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An Update and Being the Same Me

The experiment is going pretty well. The first week I gained a pound and a half, the second week I stayed the same, and the third week I lost two pounds. More importantly, I'm entirely angst free. It's really nice not to be even a tiny bit stressed about my food choices. I would bet that I'm eating pretty close to the same stuff in the same amounts as I was when I was tracking. Go figure.

Saturday I'm going to visit friends and family in California. Most of them I haven't seen in over a year, which means they haven't seen me in over a year. As it is commonly spoken and written, most people would be really excited and happy anticipating the unveiling of a body 73 pounds thinner. I hear I am supposed to relish the compliments and attention and be proud of what I've achieved and whatnot. I'm actually pretty anxious about it. I haven't told anyone I'm losing weight. It's not a secret, exactly, but I feel weird about it. I have such conflicted feelings about the concept of dieting and about involving myself in the diet industry, so I don't love talking about that. I also hate how the whole world seems to be having a constant conversation about having lost weight, wanting to lose weight, regretting cookies, wanting donuts, wishing they had time to exercise, hating exercise, being virtuous for eating salad and bad for skipping the gym. I don't want to engage in that conversation and I don't know how to casually tell my father or my childhood friends that I've been losing weight for the last 13 months and that they should expect me to look pretty different. So then when they see me they'll be shocked, which just draws more attention that I don't want. I don't want to talk to everyone I see about how I lost weight or even to accept compliments if they're giving them. Each of them will only have that conversation once, but I'm having it all the time with strangers as well as friends. It makes me tired.

A few weeks ago I had lunch with an old, dear friend who is local, but whom I don't see often. I'm sure she noticed that I've lost weight -- I am aware that I look pretty wildly different, though it makes me uncomfortable -- but she managed to show no sign of it. She treated me exactly as she always has. We ate together, we took a walk, we had a conversation about our gym memberships and she just treated me like me. It was deeply comforting. That's what I want from everyone, really. I don't think my weight loss should be interesting to anyone but me. I care about losing weight. I think about what I'm eating. I want to be thinner, to look better, to buy cuter clothes. All of that is a big deal to me, but I don't want it to be a big deal to anyone else. I just want them to be with me exactly as they've always been. I wish I could send a memo ahead of me explaining that...

An Anniversary and an Experiment

So as of last week, I've been doing Weight Watchers for a year. I've lost about 70 pounds, which is nice, and in an extremely unlikely event, have become a fitness nut, which is thrilling.

But I've been struggling lately. As much as I believe it's unhealthy for me to worry about food, to feel guilty about overeating, I still do. It's a stressful situation. I can tell myself that it's okay to eat what I want, that I'll still be working out, that I'll be eating healthier things later, that it's not the end of the world if I gain a pound, but I can't really turn off the other voice. The one who says I'm sabotaging my weight loss efforts when I eat cookies, that I'm still fat and look horrible, that I should be making healthier food choices.

I've always had only two rules for myself. One was that I would record my Weight Watchers points as accurately as I could. Always. It was okay to eat whatever I wanted in whatever quantity I wanted, but I had to record it. For most of the last twelve months, that has been really helpful. I actually find it comforting to write down a number after I overeat, even if the number is huge. It's just a number. I start over with daily points the next day and with weekly points the next week. I earn more points every time I work out. I haven't killed any puppies, I just ate a lot of points. No one cares but me.

Only for some reason, over the last few weeks, it's been causing a lot of anxiety. I hate that I sometimes debate over a breakfast that's one or two points higher than another or over whether or not to eat a piece of fruit because I'm thinking about how many points I have left. How ridiculous is that? Deep down, I don't believe it's ever a bad idea to eat a bunch of grapes or a bowl of oatmeal with peanut butter.


My other rule is No Angst. So when recording points, worrying about points, started to cause me angst, I had to decide which was a bigger rule. I decided No Angst. So as an experiment, I'm not recording or thinking about points. My goal is to do everything pretty much the same except without the anxiety. My exercise routine will be the same because it makes me happy, I will still go to Weight Watchers meetings and get weighed and will still weigh myself at home. I will keep eating basically as I've been eating, except without recording anything. I'm going to see what happens for about a month. If I find that I'm steadily gaining weight, I'll reassess. If my weight stays the same, I'm okay with that for now. If I lose weight, even if it's more slowly than I have been, I'll be thrilled. It's been almost a week so far and I am feeling optimistic about it. I am definitely less anxious around food and don't think I'm eating any more than I was before. I've lost a pound. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

In defense of emotional eating

It seems like everywhere I look, there are articles in magazines and posts on health blogs about how to overcome emotional eating. I'd like to break away from the pack and praise emotional eating. At least for me, it serves a purpose, and it hasn't done me any harm lately.

I'd like to start by saying I am an emotional eater. I eat for comfort, I stress eat, I get lonely and crave cookies or Chinese food or ice cream and I not only have to eat exactly what I'm craving, but I have to eat too much of it. Part of the comfort comes from the feeling of being too full. I'm not saying that's a good thing. It's probably a huge factor in how I got to be overweight in the first place and that feeling of being too full is uncomfortable. I hate it. But I believe it's more important to pay attention to it than to fight it. It has been helpful for me to notice my patterns of emotional eating -- what kind of mood sets it off, what happens if I don't succumb, how does it feel when I do, etc... And I certainly try to keep it in check -- I can often find other ways to comfort myself. I can write or talk or work out and sometimes doing one of those things curbs my desire to eat a whole pizza. Sometimes going to the trouble of cooking something that's healthy and delicious and eating that will curb the desire. Part of the comfort comes from the idea of giving myself what I want -- I deserve these cookies -- if I can shift that to: I deserve this root vegetable soup, then the same purpose is served.

I've been losing weight for nearly a year now, and one of the most important things I've learned is that giving in to occasional fits of emotional over-eating does not derail me. I can eat way too much for one meal or over the course of a day or over the course of several days. It usually doesn't feel good. It usually makes me feel sluggish and guilty and fat. But it is also comfortable and familiar and on some level, it works. It provides a certain quality of comfort that nothing else does and if I deny myself the right to that comfort, I get more and more agitated. I start to resent that root vegetable soup instead of craving it. Once I've eaten the donuts (because I absolutely had to, because I wanted them and don't I deserve to have what I want? because one donut doesn't make me feel like I got what I wanted, I have to eat four and have a sugar headache...) I relax. I crave my next work-out. I crave my next salad. And I see, again and again and again over the last year, that it doesn't stop me from losing weight. It doesn't stop me from working out or eating well 90% of the time. Now, part of the comfort comes from that. From the realization, over and over, that my binge didn't make me regain 70 pounds, or even 5. It didn't take away my muscles. It didn't take away my desire to work out every day or my love of vegetables. I am comforted by not having to lose my source of comfort in order to lose weight.

What I mean when I say Love

I love my body. No, seriously. I don't mean it's perfect or that I never look at myself and cringe about something -- the size of my belly or a pimple, new wrinkles, hair growing where I don't need hair -- I'm vain enough and I have plenty of room for negative body image -- I don't think anyone escapes that entirely. What I mean is, I love my body like I love my family and my dearest friends and my city and my car. They are all flawed. They all have qualities that drive me crazy and make me hate them momentarily. They are limited, which is frustrating. But the core of the relationship stays strong. Deep down in my heart, I want my body to be happy. I love that it carries me around all day. I am proud of how strong it is. I am amazed at its resiliency, its ability to heal itself. It gives me pleasure. And sometimes I am blown away by its beauty. All that makes me want to treat my body well. It makes me happy to nourish my body well, to allow it to rest, to take it out for runs and yoga classes. I am forgiving when I see an ugly side or am slowed down by its limitations. I forgive it when it causes me pain.

I feel that I was taught for so much of my life to hate my body, to want it to be different, to fight to change it. And that never inspired me to treat it well. Loving my body right now, is what allows me to change it. If I were hating it now, or hating it as it was a year ago, in order to will it to be different at some point in the future, I wouldn't treat it with kindness. I wish that when people talked about losing weight or striving for better health, they spoke more about loving your body, loving your self, and being kind.

My mother's idea of a compliment

I'm actually having my first really good day in weeks, and I promise to write positive, cheerful things here in the near future, but I'm just stopping by to record this:

I had breakfast with my mother this morning after not seeing her for several months (she's visiting from far away) and she attempted to compliment me by telling me I look like a normal person now.

Seriously. I couldn't make this shit up.

f&*%ing people

I hate people sometimes.

I went to work today and there were lovely baked goods in honor of one of my lovely co-workers. I should mention that we're in the middle of a weird and stressful transition in my workplace and as a result, I am working with many people who I had never worked with before last week. Many of them I still haven't met. I picked up a scone from the box of lovely baked goods and one of the above-mentioned new co-workers -- a woman in her 70s with whom I have never spoken before -- pointed to the scone I was holding and said, "That's fattening."

May I ask, in what universe could that possibly be an appropriate thing to say?

Let's first discuss the word fattening*. All by itself it is one of my biggest pet peeves. Only as I wrote that, I realized there's nothing petty about my peevishness. It's a word that's wrong on so many levels and I take that seriously. It implies that the only thing that matters about a food's nutritional value is whether or not it will make you fat. And even by that definition, it means nothing. Any food will make you fat if you eat too much of it and no food will make you fat if you don't eat too much of it. There are no fattening foods.

But let's move on from semantics. What could she have possibly meant by saying that to me? Is she warning me not to eat it? Does she not recognize that I'm an adult and a total stranger and that what I eat is none of her business? Is she saying it because I'm fat and she thinks she's being helpful? Would she have said it if I weren't fat? Would she have said it if I were a man? Is there anyone on earth who really thinks that would be helpful rather than horribly, offensively rude? And remember: total stranger. Is she just making conversation in that way that people do about food? Even though I recognize that this is a cultural norm -- talking about what we should and shouldn't eat and how bad we're being when we eat junk -- usually that kind of statement refers to the speaker's food choices, not the food choices of the total stranger who she is addressing.

Would an appropriate response have been: "I work out six times a week and have lost seventy pounds in the last year, so thank you, but I believe I can make my own food choices?" I just went with, "Excuse me?" She repeated herself, pointing again, as if I hadn't understood which food she was referring to, as if it had been an appropriate thing to say in the first place. I walked away.

Now I am left hating a perfect stranger, which is a pretty icky feeling. The anger, combined with stress about lots of other things going on this month drove me to eat three of those big delicious scones over the course of the day. So now I feel physically icky, too.


* (an aside regarding my hatred of that word) When I was growing up, this was the only thing my mother ever said about food. Something was "fattening," and thus to be avoided or eaten in small quantities or it was "not fattening" and could be eaten freely. I never learned a damn thing about nutrition, never had a conversation about how my body needed certain types of food for nourishment and that other foods and chemicals found in junk food were bad for my body. The only bad thing food could do to me was make me fat. The only good thing it could do was not make me fat.