have an entire chocolate drawer in my fridge? This is because my dear friend David sells chocolate through Dove, which now has this whole home party enterprise. Think Tupperware but for chocolate. And it’s actual good chocolate so I buy some or I host a party and then whammo, chocolate drawer. I’m like the worst WLS patient in the history of the world.

Speaking of worst WLS patient in the world, I’ve had these weird symptoms lately that sent me over to my doctor asking if there was a possibility that I could be starting menopause early. Or maybe it was my thyroid! Or something! So she took a ton of blood from me (because my doctor does not pshaw her patients’ concerns) and tested me up, down, left and right and declared me perfectly normal. (Aside from the hot flashes and dry skin and usual insanity, of course.) So I’m telling my friend this and drop in there that oh, well, I haven’t been taking my vitamins lately (I KNOW) and she basically smacked me with her eyes and sarcastically said “Oh, maybe you should try taking them then? MAYBE?”

So I’ll start taking them again, I promise. Because I really don’t like the hot flashes. And I hear beri beri sucks.

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It Is What It Is

January 20, 2010 at 11:49 am (Friends, Weightastic)
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I had a party to go to this weekend, a fantastic and fabulous party that is given annually by two of my favorite people in the world and this year, they threw us an 80′s Prom.

“Yay!” thought my inner prom queen, “I can finally use that bridesmaid’s dress from Laura’s wedding again!”

A few days before the party, I realized that hey, maybe I should try it on, seeing as I hadn’t worn it for a year and a half and things change. Butts get bigger, workouts get missed, the holidays ahd just happened, etc. So I tried it on and praise be, that size 14 bridesmaid’s dress still fit. Hallelujah, etc. I packed it up and headed out to have a good time.

The dress worked well for the party, especially with the addition of fingerless lace gloves, giant hair, copious amounts of blue eyeshadown and a veritable pile of long, plasticy necklaces. And the party was nothing but a good time, surrounded by fun people and many glasses of champagne and a husband who gambled enough to win me a stuffed Smurf. But somewhere around the 5th hour of wearing the dress (which was described as one of my friends as “very complicated” when he helped zip me into it), the dress started trying to kill me.

The built in, long line bra contraption started poking me in the ribs. It rode up and made me itch. If I pulled it up, the stays jabbed a new bruise into an unmarked part of my rib cage;  if I pulled down, the dress threatened to release my boobs in a small tsunami of unfettered flesh. In other words, the dress and I were having a disagreement, and the dres? Was totally winning.

I started joking about finding Mo’s suitcase and stealing some clothes from her, since I did not have anything in the car to change into. When I made the joke to her, she immediately offered to give me pajama pants and a tank top so I would survive without permanent scarring. As I was changing I told her I had forgotten how stabby the dress was, and that it was even stabbier since I’d put on probably 15  or so pounds (at least) since the last time I wore it.

“Is this a bad thing? Or a good thing?” Mo asked, since she knows about the weight loss surgery I had. “Or a neutral thing?”

I shrugged and said “It is what it is. I’m just glad I don’t have rickets!” And then we went back out and rejoined the party and had a very good night all around.

So yeah, I’ve gained back some of the weight I lost. And no, it’s not my favorite thing in the world to admit. That’s partly because I never hit the goal I wanted to hit in the first place and partly because admitting I’ve gained weight back (beyond my 5 pound “bounce back”, which I totally wrote off) feels like admitting I’m a failure. And that is pretty much stupid, because statistically, I am a weight loss surgery success. I lost 65% of my excess weight and have maintained that for 2 1/2 years. My cholesterol dropped like a stone, my blood pressure followed suit, my blood sugars are actually tending toward the low end, and oh my GOD, I can jog now! For extended periods of time even!

But I will admit that this weight gain has freaked me out. I was on the verge of a total downward spiral last month, until I was shopping and tried on some size 16 straight leg Levi’s (that’s a misses size 16, not a women’s size 16) and they fit perfectly. I’m still 6 sizes smaller than I was at my largest, and I’m still fitting into all the clothes in my closet, and I can still buy things without trying them on because I know they will fit. So I was able to step back and take a breath and tell myself “It is what it is.”

There is a change that needs to be made though, because even though my numbers are good and my fitness is decent and I’m active and working out and wearing the same size as I did 18 months ago, I am not feeling my best. I am not making nutritionally sound choices, I am not taking my vitamins on a regular basis, I am not drinking enough water or getting enough protein or avoiding sugar. And it’s making me feel bloaty and rundown and making my intestinal tract unpredictable and cranky. My brain doesn’t operate as well and I’m not as happy as I could be because my body is not getting what it needs. So while that number on the scale is what it is, it’s time to get honest with myself and do what I need to do to get back on track.

If only there was an easy way to do that. Guess all I can do is keep trying.

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To Do or Not To Do, That Is The Question

January 6, 2010 at 4:18 pm (General Gobbledygook)
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I am notorious for having giant long to-do lists. At work I have these hardbound record books where I keep all of my notes, and every day I write a new to-do list with anywhere from 10 to 25 things listed on there to get done in one day. (I never finish them all.) I have a notebook that lives in my purse where I jot down lists of things I need to get done at home. I send emails with lists of things to do to Kevin so I can make sure that he gets his things done.

So with all my compulsive list making, you’d think I would love the whole resolution schtick. It’s a list! Of things to do! Except I hate it, because I fail at long term projects. I am a procrastinator to the extreme, a person who always waited until the last minute to do schoolwork. (True story: One day at lunch my freshman year in college, some friends tried to get me to go shopping with them. I told them I couldn’t because I needed to write a paper. “When’s it due?” they asked, “It can wait!” But no, it couldn’t because it was due at 3 that afternoon. I got a B+) So you see where telling myself in January that I will do something before December becomes a problem.

I am therfore NOT making resolutions this year. Instead, I’ve decided to make small, monthly to-do lists. And by small I mean 3-5 things. I do have an overall goal guiding all of this (Live well, be happpy, stay healthy), but the two main areas I want to improve are my diet/fitness situations and my financial situation. So every month, there will be 1 diet/fitness to-do, 1 financial to-do and 1-3 general life to-dos.

January To-Dos 2010:

  1. Diet/Fitness: Stop drinking soda. I somehow slipped back into drinking Diet Coke like it was water and that needs to stop tout suite.
  2. Financial: Create year-long budget spreadsheet. I used to do this every December to keep track of our paychecks and plan out what bills will be paid when. I stopped and now things are A MESS.
  3. General Life: Walk Sophie at least 3x/week. Even though she’s little and really tends to spend most of her time sleeping, she needs to get out more. She’s crazy when she doesn’t get enough exercise, and now that Laura and her pugs are gone she’s not getting her weekly 12-hour “run around like a crazy thing” sessions.
  4. General Life: Cook at home 3x/week and eat out at lunch no more than 1x/week. Gotta get our nutrition back on track at home; we can survive on cookies anymore. Plus, eating out is expensive.

I’ve also made a commitment to Sheila (she of the insane yet awesome workouts) that I will not miss more than 2 classes a month until at least August. And I made a commitment to Kevin to keep Saturdays open so that he and I can spend them together as often as possible.

So we’ll see just how much of it gets done. But I have high hopes because look how short that list is!

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Just a Number

December 9, 2009 at 6:17 am (Absurdity, Weightastic)
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As anyone who spends more than 2 minutes around me knows, I work out with this insanely enthusiastic (and effective) trainer named Sheila.  She’s like the most peppy, friendly, masochistic drill instructor ever. And I’ll be honest, I’m a little bit scared of her. So when she announced that she was doing this pedometer challenge thingy and then said that I BETTER BE PARTICIPATING, I strapped on the pedometer and dutifully kept track of all my prancy steps for a week. (She also bribed me with the possibility of a free month’s worth of workouts so it was totally worth it.)

There was just one little thing; I also had to enter my starting and ending weight on the tracking sheet. Now see, I don’t care about Sheila knowing how much I weigh because hell, I started working out with her 3 weeks after my surgery so she knows where I started from.   So yesterday on my way out I tossed it on the scanner and emailed it to my personal address so I could send it on to Sheila.  Except it never got to my personal email address because duh, it’s only set up to send things to email addresses on the network.

Instead, it printed out a nifty little scan of the tracking sheet, complete with my email address and yes, my starting and ending weights.  And this morning, I found it sitting face up right on top of the copier.  The copier that everyone in the company uses, that everyone walks by a million times a day.  The onlything that could have made it even MORE AWESOME is if someone had been nice enough to highlight the weight numbers and then stuck it on the bulletin board in the kitchen.

Oddly, I was less embarrassed about the whole thing than I would have expected. Rather than a panicky “OMG THE NUMBER!! THE NUMBER IS OUT THERE!!I DIE NOW!” the thought that crossed my mind was “Wow, I’m a dumbass. Meh.” And then I went back to my coffee and the intricate little tables I needed to re-create for some FDA documents today.

Apparently, somewhere along the way, that whole “the number on the scale is just a number” thing has gotten into my brain and I finally, FINALLY believe it, and that is awesome. (Alternatively, I just hadn’t had enough coffee for my panic response to kick in correctly, but I’m going to claim it as a victory over My Issues anyway!)

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