Losing Half, Gaining More

I chuckled when I read Token Fat Girl’s post last week. Specifically this:

• “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not fat from the meals I choose to eat. I’m not fat from a nice plate of really delicious food. I’m fat because I eat too many seconds. I’m fat from eating too much in private (snacking) and I’m fat from too many calorie dense sweets.”

I have literally said that phrase more times than I can count – and it started with my mom saying it. I believe wholeheartedly in eating wholesome, nutrient-dense food that isn’t processed. If you look in our fridge, you’ll see spinach, arugula, peppers, oranges, celery, carrots, grapes, hummus, whole wheat tortilla, cheese, organic yogurt and milk. You might open our fridge and do a double-take back at me and wonder how on earth I got to the size that I am on the food in our house.  So, while I’m thinking of it, let’s delve in, shall we?

1. I eat too much. All of my servings are easily double what I need. Even when I eat the healthiest things, too much is too much – it’s still creating a surplus of calories in my body, and weight loss is at it’s core a math equation. Calories in vs. Calories burned, and I’m still putting a whole lot more in than I’m burning!
2. I eat most of my meals alone – thus enabling the extra servings that I would never eat in front of other people. I’ve started to really try to sit down with my kids for breakfast and lunch rather than feeding them while I stand and wait for their nap time to have my lunch. Eating with them makes lunch more enjoyable and it also gives me even the slightest bit of accountability – even though they’re young, I just want them to see me enjoying food for nourishment in appropriate portions; then eating until not-quite-full and moving on with my day. When I don’t eat with someone else, I almost always eat in front of the computer and I am so much less mindful and present – that makes it so much easier to overeat!
3. The psychological aspects of why I eat too much are ridiculous. They go so deep and I honestly don’t know why. It’s all a tangled web of the shame aspects – even shame that I really don’t have any major psychological trauma from years past that should have caused me to go off the deep end.

A positive for today: Today was a day with the kiddos. I just could NOT get it together. That’s ok – we’ll move on. But the tv was definitely on more than our normal(which is next to never) and I happened to flip through and see that show The Doctors. There was a woman on talking about hating her spider veins. While I understand why people hate them, I’m also thankful that a positive to my current focus of just getting some weight off is that things like spider veins and stretch marks aren’t even remotely on my radar of things to care about.

p.s. I think I’m ready to get writing again. It’s the perfection thing – I want to have amazing, perfect posts to put up. But just writing on here is very clearly a great accountability tool for me. I’ve gone in circles about writing a food log on here. I read many other weight loss blogs and many have food logs as a personal accountability piece and I wonder how much it truly would help? Even maybe a separate tab where I just keep a list? I don’t know. My issue is honestly with committing to it – I’d be lying if I said I really want to world to see what I eat every single day. It makes me feel naked!

p.s.s. Reason number 53,445,46,546 for needing to lose weight: we got hammered with snow last week. I loooooove snow. Wanted to go play in. Oh wait…I don’t have a winter jacket that fits:( I’ve been wearing my husband’s discarded fleece jackets for the past two years, so on the snow day I wore his Carhart and down vest to get out with my little one and deliver cookies to neighbors. Believe me, I looked *super* cute:( I have a really nice winter coat, but it doesn’t do much good if I can’t zip it up in the snow!

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.

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.

Eating in public comes along with so many feelings of shame.  Part of me wanting to start this blog was to vocalize this publicly and begin the process of dissociating that food/shame connection. It runs so deep and the more I think about it, the more I need to just get over it!

Last night, I went out by myself before my Weight Watchers meeting. My husband started to go with me 2 weeks ago and it has been really nice to have him going and do this together. But…Monday nights used to be my time away. I’d leave when he got home from work, go run errands or read quietly by myself, go to my meeting. Basically, just have an evening to myself. So this week, I decided to at least leave the house as soon as he got home from work and meet him at the meeting – that would give me a good 45 minutes alone.

When I have “time alone/away,” my intention is always to go read by myself somewhere. This always translates to EAT and read by myself somewhere. It’s one of the biggest things that I need to work on because eating and spending money are always my activities of choice and there is SO MUCH MORE OUT THERE that I’m missing out on! {Namely: moving my body!}

So, where am I going with this? Here I am, having alone time, wanting to read and I go to my favorite coffee shop. It also has a sandwich area and bakery. It’s completely habit, but I decided to get dinner. Even though I’m on.my.way.to.a.WEIGHT WATCHERS MEETING.

This is my trigger point.

This is my trigger point.

This is my trigger point.

Do I not get that???

Yet I continue to make the same choices. The point where I need to make the choice to have a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, a soda, iced tea – something other than food that I don’t even need.

So, I got the food. Chips. A sandwich. To a normal person, it wouldn’t be a huge deal. To me, it is. It’s the food I eat mindlessly, the food that’s not healthy, the food that I didn’t need in the first place.  Not only do I eat it, but I take it and go sit in the most hidden corner I can find. Just in case someone I know might see me, especially someone in my WW meeting that’s right down the street.

Eating in a shameful way is the worst. It’s the way that I eat so many meals. In the car going through a fast food place(and wishing that I don’t know the person in the window because I’ve been there so many times). Before I go to an event or situation with new people who I’m nervous will judge me for my weight. After my kids are down for their naps in the afternoon and I can sit and eat without anyone else around.

I am an adult. It does not matter what anyone else thinks of me, let alone what they think about what I’m eating. But I can’t shake that feeling in public of being hyperaware that someone is looking at what I’m eating and thinking, “She does NOT need to be eating that!” Probably because I know in my mind that it’s something that I don’t need, but I project it onto others who probably could care less in the first place because they’re thinking about themselves as well.  If someone is actually judging me:

1. They probably know me and just wonder what’s going on with me to cause me to gain so much weight.
2. They probably just want to see me get healthier/happier/taking care of myself(and I’m clearly not.)
3. Both of the above.

So, I ate in the corner. And I don’t want to do it ever again. Regardless of what I’m eating, it’s my choice to make and I’m the only one I need to answer to!