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What’s that about slow & steady?

Day three of my recommitment to my health is going well-ish. I’ve stuck to my diet these past few days, so even though I *just* finished breakfast, I’m still hungry :-(

I’m comitted to staying with my decision, though. So, I’ve resisted many impulses to indulge. I’m trying to keep busy. I’m taking sips of unsweetened, homemade iced tea. I may switch soon to water so I can take several large calorie- & caffeine-free gulps!

I’ve been getting to the gym about once a week for the past two or three weeks. This week, I intend to increase that by one. Next week, I plan to be up to three.

Nothing drastic happening yet, except that my resolve has re-emerged. And that’s good enough for me right now.     

Posted on March 4th, 2010 by lanvin
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TOGWMTLMLALSSOHGS1J

It occurred to me today that it has been over a year since I’ve lost any weight. I don’t think I can consider myself “the girl who lost more than 70 pounds” anymore. I think, now that a year has passed, I’m now something more along the lines of “the overweight girl whose muffin top looks more like a large souffle spilling over her generously sized 18 jeans”.

I think I’m officially fat again.

This isn’t because I’ve gained a few pounds. It is because I have redefined myself… again.

I used to be the morbidly obese girl who couldn’t fit comfortably into size 28 stretch pants & who needed an extension belt on airplanes. Then, through vigilent portion control & exercise, I became TGWLMT7P (see above). Now I’m TOGWMTLMLALSSOHGS1J ~~ because I think I’ve finally settled into my weight as it is, not as it used to be, & I’ve realized that it now makes me unhappy.

I coasted for over a year on TGWLMT7P. I enjoyed my new size & the compliments & freedoms it brought me. I was able to shop in regular clothing stores. I was able to enjoy a pastry without feeling as if the world was judging me poorly. I was able to feel pretty, & enjoy attention.

But I also feared it (attention) & I have to say that it pleased me just a little bit when I started gaining a bit of weight & my face went from what I perceived as “too pointy” to more round again. In fact, after two of my favorite family members died in 2009 & left me feeling as if I had just been orphaned without the societal recognition of the importance of their passing to me, I took comfort in over-eating & feeling my weight return again. There is a part of me that finds comfort in being able to hug my big, bulbous, fleshy tum.

{{ For those of you who hate fat, I’m sure that last statement just turned your stomach. lol! }}

One year ago this month, I lost my great-uncle. Six months ago, I lost my great-aunt. Since I was a child, they had been two people I could turn to for support: actual AND emotional; support I never got from my parents or anyone else in my family until I married (& even then, my husband & I have had to learn how to be there for each other in supportive but not smothering ways).

My great-aunt & great-uncle were excruciatingly important to me & I’ve been mourning their deaths ever since. I realize, though, that I haven’t been honoring them as well as I should. They were thrilled when they discovered I had lost 70 pounds. My great-aunt was downright giddy. And she used my efforts as inspiration for her to get up & work in her garden & stay active when she felt as if she would rather go back to bed & sleep. She lived to be 99 years old. My great-uncle was 87. Each of them attributed their longevity to staying physically & mentally active.

I managed to keep active after my great-uncle died. But I was in a bit of shock. He went quickly & unexpectedly because he didn’t tell anyone he had leukemia until he was nearly dead. After his death, I think I went a little mazzo: in addition to my normal kickboxing, yoga, pilates, & walking workouts, I took up bellydancing, modern dance, tap, trampoline, hula hoop, & roller derby!

When my great-aunt died six months later (in October), I stopped exercising altogether. I told myself it was because I needed a break; I had a derby injury; I was just enjoying the fruits of my labor. But I’m thinking now that I’ve been depressed.

I’ve been adrift. Lost. Not entirely without guidance or support (I am a functioning, happily married adult), but I definitely feel a void where I used to feel their love.

I’ve been compensating with food & lack of exercise. I’ve been comforting myself by getting mushy.

It is what it is, & I’m not going to beat myself up for coping with two major deaths in one year in ways that are still the best I know how to do. Maybe this was their last lesson: falling back on food & inactivity is fine in small doses, but it’s not going to help me in the long run.

And I’m in this for the long run.

So, no more resting on my laurels, TGWLMT7P. I am now officially TOGWMTLMLALSSOHGS1J, & it’s time to deflate that souffle & get back to work.

RIP AG, UJ, & TGWLMT7P.         

Posted on March 2nd, 2010 by lanvin
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Weigh-In

An even 219.0 lbs this morning, wearing only a jaunty hairband ;-)

My goal is to weigh approximately 160 pounds. Give or take a stone. That means, I have 59 pounds to lose.

In order to keep myself on track, I’m going to gather 59 stones today. For every pound I lose, I will remove one stone & return it to the wilderness.

Not much more to say after that ~~ except that I hope I don’t have to add stones too often!

Posted on February 10th, 2010 by lanvin
Filed under: Weigh-In | 1 Comment »

Starting small

Since yesterday, I’ve conformed very well to my eating plan. No snacks & lots of coffee to help with hunger pains. I still have a raging headache, though. To combat my noticing this, I’ve kept very busy with an early round of spring cleaning. It feels great to clean out the cobwebs & get rid of some junk! A metaphoric realization of what I’m also doing with my body :-)

Aside from this, not much else is going on. Thank you for your encouragement ~~ it helps & I appreciate it.   

Posted on January 27th, 2010 by lanvin
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Fundamentals

So, I thought starting a new blog would inspire me to get back into my diet & exercise routine. It didn’t. Well, in fairness, when I gave it any thought at all, I was inspired; I just wasn’t motivated enough to follow through.

It’s been tough finding the motivation to exercise regularly & stick to my diet. The severe depression has worn off. The excitement about being perceived as somewhat “average sized” no longer exists. Now I’m just an averaged sized American; i.e. plus-sized sans the shock.

As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve gained weight. Some of my clothes don’t fit me anymore. I find that depressing, but not in a motivational sort of way. I guess I feel defeated. I feel as if a lifetime of vigilance is in my future, lest I return to my former self. And that doesn’t feel as if I’m on a diet; it feels more like a proclamation that I have a disease.

As if obesity was more akin to alcoholism than I realized. But worse.

When I quit drinking, I had to realize that either I could drink or I could live. It was me or it. No questions.

When fighting obesity, obviously, I can’t quit eating. And the act of exercising isn’t an avoidance behavior; unless you look at it as requiring one to avoid everything else in order to exercise.

In my experience & humble opinion, conquering obesity requires a lifetime of vigilance & action very different from & more difficult than quitting drinking. It’s been hard to keep myself at that level this past year. I have to admit that I failed these past few months.

I have to realize I haven’t conquered it yet. I’m not on top of it yet. I may never be. I may just have to constantly fight against it & hope I’ll never succumb to obesity again. 

I have to get back to the basics: posting regularly, tracking meals & exercise, exercising, eating well, sleeping well, being vigilant, being consistent.

I have to accept that this is something I’m going to have to live with forever. I haven’t beat it yet.        

Posted on January 26th, 2010 by lanvin
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A Mental Shift

I was feeling that my past was restricting me too much, so I created a new site to shake up my perspective.

For now, please visit me at: http://www.3fatchicks.com/diet-blogs/sizetwo/ 

Best wishes!!!! xxxooo :-D  

Lanvin

Posted on January 5th, 2010 by lanvin
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Adjusting expectations; resume.

Summer didn’t turn out as I had planned. I signed up for two dance classes, derby boot camp, & trampoline. After being injured in derby, I dropped trampoline for hula hoop. Throughout the entire summer, I exercised 6 days each week for 1-3 hours each day.

In August, my other classes ended, & I advanced to the next round of derby try-outs. My overall exercise time stayed approximately the same (2-3 hours 5 days per week), but practices increased in intensity; I was working out with athletes who placed first at Nationals!

But even though we sweated like crazy 15 hours each week, the rollergirl ethos among my skaters is very much: work hard, party harder. Despite my intention to lose weight with all this working out, I managed to gain another 7 pounds. I now weigh 213.8.

At some point, I had to work through the adrenaline, ego, & group-think to see that, while it was/is ultra-impressive & fun & cool to be working out with my favorite sports team, it wasn’t really advancing my goals. And, although not my only, as long as weight loss was a goal of mine, skating derby was counter-productive to them ~~ at least in the short term. I probably would have eventually found a way to lose weight with derby; many girls have. But, it didn’t work with other areas of my life as well.

So, now I’m back. A little bigger, stronger, & kinda wondering where I go from here. I need to create a new dining & exercise plan. Then, I need to stick to it. I’m feeling a lot larger than the total 8 pounds I’ve gained. I thought I’d weigh less than 200 by now. I thought, with all that exercise I did this summer, I’d weigh a lot closer to my goal weight than I am right now. I truly didn’t expect to put on pounds. It’s frustrating. But I’m not frustrated yet.

Gotta go make plans to reach my goals…  

Posted on November 2nd, 2009 by lanvin
Filed under: Weigh-In | 2 Comments »

Welcome to the Jungle, pt. 2

When I first started this blog in Dec 2007, I described myself thusly:

“I’m fat. Too large to sit comfortably in a seat at the opera; and, too small to think much at all about my body until I do try to sit in those darn seats. And then I look around & realize nearly everyone else can set their purses next to their thighs & rest their arms on the armrests instead of having to pull them tight across their [really large] chests & guts as I must.”

I got off on a very NON-illustrious start:

“Today I awoke with the intention of starting my day on the treadmill. Instead, however, I putzed around the house for a few hours before my husband left for work, then sat down in front of the computer & tv.”

I didn’t make mention of exercise much until Janurary 7th, when I wrote:

“Yay me! I just speed walked 3 miles in a little over an hour.”

After that, I mostly reported my failings, until Feb 28th, when I (drumroll please):

“I completed an entire [exercise] tape without stopping.”

Now, just a year and six months after that: I’m a rollergirl.

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) RAWR!!!!!!!!!! :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

That’s right. Try-outs were last night. I made it onto one of my area’s toughest teams. I’ve worked very hard to get to where I am today, & I’m going to have to continue working hard to stay there & improve.

I feel rejuvinated & ready to roar. 

My blog is named after a song from one of my favorite bands from high school. In my very first post, I wrote about how I didn’t like the person I had become & I quoted this line from that song:
“Welcome to the Jungle… you’re gonna die”
It was inaccurate to say that the fat part of me needed to die. Everything I’ve always been will always be an important & wonderful part of me. But it is safe to say I’m no longer that self-hating fat girl.
I’m now a rollergirl.
I no longer have my sight set on me; I’ve got the opposing team to kill.       
 

 

Posted on August 13th, 2009 by lanvin
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BFFs

Tomorrow I will fly across the country to visit my best friend. We met 23 years ago, when we were teens. Even though I weighed less than 110 pounds back then AND about 10 pounds less than she did, my weight was something she always fixated on & declared that it was “too much”.

I left home when I was 18, but throughout our young adulthood, whenever I’d return home, my weight would be one of our #1 topics of conversation. I was always “too fat”.

Even when I was recovering from my eating disorders, she still said “we should lose some weight”.

I’ll grant you, she’s a bit touched in the head. Mean, even. But I was too. All my friends from high school are Mean Girls because I was a Mean Girl, too.

I see my high school friends every few years & it is generally nice to catch up with them. This time, I’m going back for a specific, special occasion for my best friend. And, at first I was excited to reveal the “new me” ~ the lighter me.

But one of the things I’ve been working on lately is not expecting my friends’ & family’s feelings about my weight to be similiar to the feelings I have about my weight. 

My feelings about my body have never been similar to theirs before, so why would they be now?

My goal is to approach this visit with all my old BFFs with a “whatever” attitude about whatever they say or seem to imply. I am what I am: I workout regularly & hard. I eat well. I take vitamins. I don’t drink, smoke, or take drugs. I moisturize regularly. I take naps. I am doing what I can to have a healthy body. I take the time to dress well, accessorize, apply makeup, & do my hair. I am doing what I can to look nicely.

Aside from all of that, however my body appears is beyond my control. So, “whatever” to backhanded compliments. “Whatever” to the offer that I can go through my BFF’s old, no longer needed fat clothes. “Whatever” to anything else that may happen this weekend. Whatever to all.

The beautiful thing about Mean Girls is that they rarely mature past their “best years”. The beautiful thing about me is: mine are yet to come :-)  

 

Posted on July 15th, 2009 by lanvin
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hhmm.

Well, my sister & her family left a few days ago. No one said a thing about my weight loss. I’m not certain why.

Did no one notice? Has everyone been conditioned to avoid the topic of weight around me? Is the possibility that I’m at least starting to look conventionally pretty offensive or scary? I don’t know.

I didn’t bring it up either, though.

I did, however, go to all my workout classes. I talked about my workout classes. I even took advice from my personal training & aerobics instructor sister on how to work my abs.

Emotionally, the visit went very well.

My burlesque classes have been a bit more difficult to deal with. I was unprepared for the requirement that I try to feel sexy while watching reflection in a wall-length mirror. The first day, I wore regular workout attire. I’m still twice the size of almost every performer. I felt like a shot-put throwing man; not a beautiful & graceful woman.

But, I’m still hanging in there. I bought myself a flowing knit dress I can dance in & feel pretty in. And then I signed up for two more burlesque workout classes. :-)  

I’m also working out in a trampoline class & at derby camp. Because my muscles are tight, I’d like to start swimming or just sitting in a sauna 2-3 times each week ~~ I haven’t gotten to it yet, though; my current workout schedule plus commute is almost a full-time job!    

As busy as I’ve kept myself, I haven’t lost any weight. In fact, I’ve gained. My current weight is 207.8. That’s up from my lowest of 205.4 on April 17th.

I try to tell myself that it’s muscle-mass. But, I haven’t stuck to my diet as well as I should have.

Not only have I compensated for the extra exertion with extra calories, I also got REALLY EXCITED about being almost a normal sized person & I just went along with all the food excursions my average-to-small sized friends suggested.

Do average-to-small sized people eat pastries & dim sum ALL THE FREAKING TIME, or are my friends trying to sabotage me & my weight loss goals?!?!? I really do not know ~ but, I’m giving my friends the benefit of the doubt WHILE I also retain the possibility that maybe, subconsciously, they don’t want to give up their position as “the pretty one”.

Who could blame them, really? So, I won’t hate them for that, if it’s true. I just need to be conscious of the possibility & stick to my goals no matter what.

So, that’s pretty much where I’ve been, & where I am right now. I will be writing more regularly now that my sister has left. I needed to stay away to remain non-reflective & prepare for what I thought would be a very emotional visit. Thankfully, it wasn’t. We actually had a really wonderful time :-)

But, why oh why, didn’t she tell me how great I look?!?!?

Arg. :-(   

Posted on July 12th, 2009 by lanvin
Filed under: Weigh-In | 3 Comments »

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