Losing Half, Gaining More

I haven’t updated in forever – mostly because my kids are keeping me on my toes and the holidays needed lots of prep, but also because I’ve been trying to stay away from the computer more lately. It’s good for my mental health. I’ve had a few requests for a post, so my apologies for the absence. You know when you just feel overwhelmed and have to let things go? Yeah ~ I’m always the first thing I let go. The time I spend focusing on accountability for what goes into my mouth, time planned for exercise, time to get my hair cute, time to buy myself cute clothes that fit well and make me feel good about myself…it’s always the first stuff I let go.

I started a part time job a couple of weeks ago and it’s sort of thrown me for a loop. It’s so good for me because it gets me out of the house and away by myself more, plus it’s a bit of extra money. But it has also been unexpectedly unnerving because I’m working in retail(in a store where I used to be a manager) and I work with a lot of teen/college-aged girls who are CONSTANTLY talking about being fat, their hair, makeup, clothing, being fat, working out, appearance and working out. It’s mind numbingly boring to say the least, but also just so disturbing. To see such distorted perceptions(and where I started) is just so very sad. I see how much time and energy that these girls are literally wasting on worrying about looking perfect when every single one of them is an intelligent, attractive person with so many more facets than just their looks and so many other things that they could use to focus that energy of self deprecation.

I want to shake them.

Then I want to shake myself.

For being there at there age and never getting past it. For letting it get to me so much that I’ve binged like I have not in a really long time. For letting it take me to that place of shame and anger and self-consciousness when I’m around all of them.

So, all of this just to be honest. I’m struggling. Surprisingly, it’s not so much because of Thanksgiving. I spent so much fantastic time with family and friends and the food took such a back seat to how wonderful it was to be with so many people I never get to see! Plus, honestly, I’m not fat because I enjoy a Thanksgiving meal once a year. It’s the other meals when I eat too many servings, too many meals that weren’t even needed in the first place, too much mindless easting, too many binges because of overwhelming emotions, too many choices that aren’t giving my body the nutrition it needs and not getting up off of my tush and getting moving enough on a daily basis!

Do you ever just get so angry at yourself and need to walk away from the norm a bit? I’ve been feeling that lately. Angry and upset with myself that I’ve gotten myself to such a position that it takes so much out of me – physically, emotionally, spiritually – to keep up with getting myself to a healthier place. I know that this is all one day and one step at a time, but there have been so many days lately that I just get upset with myself for being where I am in the first place. I know, I know – not much I can do about that now an whining about it isn’t changing anything. But I don’t mean this in the sense of just a small, “Oh poor me, I’m so fat” sense.

Here’s what I mean: there are so many things in my life that seem so much more important. I’m not saying my health isn’t important – God only knows how blessed I am to be happy and healthy as a whole. There are just so many things that matter to me that I want to focus my time and energy on, but I only have so much that I can do in a day. My family comes first and with two little ones, it doesn’t leave a ton of extra time. So I get angry that I even have to spend so much time and energy on something like weight loss and I’m really working on changing my habits so that I don’t feel such a dividing line between “weight loss” and the rest of my normal every day functions. I’m working on how to really incorporate the lifestyle changes I need so that they just become a norm and I just assume that I need to take care of myself and eat well and move my body, just the same as I need to brush my teeth and take a shower and make sure my kids eat healthy every day.

So that’s where I am. Sorry for the absence and sorry that this post is sort of all over the place. It’s a journey and mine is involving a lot of quiet contemplation right now and that hasn’t led to a ton of posting on here. I’m working on meditation in my life – I need more spirituality for a million different reason, but most of all because of the peace I know it brings to me.

A friend shared this link from Cheeky Lotus about being a role model for her daughter and I just needed to share. I worry every single day about how my weight issues are going to effect my kids and it’s a big part of why I NEED to do this for myself NOW. I need to take care of myself and be an example of healthy and reasonable and realistic beauty – I deserve it and my kids deserve it.

There’s so much talk about Fat-Talk Free Week and it’s all so positive. I think a huge part of that positiveness is that the lack of Fat-Talk also means that it’s less for young girls to be hearing and internalizing and taking through life with them. If I can make myself healthier and stop even one minute of my daughter doing that to herself, every difficult step of this weight loss journey will be worth itself a million times over.

My body feels good. Well, actually, it hurts. That feels good. The kind of hurt that lets me know that I’m actually using my body again. Getting moving just feels so good. Achy good.

It’s amazing how the little changes fall in line together when you make a decision to commit to something. I’ve been telling myself that I need to get my rear in gear and get it moving regularly for what feels like years on end. It feels great to finally be doing something about it and have the motivation to want to continue feeling good about myself. Even with a number on the scale that I may not love, I know that I feel a ton better about myself in general when I am actually taking care of myself and prioritizing exercise and being healthy in general. I’m well aware that I won’t feel this way every day and every time I need to exercise, but I’ll take feel like this some of the time over doing nothing all of the time! Plus, it’s already making the day where I’m dragging a bit easier to just get myself up and moving.

At our Weight Watchers meeting this week, we discussed this and someone made a really fantastic point that resonated with me:

“At some point, someone was discussing weight loss with me and fitting time into your life for exercise, food planning, etc. and how it just seems so time consuming sometimes. But, it’s necessary. We make time to brush our teeth. We make time to shower ourselves. We take time to feed our families healthy, nutritious foods.We need to place the same priority and necessity on taking care of ourselves in relation to weight loss.”

It’s so true. I would never in a million years let my kids eat the way I have been eating. Never.   Diane pointed out to me in the comments of my first post that her youngest children don’t have any memory of her looking any different than she does today. I’m so thankful that my kids are young enough that they won’t ever know me like this and that they’re young enough that they won’t learn the bad habits I have been modeling for them.
p.s. Want to know how I know I’m changing bit by bit? I bought some Little Debbie 100 Cal packs at the store last night thinking that might be good for my husband to take to work or for me to grab as a snack. I don’t know what I ws thinking, I should have known better.

1. I can’t control myself with stuff like that. I’d eat the whole box in two seconds flat.
2. It’s still JUNK, even if it’s only 100 calories of junk instead of a few hundred calories of the regular size.

So, I opened the box and the “100 calories” is literally a maybe 1″X2″ tiny cake. TINY.  Not even slightly worth 100 calories and 2 WW points in my day that I could be using for something that will actually fill me up and make me feel good.

I threw the box away. In the outside gross, stinky trash can that goes to the curb. That’s how I know I’m changing.

I went to my cousins wedding in Philadelphia yesterday and had such a fantastic time.  We knew that it was in Old City, but didn’t really realize what that meant, which is sort of sad since it’s only about an hour and a half away from us! The hotel was literally half a block from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. The wedding looked out over Independence National Historic Park and Second National Bank and in such an interesting part of the city – tons of amazing shops and restaurants. We were disappointed that we didn’t have time to spend just walking around, but having a 6 month old at home who needs his food source sort of limits longer excursions for now. This was the longest I’ve left him so far and it was still just so nice to get away for more than just a couple of hours.

The food was FANTASTIC. It also helped me to realize a few things within the context of “celebrations.”  This journey that I’ve committed to has been a long time coming. I’ve been going to Weight Watchers meeting for over 4 months now without actually really keeping track of my food. But, the fact that I’ve continued to go is a huge testament to the psychological aspect of losing weight and how I’m slowly changing. This process seems so daunting and overwhelming as a whole, but it’s the little things that I can control in a day that make me realize that I really am doing this! I really am making lots of little changes in my life, and especially in my thinking!

At the wedding, I didn’t eat perfectly by any means. But I did eat much differently than I would have in the past and that’s a really big step.

• The things that I wanted to eat that weren’t the healthiest, I took one of and just took a bite.
• If I didn’t love what I was eating after the first bite, I didn’t finish it.
• I didn’t take appetizers from servers simply because they had it in front of me.
• I didn’t try one(or more!) of everything – I chose the few things I thought I’d enjoy the most and took smaller portions of them.
• I danced about 10 times more than I otherwise would have because I knew I was burning some extra calories while having some fun.
• I also just committed to completely putting aside my normal feelings of awkward self consciousness that usually keep me from something like dancing in a social situation and it felt SO GOOD.

As a whole, I still ate much more than necessary. But I also would guess that I easily ate half as much as I may have eaten in the past and that makes me really happy. Thinking about all of this and seeing these baby steps that I am actually doing is so empowering. Believing in myself that I really can, and WILL, do this is an incredible feeling. There hasn’t been a defining/”A-HA” moment for me when I just decided that this was the point where I wasn’t turning back. I read so many weight loss success stories where people talk about the one thing that happened that flipped a switch for them, but for me it’s just been a recent consistent realization of small things that have made me realize that I truly an changing. Knowing that I can deal with each situation as it comes and take small steps to get to each thing along the way feels fantastic and it’s been a really long time since I’ve felt that about myself.

I was reading the post on Roni’s Weigh about her inspirational first marathon over the weekend and I love the info she included on Operation Beautiuful.

The concept is so simple and beautiful in and of itself that it just brought tears to my eyes. In their words, “The mission of Operation Beautiful is to post anonymous notes in public places for other women to find. The point is that WE ARE ALL BEAUTIFUL. You are enough… just the way you are!”

It was inspired by this video and Fat Talk Free Week:

I love to see the pictures they have of notes on the Operation Beautiful site, especially this one:

I can’t wait to post some notes myself and I especially can’t wait to see all of the creative ideas everyone has in the pictures on their site!