Well, I skipped a week (or so) on my weight loss log, but not much happened that was different. I'll summarize: mostly I stuck to my eating plan but occasionally I indulged in a treat or two (at work, of course). When I did find myself with my wheels off the pavement, I had a little bit of a hard time getting them back on the road. It just goes to show you, those old habits die very hard.
One treat tends to lead to another, I've found, so each time I wandered towards the well trodden path I was reminded that I'm not out of the woods yet. (Boy, the journey metaphors are just piling up!) Maybe I never will be. But I do want to go on experimenting so that I can continue to learn where my boundaries are.
I still like to see what the thin people are doing (how the other half lives, you might say). I notice that they can take or leave a piece of cake or a doughnut, and are not persuaded by the pleas of food profferers to indulge. They just say, "No, thanks!" and move on. My goal is to have that attitude. It would match the one I have toward alcohol, where I slowly drink 3 bottles of beer over the course of a month. (One is still unopened from New Year's eve.) I can't imagine doing that with a bag of candy, so I'm still in thrall to treats, I guess.
But I feel self-righteous occasionally, too, when I'm able to keep on with my program despite the occasional minor setback. This blog helps a lot, more than I had ever imagined it would. It's the perfect sounding board. I can confess my difficulties without worrying about its reaction. And it never lectures me or scolds me. It doesn't praise me, either, which is fine. I know that what matters in the end is whether or not, when I reach my goal, I can stay there for the rest of my life.
I'll write more this weekend. See you then!
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Those Precious Treats
It's that time of year again, when everyone who wants to lose weight resolves to do so, and then looks for a way to make it happen. This past week, I heard a couple of coworkers talking about losing weight. They were describing methods they've used in the past that didn't ultimately work. (One was a 1,000-calorie-and- four-hours-exercise-a-day plan.) I tried to interject with my weight loss story, but they weren't paying attention. I find that somewhat disappointing. I have a method that actually works and works well, but no one wants to know about it. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. People want a fast and easy way to lose weight, and don't want to hear about the long and difficult road to slimness. They want the benefits of weight loss but don't want to change and give up their destructive eating habits--at least not forever.
Believe me, I understand. I still have nostalgia for those pint-a-night Ben and Jerry's ice cream fests. If only such pleasures were consequence-free! But alas, an addiction's an addiction, no matter how you trick it out to make it look harmless or even wholesome. Collecting unneeded fat cells on your body is no different from collecting stacks and stacks of unread newspapers, or boxes and boxes of useless trash, or dozens and dozens of cats in your apartment. It's a type of hoarding, after all, and just as debilitating a condition, in my opinion. If you look at the symptoms, you'll see similarities, I think.
Here are the symptoms of compulsive hoarding (taken from Wikipedia):
For an obese person to learn what kinds of food are good to eat and what kinds aren't is fine, but it's more or less beside the point. Even if a compulsive eater didn't know the nutritional value of a big piece of chocolate cake or a serving of french fries (hard to imagine these days), he would not be helped by watching a TV show where a doctor describes in detail (complete with hideous pictures of ruined organs) the many hazards of eating such foods.
Educational remedies are well-intentioned but not very realistic, especially when dealing with addictions. We can see that's true, I think, when we watch the therapists on Hoarders try to get a hoarder to throw away just one thing. Though the hoarder agrees that she and her family are being destroyed by her mountain of useless junk, she still resists. And for those of us watching, the magnitude of the task seems overwhelming, nearly impossible. We want to opt for the quick and easy solution: Put a match to the place and walk away. But I think we all know that even if everything the woman hoarded were destroyed, she'd be building another, probably bigger pile of junk as soon as she recovered from the loss of her current one.
So, too, with us fat-cell hoarders. Giving up even one piece of pie or serving of french fries or box of chocolates--no matter how old, cheap, dried up, badly cooked or tasteless--presents a monumental challenge. We resist, we offer excuses, we lash out at those who would deprive us of our "precious" treats. And if we get desperate and go for the drastic "put a match to it" solution (with some crash diet/exercise plan), it isn't long before we start over, building a bigger and better mound of fat cells.
Like the hoarders, compulsive eaters can't get over their addiction in one day (or in one half-hour television episode). Such drastic change takes time and lots of hard work, and the outcome is never certain. This past week, I went back to my relatively restricted diet and tried to increase my exercise, and I lost .8 pounds, or about what I should be losing. I'm making very slow progress, but I'm sticking with it, as monumental a task as it seems. And each week I'm learning more and more not what I should be eating, but how to be thin.
See you next time!
Believe me, I understand. I still have nostalgia for those pint-a-night Ben and Jerry's ice cream fests. If only such pleasures were consequence-free! But alas, an addiction's an addiction, no matter how you trick it out to make it look harmless or even wholesome. Collecting unneeded fat cells on your body is no different from collecting stacks and stacks of unread newspapers, or boxes and boxes of useless trash, or dozens and dozens of cats in your apartment. It's a type of hoarding, after all, and just as debilitating a condition, in my opinion. If you look at the symptoms, you'll see similarities, I think.
Here are the symptoms of compulsive hoarding (taken from Wikipedia):
Compulsive hoarding (or pathological collecting) is a pattern of behavior that is characterized by the excessive acquisition and inability or unwillingness to discard large quantities of objects that would seemingly qualify as useless or without value. Compulsive hoarding behavior has been associated with health risks, impaired functioning, economic burden, and adverse effects on friends and family members.If you substitute the word "objects" with "fat cells" and "hoarding" with "eating," you gain a different perspective on compulsive eating, I think. Hoarders have excuses for why they must collect and save all these useless items, but they don't really bear scrutiny--any more than do the excuses given by compulsive eaters for why they must buy, prepare and consume thousands of calories that will not be needed to fuel or sustain their bodies at any time in the near future. Shirley calls such excuses "subterfuges" because they attempt to conceal the true reason for eating--that we can't stop ourselves. Hoarders must face the same truth: they continue to hoard because they can't stop.
For an obese person to learn what kinds of food are good to eat and what kinds aren't is fine, but it's more or less beside the point. Even if a compulsive eater didn't know the nutritional value of a big piece of chocolate cake or a serving of french fries (hard to imagine these days), he would not be helped by watching a TV show where a doctor describes in detail (complete with hideous pictures of ruined organs) the many hazards of eating such foods.
Educational remedies are well-intentioned but not very realistic, especially when dealing with addictions. We can see that's true, I think, when we watch the therapists on Hoarders try to get a hoarder to throw away just one thing. Though the hoarder agrees that she and her family are being destroyed by her mountain of useless junk, she still resists. And for those of us watching, the magnitude of the task seems overwhelming, nearly impossible. We want to opt for the quick and easy solution: Put a match to the place and walk away. But I think we all know that even if everything the woman hoarded were destroyed, she'd be building another, probably bigger pile of junk as soon as she recovered from the loss of her current one.
So, too, with us fat-cell hoarders. Giving up even one piece of pie or serving of french fries or box of chocolates--no matter how old, cheap, dried up, badly cooked or tasteless--presents a monumental challenge. We resist, we offer excuses, we lash out at those who would deprive us of our "precious" treats. And if we get desperate and go for the drastic "put a match to it" solution (with some crash diet/exercise plan), it isn't long before we start over, building a bigger and better mound of fat cells.
Like the hoarders, compulsive eaters can't get over their addiction in one day (or in one half-hour television episode). Such drastic change takes time and lots of hard work, and the outcome is never certain. This past week, I went back to my relatively restricted diet and tried to increase my exercise, and I lost .8 pounds, or about what I should be losing. I'm making very slow progress, but I'm sticking with it, as monumental a task as it seems. And each week I'm learning more and more not what I should be eating, but how to be thin.
See you next time!
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Week 46: Time to Do the Math
This week I gained a pound, so I had to do some research to see what happened. I know I ate small amounts of food not on the diet plan--more of the chocolate that was available--and fudged on measuring some foods. But those seem like relatively harmless transgressions. I decided I needed to "do the math" to see what's going on.
What I discovered is that my caloric intake (even when I'm going strictly by my menu plan) is very close to what I would need to maintain the weight I carry now. Moreover, it is exactly what I will need to maintain my goal weight of 135 pounds. The 1700 calories I'm allowing myself per day is designed to take off only 0.81 pounds per week. But my weight loss over the 45 weeks I've been on the program has averaged only 0.75 pounds per week. At this rate, I will not get to goal weight for another eight months. Suffice it to say that it wouldn't take much "fooling around" (as Shirley puts it) to slow my progress even more.
So, what to do to change this? Well, I have two choices: eat less or exercise more. My relatively high level of caloric intake is based on a fairly low level of activity. Changing one or both of the two factors should make a difference. But as it is, my current menu plan is barely adequate to keep me from being hungry, especially in the afternoon. I could tinker with my evening meal, though, or cut my evening snack to pare off some calories. I'm the least hungry at that time. Or I could delay breakfast and have it at work in place of my morning snack. Usually I'm not hungry early in the morning anyway.
Getting more exercise is also a challenge. I do a half hour of dancing in the morning, but then don't exercise much after that. I walk around the office some, but it doesn't amount to very many minutes, and the rest of the time I'm sitting. I could try to incorporate more activity into my day--walking every time I go to the bathroom, for instance, or moving my arms and legs as I'm working on the computer. Those are possibilities. Finding the time for additional workouts is a problem, though. I don't think I can stay later at work, since I have so little time at home as it is, and getting up earlier would mean going to bed earlier, which would cut into my time with my husband.
The third option is just to leave things as they are, and be content with the amount of time it will take to get to my goal. And if I can cut down on the excess, I will at least stay on target to make weight by mid-September. That's not a bad thing, because if I continue to eat 1700 calories a day for another eight months, I'll be used to it by the time it becomes my maintenance plan. By September, I will have learned how to eat like someone who weighs 135 pounds. And that's the ultimate goal, now, isn't it?
This week I'll do some experimenting with cutting calories and adding exercise and see how that works. I'll let you know the results in my next post.
Until then . . .
What I discovered is that my caloric intake (even when I'm going strictly by my menu plan) is very close to what I would need to maintain the weight I carry now. Moreover, it is exactly what I will need to maintain my goal weight of 135 pounds. The 1700 calories I'm allowing myself per day is designed to take off only 0.81 pounds per week. But my weight loss over the 45 weeks I've been on the program has averaged only 0.75 pounds per week. At this rate, I will not get to goal weight for another eight months. Suffice it to say that it wouldn't take much "fooling around" (as Shirley puts it) to slow my progress even more.
So, what to do to change this? Well, I have two choices: eat less or exercise more. My relatively high level of caloric intake is based on a fairly low level of activity. Changing one or both of the two factors should make a difference. But as it is, my current menu plan is barely adequate to keep me from being hungry, especially in the afternoon. I could tinker with my evening meal, though, or cut my evening snack to pare off some calories. I'm the least hungry at that time. Or I could delay breakfast and have it at work in place of my morning snack. Usually I'm not hungry early in the morning anyway.
Getting more exercise is also a challenge. I do a half hour of dancing in the morning, but then don't exercise much after that. I walk around the office some, but it doesn't amount to very many minutes, and the rest of the time I'm sitting. I could try to incorporate more activity into my day--walking every time I go to the bathroom, for instance, or moving my arms and legs as I'm working on the computer. Those are possibilities. Finding the time for additional workouts is a problem, though. I don't think I can stay later at work, since I have so little time at home as it is, and getting up earlier would mean going to bed earlier, which would cut into my time with my husband.
The third option is just to leave things as they are, and be content with the amount of time it will take to get to my goal. And if I can cut down on the excess, I will at least stay on target to make weight by mid-September. That's not a bad thing, because if I continue to eat 1700 calories a day for another eight months, I'll be used to it by the time it becomes my maintenance plan. By September, I will have learned how to eat like someone who weighs 135 pounds. And that's the ultimate goal, now, isn't it?
This week I'll do some experimenting with cutting calories and adding exercise and see how that works. I'll let you know the results in my next post.
Until then . . .
Sunday, January 1, 2012
The Holiday Challenge
Last week I was on vacation, so didn't post. But it was an instructive two weeks. The first week I had to contend with food gifts from my coworkers, which was very kind of them, but I would rather not have had to make the choice. I gave away some and ate some of the goodies, but it was hard not eating them up right away. I didn't do too well for the most part, and it made me realize that I still don't handle well those eating occasions where I have to say "no, thanks" to people who are trying to please me. I generally take the treats, then tell myself I will not eat them. That doesn't work very well, but refusing seems wrong too. I'm going to have to think more about what to do next time.
Though I didn't stick strictly to my meal plan during the holidays, I paid attention to what I was eating, evaluating my decision to eat what other people were eating. For instance, I ate meals with my mother at her nursing home that were high on carbohydrates and fat and low on vegetables; the protein was about right, at least at the noon meal. I ate the desserts, and on Christmas day, I ate the foods my sister served--though not in mass quantities--including fruit cake, ice cream and whipped cream for the pumpkin pudding. It was filling, but I don't think I overindulged. I passed up the chocolates (except for one chocolate Jordan almond), but not the egg nog. It was an experiment--an attempt to eat "normally"--and for the most part I think I did okay. I didn't go crazy with eating, but I didn't refrain either, and was able to avoid those arguments about dieting techniques that tend to spoil the holiday mood.
I did try to keep up with my exercise, and succeeded for the most part. That probably helped to keep my weight gain low: only .4 pounds over two weeks.
I'm pretty happy with how I got through the holidays this first year of my new eating plan. I incurred no massive weight gain that will need to be reversed in the first month of the year, and I think I ate more like a person without a weight problem. I had a good time as well. Thus I learned that the holidays really could be enjoyed without ingesting mass quantities of fattening food! Amazing!
I'm looking forward to another year of learning to be thin!
See you next time and Happy New Year!
Though I didn't stick strictly to my meal plan during the holidays, I paid attention to what I was eating, evaluating my decision to eat what other people were eating. For instance, I ate meals with my mother at her nursing home that were high on carbohydrates and fat and low on vegetables; the protein was about right, at least at the noon meal. I ate the desserts, and on Christmas day, I ate the foods my sister served--though not in mass quantities--including fruit cake, ice cream and whipped cream for the pumpkin pudding. It was filling, but I don't think I overindulged. I passed up the chocolates (except for one chocolate Jordan almond), but not the egg nog. It was an experiment--an attempt to eat "normally"--and for the most part I think I did okay. I didn't go crazy with eating, but I didn't refrain either, and was able to avoid those arguments about dieting techniques that tend to spoil the holiday mood.
I did try to keep up with my exercise, and succeeded for the most part. That probably helped to keep my weight gain low: only .4 pounds over two weeks.
I'm pretty happy with how I got through the holidays this first year of my new eating plan. I incurred no massive weight gain that will need to be reversed in the first month of the year, and I think I ate more like a person without a weight problem. I had a good time as well. Thus I learned that the holidays really could be enjoyed without ingesting mass quantities of fattening food! Amazing!
I'm looking forward to another year of learning to be thin!
See you next time and Happy New Year!
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