Hiatus

This is the last one for a while.  I have finally said everything I can about diet, weight, and feeling fat.  I have 16 pounds to go or so, will check in again in July.  Thank you for your support!

Sunday night

We went out to eat on Wednesday as our downstairs is being retiled and the refrigerator and stove are non-functioning.  It was a family eatery, and the place was hopping.  There were tons of temptations – hamburgers, fish and chips, French fries, fried clams, pizza, pasta etc.  After much mulling over the menu and sighing, I finally settled on the house salad.  It was huge but without tons of dressing a great meal for me.  We even took home a doggie bag of salad.  I was fascinated by what everyone was eating – huge portions of fried food. Each portion was easily 1000 calories.  I think we all have such a love affair with food –eating is so satisfying. Feeling full feels great to me.

 

The weight continues to slowly drop – old clothes are beginning to fit.  Life is good!

Trying to get it right

I met friends for dinner the other night at a local restaurant. I scanned the menu looking for the most healthy, least caloric meal. I finally decided on the baked scrod with no starch but an extra helping of vegetables. I ignored the bread (not the glass of wine). When the meal came, the fish was baked and served in a large pool of butter. It was delicious! I probably should have ordered the lasagna if I wanted less calories.

My daughter-in-law tells me that doctors are seeing so many obese women that 300 pounds is no longer strange. Whereas 200 pounds used to be considered big, the bar has been raised to 300. I do think it is all the food that is available – all processed and loaded with calories that is making this a fat country.

I must say that this seems to me a long time (you too, I am sure) and the results have been less than stellar. Young people and men drop weight so quickly, and my 24 pounds over 3.5 months, that is 14 weeks – has been so slow. Here is a picture of me in London at the Camden Town canals. I am still wearing black!

We are in London for the week and staying at a friend’s apartment. It is quite luxurious not to be in a cheap hotel, as is our usual custom. There is only one problem a five by five foot mirror in the bathroom. In order to get to the shower, one must pass by this gigantic mirror. I was shocked the first night to turn around and see myself stark naked. It is not a flattering mirror, some are, but this one is definitely not. So after I recoiled, I decided to really look. There are rolls of flesh, but I can see the beginnings of a shape taking place. If I had had this mirror, scales and non-elastic pants near me everyday, I doubt whether I would have let myself get this way. They may be the best diet tools that exist!

By the way, Nev stepped on the scales only to learn that the weight was in stones. When he tried to calculate stones to pounds, he said his weight was 328 pounds. Something wrong there………

I heard the word “corpulent” the other day. I think I would not like to be called “corpulent.” A friend once said she saw on her medical record, “morbidly obese” and it was devastating. I think being overweight makes me hide. I hide in jackets and big sweaters. I hide by not looking in the mirror. I hide by not weighing myself. I wonder if that spills over to other parts of my life.

Reduction

Those of us not blessed with a hyperactive metabolism are always in a continual battle – we love to eat so we gain weight – we hate getting fat so we are always fighting that love to eat. Sometimes it is hard to take on that battle because food is instantly rewarding and comforting. If there are upsets or challenges, food becomes even a greater solace. And, if you are like me, you can pretty much deny anything is happening with elastic waistbands and throwing out the scale. It’s easy to tuck away the too tight clothes into the back of the drawer. Eventually they get moved down to the basement or the guest room closet for permanent storage.

Nev has Photoshop and can retouch - this is called the pinch - it knocked off 20 pounds in seconds. 

It’s funny how often we use an event as an excuse to overeat. Nev went on a fire call this am with the volunteer firemen. After the fire, everyone went to the firehouse for bacon and eggs and sweet rolls. A slimmer fireman declined saying he didn't need caffeine and grease. Vacations, nights out, holidays, even fires – calories don’t count on those special occasions. One vacation with Sally, we ate our way through Sicily – cannoli, gelato, mmmmm. It was easier when two of us were doing it.

Lisa tells me that our grandmothers and great grandmothers were nice to themselves and accepted being overweight. They wore sensible shoes and dresses and looked like every other grandmother in the village, portly. Times have changed, and we don’t want to look like our grandmothers. So I was surprised when an old friend handed me a letter that was addressed to my great grandmother in the early 1900s. It was a weight loss and exercise program by mail. She was a forbidding woman, head of a private school. People quaked around her. But here is this letter, rather patronizing, congratulating her on losing nine pounds and urging her to continue. She must not have been happy at all with her weight. I don’t think that she succeeded in keeping the weight off. This is one of my favorite pictures of her with my aunt when she was a baby. It was around 1905, and Great Grandmother Sanford was in her 50s.

Feedback Needed

I told Nev the other day that I needed more feedback from him. I am down 18 pounds, and he has not said much. From him, I expect a daily two second nudge – “you go, girl” or “you look good” or something along that line. If I ask him, he will say something like, “It’s hard to tell, I see you everyday.” This is the engineer in him, but not necessarily something that reinforces my resolve. Of course, having told him this, he says something nice about how I look at least once a day, but now I am not sure I believe him. (He can’t win.)

The amazing fact is that 18 pounds is a lot, but not enough. I still have 22 pounds to go to slimness. You will note that I am wearing my traditional black. So I look different – my friend, Pam, tells me my “behind” is smaller. I remember several years ago, someone at work one day looked very slim. She said, “Finally someone noticed, I have lost 17 pounds.” So I have the next 18 pound weight loss to look forward to and big changes! Meanwhile each week everything gets a little looser. The winter coat is no longer tight; the red vest (that Carla tells me to dump) is almost not tight. It is at the size that you would try on and say, “It’s a little small, so I don’t think I will get it.”

We went to a concert last night; 90% of the male singers had sizeable potbellies. They were mainly dressed in snug turtleneck shirts. Most men hide their weight pretty well – it seems to settle in the belly. Women gain all over. It was clear that everyone was told to wear black, and men chose the turtleneck shirt. Most of the women were overweight too, and many wore voluminous jackets. I wasn’t sure what looked worse – too tight shirts covering an inner tube (the men) or mountains of cloth hiding the whole person (the women).

New/old pants

This week I put on pants that were much too tight before, and they fit. They are a large. Sizes vary so much now that I have mediums and larges in my closet. I must say I love it when mediums fit, but I know deep down inside that I am a large. But I was surprised and dismayed when a large did not fit me, and I tucked the pants in the “doesn’t fit” drawer. It was delightful that I could finally wear them! I have a whole drawer of new clothes that don’t fit, but soon will – not old clothes but clothes that I bought without trying on and came home to find that they were too tight.

My husband decided to lose a few pounds and took off three pounds in two days. I did more physical exercise and ate less. Unfair!!!! He said he felt fat at being five pounds overweight!

I was looking at pictures of Eleuthera. I was surprised to see how I looked in pictures of me walking on the beach. I look big still. I don’t think of myself as big but now on the border (okay, there is a distance to go) of being normal. When I look in the medicine cabinet mirror, I never did or now see myself as fat. I think that is why random photographs always shock me – who is that woman and how come she looks that way? Our ability to re-size ourselves in the mirror is such a great gift. Otherwise most of us would be depressed every morning.

It’s a funny thing on how I judge photographs of myself. I look first to see how fat I look. If I look thinnish (when I am thinnish), the photograph is okay. 

I never made it to Weight Watchers as I didn’t got home in time from an afternoon meeting. Maybe this week! I did take out the book and counted my points faithfully. Someone saw me the other day and said, “You have lost a lot of weight.” I wanted to hug her!

Back from vacation

Back from Eleuthera – I found toward the end of the week, my resolve to eat healthy began to wane. Too much temptation, and I started eating a few chips as they sat in front of me and would grab a few crackers on the plate. Soon I was slicing myself some cheese. I recognize that this is familiar behavior with me. I do well for three or four days when we are on vacation, but gradually I just want to have what everyone else is eating. I did avoid deep fried conches, but they were tempting. Another week with no loss but no gain either – a triumph for a vacation but not great for my steady resolve to look good in a bathing suit by summer nor even for fitting into this red vest by next winter!

The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency will be on HBO this month. I love how the author, McCall Smith, describes Precious Ramotswe as “traditionally built”. With only reading those words, we all know what she looks like!

I believe my biggest barrier to weight loss is portion control. I ordered a container of seafood salad (the non-mayonnaise type) at Dean and DeLuca’s the other day. It looked like a reasonable size. It was only when I took it the cash register and paid $11.50 that I looked at the weight. I was shocked by the price - who would pay $11.50 for take-out lunch to be eaten standing up with a plastic fork! It was way more than 1/2 of a pound. Since I was nowhere near a refrigerator and couldn’t take it with me, I ate the whole thing. Someone else would have thrown the extra out. I think it was three fistfuls, not one fistful (a normal size portion), which looks so puny to me! The trick is buying, eating and cooking smaller portions. My husband and I talk about this as we tend to eat what we cook, and we quite often cook more than we need for one meal so we can freeze the leftovers. But that makes having seconds of “healthy” meals easy.

I have decided to check out (check into?) Weight Watcher’s this week. I feel as though I need some other framework to keep going, maybe at a quicker pace. My vacation brought home to me how easy it is to slip into old patterns, and this is about changing patterns.

Eleuthera

Here I am in beautiful Eleuthera and I am swimming on a deserted beach. It feels incredible! As we waited in JFK, I went to get coffee at Dunkin Donuts, which has all the calories of each item listed not to the prices.  I think this must be a law in NYC.

It was pretty shocking that a plain bagel was much more caloric than a plain donut. Now that is out of Woody Allen’s movie, Sleeper. All these years, I have opted for a plain bagel and I could have been chomping on a greasy donut. I loved the calorie counter and think it would go a long way to having Americans reform their eating habits. One thing for sure, no one would ever order a bagel with cream cheese.

I heard a tip the other day on the ABC morning show on people trying to get fit. It said to ask yourself the question what is missing from your life; the assumption is that food is filling a void. The woman in the example said “color” was missing from her life. When she started to wear color, she lost weight. Someone else said sleep, and she lost 10 pounds in a snap. I am up for any new tip, particularly if it doesn’t include deprivation, so I asked myself what was missing from my life, and I could only say “wine.” Somehow I don’t think that will work.

My daughter-in-law, who looks fabulous, is running every morning, literally at the crack of dawn. I think that this is the challenge of growing old is that the possibilities narrow. My body is too old to start running again – that sport is out of my life. It’s a slow process this narrowing - aging, but it is happening.

Wednesday, I dug out my old bathing suit. It is real stretchy. I wore it when I weighed 30 pounds less and 20 pounds less. Now that is one size fits all! It hasn’t seen the light of day for four and a half years. I must say it is not very becoming today, but will do for the beautiful beaches of Eleuthra. Where we will be is almost empty of people.

Lisa noted on reading my blog that she didn’t “give a rat’s ass” on how I look in a bathing suit. We are off to Eleuthra in four days with Lisa and her husband, and she will see plenty of me and plenty of times in a bathing suit. (Below is a picture of Lisa my brother, sisters, and me when we were very little. I am the blonde with the belly button showing; Lisa is in the second row, second from the right.) Several have written something similar, and I realize that I am the only person who really cares about the way I look. When you are overweight, but not morbidly obese, you just blend into overweight America. No one thinks much about it – being slim is the outlier, particularly at my age.

I can’t count the number of times in my life when I have awakened in the morning and pledged to reform my consumption habits, particularly after a night of "too much” of everything. Self-esteem and looking good (which I equate with slimness) are intertwined from the moment you are born. It may be one of the first things we learn as our mothers and aunts coo over us. It’s not much later that we learn being overweight is negative. This is another hard childhood lesson, one of the first insults thrown at you if you are heavier than norm as a child. I remember watching a friend, JoAnne, in grade school get mercilessly teased. And another early lesson, high calorie food, especially sweets, is a reward for being good.

I am a quick eater – among the first to be done at dinner. I gobble versus savor. I wonder if that is because there were four children in our family and it was get what you can (when my mother was still alive) or that meals were so unpleasant with my stepmother and father that you hurried to get through and be excused. More food for thought.

Sunday, February 15, 2008

It felt like a different season this week with spring definitely in the air, and shorts season right around the corner. One pound this week - this is very, very slow. I was talking to my friend, Janet, the other day about the clothes we keep hidden of our past slimness. She talked fondly of two dresses. I have two pairs of tiny jeans that I have kept for 11 years. I only wore them for one year as they were never remotely loose on me and if I gained  three pounds, they were too uncomfortable to wear. (See me below wearing them with our good friends, Jan and Arnie in Taos.) I doubt that I will ever fit in them again as my body has changed in proportions with fat being more distributed around my waist. When I lose this weight, I may finally put them aside.

When I was that slim, I took particular delight in shopping. Sometimes I would just go try on clothes with no intention of buying. I was so happy with my body – tall and lean. It didn’t take much weight gain to knock me off that high. I remember shopping with my daughter-in-law; I was still quite slim. I was looking for dress for a fancy wedding, and she was encouraging me to try on these outrageous dresses. I was already unhappy with the way I looked and didn’t want to put my body in the spotlight. I wish I had, it would have been a great memory to savor. I rue other times that weight has interfered with pure joyful moments like swimming with grandchildren who only want to jump in to the lake, 50 times plus. Instead I sit on the dock and laugh, but not as much as if I had been in the water, being splashed in the face.

My friend, Patricia, said to me yesterday. How did this happen to you, you have always been so active. I think that food is many things to me including that sometimes it relieves boredom. My sister said she would be fat if she was home all the time as she is always in the kitchen. Staying home is a challenge as the pantry is always calling, a handful of nuts, a few rice crackers, and Nev’s peanut butter cups. So as I go through this slow, slow process, I am trying to change the way I deal with food. This is not a diet, but a new way of eating. Guess I will find out if it works.

Feb. 8, 2009

I can hardly believe this is the end of my fifth week. Ten pounds down. I must be looking different as people will tell me that I look so good in some outfit. But it is the same old outfit, so I am assuming it is this slow weight loss. I read the blog of an opera star in San Antonio who is losing weight. She called her diet, “a fat relocation project.” Anyhow here I am, and if I really, really try I can button this vest.

 
 

It is not my favorite television show, but I frequently watch the Biggest Loser. There is something so intriguing about people losing 20 pounds in one week. And the winners never show any sagging skin. I wonder if that is a result of the exercise, youth, or cosmetic surgery. The New York Times had an article about the contestants’ eating habits during the show and after the show. Many eat less than the recommended calories and seem to enjoy the feeling of starvation during the show.  One winner, the man in the picture, has gained 100 pounds back. 

Here I am reading the NY Times this morning.  I just bought this new lampshade for this funky lamp, and it makes me very happy.

To lose two pounds a week, I have to have a 7000 calorie deficit. The weekends are usually going out for dinner so I have to put all my efforts into five days. I figure by cutting out two drinks per day, I have cut 250 calories a day, 1250 in total. With me a few drinks leads to mindless snacking, I can cut out an additional 300 calories (3 small Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or three handfuls of chips) or 1500. If I spend time on the treadmill/stairmaster in addition to my walk, which I do all seven days, there is an additional 3500 calories. That means I only have to consciously eliminated another 150 calories a day. So without too much deprivation, I can drop this weight!

As one friend said, our culture pushes the fact that women need to be slim, from the very beginning. I remember when my granddaughter was born She was so  long and lean. Her feet were so long. The pediatrician looked at her and said, "She will never have to worry about being fat.” I thought it was a weird comment to make about a newborn.

We equate fat with weakness, no will power and overindulgence. I am not sure about this. Yes, I love to eat so part of this is clearly my indulgences. But part is genetic - a propensity to being plumpish. Yet in this society being fat for a woman  is feeling like a constant failure,  a very obvious failure that no tent-like jacket hides. It is not something that drags me down everyday, but I obviously spend too much time fretting about it. I should spend as much time thinking about improving my mind.

Men don’t like being fat, but I don’t believe most berate themselves about it. Once they decide to go on diet, they are very pragmatic.  They do it without much fanfare and lose the weight in a tidy, efficient manner. They make two or three changes, and the weight just melts off. It seems to me every pound hangs on to me, begging not to let go.

February 1, 2009

This was a challenging week for me. We went out to dinner three times, actually four times in eight days. I was better than my usual self. I didn’t snack on cheese or on other hors d’oeuvres, but I did drink wine. I also had some dessert and a slice of bread, which I never would have at home. So nothing gained, nothing loss. The red vest is still not fitting across my front.

The other hard part is that the weather was so awful that we didn’t walk at all last week. So my exercise was halved. Eleuthra is only four weeks away……  I am not going to look good in that bathing suit. I sort of like what they wore in 1855.

Still, I did take away my first piece of clothing – a jacket, which has just become too big to wear. I will store my cast off things downstairs for the summer rummage sale. I tend to wear a lot of jackets, thinking that it hides my weight. I don’t think it does, but I am not sure what is better to cover it up in a tent-like jacket or to show the rolls of fat in fitted clothes. Probably there is a happy medium there.

The New York Times had an interesting article about weight loss and said: “Scientists now believe that each individual has a genetically determined weight range spanning perhaps 30 pounds. Those who force their weight below nature’s pre-assigned levels become hungrier and eat more; several studies also show that their metabolisms slow in a variety of ways as the body tries to conserve energy and regain weight.” I have been at both sides of the ranges, and when I was too low my body just wanted to gain. I believe it used to a be a 30 pound range, but this time I upped the range to 40 pounds. Yikes.


My daughter-in-law sent me this picture of the statue, David, after he had been visiting the US for two years and eating fast food.

I pulled out some of my clothes the other day, clothes I haven’t worn in five years. This is a vest I have in storage downstairs – this used to fit me – now I can’t even button it. I have decided this is my weight losing measure. I will try it on each week. I am losing 2 lbs a week, no great overnight changes. So I am beginning to think in percentages. I am 15% toward goal.

Maggie – secret diet weapon

This is Maggie, our new half dog. We are taking care of Maggie during the week while her owners live in NYC. Maggie is 2.5 years old. She watches everything I do, particularly if I go near the pantry. 

 

YoYo

The hardest time in a diet (besides getting started and besides staying on it) is when I get close to my goal – 5 – 10 pounds out – I look pretty good, and I just want my life of dieting to be done. I want to eat all the good (bad) stuff again. And it is so easy to gain it all back. I have lost this weight over and over, and it makes me wonder if this time it can be different. I am following all the cardinal rules of doing so – lose weight slowly, don’t go on a deprivation diet, etc. I think putting myself out here in cyberspace will help too.

Different taste buds

I remember once my friend, Elizabeth, and I were taking a coffee break from work in Portland. She bought a brownie and took two bites. She said it was too sweet to eat anymore. That has never happened to me in my life!

Is anyone happy overweight?

I have always been interested in whether anyone is truly happy being plump, chubby, fat -- totally comfortable

with his/her larger body size. I have never found anyone except for an actor, who specializes in fat roles. Here is Andy in the play, The Big Monty.  (And, I am not so sure that even he was comfortable, but had just found his niche.) Just when I think I find someone, he/she makes a comment or I spy a diet book on the shelf. There are some, women in particular, who look really good, no matter what weight. Part of it is that they dress so well. I dress terribly when I am overweight. I don’t want to invest a lot of money in good clothes when I think the extra poundage is temporary. So I hang onto my old clothes forever.

I actually did that with pregnancy, (it was a real temporary state) and wore the same dress over and over. My husband burned (in the days when we had burning barrels) it right after I gave birth. This time when I drop the weight, I am going to give my clothes immediately to Good Will. There will be no going back unless I am willing to buy a whole new wardrobe.

My breasts

One of the things that I hated most about gaining weight was that my breasts got so big. I had to get new bras, and it just seems like my whole front is covered by breasts. I can’t understand why women would want to have implants – every time you move you jiggle. I would love it if I didn’t have to wear a bra, and as you gain weight there are fat bulges that pop out under your armpits, where the bra pulls in.

I find myself staying on this diet, two weeks down and my face looks a little slimmer. My sister says at this age, you are invisible anyway. That’s true.

Soup

We are eating a lot of soup as it fills me up. There are virtually no calories if you don’tadd pasta. It is easy to eat soup in the Northeast in winter. We always have a fire going so the house seems cozy. This is my favorite soup recipe, which I learned from Carolyne Roehm. Our library had a benefit, and I and five other women bought lunch with Carolyne Roehm, who lives about 15 minutes from my house in a gorgeous mansion and writes books about gracious living. (Here she is doing a flower arrangement for us.) She was incredibly gracious, and we had a delicious lunch including roasted cauliflower soup. This is so easy – roast cauliflower and garlic with a little bit of olive oil until cooked, peel garlic, add chicken broth, salt, and pepper and blend. The soup is thick and creamy and it makes me feel as though I am having a cream-based soup. (This is not her exact recipe but it works well for me.)

Risk factors

Extra weight is just not good for you. At my age, I need to worry about heart disease and getting diabetes. I am at high risk because my mother died of diabetes when I was little. I hate going to the doctor because I am always weighed. I don’t know what possible difference this makes, but somehow having someone validate what generally only your eyes see – and you always weigh more in the doctor’s office - is devastating. I always act shocked – oh my gosh, how could this have happened! One time I noticed a sign in a doctor’s waiting room (not the current one) that said: “You must be weighed - do not refuse.”

Lately, I have learned a new trick. I close my eyes when I am weighed so I never know what my weight is. My doctor never says a thing about my weight. I think she should, it would probably give me motivation to lose weight. She is probably being kind, after all I obviously don’t need to be told that I should lose weight.

But for me it’s not really about my health. I haven’t had any health problems. But it’s more wanting to be free (once again) from knowing that I have to do something about my weight. I hate things hanging over my head. When you need to lose weight, you always are telling people you need to lose weight. You find yourself saying that to store clerks, relatives, the barrista at Starbucks, the dentist, etc. – yes it’s time to go on a diet. I would like to put this behind me.

My hair

When I get slim, I am tempted to cut my hair very, very short – just for something different. I have had this same hairstyle for more than 10 years. The hairdresser is one place I don’t like to go to when I am fat. There is something about sitting in a chair facing a mirror for 40 minutes with a plastic cape around your shoulder that just doesn’t look good. Last year I was going to a hair salon that used a rubber cap when my hair was being colored. So the cap was squeezed down on your head – like a bathing suit cap but tighter – and she pulled strands of hair out through these holes. It was painful and just horrifying to look in the mirror – I looked like an alien a la Jane Curtin and Dan Akroyd on SNL, just a shorter head and chubbier.

Trading places

My friend, Terry, and I trade places with weight. We are about the same height and same age. In the 20 years since I have known her when I am pudgy, she is thin. When I am thin, she is pudgy. We worked for a surgeon who told each of us what our body mass was in the middle of a meeting. He said he had examined so many women, he could tell just by looking at them. Two years ago when I saw her, she was very slim. I asked her how, and she said she couldn’t eat after 6 pm as it upset her stomach.

Week two

This is my second week of this blog. I have been careful all week (except one post-Christmas party where I was semi-good). I figured if I told a lot of people that I was dieting, it would help me keep my resolution to drop this poundage. And for me that seems to work!

Pros and cons

I finally put all my pros and cons losing weight on a piece of paper. I think the PROs win.

PROs: Lose Weight

• Can get my nice clothes out of the cellar 
  
• Can go to the doctor’s office w/o dreading the scales 
  
• Can stop trying to hide behind everyone when group pictures are taken
• Can look at photographs w/o being shocked
  
• Can believe my 92-year mother-in-law, who weighs less than 100 pounds, when she says I look good
  
• Can be healthier  
• Can stop wearing black all the time
• Can stop wearing elastic waist slacks
• Can wear a smaller bra

CONS:   Stay where I am

• Can eat and drink what I want
• Can fill full

Dieting styles

My friend, Sally, rebels when she has to follow a certain diet. She doesn’t like deprivation. We are continuous diet buddies – we talk about dieting constantly or not dieting. She really loves great food – good chocolate – she is a great cook. Me, I go for the quantity.

What does food mean to me?

About four years ago, my brother and sister and I were reading old family letters. We read a letter written in 1952 from a friend of my mother’s who was taking care of me and my siblings while my mother was in the Virgin Islands. The friend went to great lengths to describe humorously how much I loved food and was always stuffing my mouth with sweets. Everyone thought the letter was funny. But it actually bothered me a lot. It was discouraging to think that I was this way when I was six years old. It makes me wonder is there some inner need that goes unfulfilled or have I always just loved food?

Progress

The pantry is devoid of peanut butter cups. My husband couldn’t believe that I was eating his stuff or that it even tempted me. Men are really different from women. I would have known in an instance if my snacks were gone or dwindling.  (This is a picture of the deer in our yard.)

Exercise – my gym

I never exercised until I was in my 40s. I started exercising when I was 43 and actually ran for three - four years - Hood to Coast in Oregon and little competitive runs all over

the place.

I have tried Yoga and Pilates. I am left-handed, and it is very hard for me to interpret the moves of the instructor. I am always doing everything opposite from the rest of the class. (I did not do well in synchronized swimming in college – usually I was going the wrong way in the pool.)

For over a year, I have walked with a group four days a week. Here is a picture of the walking route – it takes about 40 minutes. Up to six women walk, and just recently my husband joined us. We meet at 7 am if the temperature is above 10 degrees or the weather is dry. Usually there are only three or four of us, and we walk up a long hill trying to talk. We mainly talk politics and current news. We are pretty opinionated. During the election, we could hardly stop talking. My winter walking coat is tight. I refuse to buy another one – because I am always planning to get thin.

The gym downstairs keeps growing. We bought the stairmaster used from a gym and the weights were bought with my husband’s bonus ten years ago. Two years ago, I bought the treadmill, which I really use most often. The other machine, I do not know the name, my husband found at the dump, and the Love Handler is supposed to get rid of your love handles. It is a silly machine, (see me twirling) but my granddaughter loves it. I also do some weights, not enough really. Now that I am dieting I usually exercise 30 minutes a day on the machines in addition to the walking, five days a week.

Lulu changes

This is the first entry into my blog about losing weight. I am 62 years old and fat, and I hate that. I have hated it for five years (the last time I was slim - see me in my sweatshirt) but finally I hate it so much that I am committing to losing weight in 2009.

I just read that people don’t lose weight until the cons outweigh the pros. I have reached that point. I have decided to call this blog, “Lulu changes” because I like the nickname, “Lulu”. Some friends call me Lulu, and my grandsons call me “Grandma Wuwu”.

Past history

I lose weight best when I sign up to be weighed every week - Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, etc. But we live in the country now, and it’s too hard to go into town in the winter at nights. Weight Watchers in Torrington, Ct, about 20 miles from where I live, has its weekly weigh-in’s in a cavernous hall that smells of old cigarettes and beer. I think it is a Knights of Columbus Hall. Even when it is filled with women or mainly women, all waiting to be weighed, it is still empty, sorely needs painting, and depressing.

Online groups only semi work for me because when it gets too hard to lose weight I stop playing. So I have decided to put myself out in cyberspace. Every week I will post a picture of myself on the web - that will be my weigh-in. I will feel as though there are a hundred eyes on me.

It’s in my genes

All my life I have struggled with my weight – my Grandmother, must have struggled too. Her nickname was "Juno"  for the larger-than-life Greek Goddess. She only wore black because she couldn’t afford many clothes and was a widow, but I think she also must have found black to be slimming. I wear a lot of black – my closet is full of black – and I am not a widow. My siblings also struggle with their weight, and there have been times when I have been the thinnest, but no more!

Diets

I have tried almost all the diets. I order diet books online and then never read them. One year, I gathered all the diet books in my house and gave them to the Woman’s Society rummage sale in a brown paper bag. There were no names in them. Some were brand new. My husband, who was a book sorter, came home and told me everyone laughed when they opened the bag of diet books. I didn’t tell him they were from me.

I know how to diet but I want it to be easy. I like food and I like alcohol. Alcohol makes me want to eat. To lose weight I have to cut back on my carbs and stop drinking. That should be easy, but it is not.

My husband
       

My husband is very disciplined and is slim. He does not like getting fat and frets

when he gains a pound or two. Over the years, he has learned to be very gentle with me about my weight. He never says that I am fat, which is very sweet. He loves it when I am slim and says, “Stay this way.” But I don’t.

He also is hypoglycemic and has a lot of food around the house – some of it is bad for me. Here is picture of our pantry with his shelf – Reese’s Peanutbutter Cups –who can resist those, especially after a glass or two of wine? We always have chips too. 70% of the time I am disciplined too, but 30% of the time I am not. I will make him get rid of the Reese’s. I love salt so I will lobby for unsalted chips – they taste bad even when I have wine.

Photographs

I can pretty much live in a fantasy world of not feeling fat if I don’t look at pictures of myself or in the mirror full-length. I am tall and big-boned so I tend to dominate a picture even when I am slim. This is a picture of my Dad taken in the 1950s at a sales meeting. He was only 6’3” but he looks like a giant. My husband is under strict orders not to take pictures of me. My husband’s cousin takes tons of family pictures, and she is in many of the pictures. She puts them on Facebook. I want to do that.

2009 challenge dates

We are going with friends to Eleuthra at the end of February. I will have to wear shorts and a bathing suit. This is my first challenge date because I won’t be happy being this heavy, and I don’t think any of my shorts fit me. I have all these clothes in my basement that used to fit me. My closet is very empty upstairs as I don’t like to buy clothes, because I already have beautiful clothes in smaller sizes. (See my clothes waiting for me!) At the end of 2009, my goal is to have my closet full again.

The second challenge date is visiting family and friends in May. We will visit my husband’s cousins in May, and they are very fit. I like feeling fit, and frankly you can’t feel fit when you are carrying 40 extra pounds. There are other trips and maybe a wedding so I need to get going on this life change.