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.