Pretty soon, we’ll be snowbound, and the seed catalogs (otherwise known as Porn for Gardeners) will start to arrive.
But this week kicks off not only celebrations of family and holy days for many religions, but a four-week orgy of eating which will hopefully be a feasible explanation for why I’ve been indulging in so much Diet Porn recently.
I usually ignore the magazines at the front of the check out. The magazine with celebrity photo on the front never interested me to begin with – I only know name of people I’ve seen in movies, and their personal lives are usually uninteresting to me (ruins seeing them in movies if I know too much about them).
I will admit, however, to having been distracted more times than I can tell by the ” What’s Wrong with Your Body and How We Can Fix it” magazine. For some reason, I let myself be fooled by headlines promising an insane amount of weight loss and the first week, written by sadists who know I don’t have patience to ride out a diet for the entire month.
Then last year one of my doctor suggested the South Beach diet. I figured it had to be halfway decent since the recommendation came from the doctor. I described the bullet points to my dad, also a doctor, and got approval from the family nutrition expert. I did. And guess what, the first few weeks I lost 14 pounds.
Not bad as far I was concerned. It was time to reward myself with a donut.
Aside from a few small chocolate-covered detours, I actually stayed on the straight and narrow for most of the summer, moving to a more plant-based approach that was easier to grow myself. Over the course of four or five months, I lost about 50 pounds.
I got away from looking for a miracle and focused on long-term health.
And then winter came. In Vermont, you’re kind of a prisoner in your own home and of the layers and layers of sweaters and coats you put on the minute you get up. The upside is the camouflaging of the poundage you put on to keep warm (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it).
I teetered around Thanksgiving and got completely off balance after Christmas. I’m back on a modified fitness plan but somehow have not been able to pull my fat butt back on that diet wagon (at least not for more than a couple days time).
So that, ladies and gentleman of the jury, is why I just had to look at that magazine with hot pink cover blaring the unheard-of promise of 24 pounds to lose in the first week. Just the thought of it made me consider taking a monokini instead of a muumuu to the beach.
Sadly, I know success comes down to the tried-and-true Eat-Your-Vegetables-Control-Your-Portion nonsense that has worked since the beginning of dieting. But the thought of my muumuu, reminded me of the my impending annual two-week swimsuit season, during which time (purely coincidentally) sightings of a great white whale beached on the shores of Lake Michigan are reported.
The inevitability of a season more certain and terrifying than tax time was the only reason I needed to find that last two dollars in my wallet – even though I know how that article will end.
I’m enough of a yo-yo artiste that I know bad habits don’t die, they just wait for winter to regroup. Case in point, the last few weeks I’ve been treating my body like a bit of an amusement park, and I can’t be too shocked when I feel like I’m looking into a funhouse mirror.
Still, when, in honor of spring and impending swimsuit season (which, for me, is a misnomer as I rarely wear a swimsuit anywhere), I stepped on the scale this morning, I realized it’s time to get back on the wagon.
It was when I was standing in the toothpaste and tampon aisle that I realized that the powers that be will try to sell us on anything.
Why else would the feminine hygiene market be trying to market us on a mini pads for a thong? I don’t know about the rest of my gender, the last thing I’m thinking of during that time of the month, is how I can find a way to wear the most uncomfortable undergarment possible.
I looked down at my own body and admitted there were a lot of days during the month I wouldn’t even consider wearing a thong, and most of those all of those days end with a ‘Y’. And as I snorted in disgust, I almost whispered those dirty words that everyone has uttered at some point in his or her adult life. “I hate my body.”
But I didn’t. I stopped myself. And, as I retreated to the safety of the toothpaste side of that aisle, I knew what they really trying to sell me.
I haven’t said those words more than once in the last six months. I haven’t abandoned them because I’ve lost so much weight that I love the way my body looks. The reality is, that even when I get to my goal weight, I’ll have so much loose skin from childbearing, breast-feeding, and carrying too much weight for too many years that wearing a thong even in private might give my husband reasonable grounds for divorce if his eyes weren’t so bad .
I eschewed the phrase during my first 7 mile run. For some people 7 miles isn’t very far, but for me it was a milestone. I was huffing and puffing the whole way, and when I realized the last part of my race would be uphill, I felt the words rising. I hate my body.
My feet became dead weights, and I slowed. It was as if my were body rebelling against the arrows I had just slung.
“What have I done?” It was asking me. “What have I done except carry you the last 40-odd years while giving you two healthy children – all without complaint? You have neglected me. You have gorged and let me grow weak, and I have served you anyway”
I came to a complete stop and looked down. It was right. If my body doesn’t perform to my expectations it’s because I haven’t treated it with respect.
That’s been changing over the last few months with better nutrition and exercise. But the change is not only physical. When I selected goal weight, it was not based on a jean size, it was based on a healthy BMI for my age. And I’ve come to realize that if I don’t love my body – at every size – how can I expect it to love me enough to carry me into old age and do the things that a body is supposed to do?
So maybe if they make a thong that’s comfortable for me and my body, I’d go for it. But what was for sale on that shelf in the toothpaste and tampon aisle, I’m no longer willing to buy.
Forgive me scale for I have really sinned. It’s been at least a week since my last confession.
Before I step on, however, I just want to say that even though my sins are too numerous to list within the next hour – the last week has been a nutritional blur – I have stuck to my fitness plan like a champion (the running part that is). With that in mind, I hope you’ll agree with me that you shouldn’t raise the numbers too high and that maybe you can give me a pass for listing maple syrup as a serving of vegetables (it comes from a plant, after all).
I’m ready to do some penance, and I really appreciate you keeping the pounds even. I promise I’ll lay off the crisps and pies for the next few weeks, but I just have to say that while the running rules, dieting sucks.
Tuesday was momentous. I finished cleaning out my office. You can now enter the room without signing a waiver of liability in the event that one of my stacks of books or supplies or other-crap-that-gets-tossed-in-the-office-when-we-don’t-have-time-to-find-the-right-place-for-it.
Wednesday my office became a multi-purpose work and workout room when I moved a weight bench into the briefly empty space along the back wall. About 5 minutes into setting it up, however, I realized it was missing something very important – weights. I added their acquisition to the to do list for the next morning.
Thursday, I stepped on the scale, hoping I’d hit the forty pound mark, and I crowed. Forty-one point six (I do count the points). Then I headed to the grocery store for necessities and capped of my trip to town with a visit to Kmart, hoping they’d sell the round weight plates I’d need. I only wanted a pair of pairs of 5 and 10 pound weights – Schwarzenegger I’m not – but the only thing that came close was a 40 pound box of round weights on sale for $25.
I grabbed the plastic tape that was holding the box together and hoisted it to the top of the shopping cart. It wasn’t back-breakingly heavy, but I couldn’t imagine carrying it from the back of the store to the front. I slid the box from the top of the cart to the bottom, setting down my load and laughed, ignoring the puzzled look of the nearby stock clerk.
I still carry plenty of stuff in my head wherever I go, but thinking about the plastic tape-wrapped box I’d lost kept me smiling through the rest of the day.
What is it about the colder days that makes bread need butter to be nourishing? What is it about the roads littered with leaves that sparks the craving for something hot and chocolatey?
I’ve been so good all summer, and while I’m still kicking it up on the exercise wagon, the numbers on the scale refused to budge for the last week or two. It’s no great mystery. I’ve been indulging. Cottage cream ice cream over apple crumb pie to celebrate the Big Guy’s birthday, a few days of stress-induced gluttony, and the only thing keeping the numbers on the scale from climbing is the fact that my exercise plan is often my only downtime – a fact that keeps it alive and well.
It’s another part of the game. The exercise is easy. It feels good when you’re doing it. If feels good when you’ve done it. It’s kind of like sex without consequences. But keeping up the calorie count – is there ever a time when it feels good when you’re doing it?
There are recipes that can make you think the calorie counting feels good because it tastes good, but the fretting is only rewarded on the scale in the morning. When it’s still dark at 5:30 in the morning, it’s hard to see those numbers at all, and the aroma wafting from that calorie-laden bowl of peanut-butter oatmeal wraps around me like a hug – softly strangling my willpower.
A few weeks ago, we threw out a ton of stuff. I don’t mean we threw out a lot of stuff. I mean we threw out 1 Ton of stuff. The Big Guy and I filled a one ton container with odds and ends we’d collected over our seventeen years together, and, I’m ashamed to say, we’ll probably be able to do it again in another month. I don’t mean to imply that our house is filled with trash, but the purge was a stark reminder that I need to look before I leap more often.
A week earlier, I had queried my writing group as to whether or not I should put some of my doodles on T-Shirts. I had an idea, not just to make money off my work, but for a line of fitness wear and T’s for plus-size women (google “plus size fitnesswear” and you’ll see there’s a market there for someone). This particular leap was inspired a sour grapes moment that resulted in my own fruitless search for running wear, and the first few responses were encouraging.
The Big Guy is always encouraging, and I began researching ‘how to print your own T-shirts’. When I the writing group page later in the day, however, a-look-before-the-leap had appeared. It was from our group’s fearless leader:
“I would finish your stories,” it said. “Then move on to other projects”
I was still determined to have something fun and different for my first race in 3 years, and I had a few pieces of T-shirt iron-on paper, but the words “Finish your stories” stayed in my head the rest of the day and the rest of the weekend.
I made my T-shirt and put a few up on CafePress (just for fun), but with the race behind me, and pre-holiday fall cleaning in front of us, I knew the last thing I needed was one more project or hobby – however good an idea it might seem. Filling that one ton container was suddenly more than a way to de-clutter our house. It was a reminder that to win the important battles, I needed to stop collecting projects and just finish the ones that matter.
Last weekend I fell of the wagon and fell hard.
Knowing there was a party at the end of the day, I decided to take a day off from fitness and counting calories and label reading. I’ve been pretty good for most of the last month, and even though I told myself not to say never-ever to treats, ever was supposed to be limited to three bites. Saturday I took three huge bites.
The first bite was the veggie breakfast burrito which could only be considered healthy because of the word vegetable in it. The second was a hiatus from any exercise. And the third was an evening devoted to eating local corn dogs and fries at the dairy bar and then from the freezer case at the local country store.
My three non-regulation sized bites left me with a whopping hangover, making me all too-aware of the fact that ice cream would not be a performance enhancing drug for my morning workout. But I knew I had to workout. My sister has already signed us up for a 5K in Connecticut at the end of the summer, and, even though I’m doing the 3 miles regularly now, I know I need to keep doing those three miles if I want to not come in second to last (it has happened).
Getting back on the diet wagon always seems harder than getting back on the fitness wagon. I’ve been doing South Beach and then found my way to the Forks Over Knives plant-based way of eating, and the recipes on both have been phenomenal. I can’t really say my taste buds been deprived the last few months, but empty calories can be so darned delicious, and my new morning meal, usually so satisfying, didn’t have quite the same appeal on Sunday morning.
By about the middle of my strength training, however, I had found my way back onto the fitness wagon, and there’s a reason for this. There’s something about running and lifting weights that gives you instant satisfaction in a way that eating less simply can’t. The farther you run or swim or climb, the harder you push, the more your body becomes a temple, and the better you want to treat it. Right now, mine still looks a lot like a temple to a paunchy goddess of vice, but it gets a little more solid every day, but it isn’t the penance at the scale that keeps me going.
