Tag Archives: diets
March ANTI-Res
March roared in with subzero chills on the kite wind. Winter stalked the Midwest all the way down south and up the east coast like a jilted lover who refuses to let go. The ides passed without a word. I did not make a March Res as the resolutions made for February kind of spitter spatted and stalled. (Spellcheck tells me “spitter” and “spatted” are misspelled. We can “spitted” and “spatter” and but not the other way around? OH WELL. Everyday lingo does not always sync with dictionaries.) Now where was I before red squiggly lines interrupted my train of thought? Oh yes, February.
I finally got wet. In March. Last week, to be precise.
After gathering up my courage and swim gear, I walked over to the YMCA to do some deep water walking and learned that my Y-PASS card had been deactivated. I had changed insurance companies, got a new Silver Sneakers card, so I’m guessing the Y dropped me during the transition. (Silver Sneakers is a perk offered by some insurance companies to old and/or disabled people.) She let me in anyway, and I was the only person in the shallow pool, which was not deep enough to keep my feet off the floor. I was also the only person in the locker room so I got a good look at myself in the full length mirror. The Y called me latter in the week to let me know that my Y-PASS works again, so now I am good to go.
The two piece swimsuit purchased to replace the baggy suit does not look nearly as cute on me as I thought it did.
To tell you the truth, and this may sound bizarre, my body actually looked better when I weighed 80 pounds more. I told my sister and she was all, “oh no… you look better now” but she’s seeing me with clothes on. Everything that used to just be big and rounded is now saggy and lumpy. I have folds where I never had skin folds before, lumps where they don’t belong. And it is going to get a lot worse and that scares me. I am afraid that by the time I am done, the skin on my tummy will hang to my knees and the skin from my knees will sag like capris. The bat wings will be so long that I will have to flip the skin around my arms a few times and secure it with scrunchies. I have this mental picture of how it is going to be and sometimes having a vivid imagination can dramatically exaggerate things, but I knew when I looked in that mirror that reality is not too far off. It scares me because I have heard horror stories of nasty sores, which thankfully I don’t get but then again, I take extra care to pamper that excess skin.
I am seriously thinking of putting myself on a diet. My weight has been stagnant, the needle barely moving up or down a pound or two for months on end now. I think the fear of excess skin has got me self sabotaging to maintain where I am as I don’t dare gain back any weight. My imagination goes extreme that way, too. It never goes on or off the same. If I gained weight, I imagine it would go to those lumpy areas and turn them into monstrous things attached to my body. Yeah… gaining weight is not an option. My best bet is just get through this as fast as I can, get it done and over with. I still have a lot of weight to lose before I would be a good candidate for skin removal surgery.
Ye gads… it leaves me with one question: Are navels optional?
Making Peace (note for friends/family)
So that little cheesecake yesterday kind of freaked you out? I should never eat anything like that? Oh, it’s bad, really REALLY BAD?
Okay, what should fat girls eat? Lettuce dowsed with vinegar? Prepackaged Jenny Craig or Lean Cusine? Or just weigh and measure everything, always following rules and charts that define which foods are allowed, limited or absolutely forbidden?
Straight up, I am down… oh geez, got to do math. Okay, I now weigh 16 pounds less than what it says on my state ID and y’all know that I lost ye 50 pounds before that but I gained some back doing the up 3 down 5, up 7 down 2, and so on in typical diet/binge seesaw battles, and then down about 30 since I moved here, mostly since halloween when I finally had enough and QUIT dieting and, most importantly, QUIT bingeing. Exact weight loss? I don’t know, with all the ups and downs since 1971, I have lost somewhere between 2 and 3 thousands pounds. The thing is, I’m seeing lower numbers on the scales than I’ve seen in five years and as long as I do NOT diet/binge, those numbers will continue to drop down to somewhere around “normal” even if I occassionally have a slice of cheesecake.
Yes, I suppose you could call this a “lifestyle change” as living binge-free is a serious lifestyle change but it is a hell of a lot more than a food plan.
As for a “food plan” since some of you are so programmed to believe that a restrictive plan of eating is vital to life, I am using the idea of “Intuitive Eating” as a guide. In other words, I have yet to buy the book, but you can google to find the basic principles. It is a simple idea: eat when hungry, stop when full.
Part of intuitive eating is to MAKE PEACE with food. Feeding yourself should not be a war. Food is not the enemy. I happen to like food. I enjoy food and guess what peeps… you are supposed to!
I made the mistake years ago of using food to shove down “inappropriate” emotions that I was unable to express about things I did not know how to deal with. I was too locked in silence to talk to anyone. Then bingeing is such a horrid secret thing in itself, perpetuates into a vicious cycle. It becomes a bad coping mechanism for a lot of other things, a quick way to not feel whatever you don’t want to feel. I used bingeing as a way to contain emotions, to contain myself. The excess weight is a symptom, not the problem. Yeah, so I’m a little screwed up? But it is going to be okay… fair warning, dear friends and family, I am coming out.
Yes, I am coming out better and stronger and more devine than I ever was… that scares me but it is going to be okay.
Well, I hope this answers that “what are you doing to lose weight” question because if anyone asks me again, I’m just going to make up something silly that is obviously not true.
Thanks for reading!
Barnbees 