Here We Go Again

My mother has been overweight for most of my life.  She was surprisingly unaffected by it.  She had good mobility, good blood work, lots of friends, my father adored her, she had the respect of her employer, she ran volunteer organizations, and it didn't seem to be something that affected her negatively.  She is 76 now and her weight has finally caught up with her.  She has lympadema in her legs, is on blood thinners, and no cartilage left in her knees. She is in pain most of the time and in a lot of pain when she has to walk. She injured her shoulder trying to take some weight off her knees by using a walker.  She's in a wheelchair now if she has to go any distance of more than about fifteen feet.  Even being in the wheelchair is painful because the lympadema and size of her legs keep her knees from bending properly. She desperately needs knee replacement surgery, but no one will operate on someone her size who is prone to blood clots. I hate seeing her in pain and not be able to fix it.

Which brings me to today.  My life has paralleled my mother's in many ways and been completely different in others. I've never been as heavy as she was/is, but I've seen over the years how easy it was for her to continue to gain gradually. Not everyone even has the ability to physically gain that much weight.  I am like her in this way, I have the same body type and metabolism as she does.  I don't want to end up in that kind of pain when I'm 76.  I just went back and reread my previous posts from ten years ago.  I could have written most of them today.  The difference is that today, I'm thirty-five pounds heavier than I was then.  I used to be really good at hiding my weight in a shapely, womanly figure.  I see more of my mother emerging as my shape is no longer just womanly.  It's crossed that line over into odd because the fat has run out of places to hide.  I have rolls that are in my way, I have to contort my body to buckle or tie my shoes, my knees hurt going up and down stairs and ladders, and I find myself shopping for clothing styles that hang differently--hide more. I wear sweaters when I'm hot so my arms won't show.  I used to hoard shoes because they didn't care if gained ten pounds.  Lately, I've been wearing lower heels because my weight just crushes down on my toes when I go high.

I know in a different way that losing weight for me is no longer about aesthetics with a nod to my health.  Now really is about my health and my future health. Yesterday, a Monday, was first day hell.  I didn't even plan to start yesterday.  I just decided to try and not sabotage myself, not continue bad habits that have resulted in the place I am now.  It was terrible.  The food was good, but sugar withdrawal is a bitch.  I went to the neighborhood pool and just walked in the water for thirty minutes.  I want to build up some baseline strength before subjecting my joints to exercise on land.  My legs felt like they weighed 5000 pounds when I exited the pool.  Within three hours I was sore.  As a former athlete and exercise instructor, I felt humiliated.  Still kinda do.  Last night hunger and pain woke me up.  All I wanted to do was go get a snack.  I got a drink of water and willed myself to go back to sleep.  It took over an hour.  Breakfast felt to me like a junkie getting a fix as my blood sugar level came back up.  I honestly don't know that it will get better, but I do know this is something I HAVE to do.

This is a current picture, taken at my son's wedding last September.  Thank goodness for spandex.  I left my daughter in the picture for comparison because she's just under the weight I "should" be.  She has my same build and is just about an inch taller (she'd already taken off her heels when this picture was taken.)  I'm grateful I don't have cankles, but nothing, including skinny jeans, is getting over those calves. 

Vitamin D Findings

I got a little off track over the weekend with a trip up to visit a girlfriend in Akron. I still lost 1.5 pounds last week.

I talked to my mother today who's been reading up on Vitamin D. New studies indicate that people with a Vitamin D deficiency tend to be insulin resistant and have trouble losing weight. My blood tests gave me a value of 30 and sources I've looked up indicated a level between 50-80 is opitimal. I picked up some Vitamin D while I was out today...

Progress?

I got the blood work done last week. My fifteen minute appointment to get an order for the blood tests turned into a 2 hours physical including an EKG, additional blood tests, and even a little stress therapy. Oh, and my flu shot and pneumonia booster. Ouch. The doctor's office called to tell me my iron levels were good, but I have to wait on the rest of the results until my doc is back from a humanitarian trip.

I'm about half way through the book Dawn suggested I read. Unfortunately it suffers from the same thing all diet books suffer from, their own self-promotion. They all thump their chests and say, "I'm the best! I'm the only one that will work!" Besides that, it's a little repetitive. Hyman even delves into some of the politics of food in the United States. Remove all that and you get some interesting science. This relatively short book would have made a very good paper. Instead, the publishers method for getting the information to the public was the vehicle of a diet book and that's just unfortunate because it makes it more tedious to read than it should be. So far the book's single biggest strength is that it doesn't treat the body as separate systems. Hyman sees the body as a single working unit. Affect one part and all the others are also affected so the variables working on one's weight can be equally varied or out of balance. "The" diet to put them back into balance may be one of the commercial diets, but most likely is a return to whole and less processed foods.

When I began eating the higher number of calories, combined with the sustained effort at eating more whole foods, especially fruits and vegetables, I began to have energy I haven't had in a long time. I just feel good. I resent completely that eating this well makes such a significant difference. I don't want it to matter. I want to eat what I want, but still feel this good. My body has other opinions. The good news is that I'm not finding it a burden so far. I don't really even get very hungry any more. Like Hyman promised, the hormones and messengers that signal appetite are being reset. I'm still appropriately hungry, I'm just not desperate. That voice which demands that "I can eat what I want" is a much quieter whisper now instead of a roaring, stomping toddler.

I'm still exercising regularly. I lost a pound last week.

Daring to Hope

Hope isn't always a good thing. When you've been heavy for a long time, the weight-loss industry as a whole wants to motivate you into using their products on the hope that something could be different "this time." I've spent the last year working with my trainer to the utter frustration of us both. I've worked out twice a day, dropped calories, changed the ratio of calories consumed and all to little or no effect on my weight. Realizing that something was at play other than simple "diet math", my trainer Chris Brown sent me to a Sports Nutritionist. Her specialty is performance athletes who have challenging nutritional needs. Being a former athlete and knowing probably too much for my own good, Dawn Weatherwax was excited by the challenge to work with me and get some useful answers. I made an appointment and went to see her last Wednesday.

Two hours after walking into her office, I had some answers and some specific follow-up advice. First she took an extensive history, looked at my habits, asked questions about my genetics, medications, diseases that run in the extended family and so forth. Then she did metabolic testing to see where my Resting Metabolic Rate was working. My guess would have been too slow. In reality, pleasantly high. High enough, in fact, that it was clear I wasn't eating enough. When I tried "normal" diet reductions between

1200 and 1500 calories, my body was hanging on to fat for dear life, literally. So, I have been instructed to eat more, 2000 calories on average per day. I LOVE this idea. Thinking back over my life, especially as an athlete, it makes perfect sense. I've always performed better when I ate more. Of course there was cautions about eating nutritionally dense foods, but still, the food blessing was a wonderful thing. I started tracking my food anew today.

Dawn gave me the title of a book she wants me to read. I downloaded it to my Ipad and have been reading it in spare moments. I like what I'm reading so far. The book is titled Ultrametabolism by Dr. Mark Hyman. I'll post some reviews as I go. Dawn also gave me some specific blood work to have done and address the results with my doctor, some things about my workout she wanted me to discuss with Chris, and then she brought up the mental/emotional aspect of all this. She noted that while I may not be anorexic or bulimic, I was definitely "controlling" with my food, even if it was to make the statement through my choices, "I can eat what I want." As I tried to downplay the statement she interrupted me to prove her point. She said, "For example I can tell just by looking at your body language and facial expression that if I asked you to give up wheat for two weeks you would look at me and say, 'I don't think so...'." She had me dead on. No one had ever put it quite that way to me before. When I told Chris he thought it was hysterical and then added, "I'm glad it was her telling you and not me!" What? This wasn't news to him after reading all my food logs for the last year?! Guess I'm not as cool a cucumber as I thought.

Still, over the weekend, before I started tracking my food again today, I allowed myself to hope. I allowed myself to think of what it would be like to move through my day, interact with people, and feel about myself if I were carrying significantly less weight on this petite frame.

Happy New Year?

Is it a happy new year? Last year is gone and I have "only" ten pounds down to show for it, not the fifty I was aiming for. None at all actually if we go all the way back to this time last year. But thanks to the weight lifting, I've lost inches. I'm much healthier and as of last month, I have my own spin class two days a week. That to me was a huge accomplishment. I feel like I'm on a good track. I'm going in the right direction. I have no complaints. I just need to keep doing what I'm doing.

Bend and Stretch into the Fridge

My husband doesn't understand my obsession with cooking shows. His logic is simple: Why are you watching shows that focus on food when you're trying to eat less and lose weight? While I admit there is a certain morbid curiosity in watching other people create and eat food I shouldn't have, it's really about eating different, not necessarily just less of "bad" foods. I would never eat octopus, but I might pick up a cooking technique that I can apply to another type of seafood. Chef's say a lot of things in passing that turn out to be useful when applied to something else.

I especially enjoy "healthy" cooking shows. Cheerful chefs who are enthusiastic about fresh ingredients and layering flavors to produce something so wonderful tasting that it is a "must have" meal in and of itself. It's not trying to be "the original," it is an original. It's not a full fat wanna be or watered down version of something else. It's something yummy and desirable that just happens to be good for you. Manufacturers of kid-friendly foods have been trying to capitalize on this concept for years. I recently saw a commercial for canned pasta, loaded with sugar and white flour pasta, marketed as having a full serving of vegetables in every bowl. What diligent and conscientious parent doesn't want that for their child? Or for themselves? And tomatoes are considered a "power food." It just gets better and better! Butter should be a power food. Just ask Paula Deen.

So then it comes to my kitchen. I enjoy cooking, but not doing dishes or cleaning up the kitchen. I loathe meal and menu planning, but enjoy grocery shopping. This combination of preferences makes for some interesting meals and a depressing kitchen space, not at all condusive to producing culinary works of art and taste. Working out consistently has been good for my culinary skills because my body won't keep up with the physical demands unless I pay attention to what I'm feeding it. The planning then becomes a necessity as important has having a clean sport bra and socks every morning. It would seem that the exercise continues to reach into all the parts of my life.

Finding Normal

Chris asked me today how I was feeling about myself one month into this process or if anyone else had made comments. They have not. I don't imagine anyone else has noticed the small changes because they are housed in the same clothing. I apologized to him for not being a very good advertisement, at least not yet. That got the conversation off, in between sets of grunting crunches, on an advertising tangent. Chris referenced an "elevator advertisement." This was not a term I was familiar with, imagining print ads framed on the elevator walls. He said an elevator advertisement was selling yourself or your product as much as you could casually fit into the conversation between floors. Chris's best line as a personal trainer is to say, "I make people look good naked."

That's saying something when you realize you're your own worst critic. I should have quipped back at him, "To whom?" One of the things I want from losing weight and the reshaping of this body that is supposed to know better, is to feel pretty in lingerie. Lingerie is the place no bump or roll can hide. But feeling pretty isn't the same thing as looking like Krystal Richardson. (See picture above.) I'm not sure you have to actually be pretty to feel pretty. I believe psychologists agree that people at any weight can have that feeling regardless of their weight. I'm all for a healthy sense of self-esteem, but I also know that overweight is inconvenient and uncomfortable. For me the weight crept up gradually. I had time to get comfortable like a frog being cooked to death as the put of water he's sitting in is warmed one degree at a time. My weight went up by ounces at a time until it was 50+ pounds. I made a new normal. New normal was necessary. It got me up and out into the world. I lived my life, had friends, worked on my marriage, mothered my kids, worked at my jobs, all without feeling overly self-conscious or a need to run and hide myself from the world. As many times as I moaned about not having anything to wear to church, I still went. In fact, I was in pretty good company. They say the average American woman wears a 12/14.

The weight going to come off just as slowly, ounces at a time. As predicted, the scale hasn't changed dramatically so far, but there have been changes. Just those few changes have been enough to remind me of how "normal" felt when I was thinner and that it was a different normal than the one I adapted myself to. The sense of pretty I feel that goes with being thinner really is different than whatever sense of self I have come to terms with at my present weight. I don't need to look like a fitness starlet, but I do need to get back to my other normal.