no-weigh day

And what's all this about "lifestyle change"?

Before such a question is answered, let's review my weight-loss history.

High School.

For awhile there, I was a slave to the notion that to lose weight, I had to eat as fat-free as possible. Actually, this extended back into junior-high, when my awakward, semi-petite frame and mild junior-high dumpiness (and lack of ability to get boys to notice me) made me think I needed to lose weight pretty much all the time. This was also the time in general weight-loss history when fat-free was all the rage.

This continued for awhile, until my older sister, then mother, discovered something called Weigh Down Workshop. Essentially, a Christian weight-loss program that taught portion control via the wondrous concept of enjoying your food, taking small bites, and stopping at the first sign of comfortable fullness. (It had some other stuff about praying and trusting God, which I did and do, but ignored in this context, because it meant I had to read the whole book.) The earth-shaker, though, was that I could eat ANYTHING I WANTED.

Thus some weight loss began.

Community College.

However, I wasn't entirely in control of my... self-control. So, I might lose a bit of weight (and honestly, I was never terribly overweight, but I had all that attendant insecurity of adolescence), but it was never anything substantial, and it was more a battle of bingeing and feeling bad and then getting back on the wagon.

Somewhere in Between.

When I was 19, I moved to California. Pictures from this era show me as a slim-and-trim girl, though I'm sure I didn't think so at the time. I lived in California for 9 or so months, an interesting but debilitating time, health-wise, as I would sit in my apartment, often jobless, eating whole bags of microwave popcorn and large quantities of pizza. I got as heavy as I ever had been. I went back to Illinois for what was supposedly a trip home for my usual summer activities. I was especially ashamed of my weight-gain at a music festival, where nothing I put on seemed to look good, and I was distraught by the usual problem of not getting boys to notice me.

I didn't go back to California. Somehow, sometime not long after that festival, though, something clicked in my brain and body, and I started to just limit myself, portion-wise. I started to lose weight. I spent that whole winter and spring dropping pounds.

College.

For the first two years of my transfer university education, I attempted weight-loss and portion control and exercise. It was the proverbial time that I look back on now, and wish I had appreciated what I had. No, I wasn't perfect, and I still couldn't get those DAMNED BOYS TO NOTICE ME, which, of course, had nothing to do with my weight, and everything to do with them, losers.

In-between all my semester-ly attempts at health and weight loss, however, I was involved in a rather rollercoaster semi-relationship with a guy back home, and my first Christmas back, I managed to drop 5 pounds in a week, due to lack of interest in eating. It seemed pretty cool to me. I tried it the next summer, but somehow it backfired and while I was basically eating next to nothing I was gained weight. So I kind of despaired at that method.

Post-College.

I was basically still adhering to the whole Weigh-Down concept, because one attempt at eating "healthy" had failed (eating carrots all the time, not knowing they are rather sugary, and certainly not empty calories). I finally buckled down for about a month and ate more conscientiously and exercises regularly, seeing results fairly soon. This ended, however, when I tried out birth control, which contrary to what the drug reps say, certainly messed with my body enough to lead to weight gain, and a lack of ability to deal with my appetite, as my body was basically telling me I was pregnant. So I stopped the B.C., and with the mindset that portion-control wasn't really worth it, and tired of being fastidious, I bought some "natural" weight-loss pills. They worked... but when I ran out of money to buy them, it all came back. So that was that.

Graduate School.

Being alone, and lonely, and trying to adjust to raising an extra-high-maintenance puppy, a long-distance relationship (one guy, same rollercoaster guy, had definitely and definitively taken notice of me) and graduate school slowly took its toll on my decent weight level; beer, ramen, a gas station and its stock of snacks down the street, and choice new restuarants to frequent were all contributors. That was that. I couldn't get a grip, even with a Y membership.

I also was planning to get married at the end of the summer in-between school years. I wasn't one of those brides who could lose weight as well as plan a wedding and take summer credits. The next fall, I was married and no longer alone or lonely, but did have to adjust to a hungry guy who liked to eat more than I did (and could, without consequences), more often, but always - with me.

Which Brings Us To Where I Am Now
and no answer to my original question in sight.

I will get to that, next post.

-170(haven't weighed), 201.75 inches

I am quickly approaching my 10-day bout of PMS. I have also been lean-eating for nearly 3 weeks, so crunchtime is going to happen all at once: emotional derailment that leads to snacking as well as my traditional laziness that sets in at about a month (the benchmark for when habits are supposedly set, at that).

What I think will help is the good advice I read somewhere that if I don't keep snacky foods in my house, it makes it that much easier not to snack on them. of course, there is the potential reality that if I want it, dammit, I'll find a way to get it, but with weight loss, mental games and tricks really are a comfort and a help, not a ridiculous kind of brainwashing that they can seem to more cynical people (including me, at times). I bought some Weight Watchers carrot cakes and 5 of them were gone in 2.5 days' time. This is how it rolls. Not that I binged on them - they just became a more central part of my diet. :)

Something else that will help: already seeing results. my pants are looser. I tried on a pair that I hadn't worn since school started, and did not even remotely expect them to already be loose. Also, my "fat pants", normally loose, are not staying up and thus not being terribly modest. (Husband: "honey, your underwear is becoming a part of your look, do you need a belt?") This is good to me. I want to hit the 1-month mark, for besides the desire to bust my habit of breaking the habit factor, I have also read that it takes a month to really show weight loss. Hey, maybe my underwear will fall off, too.

170, Indeterminate Inches

As of yesterday, I've been "lean-eating" for two weeks.

This started for a multiplicity of reasons.

1 - I'm fat. Well, no, but according to any body-mass index, health professional, and the scores of items in my wardrobe that no longer fit in any way shape or form, I'm fat. I must say that I'm grateful to the morbidly obese population, if only for giving us a term for people who are truly fat, thus freeing the term fat for those of us who just need to lose weight. So I'm not morbidly obese.

But when I sit at my desk, I have to push the waist of my pants either over and under my spare tires. I take the elevator at school so that I won't get overly hot and crabby walking up four short flights of stairs. In flash photography, my butt pretty much shines, because the stretch material in my pants is maxed out, and therefore reflects my fatness to infamy in pictorial form. Fatness.

2 - I eat too much. I mean, I don't sit with one of those big plastic tubs of ice cream with handles and eat it in one sitting. I don't 10 sugared sodas a day. I don't finish off whole boxes of Lucky Charms. But I like food. As it says: I live to eat. Not the other way around.

Eating is fun. I like it. A lot. It is a preferred pasttime. I'm not like the French. I'm the American. I finish off plates at restaurants, enough food for 3 meals. It wasn't always this way, nor will it always be, but when things are crazy, as they often are, and I feel poor and neglected on any other level, I finish what I've started. And that's usually a bag of buffalo-wing potato chips.

3. Clothing. As mentioned before, a large part of my more enjoyable wardrobe is off-limits to me. I have a lot of choice clothing. I collect it. I also sew, and collect fabric and patterns for a time when I can actually make them. Also, my favorite season is summer, with the preferred "uniform" being a sundress. And some sort of shoe. No bra. No straps, even. And all that fabric, all those patterns, well, they are sundresses waiting to barely clothe me throughout the humid and oppressive and wonderful midwestern summers. I can't look like a sausage in a sundress. I have that much awareness of my social responsibility to the aesthetic well-being of others, and I am not a pretty sight.

Those are the main reasons. Of course, I could've put 4. health 5. emotional well-being 6. outright self-esteem boost 7. etc. but these are all pretty secondary to me, at least when it comes to motivations. They are all powerful reasons to stay on the wagon, but they don't get me on the wagon. For that matter, I'm not sure what really gets me on the wagon. But the holidays are over, school has started, I have money for food, and being that my husband and I have to be 90 miles apart during the week to finish our degrees - I only have to focus on my own caloric intake. And summer is coming. And dang, I want to wear some of those choice 80's vintage duds on my formal rack. And not look like I was poured into them.

Amen.