Round

A few weeks ago I made a goal to exercise 3 times a week.  This was after months of on and off (mostly off) exercise & knowing that exercise increased immune response & just generally makes one feel better & be healthier.  Still, adding in another daily to-do seemed like way too much stress, so I decided to only shoot for 3 times a week.

What a great way to start. With the exception of the IVF (where I was told NOT to exercise by my doc) I’ve been doing great for 3 weeks now, and in fact most weeks have managed 4 sessions not 3.  I look forward to the days when I make it to the gym (or have far away errands & decide to walk to and from). 

I’ve added some other good habits over the past few months too.  One of them has been increasing my tea consumption, especially green tea.  In fact, I generally start the day with black tea, then switch to green mid-day.  At first I was kind of choking down the green tea.  I’ve never been a fan, but it’s supposed to be SO HEALTHY especially for cancer so I decided to start.  To my great surprise I found a few weeks into it that I actually liked it.  A lot.  I’ve become something of a conoisseur, with about 6 varieties in my kitchen (and usually 2 or 3 bags in my purse).  I also found out that black tea is as good for you as green (even though green gets all the press).  In the afternoons & evenings I drink herbal teas, which I don’t think have too many health benefits, but are tasty and a good diversion from mindless snacking. 

Yesterday the tea drinking paid off.  We had a brunch.  One of those landmines of French eating — the guests brought both cookies and chocolate mousse.  My husband bought 3 kinds of croissants - and one of each for everyone.  We had juice, and I made smoothies.  Does there appear to be anything low carb on offer?  No.  Of course, I did have eggs in the fridge, but it’s always a bit awkward to eat other things than everyone else, and we hadn’t gotten organized enough to plan an egg dish, so I figured I’d let them start & offer eggs once things got going.  And I sat down with a big pot of tea.  (Which I take w cream).  I never got hungry, I just kept drinking the tea, then switched to the green tea (I’d made 2 pots of tea for the guests) and didn’t get hungry until an hour after everyone left (at which point I ate something low carb from the fridge).  It was the easiest brunch on a diet that I’ve had in France.  If I’m not dieting I eat the croissants and jam and butter like the rest of them, but when I am dieting it’s always a really hard battle between the goodies on offer and what I think I should be eating.  Finally I was able to enjoy the company without stressing about the food (because it was all off limits and I’m so into this low carb thing that breads & sugars don’t even tempt me). 

Well, I will stand up and be a poster girl for the Slow Losers of the Universe club.

I have been quitetly keeping at it, not stressing daily, eating pretty much what I want, living without hunger, taking an occaisonal day or weekend off from my plan, and now, 14 weeks later, I am down 19 pounds and the next several weeks I should meet the following milestones :

-1 more : 20 pounds lost

-3 more : Out of the 200s FOREVER

-4 more : -10% body weight loss

I’ve been very gentle with myself regarding goals and timing this round (even moreso after the cancer diagnosis 6 weeks ago).  I’ve dieted more times than I can count, and the days of projecting my weight by a certain date are behind me at this point in my life.  I try to do the best I can in terms of eating a healthy low carb diet and getting in some exercise, and I let the weight fall where it may.

It’s been slow going - generally a pound a week, and I had a frustrating plateau of 4 weeks where I was doing things right and not losing anyway when I was 4 weeks into low carbing.  But I stuck it out and suddenly the plateau busted, and my slow steady loss is now adding up to be something significant. Check out the page “weekly weight graph” to see the pretty picture.

I’m also not thinking of a final number.  My goal focus for now has been to get out of the 200s, and once that’s done my next goal will be to get back to my wedding weight (183).  Then step by step I’ll get to a healthier, happier weight.

It would be wonderful if I can bust out of 200 before summer vacation (just under 3 weeks), but given that we have a romantic 4 day weekend away this weekend, that may not happen.  And it may be a number that stays out of grasp for a while if I do end up starting the hormonal treatment for the endometrial cancer (major side effect : increased appetite & weight gain, ain’t that cool!).  But no matter, I will keep on the path because I feel so much better eating this way.

I’m also pretty confident I can do this on our trip to the US this summer.  Living in France, it’s not the American bread that will get me riled up.  Nor is it the industrial desserts that pale in comparison to the likes of Pierre Hermé.  Even my big downfall for Mexican has plenty of low-carb options, and every restaurant has salads full of protein and other things that I can eat.  Other than breakfasts in hotels offering ‘continental’ I think I won’t have too much of a challenge, and even those hotels must be near a place offering omelets.  I’m not saying I’ll have a carb-free, cheat-free vacation, but a few planned indulgences is not the same thing as 3 weeks of disastrous eating either.

So, sooner or later those goals listed above will be MINE and it feels so good to feel so confident that I’m closing in on them.

I guess the approach from the past few weeks is kind of working.  The scale the past few days has been looking better, and I am feeling in control, happy, and optimistic.

I’ve been very hesitant to put a label on what I’m doing because I don’t want to pressure myself into thinking I ‘must’ act a certain way, and I left myself tons of opportunities to feel my way without constraints.  Aside from more than a little overindulgence this weekend (to celebrate Thanksgiving, plus a special Italian friend visiting - and cooking) I’ve been making really good eating choices with relatively little effort.

Armed with this success for the past few weeks, I’m going to stick to this approach through the end of the year (the Holidays, the trip back home, New Year’s in Rome) and then re-evaluate in mid-January.  I’d like to be able to incorporate exercise more regularly, but since I now feel that to continue eating this way is not going to be too difficult, I think I can start to think about exercise more without it being stressful.

I’m down about 4-5 pounds in 3 weeks, and I’m not “dieting”.  I stopped eating a lot of the junk, I am paying real attention to what I eat and the pleasure, and basically I am moving back towards that nebulous thing of “normal eating” “intuitive eating” etc that I started working on with Dr Hope.  In the long run I really think this is the approach that will allow me to live happily in France, with my foodie husband, enjoy cooking, and keep me less stressed about food and life in general.  When no food is forbidden and you eat when hungry just to the point of satisfaction you should be able to manage your weight.

I know that this approach is unlikely to keep me losing weight forever - at some point to lose more I’ll probably have to go to something stricter for a period of time, but since for now I seem able to lose weight and enjoy life completely with this approach, I think its the right solution for me.

I still have tons to work on in this area too, so the challenge level is still high, but so are the rewards, and the awareness and savoring exercises do nothing but enhance pleasure with food and teach me skills I’ll need to manage my weight long term regardless.

This weekend’s indulgences are over.  I will throw away the leftovers today, and have already stopped the madness as of this morning.  I poured the leftover cream down the drain this morning (after adding it to my morning coffee and thinking Yum!) because I was thinking to myself of all the different ways I could use the cream — and the reality is I don’t need to use it at all, and in the battle of waist vs waste, the trashcan finally won a round.

I head off to a few days in Munich knowing I can eat reasonably on the road, have breakfasts of oatmeal or cereal and fruit, breaks with fresh fruit and make the best of available options for dinner and lunch - and try to avoid the desserts.  I even think I’ll be able to make it to the gym on Thursday, and for once this is starting to feel like a good thing I’ll enjoy, and not a punishing ‘must do’.

Sandra Ahten (see sidebar) has a great saying “It’s not what you think you SHOULD do, it’s what are you WILLING to do.”

I’m taking some steps to get back on track, starting now.

I was lucky to have a few days at home without my DH to distract me to have a kind of break from bad food and allow myself to really concentrate on what I wanted and how I want my life to be.  Part of that includes losing weight.

I remain committed to do this low-stress.  I had moments in the past weeks where I contemplated putting myself on some severe restriction plan with shakes or rigid diets, lured by the possibility of dropping a bunch of pounds right away.  But that’s not a path that will work for me psychologically, and certainly not a way to make peace with my body, with food, and with my life in general.  That approach is war, and I don’t have that kind of fight in me right now.

I am willing to make some changes, though.

I’m willing to keep a food diary, although I haven’t totally decided in what format.  Maybe online, maybe paper. Maybe going back to the format I developed for Dr Hope last year.  That’s what I’m going to try for this week at least.

I am willing to go back to exercise, and to work on getting fit again.  I know this will take time and effort - both short term and long, but I also know I feel so much better when I am exercising regularly, and I also know it is very synergistic with healthy eating.

I am willing to spend time and energy cooking yummy food.  I am not willing to eat yucky stuff even if it’s low calorie.  Luckily, I find a lot of healthy stuff yummy.  But I will use real butter and sugar from time to time.

I am going to spend more time concentrating on what I should eat and less on what I should not.  I am going to vaguely follow something like Superfoods and WW Core plans just to have an idea about incorporating lots of healthy foods into my diet.

I am probably going to look more into Intuitive Eating type ideas as time goes on.  In the end it’s where I need to be, but I dont think I will follow steps or rules.  It’s also not where I will begin.

I am going to try to find a tight support system.  Yesterday I arranged to have a diet buddy, calling on an ex-3FC blogger who I’ve kept in touch with, and who I now consider a friend.  She was one of my favorite bloggers and like me she has had a pretty hard year.  I am also going back to a small forum group where I can have accountability and support, and the atmosphere is friendly and intimate.

I am going to weigh in very regularly.  Daily for a while and then maybe switch to weekly.

I am going to blog regularly.  This blog has been very helpful to me since I started it, and although I feel like I’d like a clean start, on the other hand everything on here is part and parcel to my current situation and thinking, so I’m just taking down some pages that no longer seem relevant and moving forward from here. A blog is kind of like a diary but not completely - it’s more living, more fluid.  A diary was written (usually in ink) and a real record of the past.  This, for me, is more about today — and tomorrow.

I am going to set my goal very modestly.  I am not going to reference my weight goals to where I *used to be* because it just depresses me.  I am going to just accept where I am, dry my eyes, and move on.  My first major goal is to get out of the 200s, this time FOR GOOD.

I am very thankful for your supportive comments. Just realizing that I was on the wrong path was a big help - today I managed to eat better than I have in the past few days, in part because I was able to see the approach wasn’t working. Maybe that’s one benefit those of us who’ve spent years struggling with our weight have - an ability to see what is not going to work and change approaches quickly.

The truth is I am feeling a lot of stress right now. I have really tried to manage my stress - I’ve had a lot of lovely long walks in the past few days, and I’ve done some cooking (one of my goals for the year). I saw 2 friends over the weekend, which is huge considering that I rarely see one friend a month.

So why am I stressed? Because the fat pants are tight again? Not really, although that’s certainly not helping. No, the stress is coming in multiple directions. The job stress is still present - not liking my current job very much, still up in the air for a potential job change - and in my view the longer it’s taking the less likely it is…

But that’s just part of it.

We’re trying to get pregnant again, and doing injectable drugs to stimulate ovulation (extra eggs) and an insemination on Friday. So the drugs (hormones) alone could be making me batty, and the high-tech medical procedures surely increase daily stress, plus the extra pressure that trying to conceive puts on you in general. Not to mention that the last time we did this I did get pregnant but later miscarried… So I’m full of hope, hormones and fear.

And to add to that my DH is sick. Pretty seriously sick. I mean, it’s treatable, manageable, and I’m grateful for that. He has had bad diverticulitis attacks for over 6 months now and is basically on antibiotics for 2 weeks every 2-3 weeks. When he has an attack he has really bad abdominal pain and a risk of the infection getting carried away and rupturing in his intestines and sending bad nasty bacteria all over which may or may not respond later to antibiotics after emergency surgery. Ok, that’s the worst case scenario, but every attack the risk is there, and this one is a doozy. He has surgery scheduled for the 25th as a preventative thing - to remove the part of his intestine where all this is happening. He chose the end of February for this surgery almost 6 months ago over my vigorous protests (I wanted him to have it sooner) and now that he’s got another monster attack he might have to put it off, or end up having emergency surgery (which is much more dangerous). I am worried about him and also in the “anger” phase because I thought this might happen if he put the surgery off until the last possible moment…. And he is really suffering, in considerable pain, very tired, unable to concentrate, relax or get comfortable. He doesn’t have a fever and the pain is just at the level to tolerate … but every day he tells me if it gets worse he’ll go to the hospital. It’s not getting worse, but not getting better either. It’s frustrating, and it’s hard to be smiley and upbeat and helpful to him all the time.

I’m being honest here on this blog so I’ll also confess to this - I’m annoyed that he let it get to this point because he didn’t want to take the time to have the surgery earlier, and I’m annoyed he’s having this crisis NOW. I am taking high-power (and expensive) injections every night to help US have a baby, and right now the odds are 50/50 that he’s not in the hospital when he’s supposed to be giving his “deposit” for our insemination on Friday morning… I guess I’m very selfish to think of myself and our TTC journey when he’s suffering.

Well, that’s the context for me right now. Weight loss is still something I’m going to accomplish in 2008, but it’s not a priority right now…

I like to call what I’m doing “Low Stress Weight Loss”. It’s my own thing, that’s for sure, built on years of my dieting experiences. Over time I learned what worked for me, and I’ve spent the past few years learning that what worked for me once doesn’t work for me now.

I would say 2007 was the year of waking up - realizing I can’t keep doing the same thing and frustrating myself, that in order to manage my weight in my new life, I needed a new approach. This realization came gradually, probably becoming most clear to me when I pushed myself way too hard at the gym and aggravated whatever underlying back problem I already had.

My wedding was coming up and I was determined to drop some weight. I pushed myself HARD at the gym, going for 60-90 minutes 6 days a week, trying all the machines, and somewhere in there I ruptured a disk and within 3 weeks mild sciatica became horrible, incapacitating pain, rendering me unable to walk 10 feet. I was unable to work, unable to think, unable to move. I took a lot of painkillers. I canceled my honeymoon, sucked down the morphine, tried all kinds of steroid injections, made it through the wedding (a bit loopy!) and had surgery when I should have been on my honeymoon.

I’m much better now, the surgery cleared up the problem of the back and pain right away, but the issue of how to manage my weight with my new full, wonderful Parisian life was still gnawing away at me. Out of terror of not fitting into my wedding dress I kept my weight stable through all the trauma, but after the second wedding party (in the US) all discipline dissolved and another 20 pounds arose. I’m still 2 pounds up from what I had considered to be the high-end of my “buffer zone” for the past 5 years.

Over the past 5 years my weight was usually around 185, went up to 195, down to 175 in cycles. I have not been happy at that weight here - probably because in France people are skinnier than in the US. At the same weight I feel like I fit in in America, and as a person who has always been fat, that is a great feeling. But here at the same weight I’m REALLY fat, and all the social stigma that goes with it is present. So for as long as I’ve been here, I’ve wanted to get my weight down by a good amount.

But it’s just recently that I’ve come to the clear conclusion that I can’t lose weight successfully the same way I did in the past. Counting calories and other strict diet programs makes me obsess about food and become draconian with my daily choices. I see the world full of things I can’t have, daily, constantly. I think about food all the time - what I can have, what I’ll have next, do I have calories left over, what will I have to eat at the next meal if I eat that, etc… It’s EXHAUSTING.

And going to the gym in a non-gym culture is hard too. My life isn’t organized to get to the gym. I have no more excuses than anyone else to avoid exercise, but the truth is right now I’m not ready to carve out the time for it. I might someday go back to the gym, but not right now. And I acknowledge and accept that I will have slower weight loss because of it. For now, it’s the right choice for me. Long term, I want to be fitter, not just thinner, so I’ll need to work out a way to get more exercise, but at least for right now, I know that what I always considered a “real workout” will just add stress to my life. Stinky hot dirty and run down expensive Parisian gyms will have one less client for a while longer. Long walks a few times a week is what I can commit to.

Change is SCARY and HARD. I am working on changing the way I deal with food – something I deal with about 5 or more times a day. It’s not easy.

My new approach, which I call Low Stress Weight Loss is really about finding a way to manage my weight without losing my sanity. But I’m out of my comfort zone. Luckily I found Dr Hope who is giving me a lot of lessons that are in line with what I’m trying to achieve.

In truth, as much as I’d love to be several sizes smaller (about 4), I’ll gladly get there a year or two later in exchange for my sanity and an approach that I feel will work for me long-term. Which means biting the bullet and doing some hard thinking. And changing.

Part of what makes the change scary is my weight loss history. I’ve always been someone who believes in ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it’ and ‘don’t re-invent the wheel’. So if I need to lose weight again why not just return to what’s worked for me in the past?

My first successful weight loss (40 pounds) was following the low-fat craze, and I kept a very simple food journal of listings of foods I ate with no portions or calories calculated. Eventually my weight loss slowed, and then stalled, probably because plates of pasta piled to the sky or boxes of Snackwells fat-free cookies does not lead to losing weight. What I thought I learned here was that I needed to be more structured, and do more than just keep a list for serious weight loss. I didn’t keep those 40 pounds off for very long, but I’m no longer so sure it was because of the lack of structure - I was eating huge quantities of low-fat food, and I suspect in calories it was just too much.

My 2002 weight loss success was built on rigorous record keeping and even more rigorous exercise (with record keeping for that too). All the record keeping appealed deeply to my control-freak tendencies, and gave me things to obsess over. Since that effort was successful, this time not just in the short term, but in the long term. From 250+ I lost weight and eventually settled around 185-190 where I’ve been for 5+ years (recent slip-up not included).

So each time I’ve made an attempt to diet since 2003 it’s always been a return to the 2002 approach – strict diet, tons of exercise, and lots of record keeping. Except it hasn’t worked for me again. Which I know is actually a good thing, because I was miserably unhappy with my life in 2002 which is why I dedicated myself 100% to my weight. I needed and wanted a change, and so I made some radical ones. It worked.

My life today is totally different than in 2002, and all for the better. Today I am happy. Living in a fabulous city, married to, and in love with, a man who is such a great match for me sometimes I have to pinch myself to see I’m not dreaming, with a decent job, good prospects for the future and a diverse and balanced set of interests and activities. Of course maniacal dieting is not going to work with that. I don’t want it to.

In writing this I’m realizing that this new approach is about paying attention. Which is not what I did on the low-fat plan at all. And it’s about pleasure and moderation, which was not the approach in 2002, it’s not obsession.

It’s going to take time to learn how to do this, but it’s an interesting set of lessons.

I’ve stopped calorie counting.

I’ve been counting calories since I’ve been back on track (this is now the 6th week back on track). It wasn’t so much a decision to count calories as a decision to use an online food journal which automatically gives you the calorie counts. Still, an old-hand at dieting like me can’t sit in front of this kind of program and not see the totals for each day and try to stick to a similar range of calories.

Since I’ve been seeing Dr Hope I’ve been doing both the online thing PLUS a paper journal (with the columns to note where I ate, what I was doing, how I felt etc, along with what I ate).

I started to realize that maybe I should stop with the online journal the other day when I felt I had had enough to eat but I’d already marked that I ate a certain amount of the food in my online diary. Eventually reason won out and I didn’t keep eating just because I had written it down, but the incident did make me think. I’ve also noticed that sometimes I’ll eat more or an extra snack because I know I have the calories available for the day. That’s not listening to your hunger and paying attention to satisfaction, it’s nuts.

Bear in mind that I”m not even really actively dieting - just trying to get myself back on track a little, and the calorie target I’ve been working with is rather high.

All this behavior is deeply ingrained from years and years of dieting.

So for the past few days I’ve only been keeping the paper journal. At meals I try to think about how hungry I am, what I feel like eating, do I enjoy the tastes, and when can I stop eating.

Paying attention to food in this way is very new and quite hard for me. I’m also starting to think that it’s pretty opposite of the calorie-counting approach, and so in order to really give it the effort it deserves, I can’t be trying to do the new thinking while still secretly clinging to the old. Dr Hope didn’t know about the electronic food journal, because I was pretty sure she wouldn’t approve.

I confessed on Saturday when I saw her. Told her I’d been doing it, and that I was stopping. She was very supportive, as I expected. She called calorie counting and other types of counting or allowance dieting systems “accounting” and I thought that was interesting. It’s true that it puts a huge focus on food and what you’re allowed or supposed to have. I do think I think more about food when I’m dieting than when I’m free-for-all-ing.

I’m going to try the Dr Hope approach from now until January. No more diet software. Just the archaic paper journal … AND A WHOLE BUNCH OF THINKING.

Ok, Dr Hope gave me 3 homework assignments and I promised I’d share them :

Assignment 1: The first is to re-trace my weight history. Largely that’s in my “about” page so I won’t bore you all with it. I’ve been fat since I was a kid and I never got skinny. I had some success losing some weight at times, but pretty much was size 18-22 for all of my 20s and half of the 30s. I remember being 12 and going shopping w my dad for my first ‘grown up clothes’ not in the kid department and I wore a size 12. (which in those days was smaller than today’s size 12, but still…).

Assignment 2: Second homework assignment is to list as “true or false” each of the 27 statements below. I’ll mark T or F for what I’m writing on my homework paper for Dr Hope. (Note : the homework is in French - I’ve used “starches” to refer to bread, pasta, rice etc type of carbohydrates - there is a specific word for this in French)

1. I need to eat 3 meals a day (T)
2. I need to not eat between meals (F)
3. I need to never skip a meal (T)
4. I need to have a big breakfast every morning (F)
5. I must never leave in the morning without breakfast (T)
6. What I eat in the morning can’t make me fat (F)
7. One should never eat fruit in the middle of a meal (F)
8. One should never eat fruit between meals (F)
9. I should never mix starches and fats (F)
10. I should never mix protein and starches (F)
11. Everything eaten after 5pm is stored, not burned (F)
12. Eating before going to bed makes one fat (F)
13. Certain foods can’t make you fat (F)
14. Certain foods make you lose weight (F)
15. Certain foods always make you fat (F)
16. To lose weight you need a balanced diet (T)
17. To lose weight, you need balanced meals (T)
18. Proteins can’t make you fat (F)
19. To lose weight you need to drink water (F)
20. For a cocktail, tomato juice is a better choice than alcohol (T)
21. Starches can’t make you fat (F)
22. Fats make you fat (F)
23. A square of chocolate is more fattening than a nonfat yogurt (F)
24. If I don’t eat vegetables I can’t lose weight (T)
25. One should never eat starches more than once a day (F)
26. I need to eliminate sugars (T)
27. One needs to eat everything one likes in reduced quantities (F)

I think number 27 will turn out to be a big focus for her, and very difficult for me. I have always found it easier to avoid certain foods completely, because I have a hard time eating a “reasonable” portion of them…

Assignment 3 : Write the list of all your taboo foods

• Pastries
• Butter
• Cakes, cookies, pies, desserts
• Ice cream
• Pasta, rice, potatoes
• Bread (except whole wheat)
• Cheese
• Pizza
• A lot of restaurant foods (sauces, preparation, etc, including most ethnic stuff Chinese, Indian, Thai, Mexican, Lebanese. I can manage w French & American easier.)
• Candy
• Anything breaded or fried
• Most sauces

Maybe I’ll think of more taboo foods before my appointment tomorrow…

I’d love to see others’ Taboo Foods lists!

As I read others’ stories and blogs I am often overcome by the similarity of our struggles and sometimes in awe of the strength of some of you.

Today I came across a post of AngelFood, who last week accomplished what I am aiming for - a good week, without too much stress, and real food. Here’s her post.

Thanks to all of you who keep telling your daily ups and downs helping us all to learn and grow.