Round

I weighed in at 184.4 this morning on the fancy scale.

That is up about a pound from last week, but down a little from some of what I’ve seen during the week.

My fancy scale (which my sister brought me from the US 5 weeks ago) calculates hydration, bone mass, and body fat in addition to weight. I don’t know what the hydration matters, and the bone mass is certainly not accurate (nor is it something controllable) but the body fat is interesting. My body fat percentage, according to the machine, is 34.9%. Which sounds better than 35% but still sounds pretty damn fat.

Turns out “normal” body fat for a woman is 20-25%. So, I’m about 50 pounds overweight, and at least 10% overfat. According to BMI charts I leave “Obese” and enter “Overweight” at 178 pounds.  But I found this site that looks at body fat percentages, and it looks like the classification for “obese” varies at each weight, depending on waist size.  Given that I am an “apple” (I carry a lot of my weight in my belly) it looks like it will be even longer to get out of “Obese” in body-fat-percentage-land.

I need to be very focused this week to drop 1-2 pounds before leaving for the US. Our big party to celebrate our wedding for our American friends & family is in 2 weeks, and the dress fits best below 183. And we have 4 days in New York City to get through before heading to my hometown, and I doubt that those are the days I’ll be able to drop a few pounds, so the goal this week is to try to drop back down, and next week (on vacation) to really make decent choices so I can stay the same.

I have not been making my goal of maintaining my weight — instead, it is slowing drifting up. Part of it probably is a return to ‘normal’ eating now that I’m feeling better, part of it is the limited activity I am allowed to do, and a LOT of it is from eating too much.

I am really getting ready to get serious about losing in September, but I really also want to maintain my weight around 183 before then — and not add another 10 or more pounds to my starting number in a “last feast” mentality. (Am I the only one who does that?)

I am also hell-bent on finding a way to approach managing my weight without adding more stress to my life, and for that reason I’ve been trying to ease back into healthy habits, instead of trying to attack everything at once.

I’ve actually been really good for the past 2 weeks on the following :

• Eating more fruit & vegetable (minimum 5 per day)
• Increasing water to minimum 8 large glasses a day
• Finding support online
• Daily walking (first week was hard, but it’s gotten better)

I need to acknowledge this progress & accomplishment before just jumping into the next steps I need to take.

But the next step for me is obvious, and one that I’ve been resisting, and that is keeping a food journal.

Starting tomorrow (I weigh in on Mondays) I am writing down everything I eat. I will do this in a paper notebook, and will only list foods, not calories or nutrients, nor portions, for now. No judgment, just information. Keeping a daily food diary (often more detailed than this beginning) has always been one of my successful weight-loss cornerstones.

I don’t think I’ve ever been body confident. I could critique every part of my body to the moon and back without ever pausing for breath. I’d have a hard time identifying the second-most-critiqued body part, but number one would be my belly.

Among the maligned parts are my arms, which I have kept covered almost all my life.  No strapless dresses - not for me, tank tops - nope. But this year I’ve gotten bolder, even though my arms are still the same. I wore a strapless gown for the big bash before our wedding, and my wedding dress was strapless as well. And while my arms are not svelte and toned, they don’t look all that bad in photos, so I assume they don’t look all that bad in reality.

Today on my walk I was wearing a sweater over a tank top. This is a fairly common outfit for me, with the tank or camisole peeking out in front but the arms carefully covered. But it was warmer out than I realized, and after 5 minutes of sweating I decided to take off the sweater despite my arms. It was more practical, more comfortable, and no one arrested me.

And my arms are good actually. They are capable of so much, allowing me to carry, draw, type, cook, create, garden, touch and feel.

Gourmet means the same in English & in French, but the French have another word, gourmand, which means overeating.  Last night we were both.

We blew off our friend’s dinner party last night.  It was not nice of us, but we were both dreading it & had a plausible excuse.  We also had a babysitter.  So, we decided to go to one of our favorite restaurants, a Michelin-starred gourmet place which was closing for the summer holiday.

It was, as always, delicious and fabulous.  It was also a real indulgence, mainly because we eat a lot when we go there (my husband is a real gourmet & a frequent customer of theirs, so they often customize a tasting menu for us — which means WAY too much food, even though each thing they bring out is not huge).  Luckily I had eaten healthy all day, but still…

Appetizer : Lobster, prepared 3 ways

Fish : Sole, prepared in a really neat sauce w white truffles (DH had turbot)

Meat : Veal, in a caramelized sauce of reduced veal juices and a hint of coconut milk (DH had a small game bird, I don’t remember which - way too gamey for me)

Cheese : I didn’t have much, but there was a nice sheep’s milk cheese I’d never had before that was quite good, along w a comte that was excellent (DH had all the scary cheeses on the cart)

Dessert 1 : strawberry & pineapple verrine (a verrine is something that is served in a glass, usually layered, always pretty) this was a light, nice liquid — I thought this was it until…

Dessert 2 : mango tart w balsamic reduction and confit tomatoes with verbena ice cream — sound weird but it was awesome.  Even if we were already stuffed by this point, so we didn’t eat much of it

We also had good wine, but I am such an amateur & I never remember the names.

Today we had a brunch at our house, and while I had one croissant (a cinnamon one, which is not terribly French) other than that I just ate fruit, not bad considering the carb-o-rama in front of me.

I found the photo online - it’s not our dinner, but an idea of a verrine.  What’s odd is that there was this table of Asians near us that passed a camera back and forth all night, taking pictures of everything they were served, and I thought it so odd last night… Now I think maybe they’re all bloggers!

We have had a very cold and overcast summer so far here. Today, finally, it is sunny. And so is my outlook! I also went to the hairdresser, another pick-me-up. I cut roses from my garden & have been working on my ‘get ready to lose weight’ homework. I ate my leftover black bean salad (in which I added WAY too much onion) and have been good about snacking. I will go out for my daily walk in a little bit — needing sunglasses!

Isn’t it amazing how something that we can’t control can have so much effect on our outlook? Or maybe I was just ready to be really upbeat today?

We are going to a Dinner Party at a friend’s house tonight. Likely to be a calorie-challenge, but also possible to be full of foods I don’t like (foie gras, salmon, etc). Always a crapshoot. I don’t think either of us are looking forward to it, but we’ve put off 2 other invitations so we are in a bit of a bind…

Here’s the “Prepare to Lose Weight” Homework :

• Write down the reasons why you want to lose weight and how serious you are about losing weight
• Confirm in your writing how committed you are to following your weight loss program
• Write down where you have to make major changes in your life, including what you eat, where you eat, and how you eat. Look at your eating habits and decide if there are any that you can break
• Review the amount of exercise you do now, and how much you are prepared to do in the future. Exercise should eventually become a part of your daily routine
• Look at the size and style of the clothing you wear now and compare it to what you want to wear when you have reached your weight loss goal
• Set a realistic set of weight loss goals and factor in a self reward system for when you reach certain goals.
• Plan a healthy diet that you know you can live with

My answers coming soon…

I have just come to realize that my desire to start this blog & the other activities I am doing around weight management (reading mainly) are stemming from a real desire to lose another chunk of weight permanently, and in a way that works w my life. Which means it will probably be slow.

The times I have lost a good amount of weight I have always had a ‘getting ready’ phase, so I think this is a really good realization. Right now I am focused on maintaining my weight around 183. I have our US reception for my French wedding in just over 2 weeks, and I have to fit into my dress, so the motivation is external. Plus I am still recovering from surgery and still not allowed exercise, so if I wanted to lose weight right now it would be really hard, since I’d have to do it all by calorie restriction (something that I’m never good at, especially without exercise).

What does getting ready to lose mean?

• Building some of the good habits back in, such as eating a lot of fruit & vegetables, regular exercise, etc.
• Having a clear plan of what I am going to do
• Being willing to make the sacrifices
• Having my motivations of why I want to lose weight crystal clear in my head
• Thinking through how I will deal w various challenging situations during the process
• Identifying a start date that is reasonable — not in the middle of a big project at work, but not letting endless excuses keep me from starting
• Having rewards in mind
• Deciding on the basics of the plan I am going to follow

I am not very far along on all these points, but at least I can now make more sense of the diet-related web searching, now that I know what I am really searching for.

Right now, my thinking is to find a way to lose weight without becoming obsessive. I don’t know if I can really do that. I’m thinking of a healthy diet with calorie counting (which I have done before) or maybe an exchange-type diet. I am kind of intrigued by Weight Watchers but I don’t know if that will be a good choice for me or not. I definitely plan to incorporate regular exercise as soon as I am able, but it will likely be swimming or maybe AquaGym & walking, at least for a few months. I think I’ll try to weigh weekly, or maybe even monthly, but probably not daily. I need to really look at my calendar, but most likely I would start in early Sept & keep on the good habits before then. I have 2 weeks of big professional meetings from August 20th, and since I’ll be living in hotels & working long hours that is probably not the time to start, since food choices & exercise time will both be out of my control. I am a very spoiled woman — I can’t think of anything I want as a reward right now that I don’t have — need to work on that!

I just found an article on getting ready to lose weight — I’ll try to address some of her ideas here in the future!

It is very easy to do nothing.  I am a type A personality, and have been go-go-go for years.  Yet being benched from work & movement for the past 2 1/2 months due to my back forced me to slow down….then to stop.  And now I’m liking being stopped.  Too much.

I no longer have extreme pain & narcotics to excuse my inactivity & lazy days, nor hospital confinement, nor even last week’s immediate recovery period.  I see pretty clearly that I am now used to doing nothing — and liking it.  My lazy side, which got to come out and play from time to time on Sundays back when I was single, has been waiting around looking to take control.  So now that it’s been invited to the forefront, it doesn’t want to leave.

In a given day, I waste enormous amounts of time on the internet.  I read magazines.  I sleep in. I play w makeup. Watch a movie, maybe read.  Fix myself something moderately healthy to eat.  I do very little to help around the house (medical excuse!) but the scary thing is I don’t even do the few things I should.  I should be on top of a bunch of details for our US trip.  I should be catching up w my work emails.  I should be using this off time to tackle a few projects around the house.  And deal w a lot of paperwork.  But I’m not, I’m stalled, stuck & seeming to enjoy it.

Most disconcerting is the other thing I am not doing as I should : Daily Exercise.  Now, I am not supposed to do anything taxing, and right now not even swimming is authorized, but I am allowed & encouraged a daily walk.   I am completely out of shape from being immobile for so long.  I get tired after my walks, and I feel muscles in my legs for days if I take a hilly route.  I know I need to get into better shape, for my weight, for my health, for my fitness, for my routine.  I used to go regularly to the gym 3-4 times a week before this injury.

So why have I missed 3 days of the last 6?  I have lots of excuses, but they are just that.  The real answer is ‘laziness’.

Today I did go for my walk — I got up at the same time as my husband, and had him drop me off in the car about a 30min walk from home.  Forced me to not sleep in, get the exercise (I had to get home!) and feel better.   I actually did a really long walk, because he dropped me at a park I didn’t know, that I explored quite a bit before heading home.

So, I took a step.  I will repeat the process tomorrow morning.

Maybe I should do the same for my various to-do list items, and try to build momentum in a few directions…

Thanks for the comments on my blog!  Today’s entry is a response to one of the comments, asking why do I think women in France are smaller.
I think the French women conform to a different social norm.  Being thin is very important to them. They are also raised to be very conscious of not eating between meals. All of this is changing, unfortunately — obesity is on the rise here, as in most of the world — but still dramatically lagging behind the US.  I’ve lived in both cultures and while I certainly wouldn’t say it’s easy to be overweight in America, it is even harder in France.

There is not the same “fat acceptance” as in the US, nor is there even the pragmatic business side of phenomena like “size inflation” — most of the main brand clothing lines & stores go up to about size 42 (a US size 8!). Women’s magazines write articles about how terrible it is to leave the size 30-somethings (basically anything bigger than a 4). It doesn’t mean there aren’t women bigger than that, of course there are, but the culture is not very accepting.

I have struggled a long time w my weight and was thrilled to arrive here a few years ago wearing a size 12. In the US I felt like I was in a normal-sized body. Here, that same body made me still feel obese. (And I think that feeling contributed to my 20 lb regain). I have heard a lot of comments from friends & acquaintances in the past few years that they think I drink Coke all day (I never drink sugar soda and rarely drink diet either). That I eat McDonald’s every day (haven’t had McD or other fast food in years and years) etc. I get comments when I have an apple at 6pm for ‘eating between meals’ — (we eat dinner around 9pm most days, so w lunch at 12:30 I am hungry late afternoon — and incapable of making healthy choices if I don’t snack before 9pm.)

Today I again fell into the not-the-best choice breakfast, which is a relatively frequent weekend occurrence.  Living in France (land-of-heaven for sugar & flour concoctions), I am often surrounded by great bakery products.  As long as these stay out of the house, I am fine.  But it can be difficult to have a simple bowl of cereal on the days when we have fresh croissants, brioches & fresh bread laid out on the table, surrounded by their friends Butter & all the cute boutique jellies we’ve accumulated.  Add an element of “family celebration” and a girl can go seriously overboard.

Today I wasn’t terrible - I had about 3/4 of a croissant  plus 2 slices of bread, but a bowl of fiber cereal (my weekday routine) is a far better choice.  In writing this entry, I can see that this weekend breakfast thing has become one of my Challenges, and I am often wracked by guilt after the carb-o-rama of Sunday mornings.

I need to figure out how to stop this weekly bad habit.   I will make a real effort to do better for the next weekends (our last before vacation).  I have two reasons to focus -

1)  I really need to have good breakfast habits in place to make it through the US trip without ballooning in weight.  If I allow myself to have whatever I want for breakfasts, I won’t have the same bakery temptations, but there are still pancakes, waffles, sausages, bagels, omlettes, cream cheese, etc for 3 weeks.  Better to say : fruit, cereal or whole wheat bread, yogurt and that’s it.  Still hungry? Have more fruit.

2) I can see the regularity of this situation means I need to deal w it differently.  A birthday meal is not such a big deal, as it comes only once a year.  But breakfasts like this are a weekly occurrence, and therefore something I need to manage routinely to manage my weight.