My Knock It Off! Challenge

I’ve been here before. Five pounds up. It happened in 2008 and I wrote about it at Refuse to Regain. (See “A Tale of Five Pounds.” )

Those five pounds were due to my sensitivity to “S” foods: starches, sugars, sorbital and sucralose. I got careless with my diet and from August to November, I gained five pounds. When I restricted the S foods to 2-3 a day, those five pounds went away in three weeks.

These current five pounds are post-surgical pains in the butt, but last Monday, I put on my big girl undies and challenged myself to knock those bad boys to the curb. I’m calling it my Knock It Off! challenge.

It’s been a long time since I’ve committed to a challenge. Sure, I’m committed to walking normally again and am faithful to physical therapy, but I’m talking about a personal challenge. Something I do only because I want to. To prove I can. To fit into my skinny jeans again.

You know me, I always have a plan. I didn’t wake up on Monday and say, “Gosh, I think I’ll lose five pounds!” I journaled over the weekend, answering these questions:

1. Why do I want to lose five pounds?
2. If I didn’t lose five pounds, would I be OK with that – physically and emotionally?
3. How will I lose five pounds?

My answers (The Readers Digest version):

1. I want to lose five pounds because I don’t like how they feel around my middle. I feel bloated and my pants are tight. There’s a point at which – usually around 126-130 – that I feel truly thin. My stomach is flat and I move lithely, bending effortlessly. I remember that feeling and I miss it.

Other than that, I have no “reason” to lose five pounds. At 135, I’m totally within an acceptable BMI. However, I know that if I don’t care about these five pounds, when will I start caring? At 10 pounds gained? 20? 50? As with any weight goal we establish for ourselves, it’s a personal preference as to what is acceptable. For me, five extra pounds is the top of my acceptable. I like being at the low end of the BMI scale. I am at home there.

2. If I don’t lose, will I be OK with it? In a word: no.

I know my body functions better at a lighter weight and so, if it’s within my power to do so, I will lose five pounds. If, however, my body will not give them up despite my best (and not crazy) efforts, I will make my peace. But in the meantime, no, I’m not OK with these five pounds and I want them gone. I will, however, be patient and give my body the time it needs to disperse of them.

3. How I’ll lose these five buggers is probably the toughest question. I eat roughly 1300-1500 calories a day, so eating less really isn’t an option. However, my choices are subject to change.

Just as I did the last time, I’m restricting my S foods to 2-3 a day. While I haven’t eaten as “badly” as before, my current intake could use a little tweaking. I’ll also increase my activity level the best I can and get back to a regular meditation schedule to lessen my stress. Weight gain isn’t solely a result of eating more and moving less. I’m under a lot of pressure these days and I know I need to deal with it in a more loving and kind fashion. That I recognize this is 99 percent of the battle. The other 1 percent should be a cinch once I get my brain around it.

You all know, it’s easier to lose four or five pounds than 104 or 105 pounds. It’s best I start now. Besides, I can’t afford a new wardrobe! (And I really like these new jeans.)

What do you challenge yourself to do? What do you strive to do with your body? What motivates you? How do you plan for it?

Knock It Off! has begun. I’ll let you know if and when I get there. Thanks, as always, for listening.

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When Occum Is Wrong

Yesterday was g-baby Claire’s 3rd birthday party. She’s a princess, isn’t she?

As always, most of my son-in-law’s family was there. They are kind, boisterous Steelers fans I’ve adopted as my family.

I met Matt’s parents in 2005 after losing the first 70 pounds in this journey. Here’s what I’d posted on Lynn’s Weight-Loss Journey back then:

“It’s September 18. Larry took this picture before we went out to dinner with my daughter's boyfriend's parents. This was the first time we'd met them. Driving there I told Larry that I would have felt so uncomfortable if I'd weighed 296. He said I would have found an excuse to cancel. That hit me hard, but he's right. I probably wouldn't have met them at my high weight. I would have avoided it like the plague.”

Meeting Frank and Julia the first time took a great deal of courage for me, even though they are two of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. Courage because I was a social hermit. And why was I a social hermit? Because of my weight, of course. Right?

You know how when you assume something’s true, you don’t think too deeply about it or question it? You just allow it to be what it is because on the surface it makes perfect sense. It’s Occam’s Razor: the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

Usually, but not always.

During my morbidly obese years, I assumed my weight was the reason I was reserved and shy. When I starting losing weight, I honest to god expected that at the end of the journey, I’d be a social butterfly, completely forgetting that before I was 300 pounds, I was NOT a social butterfly.

Remember what I wrote in my last blog? “Thin can solve or prevent a lot of physical ailments, but thin does not resolve issues of self-esteem.” I re-read that line a few times while thinking about this blog and a truth worked it’s way out: It’s OK to be shy. It’s OK to be introverted. It’s NOT OK to NOT accept that about myself and to constantly work against the grain and expect me to be something I can never be.

Self-esteem isn’t just about “feeling good” about ourselves, but accepting wholly and without reserve who we are inside and out. When we constantly think we’re going to change “some day” because our weight and/or circumstances will be different, we’re missing out on getting to know who we really are at the core.

For instance, on Friday, my friend Janet – whom I hadn’t seen in 3 years – came for a visit. We went out. Did a little bar hopping. Janet is assertive and has always been about talking to folks and having a good time. Friday night she was on top of her game. I, on the other hand, other than talk to a few people I knew, stayed to myself and did a lot of people watching.

Contrast that to yesterday when I felt comfortable among people I know love me no matter what I look like. And yet, like Friday, it took a lot of self-encouragement for me to be social and to interact.

Aha!

Here’s what I know about me. I am kind, I know how to throw a good party, I like to help out, I love meeting new people, AND it takes a lot to step outside my comfort zones.

The cool thing is? THAT’S OK!

It’s time I stopped blaming weight for what is not wrong. It’s not wrong that I am shy in public. It’s not wrong that my first tendency is to avoid social situations.

I feel like a refrigerator’s been lifted off my shoulders. Amazing what a little thinking and perspective will do, isn’t it?

This weekend, Frank and Julia’s daughter is getting married. (This is a photo of some of my adopted family. My daughter Cassie is in the middle, pregnant with Claire three years ago. The bride is on the far right.) There will be 460 people at the wedding, significantly more than Sunday’s birthday party. Dressed in my new black dress (and a bit of Spanx), I will attend the wedding and reception, all the while encouraging myself into self-confidence rather than talking myself into being something I’m not.

Heck, I might even dance a little :)


One more photo from the Claire's b-day party.

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The Thing About Weight Loss Is…

Reading blogs about the ways in which weight loss/maintenance are integrated into everyday life never fails to inspire me to keep going. And I know that’s why many of you read my blog, too. You expect me to be honest with you about my perspectives on weight loss and maintenance. So with that in mind – the honesty part – today’s blog comes from the center of my life as it is right now.

Over the last month, I’ve instigated some major changes for my life; painfully necessary changes that will take me away from many of the comfort zones in which I’ve cloistered myself since losing weight. But why I’m forging ahead into this unknown is because if I’ve learned nothing else in the last six years it’s that the person I am inside – at any size – is the person most in need of my love and protection.

I believe this is true for everyone, even those of you who have children or other family or friends who you say “come first.” I used to feel that way, too. I used to put everyone and everything else first and me somewhere way down the list. But the only way I could start this path – this time – of weight loss was to accept the fact that if I didn’t acknowledge, value and protect my self-worth, I would be perpetually…in a word…screwed.

Every time I lost weight in the past, I thought when I got to goal, my problems would be solved. And every time I was wrong. This time was no different. I readily admit that I wanted to run away from 300 pounds as fast as I could; leave it buried somewhere in my past. But 300-pound me tagged along, and it was around 200 pounds that I learned that life was what I made of it, obese or not, and I couldn’t run away from 300-pound me, or the me who weighed 139 pounds for five minutes in 1990, or 170 in 1987, or 120 in junior high school. I was all of those weights yet only one person. Me.

When I was 300 pounds, I took comfort in the fact that no one really looked at me – not “that” way, anyway. I didn’t dress to impress, and the expectation of me stemmed usually above the neck. I was smart, I loved what I did for a living (I was an antiques dealer as well as being a writer), and my family loved me for me. Then I lost weight and people DID start looking at me “that” way, and for awhile I allowed the expectation of others to become my expectation: stay pretty and happy because that’s what thin is all about.

Wrong. Thin can solve or prevent a lot of physical ailments, but thin does not resolve issues of self-esteem.

For example, I still apologize excessively, and sometimes I feel I don’t have the right to ask for what I need. These behaviors stem from deep-seeded, long ago issues that I chip away at resolution year after year, the ones that can’t be solved in a few sessions with a psychologist or through ice cream or retail therapy.

And so here I am in 2010, thin and still chipping away at the me underneath.

But, as Martha says, “It’s a good thing.”

I’m not the keeper of the keys, or have all the answers for weight loss, maintenance and life. But I will continue to share here what I observe and know to be true for myself. I will also continue to do my best to stay at this weight because it feels like home to me, which is good because I’ll be moving soon and I need the comfort of the way I feel about myself in this body. We are one, after all, my body and my mind, and while we’re far from perfect, we’re all I’ve got.

From the outside, and even to me sometimes, it seems like I have everything I wanted at the beginning of my journey. But I don’t and that’s OK.

Maintaining this latest and largest weight loss is part of my life, but it is not my life. My life is me, and I’m taking care of me, even though this new path will be bumpy as hell. But it’s with a smile and only a little timidity that I say to the uncertainty of the next few months, “Ready or not, here I come!”

And I promise to take you all with me.

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Laryngitis Lynnie

My son-in-law loves me, even though he insists on calling me Lynnie every chance he gets.

“Goodbye, Laryngitis Lynnie!” he said yesterday as I was leaving Pittsburgh, big grin on his face.

Love you, too, Matt. *eyeroll*

It happens every couple of years, this laryngitis nonsense that always eventually makes sense. I felt it coming on Saturday afternoon, and sure enough by midnight, my voice was toast. I talked (actually I whispered) a little too much early yesterday which made it worse before I got smart and shut the heck up. For 28 hours I’ve been silent and must remain silent for at least another 24-48. Doctor’s orders.

I’m relegated to texting, emailing and hand-writing people I’d normally just talk to. I may have no vocal chords to speak of right now, but I still have a lot to say. Too much, perhaps. Just ask my massage therapist. A normal person with laryngitis would go in and write, “I have laryngitis and cannot talk” and just enjoy a silent massage.

Not me.

My massage therapist doubles as my shrink. I brought my note pad and pen into the room today and wrote to her while she worked the kinks out of my neck and knee. Only when I was on my stomach was I rendered speechless, so to speak, but it was then that I truly relaxed and heard that voice in my head say, “Chillax, woman.”

It’s not like I yammer on constantly. In fact, my days are usually filled with a lot of silence. But it’s silence born from being alone, not from an inability to talk. On silent days, I have the option of picking up the phone and calling someone. I can chat with the mailman. Say hello to my neighbor or the person who makes my latte. This self-imposed silence takes concentration. Mindfulness.

The reality is that right now, I can’t talk. It hurts. And when something hurts, you take care of it, right? Isn’t that what you do?

Probably not always, is my guess. How often do we put ourselves first, even when necessary? We’re busy, we have things we absolutely have to do, and we tell ourselves it’s OK – maybe even preferred – to care about everyone else, but not ourselves. We have too little time, we’re not that important, and so we suffer in silence instead of appreciate or welcome silence.

I thought it was funny (not “ha ha” funny, but funny) that it is this silence – this “I can’t talk even if I wanted to” silence – that showed me that I fill my vocally-able times with a whole lot of bullsh*t. Sorry for the expletive, but it’s the truth. How many times do we say exactly what we want to, with no preludes, no great big explanations and no apologies? How often do we just get to the point? Say what we need?

I’m certainly not the queen of succinct talking, especially when I have to ask for something. I hem. I haw. I try to read the other person to see if I have the right to ask what it is I want to ask. It comes down to self-esteem and self-worth, and I waste a lot of words winding my way through that maze. That was my MO when I was 300 pounds, that’s for sure. I hardly ever stuck up for myself or asserted what I needed unless I was sure I’d get it. My self-esteem was minus zero back then. Glad to say it’s on the plus side now, but still could use some improvement. I’m working on it.

It’s “helps,” if you will, to get laryngitis. I’m beholden to a pen and a piece of paper. A phone with 100 characters of texting capability. I have to be very succinct when I convey what I need. No BS, no fluff stuff that rarely belongs in a conversation.

“Will U buy me Vit C?” I wrote to Larry before he went to work. If I could talk, I’d have said my doctor said I should take vitamin C while I’m sick, then had a big long debate with him about whether vitamin C really does any good and maybe I shouldn’t waste my time and money, when in the end I know I’d have asked him to buy it for me anyway. So I bypassed the BS and simply “said,” will you buy me vitamin C? And he said, “Yes.” That’s all. Just, “Yes. 100 tabs OK?”

I wish it didn’t take such a drastic condition for me to wake up and appreciate silences; to knock off the BS and get to the heart of what I want to say. I’m sure it will be a few more laryngitis episodes before I learn that lesson completely.

My voice is toast. I just tried to say something and notta. I can’t even laugh. I even sneeze in silence. So there will be a lot of time in the upcoming day or two for silent thought and reflection. I’m not going to waste it. Because like the women in the Loreal commercial, I’m worth it. I’m worth this silent time. I just hope deep down I absorb it, believe it, and speak more mindfully when my voice returns.

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Joy vs. Drudgery: Weight Loss and Hopping

Every time I see Claire lately, we have the same conversation:

Claire: Grammy, your boo boo all better?
Me: Almost.
Claire: You can hop wiff me?
Me: Not yet, honey. Soon.

Claire’s a hopper. And a jumper and a skipper and a runner and a tricylcer. But mostly she’s a hopper. It’s in her blood.

Mommy Cassie hopping

Auntie Carly hopping

I introduced Claire to hopscotch last year. I drew a great big hopscotch grid on the driveway, and while she didn’t understand the rules, the grid gave her hopping a focus. Now she hops up a curb, she hops down a curb. She hops over cracks in the sidewalk, hops up stairs, and hops from one brick to another on a cobblestone street. When we went camping in August, she found two logs she could hop between. In parking lots, she hops between the concrete parking guides.

We think of hopping as fundamentally easy, but if you watch a child hop, you’ll see much more than carefree fun. Hopping is serious business. In the year that she’s been hopping, Claire’s fallen enough times to know hopping requires her full attention. Before she hops, even if it’s a split second, she concentrates, calculates how much oomph she’ll need in regard to distance, and executes her move with precision.

A lot of people think of weight loss as fundamentally easy, too. The formula – eat less, move more – is simple enough, right? So why is it so damn hard to lose and even harder to keep it off?

I think it’s because we forget that weight loss and maintenance can be fun

Watching Claire hopping yesterday, I saw fun within her determination and concentration. She knows hopping takes a lot of energy, but she also elicits a great deal of joy from it, and it’s that joy that makes it worth all the effort.

In my last blog, I wrote about finding balance in how we lose weight, incorporating healthy eating into our everyday routine rather than viewing it as temporary, like it’s some kind of injury (see “Lynn’s ‘Balance Plan’”). In a comment, Ruth wrote: “…the reason for such high recidivism in 'dieting’…(is) the view that it is a restriction, not a choice.”

Weight loss – or any big change toward the positive we make in our lives – is tough, but it can be fun, too. Maybe not circus fun or theme park fun. But fun is knowing you won’t be so full that you’ll have heartburn every day. Fun is knowing your body is running more efficiently. Fun is dropping a pants size. Fun is learning to work parts of your body you’d ignored for years. Fun is waking up in the morning fresh, knowing any “falls” you might have had the day or week or month before are all in the past.

I can’t wait to hop with Claire again, to not be on the sidelines or on the outside looking in at total joy. The same was true with weight loss. Almost six years ago I got off the sidelines and allowed weight loss to become the joy I’d been looking in at for so many years.

So…how are you having fun with weight loss or maintenance?

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Lynn's "Balance Plan"

I’ve been reading over some of my writing as I research an upcoming Refuse To Regain blog about an aha! moment I had recently regarding exercise and weight maintenance. I came across this blog, “Lynn’s ‘Balance Plan,’” written in June 2008 for RTR, and I thought how, more than two years later, it still represents how I feel about weight loss and maintenance. I wanted to share it with you in hopes maybe you’d relate to some of it yourself. I’d love to hear from you if it does, and even if it doesn't, and why.

Have you seen or perhaps even used a balance board? It’s basically a 2-foot by 1-foot wooden board with a rollerball underneath. The idea is to stand on it while performing other exercises such as lifting free weights. The goal is to teach the body how to balance itself, to be more stable.

The first time I got on one of those suckers, I felt like I was on an amusement park ride. I was all over the place! Wobbling here, wobbling there. I could barely stay on the thing, let alone lift weights at the same time.

Over time, however, my body adjusted to the subtle movement of the rollerball and I learned to trust my instincts – to feel the rocking back and forth and to stay stable – as I concentrated on lifting weights. I found the balance.

And so it is with weight loss/weight maintenance. As reader/fellow maintainer Susan said in a comment posted to Barbara’s recent blog (see “Let’s Get Specific”), “Perfection is not the key to maintenance. It is finding balance you can live with.”

In response to Barbara’s challenge that we name and explain our “lifestyle change” plan that works for us, I offer “The Balance Plan” (or as I’ve nicknamed it: “How Lynn Walks and Chews Gum at the Same Time”).

The Balance Plan incorporates everything in my life. I blog, I answer email, work out, feed the birds, water the plants, babysit my granddaughter, eat, sleep, shower, go to parties, and go on vacation and all the while, maintenance buzzes in the background. It’s always with me, around me, and in me. It is me.

I’m adopting as my credo something my friend Sondra wrote in a comment: “I choose to stand my ground that I will put what is best for me first.”

Amen.

To maintain my weight loss, I’m learning to rely on my instinct and what “feels” right, in the same way I trust my body will keep me balanced on a wobble board. I also eat whole foods as close to their natural state, most of the time. I allow for chocolate and pudding and vices such as that, but always, always in moderation. I still use, as a tool, the Points system to help me gauge my overall food intake, but even that is becoming more “natural” for me to determine. My goal is to one day eat in total accordance to my body’s needs.

I’ve always said there’s a reason why pregnancy is supposed to take 9 months. We need time to prepare. There’s a reason why weight loss isn’t overnight. We need time to prepare for maintenance. Whether you lost weight through diet and exercise alone or with some kind of surgery, how you lost the weight is only a preparatory class for maintenance and forever, and as Sondra said, you have to change your lifestyle to get to goal.

It's frustrating to read posts on my favorite Weight Watchers discussion board from people returning from vacation bragging about how much food they ate and how “off plan” they were. They were on a “food vacation,” happy and content to stuff themselves with all their old favorites.

In real life – in real weight loss and in real maintenance – there are no such “food vacations.” Yes, there are times when we might indulge in some particular food, but we know it can’t be all the time and we know that to continue our maintenance balance, we must plan for such splurges. And as Susan reminds us, “…the most important thing is getting right back to good/clean eating after a couple of not so great meals.”

When these people return from their food vacations, the often post that they are are sad to get “back on plan.” They miss their old lifestyle. They see the new lifestyle they must embrace and resist it, like it’s their enemy.

On the Balance Plan, I understand that I have to be a friend to my body, to my food choices, and my exercise regimen, and to stand on the same side as my “lifestyle change,” to be fully immersed in it and not leave it at home when I go on vacation or out with friends or to a party or on a picnic. I take it with me at all times because it’s who I am, just as sure as I am a 44-year-old female.

The Balance Plan is open to new ideas and research. I educate myself and question “authority.” I ask lots of questions, try new foods and various approaches to obtaining the right nutrients. As I said earlier, I trust my instinct. I trust there’s a balance.

If I fall of the balance board, I get right back on. Not getting back on is not an option just as I can’t choose to not be 5’5” tall. The Balance Plan is innate so its “rules” change from person to person. But in the end, it’s about being your own best friend – walking and chewing gum at the same time, so to speak.

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Crazy. Busy. Avoiding the Second Arrow

I don’t get too busy too often, and when I do, it’s usually not for more than a day, maybe two. This last week, though, has been non-stop busy, and it’s given me a huge appreciation for those of you who’ve told me how hard it is to plan your menu for a day, let alone a week, because your schedules are so hectic. I kind of get that now.

I forgot to eat dinner on Thursday night and ate a bowl of Grape-Nuts when I woke up very hungry at 2 a.m. I slammed down a Subway Veggie Delite on my way home from Pittsburgh late Friday night and it sat in my stomach like a lead balloon. (For the record, I love Subway’s veggie sandwich, but the bread was overkill after a day saturated with simple carbs.)

Saturday I was up early, went to a bridal shower, had lunch with my daughter, came home, showered and went out again…another missed dinner. When I got home at midnight, I had a PB2 sandwich and a Hershey Bliss. Granted, that’s a far cry from the days of grilled Spam and Velvetta sandwiches or 3-egg ham and cheese omelets, but still…chocolate and peanut butter at midnight?

It’s not easy to be prepared for everything and all circumstances, but I had advanced warning for several of the things that made me busy. But rather than plan my food like I usually do, I flew by the seat of my pants. Not my most stellar move.

The crazy business of the week involves many things: Mathilda’s death (we put her down last Tuesday, poor girl’s legs just weren’t going to work anymore), my knee, the lack of hard-core aerobic exercise, and, without boring you with details, a kinda sorta messy personal life. When it rains it pours.

It’s rained like this before when I’ve lost weight and…surprise, surprise…I was unable to maintain my weight loss. The culprit was always eating whatever whenever and not giving any thought to my body and what it needed. The things that were falling apart around me superseded that and I sought comfort in food rather than a fully alive and functioning body.

I can see how this could happen again, but I’ve got a rock solid maintenance mentality on my side. I trust that all I’ve learned in the last four years will keep me from straying too far.

I also trust the guidance of the Buddhist teaching of the second arrow, that when we encounter pain (when we’re shot with the first arrow), we have the choice of how we handle that pain. We can blame or whine or indulge (hello chocolate cake!), trying to run away from the pain (thus shooting ourselves with the second arrow), or we can experience the pain of the original arrow and live from within that pain and work out the best course of action that will not further our suffering.

Sometimes it sucks to feel that first arrow. OK, who am I kidding? It usually ALWAYS sucks to feel the pain of the first arrow. But in maintenance, I’m going to do all I can to not further my suffering by piling on a few or 20 pounds.

This week I will do my best to stay mindful, to treat myself and my body kindly. Not eating, carbohydrate shock – these are second arrows. And god knows I’ve got enough to deal with with that first arrow than work around the emotional complications of that second one.

In terms of food and taking care of yourself, how do you deal with that first arrow?

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