You Gotta Fight For Your Right To (Pity) Party

Last night we went to a going away party for a friend of my husband. I’d actually been kind of reluctant to go because the last time I had seen many of the people at this party I weighed twenty pounds less than I do now. Why is that the first thing I ever think about when a social event comes up? Anytime social events arise, the first thing I think about is how much weight I’ve gained. I really hate that I think like this; it makes me angry with myself. Why is it important to me? Why do I care what people may think of me? I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around it and I think that it’s more than just worrying about what other people think. It’s more like it reminds me of just how out of hand I let things get. Since I last saw these people, I gained like forty pounds and even with the weight I’ve taken off, I’m still sitting twenty pounds heavier than what I was. Why this matters to me so much, I really don’t know. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m so overly sensitive or narcissistic to think that my weight matters to others around me but it’s a true feeling that I experience so I won’t hold back from telling you all that I do indeed feel it. I know it’s silly and I know it’s unhealthy but as I was putting on my makeup last night I couldn’t help feeling bad about myself and thinking that no amount of mascara was going to hide what I’ve done to my poor body over the last year. I don’t know, my poor body deserves better. It deserves to be filled with good food, receive exercise and sleep and rest. It doesn’t need to be force fed crap, stretched out of shape by emotional eating and it certainly doesn’t need me beating it up mentally yet these are things that I have repeatedly done to it for years now. Grrr. Sorry, I’m yucky today. I’ll try to wake up tomorrow my happy, positive self but for some reason this weekend I have been rolling around in my own self-loathing. Maybe what I need is a nice hot bath to try and wash some of it off!

Weigh To Go! Part 7

December’s Starting Weight: 178.9 Last Month’s Weigh-In: 148.6 Today’s Weigh-In: 145.2 Total Lost To Date: 33.7 This month I’m down 3.4 pounds. I didn’t lose the 5 pounds I was aiming for but that’s ok. I find that if I set myself a goal, I just naturally try harder. I need something to strive towards; if I don’t make it, that’s ok because at least I know I was giving it my best. Last post I was worried that I had hit a plateau. But I looked back at my food journal and weigh-ins and realized that I really got down to business and started logging in all my calories and carbs at the end of April. Since then, I’ve been losing about 4 pounds a month on average so really I’m right where I should be with the 3.4 loss this month. I also started doing some weight lifting the last few weeks. I’ve always stuck to jogging/walking/running and now I’m doing all kinds of new exercises using free weights and resistance bands. I build muscle easily and so I think that feeling like my body is stuck might be more of a result of building muscle. I’m the type of person who gets discouraged if my pants feel tight and ignores the fact that my legs are getting smoother and more toned. It’s just a leftover fear that big equals Fat. So what if my pants aren’t feeling as loose as I’d like them to feel? I’m totally ignoring the fact that I’m replacing fat with muscle. I need to remember that this is long-term and in a few more weeks I’ll really be able to see the benefits. I also wanted to make sure I said thank you for all your supportive comments last post. Every once in awhile I have these little freak out moments where I think I can’t do this and it’s so nice to feel your support. It makes me feel like yes I can do this! I also think that I’ll take your advice and see if I can mix up my food program too. It’s something that I really like the idea of. I’m going grocery shopping tonight and I think I want to buy more fresh veggies and fruits. I tend to eat very pre-packaged, easy to carry meals during the day because it fits into my busy schedule. But that doesn’t mean that when I get home I need to eat that way too. So I figure that at night I’m going to really try to eat more balanced dinners with lots of fresh vegetables, lean protein and fruits for dessert. So July is gone already! Can you believe it? I had vowed to kick its ass this month and all things considered, I’m going to say I at least managed to slap it around some. Ok, August, here I come!

Stuck!

Sorry I’ve been absent all week, I have been so tired and busy lately that everything finally caught up with me. I started this month out vowing to kick July’s ass. Little did I know that it was my ass that was going to receive the kicking. This time I made it three weeks with exercising everyday before I fell on my figurative face. I pretty much crashed and burned Thursday night. I went to bed early and as I had Friday off, ended up sleeping most of Friday away. Then I never really got going for the rest of the weekend. I’m just so tired; I’ve kept up a crazy pace for the past few months and it finally caught up with me. I did absolutely nothing over Saturday and Sunday. I slept until the late afternoon and after dragging myself on to the couch in front of the tv, I only got up to dig around in the kitchen for something to eat. I stayed on target calorie-wise but I still feel bloated and yucky just because I lazed around so much. So weigh-in is in three days and I know that I’m going to fall short of my 5-pound challenge. I actually would be surprised if I lost anything this month. My body feels pretty much the same and I kind of feel like I’m hitting a plateau right now. I refuse to lower my calorie intake anymore than it is, I can’t function on less food than I’m taking in right now. I know from past experience that if I go too low I end up feeling run down and then I fall off the diet wagon because I can’t keep to such a rigid plan. The other alternative would be to bump up my exercise but as this weekend proved, I don’t have that much more to give energy wise. I feel a little stuck right now. I’ve lost over thirty pounds and I have less than twenty to go to get to goal. I keep thinking that maybe I need a break but then I think about how close I am and I don’t want to stop now. I keep telling myself that in a few months I could be at goal; I don’t want a moment’s delay. But I realize that right now requires more effort just when I feel like there’s not enough fight in me.

Because Lynne Cannot Live On Soda Alone

All my life I really have struggled to drink water. In the old days I used to drink nothing but sodas and rarely would drink water straight up. I used to hate the fact that it had no taste and would barely choke it down before finding my way to the closest vending machine. But over the past few months I have developed a love for my former enemy. It still is a shock to me that I drink it now because I enjoy the fresh clean feeling of water and I drink a ton of it nowadays, just like a good girl should! I easily drink at least eight to ten bottles a day and I always have a nice big glass of the clear stuff next to me at all times. At work we have bottled water but today we ran out. I only had the one bottle that I had brought with me and that was gone within the first twenty minutes. By 10 o’clock I noticed a slight headache but ignored it. By 3:00 my head was pounding. After I got home I couldn’t drink enough but the headache persisted the rest of this evening. It’s after 10 and now I’m finally feeling better! It just makes me think, how did I never drink water before? How come my little kidneys didn’t protest and give up? My poor body, it must have been scared that Water Days was over and so the headache was a warning that we weren’t going back to our former soda drinking ways! Isn’t it funny how we can spend years feeding our body crap food and depriving it of healthy things but then after we make changes for the better, our bodies become more sensitive to any slip back into old behaviors that used to be the norm?

Déjà Vu

Lately it seems that I’m experiencing déjà vu of my first big weight loss experience. For instance, today at work my co-workers were discussing weight loss. One of the girls said that while she understands how easy it is to gain a little weight, she couldn’t understand how people can be to the point where they are 100 pounds or more overweight. The other girls nodded their heads in that “I couldn’t imagine that either” sort of way. I didn’t know what to say. Because I can totally understand how that happens! This co-worker has really only seen me at the weight I am right now or less. I don’t know if she realizes that in the past I lost 68 pounds, gained some back, lost 30, gained it back plus more, and now am once again making my way down the scales. I figure that when I’m done with this latest weight loss adventure I’ll have probably lost nearly 50 this time around. It was kind of like this, “Hey! I am one of those people that you’re talking about!” Here’s what I’ve realized, on a good day in a great outfit, I don’t look like a big fat girl. I look slightly chubby to downright normal depending on the observer’s standards. Also, I don’t ever talk about fat or dieting in my “real” life (only with you lovely people do I feel comfortable) so people don’t know my long history with fat and fatness and therefore feel free to say whatever they really feel in front of me. But underneath, I’m still heavy. I have cellulite and fat rolls and many other little indicators of fighting the fat war. Let’s not even talk about the psychological fat because I still have a ton of that poundage to move! The whole conversation made me feel so weird. It made me feel like a fraud; like a fat girl who has somehow managed to listen in on the skinny world’s conversations. Like I’ve had the chance to hear what they really say about people like me when we’re not around. And here’s something else that I think about: I realize that there have been so many times where I’ve tried to lose weight and then failed miserably. Then there happened to be this one magical time where everything clicked and I lost a lot. But what if that one time hadn’t been successful? Wonder if I had continued on the same path that I was on? I know I would have continued to gain and gain and gain. 100 pounds or more? Oh yes, that could have easily been me, in a heartbeat. It’s just weird to think how easily I could be the very person they’re having difficulty imagining. I mean I pretty much was, 68 is not that much less than 100 and at the time the scales were quickly sliding that way. I know that weight loss takes a lot of hard work but I’ve always thought that it could have easily worked out a totally different way for me. I sometimes feel like it was by a stroke of luck that my weight loss efforts went the way of success. Imagine that same conversation if I hadn’t lost weight, they would have had the same opinions but would have never said them in front of me. I don’t know, every once in awhile I realize how there are only certain people who can understand what this is really like. Being part of Fatblogland is fantastic; you connect with people who understand something that you thought nobody could relate to. Then you realize what the outside world can be like and even though you know how things are, they still kind of catch you off guard.

Feats Of Strength

I’ve been trying to add some weights and strength training into my exercise routine. I’m very comfortable with walking/jogging/Steely Dan workout routines but the world of muscle toning is relatively new to me. I think for so long I labored under the delusion that lifting any kind of weight would make me bulky. Nowadays though there’s so much information out there about how great weight training is for women to burn fat and shape their bodies. I think I’m getting near the point where I need to start thinking about smoothing and toning my muscles more. I think that not only will it make me healthier and stronger but also it will probably give me the body shape I’m looking for. So I’ve been using resistance bands (for some weird reason I totally get a kick out of them) and I’ve been trying to use a weighted rubber ball that my husband owns. I have no idea what the ball is called but again, for some weird reason, I get a kick out of using it which means that I’ll use it more than I would a regular dumbbell. The funny thing is, when I take the ball out to use, the pup totally freaks out. It’s like this gigantic blue ball that’s bigger than him and try as he might, he just can’t get it to budge. So when he sees me lifting it over my head he gets totally excited. Perhaps I flatter myself, but I think maybe he’s impressed by my strength?

Yes, You Don’t Need PMS To Have Mood Swings But Then Sometimes It Totally Is The PMS Causing The Mood Swings

So today I just felt off. I was tired, grumpy and feeling blah, like I just wanted to crawl under the covers and nap the day away. I was not in the mood to work out but I knew that I would feel better if I did so I got dressed to spend a little time with Steely Dan. Usually once I start I feel better and I end up getting into the workout. But today my heart just wasn’t in it and it took everything for me not to quit halfway through. This “icky” feeling continued all day until it occurred to me to get the calendar out. After counting the days I figured out that it’s just TOM getting ready to show up. A total “duh!” moment. You’d think that considering this happens every month that one of these times I’d figure it out!

One Plate, One Fork, One Glass Equals Easy To Clean

My husband is a big snacker; he can eat a huge meal and then a little more than an hour later end up back in the kitchen eating a mini-meal. (His idea of a snack is what I’d call a dinner-size portion!) When he sits down on the couch next to me with a big bowl of ice cream, I’m often inspired to dig around in the kitchen too before realizing that I’m not really that hungry and that I'm just eating to eat. So with him out of town this week for work, I’m planning on a ton of exercise to pass the time and some light and healthful eating. It’s funny though because being left to my own devices doesn’t always result in a week of on-plan behavior. Actually, I usually do either really good with eating or really bad with eating when he’s gone, with no in-between. In previous times I’ve spent a week doing the best gym routines of my life and there’s also been those times when Burger King, Home of The Whopper became Burger King, Home of Lynne. Sometimes when I'm by myself I really get into cooking for one and sometimes I love the fact that all I have to do is hit the drive-thru and the cooking is done for me. Luckily, I had a great day today and don’t foresee any problems with the rest of this week (knock on wood!) I think the lack of temptation is from that 5-pound challenge dangling before me. I realize that as silly as it sounds, small mini-goals totally bring out the hard core competitor in me!

You Don't Need PMS To Have Mood Swings

I dislike this once a week posting pattern I’ve gotten into but it seems lately that I’m short on time for even basic things like sleeping and showering and so as a courtesy to my family, friends, and coworkers, I’ve been foregoing the posting in order to ensure that I don’t turn into an unkempt, sleep deprived bitch. There are lots of things I’ve been meaning to write about, little ramblings and musings, that I’m going to try to start making more of an effort to get down. Maybe I’ll bore you, maybe I won’t, but I find that each part of this weight loss journey brings on so many different emotions and ways of thinking about myself and I feel like sharing them with you. I think the biggest thing going on is that it’s hard trying to keep an accurate mental image of what I look like while my body is in a slow but constant state of change. I’ve always had “fat” days and “skinny” days but I’ve noticed that more than usual I seem to be filled with fluctuating perceptions of my body. Sometimes I look at myself and think, “Wow. There’s a big difference compared to December.” Then not more than a few hours later I’ll see my reflection and think, “For thirty pounds lost, it looks more like less than ten.” All that I can think to explain these differences is that while overall I’ve lost a lot, I’ve done it at a very slow, consistent pace so it’s effects are skewed; noticeable over a long period of time but less drastic on a day to day basis. I think that the times that I feel “fat” are due to expecting too much of my body. I think it’s just me running out of patience and wanting instant results from a process that is slow and steady by nature. I’m sure the moments of feeling “skinny” have the same origins. Suddenly feeling like I’m thinner than I am comes from the sudden realization of how far I’ve come. It’s like I’ll realize that a lot of my body, a part of me that I’ve carried around everyday, is now gone. I’ll get so tickled with how much I’ve lost that I’ll temporarily forget how much is still left to go. Then I’ll notice the other part waiting to be tackled and instantly bump right back up into feeling fat. It seems like I bounce around like this several times everyday and I think it has to do with being at this particular weight; I’m no longer fat but I’m not quite yet thin. I seem to sway between congratulating myself for what I’ve accomplished and berating myself to keep me from growing complacent.

5-Pound Challenge

Can you believe it’s already the start of July? Where has the year gone? I just realized that this last weigh-in marked my sixth month into this weight loss caper and I think that July could be the best month yet! I’ve got plans to increase my exercise (which won’t be hard to do considering that it has been almost non-existent for the past two weeks) and add in some weight training. I’m going to set a little mini-goal for myself this month and aim for five pounds off by next weigh-in. That will take me to low end of the 140’s, very exciting! I think this is more than doable and I need a challenge right now. So wish me luck, I’ve got four weeks to kick some ass!