July 2007 Archives

For the first few days I was on The Program I was hungrier than I thought I would be. Portion control is seriously the name of the game. I ate my normal rice and tomatoes for lunch on my first day but the amount of rice was cut. I never measured it before so I'm not sure how much I was eating but 1/3-1/2 more than what is considered a standard portion size of rice is a good guess. By the time dinner rolled around I was insanely hungry. This continued for the first few days. I started eating more of other stuff (fruit, veggies, the usual crap you're supposed to eat) in addition to smaller portions of rice, meat, etc. and I haven't been hungry much since. Occasionally in the morning my corn flakes seem to last not as long as I would like and I get a bit hungry at around 10:30 or 11:00 and I usually eat some raw carrots. I like to put lunch off until at least noon and 12:15 or 12:30 is even better because it helps break up my work day. If I don't get back from lunch until 1:30 there are only 3.5 hours left in the work day! I need psychological tricks and tools to help get through the boredom of my work.

So once the initial issues of figuring out how to eat enough good stuff (fruits, veggies) to counter eating a smaller quantity of less good stuff { (meat, cheese, white rice) I'm of the belief that there is no bad food over all but I could be starting to change this opinion*} were sorted out things have been going pretty well. The truth is I'm never hungry and I'm never full. In some ways it's a weird feeling. Like I guess that's how you're supposed to feel, like you stop eating when you're no longer hungry not when you're full or when the plate is empty. But man that is almost a foreign concept for me. I'd never really thought of it before. There have been a couple studies out lately that say we eat as much as we're given not as much as we want or need and that is blindingly obvious to me now. My criteria for stopping eating are 1) the plate is empty or 2) I'm full. Stopping when I'm simply no longer hungry is just....weird for me and it's something I don't know that I can do much off. That's where knowing what a portion size is supposed to be and how much I'm supposed to be eating in a given day is a huge change and benefit for me.

"Eat only 1 cup of rice with like 2 cups of vegetables instead of 3 cups of rice and .25 cups of vegetables." Oh, ok, I can do that.

I really am of the school of thinking that says there is no bad food. Like say chocolate cake isn't a bad food. It's just a food that you should eat in small amounts and not every day. But dude meat? Not really a good food. I'm carnivorous like a bear is carnivorous but 85% vegetarianism is looking mighty good to me these days. Example: yummy, tastely little vegan meatballs? Like 3 points a serving. Real meatballs? Like 12. Example: Morningstar Farms Chick Patties: 3 points. Regular breaded chicken patty for sandwichs: 10 points. Grillers Garden Burger: 3 points (5 with all the necessary additions like cheese and ketchup). Standard restuarant burgers: Range from 7 at McDonald's to 20 at "casually dining restaurants." So yeah I'm thinking vegetarian meals are going to become and even bigger part of our diet than they were before. We'll have regular dose of lean chicken and fish but only very occasionally splurge on meals arranged around huge hunks of meat (say like on my birthday exactly two weeks from today).

And in case you're interested get the vegan meatballs as Trader Joes (3 points), add a little bit of pasta sauce and simmer (1-2 points) until meatballs are heated through, serve on a Wonder Bread Hot Dog Bun (1 point!) and you've got a very, very tasty, very The Plan friendly lunch.

Something else we've learned in the past little bit is that it is super hard to eat healthy food if you aren't making it yourself. Example: Noodles and Co. Belinda's favorite dish from the is the Indonesian Peanut Saute with tofu. It consists of noodles, a light brown sauce, vegetables and tofu. Sounds no so horrible right? So very wrong, a small serving is 18 points. 7 points more than the Wisconsin Macaroni and Cheese I like to get. We may be having dinner at a chain Italian place this weekend for a friend's birthday and because we're being pro-active about this we scoped out all the nutritional info and figured out points etc. Jesus, Mary and Joseph if you eat what these people give you in many, many (I dare say most) cases you'll have exceeded what your caloric and fat intake is supposed to be the entire day. Granted Italian food has pasta, cheese etc but the amounts of fats and calories in these admittedly huge portions are crazy. Again it goes back to us eating whatever is put in front of us. It's really hard to combat that. I see now that it's all on you to be super vigilant about what you put in your body. You can have anything you want but you just have to plan for it and think about it instead of just blindly eating whatever day after day. Such a simple epiphany but such a huge one.

Something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is how I'm seen now that I've lost 132 pounds. How I see myself, how strangers see me, how my family who saw me at my heaviest now see me, how my family who saw me heavy but not nearly my heaviest see me now. Used to be, save very, very few exceptions, I was always the fattest person in the room. There was a certain...comfort isn't the right word but almost a feeling of comfortable acceptance. "I am the fattest person in this room. I don't have to compare myself to anyone else, I don't have to do anything. I am what I am and this is what it is." Now, I'm mostly not the fattest person in the room. A lot of times I'm the person in the room who can bench press the most, knows what vegetables are currently in season, and walked anywhere from 1-4 miles before the other people in the room got out of bed. Clearly that's different from being the fattest person in the room. Clearly I don't miss being the fattest person in the room but I do somehow miss knowing where I am in relation to people. I can't look at myself and see how I look in the context of other people. Would strangers describe me as fat, heavyset, thick, healthy, strong? It doesn't really matter. I guess I'm just curious.

All of this coincides with moving back to Louisville, where I'm so much happier, so much more content and so much more confident. So do people treat me better because I'm 130 pounds lighter or because I treat them better because I'm happier? Are people more friendly because they aren't repulsed by my appearance or because people are just nicer here. Many questions but not so many answers when it comes to strangers. Family is a little clearer.

At my brother's wedding I saw a lot of family members I hadn't seen for a long time. There are very varying degrees of long time though. So I hadn't seen in 8 months, some I hadn't seen in 4 years, some I hadn't seen in 9 years, some I hadn't seen in over 15 years. Some of these people have been present in my life at moments where I was getting bigger and bigger. The ones who saw me at my heaviest and hadn't seen me since I started my healthy lifestyle last year seemed to only want to talk about my weight. I had an aunt who repeatedly demanded I tell her the number of pounds I'd lost. As we've discussed I'm not comfortable with that (though I tell you people freely enough don't I?) so I repeated my stock answer of "a little" over and over to her. She wasn't terribly amused. She didn't ask anything else about my life, our new house, my photography career, nothing. This massive weight loss is apparently the only thing about me that interests her at all.

Family members and family friends who hadn't seen me in 15 years didn't ask about it at all. They commented that I looked wonderful but I chalked that up to the terribly cute outfits I was wearing for all wedding related hoopla including fantastic accessories. Family members who saw me when I was 130 pounds heavier said I looked great but the only meaning I took from that is that "you look so much better 130 pounds lighter" instead of "you look pretty in that skirt." Did they mean either of those things? I don't know, that's just how I instantly took it.

Perhaps the most interesting exchange at the wedding was with a male cousin I hadn't seen since my grandmother's funeral many years ago. I was quite heavy at my grandmother's funeral maybe 30 or 40 pounds less than my heaviest weight. So let's say a hundred pounds more than I weigh now. Since I last saw him this cousin has gone completely bald and gained a significant amount of weight. The baldness threw me. I didn't pay much attention to the weight, until he brought it up. He came up to me and said something about he didn't know I would recognize him. I said well yeah the bald head threw me off for a minute. He sighed and said "yeah there's that and the extra 30 pounds" in an almost apologetic manner. It was a short exchange but one that never would have happened a year ago. No one apologizes to the really fat girl about their extra 30 pounds.

Some family friends told me I looked like I did in high school, others said they would never have known me if we passed on the street. The interactions I liked best were the ones where my weight didn't come up at all.

I've now lost 132 pounds. This summer has been an interesting time for my weight loss/healthy journey. At the beginning of summer I was losing a crazy amount of weight a week (like 5-7 pounds a week) because I was doing so much work around the house and particularly the yard but not eating anymore than normal. Then came family visits, friend visits, headfirst diving into the Louisville dining scene, a couple Maker's Mark nights, and the hot sign being on at the Krispy Kreme. So then the scales stopped moving. Even when the number on the scale wouldn't budge I knew I was making good progress in my health goals. My upper body strength has grown significantly (bags of mulch are heavy), my overall fitness level is higher, and I'm just really active on a daily basis. So though I can't say I wasn't frustrated when the scales wouldn't budge I knew it was just a plateau that I could work through and not the end or the beginning of anything. Now the scales are moving again, our eating out is back to a normal level and our healthy eating habits are right back on track. I should mention that earlier in spring I had set a min-goal of reaching the 130 pounds lost mark by my birthday. Clearly I've exceeded that and I couldn't be happier about it.

Speaking of birthdays, it is that time of year again. On 27 July I turn 31. Hmmm. I don't have a lot of thoughts or emotions on turning 31. This time last year I was in such a depressed, miserable place emotionally, physically, psychologically, it's good to now just be back to "yay a birthday. Presents, dinners with loved ones, cake, good times." instead of "my god I'm 30 years old and a complete and total failure." Definitely an upgrade.