Weigh To Go! Part 11

December’s Starting Weight: 178.9 Last Month’s Weigh-In: 134.8 Today’s Weigh-In: 132.2 That’s 2.6 pounds lost for the month of November and a total of 46.7 gone since December. Not bad, eh? I survived Thanksgiving and all its leftovers; I can tell that it added a few pounds back on there at the end of this month (I have a feeling that I may have actually been about 130 for most of November) but overall I’m very happy with things. I had my fun, enjoyed my food and family and then shifted back to eating sensibly and exercising. There have been many times in the past where my Thanksgiving eating habits weren’t that much different from my everyday eating habits so I’m feeling all proud of myself for having so far survived two holidays that have proved my undoing in the past!

The Workload Can Get A Little Heavy But It's Ok Because I've Been Lifting Weights

Boy this time of year gets hectic, doesn’t it? I’ve been out of fatblogland for the past week due to the fact that life finally caught up with me and tackled me to the ground. Sure, exercise has built up my endurance but there’s only so far you can run before life’s big To Do list gets a hold of you and pins you into submission. Other than that though, I’ve been doing really good. My eating is great and well balanced, my exercising is consistent, and in fact today I’m having a skinny day. Have you ever had one of those? You wake up in the morning and you just feel like you lost a pound or two. And it’s not because of dehydration, it’s not that you were bloated and now it’s finally gone away, instead it feels like a sudden but very real loss. And you wonder, what brought that on? In general, for me, weight loss is a consistent process, small variations but generally slow and steady. Then every once in awhile I’ll have a week where all of a sudden a couple of pounds are gone. And it really is enough to be noticeable, I’ll wake up and I can tell that my stomach feels smaller and then I’ll get dressed and my clothes will fit looser and I wonder, what happened over night? I’m going along doing what I always do (as far as I can tell) and then there will just be a random big loss. I don’t know if maybe I did something different without knowing it, or if it’s just a natural process or whatever but either way, I’ll take it! Oh and also, pictures. Ok, so I was thinking maybe a flickr account would be good but I have no understanding of such things and so I need to look into it. I need something private that can only be viewed with my permission, which I imagine is possible?

More But Not As Lengthy Inane Blatherings By Me About Troubles In Covering My Ass

Hey, so I did get some jeans! I’ve been on such a mission to buy some new pairs because the day that I cleaned out my closet I gave away all of my jeans except for one pair. The pair that I kept fit but they’re “summer jeans” because the length of the leg is shorter in order to show off cute summer sandals. The only pair of “winter jeans” that I had I decided to throw in the pile at the last minute. I wanted to keep them because they’re the only pair long enough to wear with boots but they were so big that I had to cinch them in with a belt and then make sure my shirt was long enough to cover the bulky puckering of too much fabric at the top so in the end I put them on the pile. I bought two new pairs. I got these ones in a size 4 and these ones in a size 2. Now I assume that the dk’s must not be sized by American sizes because an American 2 is super small but these fit right. In fact, they’re the best fitting pair of jeans I’ve owned! The fabric is so soft and they fit my hip to waist ratio better than most other pairs of jeans I’ve had. They look so good with a stiletto black boot, fitted sweater and this coat, my favorite new purchase (I bought it in an XS, guys!) The ol'navy jeans are not soft (contrary to what they may say on the website) and I’m going through the whole breaking them in period. With them I’m running into the same problem I have with all other jeans, they are so tight and unforgiving across the thighs, too baggy at the waist and constantly being pulled down by the constant rubbing together of my thighs. No wonder why I always blow out the seams of my pants, that’s a lot of friction!

Warning: Lengthy, Inane Blathering By Me About Troubles In Covering My Ass

You know, just making the decision to commit to doing an exercise plan has made all the difference in my attitude. I’m feeling all back to my normal self and I’m working on kicking out all the negative thoughts. And thanks for all the support guys, what would I do without you all? Ok, so I try not to bitch and whine too much and yet somehow I’m always doing that here. And I’m about to do it some more. I apologize in advance. So when I was getting all down on myself on Friday a lot of it had to do with the fact that while I was running around doing errands, I was also out jeans shopping. Boo! Jeans Shopping! Why is it that it doesn’t matter if I’m size 14 or 4, jeans do not fit me right? Can someone please explain that to me because I don’t get it. Here’s the problem, no jeans have ever really fit me right and it has to do with the shape of my body. I think I’ve tried on every style and brand of jeans in my local mall and while some are better than others, I still have the basic problem of none of them being quite right. Here’s what’s going on: First: My waist is small and my lower legs (slightly above the knee and down) have really slimmed out but I have some booty (a good thing) and saddlebags (not good). So my jeans have the tendency to feel like they’re always riding down probably because the widest part of my body, my inner thighs, rub together and cause the fabric to be pulled down. So my jeans never fit tightly at the waist and instead always move down and want to rest on the largest part of my lower body, my thighs/saddlebags. Is this a good enough of a description to give you all a visual image? Basically my pants want to ride low and no matter what size I am or what pair I’m wearing, I always have to pull them up after walking any distance. Second: Although I have a large derriere, I’m short waisted, so I have trouble finding a rise that works. Ultra low rise and even some low rise jeans are not enough to cover my rump; I just need more fabric than that. Just below the waists are what normally work but again when walking they end up being pulled down too low. But anything that hits at the waist is just too much fabric around the pockets and crotch area. I really don’t need a pouch right there. Also another thing, I think generally what happens is that the way I sit stretches out the waist, which I don’t need because the waist is already too big anyways. And this is a problem in general, for some weird reason my fat has magical powers when I sit and it will alter the shape of any pair of pants, no matter how tight, so that they look baggy across the waist and lap when I’m standing. If only I could harness this power for good! Third: I assume that 5’6” is a pretty average height but I notice that pants are either too short or too long. I often have my pants tailored. Some I have taken up so that they don’t drag on the ground when I wear tennis shoes. Others I buy too long and then have taken up so that they can be worn with boots. Depending on the shoe I’m wearing, the perfect pant length is either 31 ½ or 33 ½ inches. Anything else either looks a little too short or becomes frayed along the back hem. That’s just a basic list of what I’m up against; I won’t even go into detail about how picky I am about color, amount of stitch detail, degree of distressing (just know that in general I shy away from the whisker around the crotch look, no needed emphasis there but thanks anyways), and type of denim. Oh and skinny jeans? They really don’t do me any favors. But the hunt is on and I’m on the prowl for a new pair of jeans. I figure that exercise is going to help me change the parts of my body that are making a nice fitting pair of jeans so hard to find and I’d rather make changes by exercising instead of crying over my chili dogs about it like I did on Friday! I’ll let you know how it all goes!

Amateur Hour

Today the husband, pup and I went for a run. Boy it doesn’t take long to lose your level of fitness, does it? It was rookie ball out there! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done any real exercise and it showed. I was out of breath within minutes, I had no pacing, no rhythm, and I felt so out of it. We were going to run about a mile and a half but I ended up having to walk some of it. But I’m so glad I went out! It showed me how much I love exercise. While I may not really love it in the sense that I love chocolate or long naps, I love it for what it does for my peace of mind. As I alluded to in my previous post, I got kind of frustrated and down on myself on Friday. I’ve kind of hit this point where I’m not sure where to go with my weight loss. I feel like I’m the size that I want to be and the actual number on the scale is healthy but still I’m afraid of something. Doesn’t that sound silly? But something about this actually scares me. I think it’s the fact that I’m so close to the end (I should actually say goal because this journey doesn’t have a real “end”) and I’m afraid of what the last few pounds are going to take. I definitely believe that whole thing about how the last ten are the hardest. When I was thirty pounds away from goal I was frustrated at being far away but in some ways it was easier to put my head back down and keep trudging along. Now that I’m so close all these things keep popping up into the back of my mind. Things like, “Will I actually be able to make it?” and “Do I have what it takes to get there?” and “Oh my gosh, if I actually do make it, am I going to stay there?” I was going over all this stuff on Friday and it kind of got to me; I kind of felt like the answer to those questions was a big fat no. But today as I was out dragging myself around the jogging trail I felt a renewed sense of “I can do this”. Exercise gives you hope. It makes you feel like so much of this is within your control if you just really put yourself into it. While the past few weeks’ break from exercise was nice and probably something I needed, it made me feel like I was putting everything on keeping my eating perfect. Well as you can see from the last few posts, that didn’t work out so well. My eating actually got worse and who knows if somehow it’s connected to putting too much focus on the food, so much that it actually backfired. Either way, starting this week I’m back to regular workouts. Even though exercise isn’t my absolute favorite thing to do, it does so much for me in so many ways.

Chili Dog? More Like Chili Hog, Round 2

I’ve always thought myself to be a smart cookie (I’d say I’m probably a chocolate chip kind) but there are occasions where I must get hit over the head with a lesson a few times before I finally am ready to be clued in. For instance, last night we were going to go to our University’s basketball game. I had woke up late and then spent the day running errands so I hadn’t had anything to eat except a 130 calorie bowl of oatmeal. My husband and I wanted to eat before the game so he was going to run to a drive thru as I stayed at home getting ready. When he asked me to make a choice as to where and what I wanted to eat, I could have gone for something decent or at least reasonable, right? Nope. I had gotten kind of stressed out and down on myself yesterday (I’ll go ahead and write a separate post about all of that at another time) and I just wanted to stuff myself on something fatty and filling. In my moment of weakness I decided that Tuesday’s chili dog and fries fest had tasted so good that I wanted the same thing again. Only this time I had lots of calories leftover to splurge so I made that two chili dogs along with the chili cheese fries. Now I know that this is too much food and it’s crap food at that. All the wonderful comments and advice from you all on the previous chili dog post should have popped into my head to remind me of the bigger picture. But I sometimes have to get a significant wake up call before I learn a lesson. So I sucked all that food down within minutes. Technically it’s a binge; even if I was within my target calorie range, it was still gorging on food to make me feel better and it was eating past the point of fullness. I of all people know that emotional eating doesn’t solve problems and doesn’t make me feel better. In fact it does the opposite of both of these things in the long run but sometimes I fall back on old “quick fix” habits. Well, I paid the price for this one this time. I was so miserable at the game. I felt like I had a ball of lead in my stomach and I couldn’t sit comfortably. It was literally a painful reminder of why eating in a healthy balanced way is about more than just trying to lose a couple of pounds. It’s about being in touch with my body and my mind and it’s about handling stuff without turning to food as a fix all. The good thing is that I feel like this might be what I needed to get my eating back on track because I feel like I've gotten that urge to uncontrollably eat finally out of my system (hopefully it will last awhile). Who knew that wisdom can come from a trip to wienerschnitżel.

Chili Dog? More Like Chili Hog

Last night I was craving chili cheese fries and a chili dog so badly. I didn’t get home until almost 10 o’clock and by then I was so hungry that I was no longer thinking straight. So off my husband and I went to the drive-thru to get our fix. It was so good and it totally hit the spot but it made me feel guilty afterwards as it set me 250 calories over my target range. Sometimes when you eat like crap you know exactly why you did it and then there are other times where after the haze clears you’re left wondering what just happened. You went all day with intentions of being good and doing the right thing and then in what seems like a matter of moments you find yourself on the other side of an empty fast food container, plastic fork still in hand, confused as to why you did what you just did. I don’t know if it’s the time of year, the change in weather, the chaos of my schedule or all of the above plus more but it seems like this happens more often lately than it used to. I hate when I think I've gotten a handle on something only to see that it's still there, lurking under the surface! I figure I must be learning something though, my husband asked if I wanted to split one of the extra chili dogs he had ordered and I said no. That’s a small victory considering that in the past I would have taken him up on that offer in a heartbeat. Yep, small steps, guys.

They’re Held Up By Fabric And Elastic, Not Magic!

I wore a pencil skirt yesterday. This one, in fact. Size 2, thank you very much! I really love that all the newer fashions come down to the knee as opposed to in previous years when the mini skirt was all the rage. I’m pretty self-conscious about my legs but in a knee length skirt you’re only showing a little calf and ankle, so nothing too risqué! The thing I found out though is that fourteen hours is a long time to be in a skirt, especially if you haven’t worn a skirt in over fifteen years. I haven’t yet mastered the ability to get in and out of my car without giving any standers by a free show. And I wore thigh high pantyhose, which I will never do again. I need pantyhose because they really smooth out the look of my legs, hide some of the small veins I have on the inside of my knee, and give me a healthier color because the natural color of my legs is an ugly shade of anemic due to the fact that they haven’t seen the sun since the early 90’s. But I really hate to wear a full-length pantyhose and I get really tired of trying to keep them on straight after my fortieth trip to the potty. With dress pants I always wear knee highs and they work out just fine so I thought that thigh highs would work the same. I was wrong. Maybe because I have lots of fat on my upper thighs, they refused to stay up smoothly. Instead they just cut into my leg fat and then annoyingly tried to roll themselves down. Poor pantyhose, there’s only so much they could do when faced with clinging to my leg fat for fourteen hours! By the end of the day my friend and I got into my car to drive to our practicum center. Before getting back out of the car I pulled the suckers up and told my friend, “I feel like an old granny whose hose won’t stay up! Thigh highs are not sexy!” to which she replied, “They’re sexy, Lynne, but they’re probably only good for the bedroom.” And yes while she's correct that they're probably best suited to the bedroom I'd like to add the caveat that they're for skinny people in the bedroom because the look I was rocking was not sexy. The closest it came to anything bedroom games related was resembling bondage gone horribly awry. So next time I’m out I’ll make sure I pick up a pair of full on, old fashioned, control top pantyhose. They might not be comfortable but they sure work a lot better than nylons that look like they’re strapped on with tourniquets and who left to their natural course, will roll down to your ankles.

Oooh, Irony: Finding Motivation By Taking A Break

More on Operation: Get My Head Back In The Game. I’ve managed to reign the extra eating back in but I’m still struggling with the exercise. I will find any excuse to not workout, from cleaning house to visiting with friends and family. I think the bad thing is that I’ve gotten so much more done lately because I’ve been so motivated to avoid exercising! My laundry gets done, my homework gets finished, my car is clean, etc. and all of these things are not good incentive for getting back on to the exercise horse. I am just so busy that I really only have so much time for so many things to get done. I tend to give up about an hour to an hour and a half to exercising plus I have to really plan my day around a workout. I have to plan what I eat and when I eat so that I have energy and then I have to make sure that I have enough time to shower and get ready afterwards so that I can move on to the next tasks that need to be done. I know that in the long run it’s not doing me any good to not exercise but I think I need a break so I can play a little catch up with all the other pressing things going on in my life right now. I’ve only done two half-hour workouts with Steely Dan this weekend when usually I would have clocked up at least 6 to 8 miles by now. I’m not sure how long I’ll take this little work out break, maybe only a few weeks, but I’m going to just concentrate on working out only when I feel like it and only for as long as I want to and most importantly I’m not going to guilt myself into a workout anymore. Hopefully this will put me back into looking at exercise as fun and not as just one more thing on my huge to do list.

Getting Back In The Game By Not Playing Pretend

This weekend I cleaned out my closet, one of many parts to Operation: Get My Head Back In The Game. I took everything out and tried it on and then each item either went back on a hanger into the closet, in a donate pile, or was fit only for the trash can. Honestly guys, only about half or even a little less than half of my stuff survived. I decided to do the clean out because I noticed that it was taking me forever to find something to wear in the morning yet my closet was stuffed full of things. Once all the unwearable items were out I could see why I couldn’t find anything to wear. I just don’t have that many things that actually fit me. I have a hard time getting rid of clothes that I don’t fit into anymore because there’s always this “what if I need it?” thought in the back of my mind. This thinking applies both to things too big and things too small to be worn. I’m always hoping that I’ll get back down to a size that will allow me to wear some favorite shirt or I’m secretly afraid of ballooning up to a size and I’ll need pants that can accommodate the gain. There were things in there that I thought I was saving because they were still too small yet when I tried them on, they were already too large to be worn. That sucks because there have been times in the past few months where I really needed clothes and could have used them! Alternatively, there were things that were way too big and I hope that I’ll never wear again. For some reason, these were the hardest things to get rid of. Getting rid of all the larger sized clothes was like saying that I’m not that person anymore and am committing to never being her again. After they were all piled up on my living room floor I looked at them and wasn’t sure how I actually felt. I think I hit the nail on the head though when I told my husband, “There goes my safety net.” Keeping all that stuff was like insurance for my binge eating ways. I remember last Thanksgiving I was so uncomfortable; I had started with Halloween candy and then just never stopped eating. By end of November I was wearing baggier shirts and my jeans had become way too tight. My way of dealing with it was to go into my closet and get the next size up pants. That allowed me to go back to living in denial about my weight gain. At the time, it was just easier to go on eating and pretend that I hadn’t gained back all my weight. I’m pretty good at that kind of pretending considering that I went from a size 5 all the way back to a size 13/14 before I admitted to myself that it was time to do something. And I think that’s typical me, some people freak out when they gain five pounds, I don’t freak out until I’ve hit the forty or fifty pound mark. It takes that much for me to realize that the weight gain has gotten out of control. Maybe that’s why I’ve always had a weight problem, sometimes I can’t see past the food and what it symbolizes to me. Sometimes the food is even worth the sacrifice of what it does to my body and I have to be so miserable and unhappy in it that I can’t go on pretending that the weight isn’t there any longer. The first step then is getting rid of that safety net, or what it more accurately is, that crutch that I’ve depended on: There are no bigger sizes in my closet to fall back on, no bigger clothes to play pretend in.