43 An even 200
Aww phooey. The two pounds are back that I took off last week. Not surprising—I was expecting this, but I’m still irrationally disappointed. At least there’s a good reason those pounds are here---a weekend vacation with plenty of food, and much less exercise than normal. Happily, I’m feeling less resentful about it than usual. I’m ready to go back on points, but I prophesy that I’ll be switching back and forth from core to points fairly regularly.
SO—why did I finally post the dread weight today?? I’ve never been a fan of the reality—let’s blurt out everything in the world about ourselves movement. I guess I have a little bit of old-fashioned dignity, which I see as a good thing. HOWEVER—the honesty of other bloggers—Sean and Laura (of zaaisshrinking.blogspot.com), and those who have written books have been incredibly helpful to me. It’s impossible to measure how much the written word has helped me in my life. Okay then. On the off-chance somebody every stumbles across this blog, maybe some openness might help them. Actually, there might be more openness than anyone bargained for especially me. I’ve been thinking I need to write out one emotional issue—my first thought was to put it in my private journal but then I got to thinking that silence has been a big problem in my history. I sense that putting the real issues out there however personal would somehow be a healing thing to do. So, we’ll see. I know I need to write it out for sure. Whether it gets posted…..well….we’ll see. For today putting up numbers is scary enough.
The first time I remember being really horrified by my weight was in second grade—I weighed 72 pounds!!! Things only got worse. I managed to never actually be the fattest kid in the class, but I was always number two. For me, the obesity epidemic came too late. This was back in the 70’s. Take a look at some old 70’s sitcoms and see how skinny everybody was!! By today’s standards I wasn’t all that fat—not fat at in fact!! But it didn’t feel that way back then. I have my mother’s german curves—a womanly figure, which is to die for now, but was horrible in junior high. In high school, I was pressured to join the swim team. I must have been about normal at 135 pounds and 5’7. But I didn’t FEEL normal—and looking back at the swim team pictures I can objectively say that yes, I WAS the dumpiest one in the group. I put on 20 lbs and graduated at about 155—my current dream weight—but it wasn’t a good dream then. Slowly I put on more weight over the years. In college I added another 30 pounds over the years. Got married and went to Japan. That was bad weight-wise for both me and my husband. We suddenly became sedentary and ate a lot of fried foods—that was scary—another 25 pounds in ONE year. It never came off. Pregnancy actually helped—I lost all desire for any kind of fat, sugar or salt and dropped a ton of weight to the fright of the doctors. I had a hard time convincing them that I wasn’t doing anything stupid—but I wasn’t!! My beautiful daughter was born healthy, and to my great surprise (and relief) was one of those women who was back in her pre-pregnancy jeans within a week. I actually came out ahead by about 10 pounds. If I had only had 6 more children…. Other than the Japan experience, my weight gain has been relatively slow. The worst weight I ever saw on the scale was 228—very depressing because I didn’t weigh that much even when 9 months pregnant!! I didn’t do anything about it other than occasional stabs at losing weight that never had any umph behind them.
Eventually, I got completely fed-up with the diet industry and became the “rebel dieter”. I wasn’t going to do anything stupid to go out of my way to gain weight, but neither was I going to try to lose it. I was furious (still am) at programs like weight watchers who claim to have answers but offer no help to people to get to the place in their minds where they can tolerate living on such a plan. I began to look at the things that made me mad (about 90 separate issues right off the bat) and began to work on those rather than working on fats or calories or whatever. Doing that—which I still consider the REAL work of losing weight enabled me to drop back to the 196-198 range without dieting. The catch was that it took me about 5 years. And I’ve been stalled at this level for a long time (a couple of years in fact). I went overboard last Christmas and went back up to 208 where I stayed for the months it took until I began this blog. As you know, if you’ve been unfortunate enough to read this far, I tried the Lean and Free program which just didn’t work. Too much freedom I think. So, I’ve joined weight watchers—with great reluctance, but with hope too---not hope that they have the answers—and the meetings still drive me crazy to the point where I’m literally better off not going---but with hope that I have made enough mental progress that I CAN accept at every level, that losing weight means work and that that’s okay. I’m using ww in the same way that a person with a broken leg uses crutches. I hope that someday I’ll be strong enough to not to need ww. But I’m doing a lot of thinking (without the help of ww who doesn’t seem interested in helping) about how I’ll handle life at goal weight. What I need to do every day for the rest of my life---what I can play with till I find what works. I’m determined that I won’t get to goal weight and then celebrate by going out for pizza and putting it all back on.
For now, using the 208 as the official starter—I’m down 8 pounds. And happily something else is down too—which is nice on a week when the weight went up---my triglycerides are down! They’ve been steadily increasing over the past few years—at last check up they were around 220 (they’re supposed to be less than 149). This year’s check up they were at 176! It’s exciting to think what next year will bring.
The dates are working out funny and very apt too. I happened to join WW on April Fools, and now I’m revealing my weight on Friday the 13th. Life has poetry about it, no doubt.
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