Soldiering On…

My Honey and I had a fabulous homecoming from his disappointing and scary motorcycle race, and my mum’s husband is out of the hospital and doing well.

I started an intense and highly selective leadership program, and we just returned from a very fun camping trip with friends… our first camping experience as a married couple and in the rain.  Nothin’ like snugglin’ up with your man while the thunder booms overhead and lightning flashes through the mesh windows.

I enjoyed the healthy stuff I brought for the trip, but I also indulged in some goodies brought by others: Oreos, Doritos and homemade s’mores, which we managed to cook over a damp fire in between rain showers.  I talked to my girlfriend a little about my weight gain and how I’ve been struggling for several months being 7 or so pounds up.  She said she couldn’t tell, which was nice… made even nicer by the fact that she’s extremely direct and would tell me straight up if she felt otherwise.  It was nice, along with being away from the computer and cell phone access, not to have a scale around and not to keep track of every morsel.  I felt free to just be me and do what I wanted to do with some moderating.

Returning to the real world this afternoon, I picked up the mail and found the latest issue of “More” magazine.  Candace Bushnell’s column really resonated.  Titled “Why I’m a beauty scrooge”, it details why she is against cosmetic surgery.  She relates a story in which, earlier in life, she’s offered a half-price boob job. Even with a huge discount, she couldn’t afford it, and she realized she was “…just going to have to soldier on” with her “…grossly imperfect body”.

That is EXACTLY how I feel on most days: that I am soldiering on with a grossly imperfect body.  It was wonderful to read that Candace Bushnell, an extremely successful writer and a “cougar” with a much younger boyfriend, has felt this way for years.  As she says, the message is “change your looks, and you can change your life”. 

Here’s the funny thing, though.  I have done that!  I have drastically changed my looks, and I have drastically changed my life.  It’s actually pretty darned amazing.  The life I’m living now is one I never even dreamed of.  It’s miraculous to me.  I am doing things personally and professionally that are exciting and challenging and notable.  I am making a difference in my community, and going on adventures, big and small, with my new husband.  My life has a surreal quality. 

Yet, I am still “soldiering on” when it comes to my looks.  There are days – after I see myself on TV or after I see a Facebook picture of a friend in a bikini who never let herself get fat and then had to fix it – that I am utterly devastated by what I see in the mirror… so much so that the urge to hide in the closet is nearly irresistible.  But, I soldier on, knowing that I cannot discount the love of my man by dissing what he sees as beautiful… knowing that my contribution to work is based on my skills and attitude, not my face or body shape… knowing that my support and appreciation of my friends and family has nothing to do with the size of my jeans. 

I hope to get past the soldiering.  It’s admirable but tiresome, and in my case, it’s wasteful of valuable energy.  It helps me live life fully, bringing me a kind of stubborn resolve to try that new thing “in spite of”, but it takes a toll at the same time, leeching joy and peace.

Instead, I hope to be able to truly embrace my transformation and appreciate its significance now… and what it will lead to in the future that I can’t yet see.  I guess I’ll keep soldiering on toward that goal.

Minor Meltdown

I had a minor meltdown tonight.  My frustration with not being able to eat what I want when I want to overwhelmed me, and I kinda lost it. I cursed and stomped my feet and was generally miserable.  It’s hard on my fiance when I’m like that.  He understands more than most, as he struggles with overeating himself, but he doesn’t get the anger I feel about the hand I’ve been dealt in life when it comes to my physical body. 

I am so angry, so resentful that I have to fight so hard not to give in to my eating desires.  Why is this my curse?  Why don’t other people have this problem?  And for those who choose not to fight it, why are they seemingly so comfortable with that decision?? Why does everyone look at me like I have six heads when I try to explain the compulsion?  When I describe the fear of falling completely off the wagon and losing everything?  They think I’m overly obsessive, and even my fiance said the same thing tonight when we finally talked through my upset.  He’s tired of reiterating that he loves me for the inside but that he truly does think I’m beautiful and sexy.  I don’t blame him; I’m tired of the whole thing, too, and I know it’s irritating for him.

Sometimes I feel so uncomfortable in my own skin that I just want to get away.  No one – not one person – in my circle understands how that feels.  My fiance thinks I want to get away from him when I want to leave.  It’s not that; I don’t want to leave him.  I want to leave myself behind.  Unfortunately, I can’t do that.  No matter where I go, there I am.

I don’t know how to get past this part of myself.  We keep rehashing it, and he wondered aloud tonight when we would stop having this same conversation.  He wasn’t particularly annoyed when he said it, but I can see that coming if I can’t overcome this. 

A lot of it, I know, has to do with stress and fatigue.  I haven’t been sleeping well at night, and along with managing wedding details and projects, my work has been extremely busy and intense.  Knowing all that, though, doesn’t make it easier.  I’m mad at myself for freaking out; I’m mad at myself for continuing to have this struggle; I’m mad at myself for taking it out on my fiance.  I’m just plain mad as hell.

I feel better now that my fiance and I have talked, but it’s not over.  These feelings are always within me; they just ebb and flow.  At some point, I will have to come up with a way to deal with it for good.  I just don’t know when or how.

I can relate…

I just read an excerpt of “Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater” by Frank Bruni.  Wow!  SO much of it sounded familiar.  Never getting enough food, sneaking food, always being too big in comparison to my peers, throwing up after eating too much.

I’ve never approached full-fledged bulimia, but I have thrown up to purge the excess calories.  Interestingly enough, I never did it as a child or even a young adult.  It’s much more recent than that.  The first time was a couple of years ago, and I went through a period where I did it fairly regularly.  Then I would stop, and then when things got stressful, I would do it again for a spell. 

Mr. Bruni talks about finding a bathroom where he’d have privacy and giving his face time to calm down so that it didn’t reveal the signs of his vomitting.  I have done the same thing, sneaking into the bathroom in a restaurant, hoping no one that I knew walked in while I was throwing up, putting eye drops in to get rid of the redness before heading back to the table.

He doesn’t mention this, but I wonder if others have had a hard time making themselves throw up.  I’ve had times when, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get anything up.  It’s maddening.  So frustrating to bring tears to my eyes with the effort, hacking and gagging, with nothing to show for it.

I haven’t done in it in several months, but it remains tempting, especially right now when my weight’s up 5 or so stubborn pounds.  I think that what keeps me from making it a habit is that I’m generally so health-conscious.  It’s hard to justify self-induced vomitting when I otherwise work diligently to take good care of myself.  But I definitely feel the pull of it.  It’s an appealing solution to a problem that frequently seems insurmountable.

The author describes his favorite foods like he’s writing a love story; he remembers every nuance: the texture, mouth feel, scent.  Food is like that for me, too.  It’s extraordinarily vivid and compelling.  He mentioned that he’d volunteer to clear the table so that he could lap up the remnants of dessert.  Me, too!  The author turned away from the scale in the doctor’s office.  Me, too!  I even went so far, when I got older, as to refuse to be weighed at all.

One thing I didn’t do was throw up when, as a child, I didn’t get the additional servings of food I wanted, which Mr. Bruni did.  That seems like very odd behavior to me, and yet it makes a weird kind of sense.  My relationship with food is so disordered that odd is normal.  It’s a struggle to relate to people who don’t feel an irresistible compulsion to eat.  I am bewildered by people who can leave food sitting in front of them without giving it a second thought once they’ve had their fill.  It’s foreign to me, truly foreign. 

While our stories are not exactly the same, I feel a kinship with Mr. Bruni.  I understand the torment, the fear, the shame, the turmoil that he’s lived with all his life.  I will be buying his book very soon.

Gliding on the Gazelle

It’s been an off week for P90X this week.  Work has been so busy, with meetings and outreach events during non-work hours, that it’s been really hard to fit in the DVD workouts.  Instead, I’ve been doing 30 minutes on Tony Little’s Gazelle.  It’s not nearly as intense as P90X, but at least it’s something.  My fiance has been home, and I can do the Gazelle while he’s home without waking him up super early or hogging the TV/DVD player at night.  It’s also a little more mindless after a crazy long day at work.

I may end up repeating the P90X program in the fall, after the wedding and after some of my evening work commitments have passed.

Are we ever “cured”?

In September, I will have been doing my lifestyle change for seven years.  That’s a long time, and it seems like it should have gotten easier.  Unfortunately… not so much.

I have been struggling for the last few months with a 7-pound weight gain.  I know why: I’ve got a huge amount of stress in my life right now.

1) I’m planning a wedding.  Even though it’s an untraditional wedding, low-key by wedding standards, it’s still a big event, and big events require a lot of work.

2) I’ve branched into doing TV for my work.  It’s extremely difficult to see myself on television.  To me, the flaws are glaringly obvious and exacerbated by the medium.  I’ve been fighting not to get depressed over it, but it’s tough.

3) I’ve been doing a lot more public speaking on evenings and weekends.  I am so excited to be doing this outreach because it’s critical to get the consumer protection messages out there.  But, there’s a lot of pressure when you’re dealing with people face-to-face who’ve been victims of fraud or are losing their homes.  They want answers, and they want those answers from you.  It’s also tiring to prepare and to work the extra hours.  It’s definitely worth it, but it takes a toll.

4) My fiance and I have been doing a lot traveling, off-roading and camping with various mishaps occurring along the way like wheels falling off vehicles, getting lost, flying at weird times of day, etc.  Lack of sleep and anxiety bring out my desire to munch.

Most of my stress is “good” stress, coming from positive events in my life.  But, when I’m stressed, no matter where that stress comes from, I want to eat.  When I get tired, I want to eat.  At times, that urge to eat is nearly irresistable.  In fact, it’s proven to be irresistable for me a lot recently, which is why I’m up seven pounds.

Do we ever get “cured” of overeating?  Will I ever be “normal” in how I approach food?  I don’t think so; I think I’ll always have this yoke around my neck.  It will be lighter sometimes, but it’ll always be there.

It’s an issue that obesity researchers continue to explore.  Irene Rubaum-Keller’s article “What is recovery from addiction?” asks, “If you are an addict, can you ever really get well or are you just destined to manage your tendency to be addicted to things/people/substances forever?”.  My experience tells me I will not “get well”, that instead I’ll just be managing the situation for the rest of my life.  And it bums me out that experts, people who’ve been researching this problem for years, don’t have any answers for me.

Rubaum-Keller says:

The bottom line is; we don’t know the answer to that question. The definition of recovery the committee came up with was this “a voluntarily maintained lifestyle composed characterized by sobriety, personal health, and citizenship.” It involves trading the easy drug/sex/gambling/food/shopping/alcohol high, with something more difficult to attain that is also more meaningful and lasting. Recovery does not just mean sobriety. It is a more holistic experience that involves improving one’s life in various ways.

I am committed to the path I’ve chosen, and for the most part, I’m glad I made the choice.  But voluntary maintenance is HARD.  I keep expecting it to get easier, and it just doesn’t.  That’s my reality.  For now, I can’t change it, so I’ve got to be aware of it and work with it the best I can.

In my current situation, I’m trying to focus on the fact that all I’ve gained is seven pounds.  I’m also proud of having taken on a very intensive exercise program with P90X.  My body is really strong; all my clothes still fit.  I’m having the adventure of a lifetime.  I’m managing the food situation successfully for the most part.  That’s the best I can do, and it has to be good enough for now.

Week 2 of P90X

I’m halfway through Week 2 of P90X.  It’s a terrific program.  So challenging.  Ab Ripper X, which I did tonight after doing the shoulders & arms workout, makes me use LOTS of foul language.  It’s tough, man!

The hardest one for me, though, is Yoga X.  That’s the one I have to do tomorrow.  I’ve always found yoga hard.  The longheld poses that seem to stretch the muscles endlessly kill me.  It will take everything I’ve got tomorrow to stick with it.  I can do kick-ass cardio and multiple weight reps forever (well, not really forever, but you know what I mean), but yoga… yowsa!  Sheer determination is the only thing that gets me through.

And, it’s a bit of a shame that it’s so tough for me because yoga is extremely good for you.  The whole mind-body thing is very important to good health and battling illnesses and stress.  I need to do yoga, even if I don’t want to.  As much as I recognize the importance of mind-body workouts, I have trouble making myself do ‘em.  I need to work on it, and this is an unexpected benefit of doing the P90X program.

I wonder, will I get “ripped” like the people in the ads?  I have some muscle definition, but it’s hard to imagine myself all cut like “those people”.  Supposedly it’s possible.  I just want to complete the program and lean out.

I’m a little apprehensive because we will be traveling on workout days over the next several weeks, so I will not be able to do all the workouts.  I will bring DVDs with me and do the workouts on the computer when we go to San Diego next weekend.  But, the week after we’ll be camping on the Grand Canyon, and I doubt we’ll bring the computer with us.  It’s a constant challenge with the life I lead with my fiance to stay on track.  There are ALWAYS special circumstances.  In fact, it’s really more of a special circumstance when there aren’t special circumstances.

I should give myself kudos for being able to adapt and adjust, but instead I usually feel frustrated and like I’m doing it half-assed.  Bottom line: I can only do what I can do, and clearly it’s worked for the most part.  I keep having to tell myself that!  Boy, it takes some of us a long time to internalize the message, eh? 

Anyway, I’m really enjoying P90X so far.  It’s great to be so challenged and to know that after another week, new challenges will come.  It’s great to save some money and to be home at night where I can do laundry or other things while working out.  P90X rocks!

Distracted by life and feeling frustrated with my eating

It’s been a month since I posted.  Yowsa!  That’s way too long.  Life has intervened, though, distracting me from my writing.  And, truthfully, sometimes I’m not sure what to say.  How much can I talk about diet and exercise, especially when I don’t feel like I’m succeeding at them?  I hate to be negative; I want to be inspiring and uplifting, not a Gloomy Gus.

My pole classes have been tremendously rewarding, but sometimes they’re frustrating, too. I often feel like I’m not progressing as quickly as I should, especially since I auditioned for – and won a spot on – the studio’s dance team.  I haven’t yet been able to perform in public, even though I’ve attended every single rehearsal and given it my all.  They think I have “massive potential”, but I’m not quite there yet.  It’s hard not to feel badly about it when most of the other girls have had their chance to shine.  And, now the paying gig, the one that launched the team concept in the first place, looks like it’s going away.  In its place, we’re doing “Get Ready for the Stage”, where we’ll essentially put on an adult dance recital for family and friends.  I’m excited to do that, but it’s not the same as getting paid to dance.  That’s my ultimate goal: I want to get paid to dance professionally… just once. 

Otherwise, wedding plans have consumed a lot of my mind, not to mention Skyping with my fiance after pole class.  By the time we’ve finished talking, I’m beat… ready for bed, not for typing. 

My weight’s been up a litle more than I’d like, and I once again find myself discouraged by that.  I remind myself that it goes in cycles, that it’s hard to stay the course perfectly when you have so much going on.  But it doesn’t really help.  I still feel like a failure and frustrated with myself.  I also get scared, really scared, about falling off the wagon entirely.  Now that the wedding is coming, I feel even more pressure… which irritates me further because I hate giving in to all that mental wedding hoopla!!

Plus, I have started doing TV work for my job, and seeing myself on the “big screen” has thrown me for a loop.  After I see my video, I’m so disgusted that I want to call off the wedding, which naturally doesn’t go over well with my fiance.  Poor guy… I’m just a tad neurotic, and he bears the brunt of it.  Thank goodness he loves me! 

The thing is… life is actually really good for me right now.  My work is awesome, and doing the TV stuff is a huge opportunity.  I have been very well received and gotten lots of positive feedback, despite my feeling that I should be wearing a bag over my head.  My body’s in the best condition it’s ever been in.  Even though my weight is higher than I’d like, I am still wearing a size 4 in tailored suits, which is fantastic at nearly 40 years old.  My friends are terrific.  My fiance is an amazing man; our love is extraordinary, and we are going to be married!  We’ve found the place; I’ve found the dress, and tonight I found the elements for a rockin’ invitation that I’m making myself.  How great is that?!?!  I am learning to fly with him to boot!  Life truly is wondrous. 

And yet… I still get down and upset about my weight, my looks.  I feel like things hang by a tenuous thread that can be snapped at any moment if I am not continuously vigilant.  Ah well… it’s probably the stress talking.  Although things are good, there’s still a lot of stuff going on.  Managing stuff, even when it’s positive stuff, is exhausting and stressful.  Once again, I guess I’ve got to cut myself some slack and try to chill a bit.

Can eating healthy hurt you?

A recent article in the NY Times suggests that being too health conscious about food can actually be harmful, especially to kids.  Apparently, some of them are obsessing about sodium and fat and calories to the point where they’re afraid to eat.  Hmm… I’m not sure I totally believe that as I read a lot more stories about kids suffering from lifestyle diseases like hypertension and diabetes due to obesity.  Anyway… this extreme obsession with healthy food has been dubbed “orthorexia”.

Orthorexia is an obsession with healthy, pure eating that can sometimes lead people to consume too few calories because they want to be extra sure the food is good for them.  In most cases, these folks are not in any physical danger, but they may suffer from unnecessary anxiety because of the “condition”.

I certainly don’t eat too little food because of my concerns about healthful eating, but I do get seriously nerved up about what I eat and how much.  It stresses me out a lot, and one of my goals this year is to stop worrying so much and learn to trust my body to do what’s right for it.  Trusting my body is much easier said than done because my instincts have been out of whack for so long.  It’s getting better, though… baby steps.

Supposedly one person has died because of “orthorexia”.  Someone named Kate Finn passed away in 2003 because of heart damage due to emaciation prompted not by a desire to lose weight but a focus on eating super healthy.

Going back even further, in the 1980s, there were concerns about “muesli belt malnutrition” in which kids were eating so supposedly healthfully that they weren’t getting the vitamins they needed.  This has been mostly debunked, but it brings up a good point.  Anytime we obsess on something, it can lead to bad results.  Balance is the key in all endeavours.  Again, easier said than done. 

I’m not too worried about being “too healthy”.  I’m more concerned about how much I berate myself when I don’t achieve the high standards I set for myself.  All that negative energy is very harmful.  As I mentioned earlier, that’s why I’m working on attaining some sort of peace with the process.  I’ve been reading books, but more important, I’ve attended a couple of intuitive workshops through my pole fitness studio.  These workshops have been very insightful and helpful.  Cleaning out the negative energies in my food and fitness space is critical.  I will soon have a one-on-one session with the healer who teaches the workshops.  I think that’ll be of tremendous benefit to my efforts to make the next phase of my lifestyle change more relaxed and positive.

The hard truth about weight loss

As great as my weight loss success has been, I frequently get discouraged by how long it has taken and how hard I still have to work to keep the pounds off. Shows like “The Biggest Loser” and magazine covers featuring women who’ve lost hundreds of pounds in a few months… rather than inspiring me, they bum me out because they make me feel like my results are not good enough.

So I was actually happy to read MSNBC’s “Forget low-fat — calories count more in dieting”. It provides details on a federal study that followed participants for two years and really confirms what I know to be true – as much as TV and magazines want to convince me otherwise.

1. Calories count. It doesn’t matter how you lower them – by cutting out carbs or fat or whatever; they just have to be lowered. The bottom line is that you’re not going to lose weight unless you consume fewer calories (or burn a bunch of them off through extremely high levels of exercise).

2. It takes a l-o-n-g time to lose a relatively small amount of weight. We don’t want to hear it; we are SUCH an instant gratification culture. In this study, participants lost an average of 13 pounds in six months. Most people I know would be disappointed instead of happy.

3. Chances are, the weight’s gonna come back. “…all groups saw their weight creep back up after a year. At two years, the average weight loss was about 9 pounds while waistlines shrank an average of 2 inches. Only 15 percent of dieters achieved a weight-loss reduction of 10 percent or more of their starting weight.”

I have been doing this for six and a half years, maintaining 117 pounds off. Sometimes, I’ve lost a bit more, sometimes a bit less. But, overall I have maintained – and continuously exercised – for an extended period of time. It’s taken a tremendous effort, and it’s still really, really difficult. This study is affirming. Whew! I don’t have to be so hard on myself! I am doing a terrific job, considering the odds are clearly against me. Based on this good news, I’m giving a shout-out to myself… and a reminder to be gentle, patient and understanding when I struggle.

Supersizing hits home

 The enormity of restaurant portions is well known, and countless strategies have been developed for dealing with them: ordering only appetizers, immediately putting half your meal in a to-go bag, even staying home rather than going out to eat.

Now, it turns out that eating in may be as dangerous to your waistline as dining out.  A study published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that cookbook recipes have significantly higher calorie counts than in the past.

“The study, which looked at how classic recipes have changed during the past 70 years, found a nearly 40 percent increase in calories per serving for nearly every recipe reviewed, about an extra 77 calories.”

Although the trend has been noted in other cookbooks, the study focused primarily on the classic “Joy of Cooking” cookbook, first published in the 1930s, discovering that…

“Only the chili con carne recipe remained unchanged through the years. The chicken gumbo, however, went from making 14 servings at 228 calories each in the 1936 edition, to making 10 servings at 576 calories each in the 2006 version.”

“And changes in “Joy of Cooking” have been going on for a while. Increases in overall calories per recipe have been gradual, but portion sizes tended to jump, first during the ’40s, again during the ’60s, and with the largest jump in the 2006 edition.”

Add a decade, expand a portion.  A brownie recipe that yielded 30 brownies in the 60s now delivers 15 brownies.  A chocolate chip cookie recipe that made 100 cookies initially now provides only 60.

So what do you do about it?  Unfortunately, being aware isn’t enough.  You have to be as vigilant at home as you are on the road.  Make smaller cookies or brownies.  Or, adapt your restaurant strategies for home: don’t eat a full portion, saving the extra for another meal.