A Stroke of Jean-ius

New jeans, new size, new friend. It's a big day in this Fat Lady's world.

I weighed in on Sunday morning at 169.50 pounds, down 81.50 pounds or 32.5% off my original weight. I am now two-thirds of who I used to be. My body is reshaping all over the place, and it’s awesome. My dress pants are hanging off my hips, and my size Medium sweaters are starting to sag at the shoulder. Success in the jeans area, however, continues to elude me. My size 10 no-stretch are too large now, and after all these washings, they are starting to creep up in the hemline. No matter how careful I am with ‘no shrink’ denim, the bottoms inevitably contract and I am left with floods.

I hate floods. I spent the whole of my childhood in “high water” pants. They didn’t make tall sizes back then, or if they did, we couldn’t afford them. As a result, I got so many comments about the water level rising that even now, 32 years removed from the last comment, I don’t wear crop pants, Capris, or anything that is not so long that you can’t even tell whether I’m wearing socks, much less guess the color. I’m even wary of super-long shorts, just on the chance that someone will mislabel me as wearing pants that are length-retarded.

So when the black size 10s started riding up my ankles, I started looking. On the advice of friends, I set my sites on the Gap, LL Bean and Eddie Bauer.

All my cool friends shop at LL Bean, but somehow, I have never been able to bring myself to buy from the Great Preppie Maine-land. There’s something about the LL Bean catalog that confuses and disturbs me. First, I am not a visual person. My brother can look at two threads of a swatch and know how it will look in any room, including one he’s never occupied. I know this, because the only set of usable curtains I ever owned was a set he sent me. “Put them in the family room, on the windows facing the deck,” he’d told me. They fit perfectly and set off the whole room. When I asked him how he’d managed to find the right curtains based only on my complaints and failed attempts, he’d offered merely, “It was obvious.”

Okay, then.

The longest year of my life was 1979 when I had a full year of Plane & Solid Geometry. No matter how many dashed lines I drew, I just couldn’t ‘see’ the figures as three-dimensional. So, seeing pants that are just ‘standing’ there on display means nothing to me. I understand the cache of Bean’s idea about using ‘model-free’ displays, but since there are no people in the clothes, I can’t extrapolate to figure out which will work for me. As LL Bean has no retail locations in Illinois, I had to scratch them off the list.

My referring friend and my fiancé are both Bean fans, so I hold out hope that some day my Wardrobe Mentors will come to my aid and help me with this feat. But for this weekend, jonesing for jeans, I had to move on. I went to the Premium Outlet Mall.

The outlet mall in Aurora boasts a Who’s Who in Upscale Suburban fashion, including all the men (Ralf, Giorgio, and of course, Eddie), many of the women (Victoria, Ann, Lane), and of course, the famed Brooks Brothers. I’ve been out there a few times with Howard, usually when we’re either gunning for something higher end that doesn’t break our wallets, or we just can’t breathe any more mall gas, and so must do our consuming outdoors.

Well, Sunday was about the worst choice for outdoor mall activities. It was about 6 degrees here with a gusty wind that topped out around 25 mph. We layered up and wore our heaviest coats, but still, any time we were outside longer than the few seconds it took to sprint from one store to another was sheer, frozen hell.

I had no luck at the Gap. Nice place and all, but their version of ‘boot cut’ appears to mean, ‘some guy with boots is gonna cut the hem of your jeans and then set up camp in there’. The flare was too dramatic for me. Despite discovering I can wear boots, I have been unable to find a pair that I like, and so when I wear boot cut, I’m reminded of the 1970s when I wore all my bell-bottom jeans with a set of red faux leather platform shoes that looked alarming like sneakers on stilts. So no, I don’t do flare.

I bellied-up on the ‘skinny’ jean section too. I think that Gap ‘skinny’ would be more accurately described as Gap “mermaid”, or really, Gap “hobble” since the legs were so narrow and the crotch so small that I couldn’t get anything up over the Octopus. When I did manage to stuff some of the invertebrate’s head down below the zipper, I couldn’t stand up for fear I’d ‘distress’ an already goodwill-looking pair of stovepipes. So off came the GapPants and on I went in search of fancy panties to take my mind off the fact that I was going to have to wear khakis for the rest of my life.

After the 36DD bra score, I headed off to Eddie Bauer. Hesitant, but still buoyed by the lingerie purchase, I stepped inside and looked around for blue things on hangers.

Eddie Bauer is another one of those places I’d seen and heard about, but never really tried for myself. I’m outdoorsy, in that I don’t like to spend all my life cooped up, but I’m not exactly a camp-and-go gal. I did my tour of duty in the Girl Scouts and I even took a 2-week vacation down the east coast in a tent—once. But as my 30s set in, I decided that I liked hotels. Then later, as my 40s appeared and DS was born, traveling became a true and rare treat. I decided then that I liked expensive hotels that specialized in fawning over their guests. To me, ‘roughing it’ now means no Jacuzzi in my 2-room suite.

Anyway, even though I know that Eddie Bauer isn’t a true Outdoor store, it does have that ‘I like it crisp and chilled’ look, and that’s not me, either. Their clothes-simple, smart, and a wee little bit androgynous, remind me of the Peri-Lesbian era, and that’s something I prefer to stuff down into my memory, rather than share space in my current Girly-Girl Gone Corporate closet. But I was out of choices, and anyway, a new friend had recommended Bauer, and so I went in.

A clerk greeted me at once, and in a true, ‘may I help you?’ way, rather than the Accost You At The Door method that the retail outlets seem to prefer these days. It’s as if everyone took the Old Lady Greeter thing from Wal-Mart and turned it into a Pummel the Customer Upon Entry method. I dislike sales people, and I dislike pestering salespeople more (see post immediately below). This woman, though, simply nodded and smiled as we went in, commented, almost to herself, that jeans were buy one/get one at half off, and then went back to folding Henley’s into perfects sixths. Wow. Good sign.

Howard and I found a few in size 10, and, daring fate, a few more in size 8, including a fancy slit-up-the-side variety called “Novelty”. They had everything in Long sizes, and so I snatched it all and plopped myself into a fitting room. I tried the 8s first, and discovered to my surprise that the Novelty was too long. We couldn’t find a Novelty 8 in average length, and since I was now OFFICIALLY a size 8, I refused to try the 10s. Alas I had to abandon the Novelty and go for something regular.

One thing I noted was that most everything was a stretch of some sort, with 1% spandex mixed in with the denim. I wanted 100% denim. But the Bauer jeans fit nicely-curvy and really long. Could I make an exception this once? I decided to make the compromise. After all, it was more important to me that my socks vanished than it was to prove that I was a True 8, no stretch, no lie.

I found a pair of size 8s (1% lycra) that fit nicely and would clearly be comfy once I gave them the One-Hour Test. This test, which Howard loathes but now practices, basically says that you should buy jeans that you can barely fit into in the dressing room. That’s because denim relaxes, and so an hour after they’re on you for the first time, they’ll stretch and fit you regularly. Of course ‘fit’ is a relative term. I wear my jeans tight: always have. I like them that way. Denim should not sag, so says me. My dress pants can hang off my hips and dangle on my legs, not touching them. But I want my jeans to follow my figure. I couldn’t find anything in an 8 that I liked, and suddenly, all the size 8 longs vanished. Certain of a conspiracy, I asked Howard to find me anything in a long.

And then the most amazing thing happened.

I snuck a pair of 6 longs (1% lycra) into the dressing room. I had to barter hard with the octopus, but I got them up and I got them on. Size 6! That means that somewhere out there is a pair of size 8 no-stretch that will fit me when I’m standing up. Those Tall Girl jeans are size 8. It might be time to pick a weekend and bring them out for public display.

So I have made my peace with stretch jeans. I don’t need the stretch to pretend I’m a size smaller. I know what size I am; this is just for length and for comfort. I can find a 100% denim size 8 if I look hard enough, and probably I will. But for now, I have an 8 in my closet that I can wear anytime, and a 6 that is just a week or so away from Casual Friday.

And to my new friend “Jeanius” who recommended Bauer, thank you. Thank you for writing me, thank you for suggesting Mr. Ed’s, and thank you for ‘seeing’ what I could not.

A the S(ix Long)

Now Available in Stores

Get this: my breasts are both smaller and larger than I thought.

The corollary here is that although I have been wearing a bra since I was 8 years old, that I have no idea how to shop for, nor fit myself, for said Foundation Garment. Yes, that’s right: I’ve been wearing a bra in one form or another, usually the digging-into-my-flesh variety, since the second grade. Lucky me, I had bra strap marks under my Holly Hobby t-shirt.

I did pretty well until I got pregnant. Apparently more than all the blood in my body left me when I pushed out dear 9lb-4oz son. Some of my brain had traversed down to the placenta and exited my womb, along with a fair amount of common sense and any sense of style or history. I found my style about 25 pounds ago, but clearly the history lesson had to come later.

I’d been walking around lately in my 34F, concerned that while I had the bra hooked on the tightest setting, I could get my thumbs between the fabric and my skin. AND even though there was all kinds of room between me and my ‘freddie’, I still had those nasty skin-eaten marks along my rib cage. Howard saw the marks the other day and wondered aloud if I’d secretly sworn my loyalty to the Really Bad Body Art cult. Ah, no such drama, my dear. It’s just that I’m a moron when it comes to dressing myself.

I took a set of measurements last week, and I’m 31 inches around my ribcage. Ok, as “memory” serves, this means that I should be a 32 band, since bands only come in even sizes (stupid), and if you’re between bands, you should go up (stupider still). Clearly the F cup is too big now, as my boobs are just laying in puddles at the bottoms of the cups, doing their level best not to fall out beneath the underwire.

I am 41 inches at the bust: not 39 inches, by the way, for those of you who read last week’s post. I have no idea how my breasts grew 2 inches in about 3 days, especially since I did not notice that. I mean, come on: that is definitely a Dear Diary moment. Anyway, the formula for bra sizing is to take your band size and subtract it from your bust size. One inch difference translates to an “A” cup, two inches to a “B’, and so on. The number corresponds to a letter, and, assuming you can convert (even) integers into hexadecimals, bra shopping becomes a hook-n-eye snap. Yippee.

So, at a 32 band and a 41 inch bust, I am a 32I. Guess how many of those you can find in the Kohl’s discount bin? I had pretty well resigned myself to breast binding when the Foundation Angels took me in their hands and led me to the L’eggs, Hanes, and Jockey outlet in Aurora, IL.

I’d gone there to hunt for jeans, a story unto itself that now will clearly have to go in its own post since I’m so freaking long-winded. Hey, I can’t help it: I have too much room in my bras. On a whim, I steered Howard into the undies store. Let’s just see if they have a 32DD for me. Howard’s in: of course he is! Some woman just asked him to sit in a dressing room while she flashes him over and over. What’s not to like? We glide in, blithely ignoring the Elvira-twin clerk with the tape measure dangling around her shoulders like a clasp-less, numbered lorgnette. We find a couple of 32s, including a triple D, and off I trot to the dressing room.

Somehow I wound up with a 32D, but I try it anyway. Almost at once I see that the breast area is too small, as I’m seeping out all over the place. The band is fine, but I’m still getting the ‘back bacon’ look underneath my sweater. Off it comes. The DD is better, but I still have that ‘gone digging for truffles’ look, and the DDD is much too big. The girls are doing the backstroke in there. I sit down, irritated, and Howard goes to look for other styles, figuring that maybe it’s just the cut of the Nurse Ratchet style we had.

While I’m sitting in the fluorescents, I notice a poster on the wall remarking on how to measure for a bra. Blah, blah, blah, it’s all the same. Measure your ribcage right under your breasts, and then….hey, wait a minute. That says to add 5 inches! Whoever heard of that? Thirty one plus 5 is something normal..a thirty-six. I pace the sardine cubicle, waiting for Howard to return with the 34s I’ve sent him for, so I can toss him back for something bigger.

All at once, someone female and unfamiliar bangs on my dressing room. I jump, but say nothing, refusing to talk while I’m nekkid behind a half-door. The bang resumes, and then I hear Howard. “Sweetie?” he says. I answer. The woman booms over us both.

“Honey, you need some help?”

God help me. It’s the Lorgnette Monster. “No, thank you,” I reply. “I’d rather work with my fiancé.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

I pause, waiting for her to leave. “Hello?” she crackles. I remain silent. She turns her attention to Howard. I get dressed, retrieve him, and find a 36 to try. Lorgnette follows us around for a while, but as I refuse to make eye contact or show her The Girls, eventually she falls away.

I try the 36 and it fits. Not only does it fit, but the fit actually corresponds to the poster on the wall. Bra back is below the shoulder blades, center is resting on my breastbone (do bras do that? I never knew it!), and the straps are on my shoulders, neither slipping nor digging for bones. Cup? Double-D. How about that? It only took 81 pounds and 34 years to get into a standard size.

Thirty-size Double D. 36DD. Sometimes you can find that in regular stores. Thirty six! Add five inches. Who would have thought a little thing like reading directions and doing simple math could help me keep my breasts from falling into the underwire vice.

I never thought that I'd be happy about getting something larger, especially in a place that already, um, stuck out. But I'm okay with this. I'm through with the $80-a-pop, any-color-so-long-as-it's-white, crap-tacular bra. That bra at the Jockey store cost me $20. I could pay for my wedding on the bra savings alone. That is, assuming there will be any money left once I get a 36DD in every color, variety and style available. I might even go swimsuit shopping this spring. I'll soon be on my honeymoon, and while Vancouver is not known for it's beaches (or its sunny weather), it would be worth it, even just to sit in a hot tub, with a real swim top in a real size.

Muchas gracias, Bali. The girls and I thank you from the bottoms of our well-fitting hearts.

A the S(hrink to Fit)

Coming up Short

I am disappointed to report that I will need to grow shorter in order to buy clothes that fit me.

I weighed in this morning at 170.50 pounds, down 80.25 pounds overall and almost 4.0 pounds since last Saturday. I am doing exactly what I did last week when I lost only 1.0 pound, as well as the same thing I did 3 weeks ago when I lost nothing. Since this is a good week, I’m inclined to ‘trust’ that my body knows what it is doing, and that all the right things are going on. The first time my loss slows for the same inexplicable reason set, though, I’ll be off rampaging at full volume. Stay tuned: it’s bound to happen soon.

Maybe (probably) there’s more going on under my skin than I realize. My body is adjusting to new foods, and to new amounts, and to a lot more activity than it contended with a year ago. It also has to readjust my muscles, tendons, and metabolism to account for the lighter body weight, the change in mental health (I’m engaged to Howard!!!), and the fact that I’m commuting in high heels now, versus sitting at home in my size 2X jammies, just a donut’s throw away from the pantry.

I think if someone had explained the ups and downs of weight loss when I was standing on the precipice of the program, I might have jumped off the cliff, rather than gird myself for the start/stop of the downward journey. On the other hand, perhaps it’s good to know that one’s weight fluctuates, wildly sometimes, and that so long as the arrow continues to point generally downward, that’s good. For the record, I have been losing weight on WW for 26 weeks, and so my ‘average’ weekly loss is 3.08 pounds. That includes one week where I lost only 0.60 pounds, and another when I lost 7.5. So, there it is.

But anyway, back to cutting off my feet to stay fashion-forward….

Seeing as I’m flirting with the 160s, a place that feels decidedly normal to me, I am jonesing to buy a pair of size 8 no-stretch jeans. I looked around a little bit this week while I was out buying a trampoline for DS (Man, that was a good call!), and I discovered that my historic favorite brand, Chic, only does ‘short’ and ‘average’ lengths below size 12. When I got my 10s, I went ahead and bought the average length, in part because I was SO keen to get a size 10 anything that I decided to bite the bullet on the high-water inseam. Now, though, since it’s Chicago in January and anything exposed to the elements will be instantly frozen, I’m less inclined toward revealing anything vulnerable. I tried Target, SteinMart, Kmart, and Levi’s on line, all without luck.

This cannot be that hard. Hello? I cannot be the only woman over 5’8 who needs jeans that go all the way down to her shoes. I refuse to believe that I will have to start wearing Capri pants--or something that looks like Capri, since they aren’t long enough to be considered true long pants. My god, did I just write ‘long pants’? I’ve channeled my grandmother….Next thing, I’ll be frying flour and speaking with a heavy Kentucky accent, complaining about how the clothes don’t smell as fresh when I put them in the dryer as when they’re out ‘on the line’. Anyway, I will not start showing ankle bone, or Achilles heels, or skin, just to get the thinness on top that I need. I will not.

I could probably go to “Fruit” Republic or some boutique-like place and find something awesome and butt-raising, but I am having serious issue with shelling out a lot of dolares for what will be weekend-only gear. I am still dressing ‘casually’ 2 days a week at work, but only because my feet are suffering in heels. Clearly I had put too many years between the last time I wore pumps regularly, and somehow I cannot walk in any kind of heel without crippling myself. Even when I’m dressing ‘down’, I’m still in good sweaters and my best jeans-and those only because all my dress pants have long inseams. And hey, now that I mention it, how is it that I can find all sorts of dress pants that are way long in the leg, but the jeans are conspicuously absent?

Where do all those terrifyingly thin models shop for casual clothes? But that's no solution, either. I'm pretty convinced that those rail-thin women can afford high fashion labels only because they have unloaded the whole of their food budget into their wardrobe. Did you know, by the way, that size 0 is no longer the smallest size? There is now a Size double-zero, for those too 'petite' to wear a size so small, it isn't even an integer. Frankly, I don't get the whole double-zero thing. To my mind, the size 'down' from zero is Negative One. I think they ought to call it that, too. After all, one can only put so many zeros in a size before it gets ridiculous. Give me the silk blouse in size 0000000. It sounds like a murmur, or a coo, rather than a number. If they did it my way, they'd have an infinite number of sizes on the other side of zero.
"I'll take the distressed jeans in size Negative 10, or maybe even 'ten below'. Sad, sad, sad. What's next? Jeans in size Kelvin?

I considered crossing back over to the men’s department, since I can find a 34 inseam with no issue in my size (32, I think). But somehow, I just can’t make myself do it. First, been there/done that, and I’m a lesbian no more. Second, I have a female figure. This week, I checked in with my tape measure and I am 39-31-39. I got curves, serious ones. My teeny (ish) waist and my wide (ish) hips do not work in the flatland forms that are men’s jeans. So, thank you, but I wills save my boy-based shopping sprees for stuffing Howard into his clothes.

I used to buy my clothes at Tall Girl shops, but the store in town is closed and I am loathe to consider buying jeans via the internet. Besides, those jeans were $80 a decade ago, and I am cheaper, a mommy and paying for a wedding now, so I’m unenthusiastic about dropping that much money on something that could very well be part of my transition wardrobe. My tall girlfriend, “Twins” (she lives in Minneapolis, though that is not why I call her that, yuk yuk) suggested Gap Curvy Bootcut, so it looks like I’ll be spending some time with the 20-something crowd, shouting over Hip-Hop music while avoiding eye contact withall the cute things that Gap Kids offers.

On the happy side, even though I will clearly have to clean my house in my dress pants, since I won’t wear floods anywhere, including my own home, Howard and I decided to start shopping for my wedding dress this weekend. It’s sort of funny, since I still have no goal weight in mind, and so I have no idea whether I’m 20, 10, or 2 pounds away from where I’ll be when I walk down the aisle. My only hope now is that it takes me a long time to find my dress, and by then, I’ll be close enough to goal so that the alterations will not involve folding the dress over and cutting it in half. Can you imagine? Gee, what are we going to do with all these extra sequins?

I have an idea: Let’s glue them all together and then sew them to the bottoms of my jeans. Maybe then I’ll get the inseam I want.

A the J(eanless)

Worth the Weight (Loss)

I’m Normal!

I weighed in at 173.0 pounds this morning, down a full pound from yesterday. Somewhere between yesterday at 7am and today at 6:30, I slipped over the BMI ‘overweight’ category and sat down in Normal. I am not yet at my goal, but as of this morning, I am no longer overweight. Wow, that feels good to write. After 7 years of extra poundage, leaving my shirt untucked to cover bulges and pinched skin, 4 years of carrying around my post-partum “baby fat”, and 6 months of strict Weight Watching, I am at long last within the normal body weight for my height and age. Yee-ha!

I put my Size 8 jeans on today-those nifty black straight-legged beauties that I couldn’t get past my knees when I started this program. They’re on, folks. Stage 3, and the button is straining, but I got that danged zipper up, and I’m still sporting my period belly. It’ll be a month before I can wear them out of the house, but they are On!

I’m to a point now where I can ‘see’ my body from here. I can see the places where I need to lose, or where I could lose more if I chose. I’m not just this blob-like creature, walking around indistinguishable from a man with long hair or a shapeless, sloppy creature who, despite her mammoth size, is easily overlooked in public places. I can still see a little pooch in my tummy; it’s where I carry all the extra pounds, so it’s no surprise that there’s still a little kangaroo ‘joey’ in there. Hey, I’ll take it. A joey is a much sweeter companion than the Octopus I’d been carrying around in my stretch jeans all these years. And, as I’ve recently discovered, it’s a lot easier to fold a joey into my tightest jeans. The octopus had major issues with me jerking those no-stretch denims over its head. The joey has much less to say about it.

I got so excited about being normal that I actually drew a bath and shaved my legs today. I haven’t shaved my legs regularly in years. The ‘reason’ has changed over time; first, because I was a feminist, then because I was pregnant, then because I was apprenticed as a lesbian. Those reasons were really more rationalization, though. I like having smooth legs, but it’s a torturous hell to shave in a tub when there’s a boulder lodged between your legs and your torso. Standing was worse, as I couldn’t see my legs when I was bent over, and the effort of keeping myself from toppling over proved harder than the shiny-legged results I would achieve. In the end, I opted for black hosiery, then tights, then “refusing” to wear skirts or dresses because women/pregnant broads/dykes didn’t dress like that.

Today, I shaved without incident, and I enjoyed it so much that I actually laid back in the tub, soothed by the water that now covered my body (and didn’t when I was fat) and read a little Miss Manners until the water cooled.

People at work are now initiating conversation with me in the hallways, and the door is routinely held for me. I want to get worked up over how this should always be the case, and at some point I will, but for now, I’m so warmed by being noticed that I cannot taint my glee at how normal and regular things have become. I look like a regular person. My hair is done (well, for me, anyway), my clothes fit and are fashionable, I’m painting my nails again—Revlon’s “Cherries in the Snow”, and I’m of normal body weight. I’m actually looking forward to my annual physical this year. I might even keep my shoes on this time, just to make next year’s results a little more dramatic.

I’m starting to think about a goal weight--sort of. I don’t really want to, but the temptation to log one and draw a finish line plucks at me. I want to know when this piece will finish, so I can get to the business of Living This Way Forever. Of course, I’m already doing that, and of course as I near my goal weight, my losses will slow, so maybe I shouldn’t be too hasty to select that magic number. For my height (5’10”), I should be somewhere between 135 and 174 pounds, depending on my bone structure, my activity level, and my age. I don’t really acknowledge the age one; after all, it’s supposed to be harder to lose weight in your 40s than in your 20s. I’m beginning to think that it’s harder only because I had the habits longer. Once I set myself to the task, this weight has come off as naturally and as well-paced as any of the stupid ‘gotta get into those jeans’ diets I did when I was younger. And this one has the benefit of working forever.

I consider myself to be a small-to-medium frame, which means that I should be somewhere on the low-to-middle side of the scale. I want to be at 150, since that would mean that I’d lost over 100.0 pounds on this journey. I know that’s not what this is about, but doesn’t it sound cool? I lost One Hundred Pounds. See that fifth-grader over there? I used to carry that much extra weight on my body, and now it’s all gone. It’s gone: severed from me like the cancer, the diabetes, the stigma, and the pain that it was. I chewed my way through vegetables and couscous and an endless parade of chicken breasts to get down here. I did it, it was worth it, and now it’s over. Maybe I’ll go have a potato. HA HA HA!!

When I was a teen and a college co-ed, I weighed routinely in the low 140s, allowing for period weight, basketball season, and whether I had something slinky that just had to fit that weekend. Howard keeps telling me that I can’t get back down there, and maybe he’s right, but right now I seem unstoppable, weight loss-wise, and it’s very tempting to head back down to where I rested all those years. I don’t think I would consider it a failure if I aimed for 140 or 142 and couldn’t budge the scale below 150 without spending all evening on the exer-cycle. Maybe it would be better to know approximately where I want to land (140-155) and see what my body says about it. I’ll ask Joey when I unleash him tonight.

But now that Howard has decided on a goal weight, I’m tugged to pick one, too. It would be meaningless, except in WW terms. If I chose a goal weight there, and then hit it without gaining 2.0 pounds over 6 weeks, then I would become a Lifetime Member, and my meetings charges would disappear. I’d still go; in fact, Howard and I both intend to keep going every week, even after we’ve hit goal, and then lifetime. It’s good prep for becoming leaders.

Lifetime Member. Man oh man, that’ll be me. Howard and I, Lifetime Buddies forever.

Speaking of forever, Howard and I are engaged. It only took 6 months….and 24 years to get here. I am happy beyond words, my heart soars, and for the first time in my life, I have hope: real, solid, built-on-reality hope.

We’ve found a place and set a date: October 13, 2007. It’ll be a small-ish affair, where I hope to be surrounded by all my/his/our most treasured friends and family, and where I will join my life to this honorable man, who will lift me to such a rapturous place that ‘happy’ will look like something that I feel when I’m PMSing.

We’ve been engaged for a week and while plans are unfolding at as comfortable a pace as we can manage with 2 full-time jobs, a treasured DS with a colossal “I need Mommy and Wozen” desire, and only 9 months to finalize every detail of our wedding in a town where the average engagement last 17 months (precisely because of all the things noted above, along with an alarming lack of desirable spaces to host this sacred and joyous event), I can tell you that I’m already taking daily precautions to ensure that I don’t snap off the head of some smarmy by-the-job clerk whose too busy nursing his hangover to endure my questions.

It’ll be a journey; one that Howard and I intend to take together, and we’ve vowed to have fun with the planning, or if we’re not, to stop planning and figure out how to make it fun. So far, it’s been wild, and with only a few hiccups that are already funny. Did you know, by the way, that if you have your wedding at The Drake Hotel that you must have a minimum food and beverage charge of $52,000. Yes, folks, that’s right: fifty two thousand dollars. For canapés or lobster, or, maybe pancetta-wrapped cantaloupe served on gold bars. I’ll tell you what: I am a traditionalist (I have learned), and I honor the ritual of the ceremony well above the ambiance of the party, but I want my guests to feel welcomed and happy, and to have a marvelous time on that Saturday. But if I’m to pay FIFTY TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS for something, it should have a basement. Or at least a private entrance and a garage.

So, we will not be having our wedding at The Drake. Nor the Signature Room, the Metropolitan Club, the Garfield Park Conservatory or the Harold Washington Library. Nor, for that matter, will we be having the wedding downtown. In fact, we’ve found a darling yummy spot in the NW suburbs that is to be our wedding and reception (and cocktail hour) locale. I hate the name, but I love the place, and I might even be talked into offering a chicken dish for dinner. Don’t hold your breath, though. The fish and steak options look far more elegant. If you want to check it out, here’s the link. And don’t laugh too hard. Or, go ahead, but please keep your snickering behind your handkerchief when you meet me in the receiving line.

http://www.barnofbarrington.com/

Yep. I wasn’t born in a barn, but clearly I’m going to marry in one. Well, why not? Forty foot ceilings, roaring fireplaces, an elegant menu, and a catering manager who considers evening weddings to be her favorite. There’s even a balcony for the musicians to stash during the ceremony, and a beautiful sculpture that will frame around the huppah and take my breath away. That is, if the groom hasn’t already.

Look for lots and lots more commentary on this as I venture through the next 9 months. I have a whole post written about the bridal show that Howard and I attended last Sunday. That’s where I learned all about the Bridal Industrial Complex/Cult of Fear and Loathing of All Things Tasteful. Glad I went, gladder still I won’t be going again. But I had to do it once: it’s the normal thing to do.

A the B(etrothed)

Under Normal Circumstances

I weighed in this morning at 174.0 pounds, down about 1.75 pounds from last Saturday. I am now just 0.25 pounds away from a BMI of 24.9, which is the top end of the normal range. I am (nearly) of normal body weight for the first time since the spring of 2000. Seven years is a long time to be abnormal. I’m glad it’s finally over.

I took a daring challenge this week, and decided to skip the daily weigh-in, along with its associated mid-week Freak Out when I inexplicably (and routinely) gain weight for NO REASON. Figuring that I’d have less gray hair by year’s end, or at least less to keep me at Red Alert on Amy’s Gone Psycho scale, I opted to trust my weight loss program, and know that since I was doing the right thing food-wise, I would lose weight.

That’s tricky stuff, since I was PMSing this week, and the hormones were In Charge this time. Someone at work sent around an e-mail noting there were donuts in the break room, and I had to get up and walk around the building to keep myself from firing back a nasty-gram about the horrors of ‘people like you’ who exist only to sabotage the efforts of those of us suffering in a No Carb Zone.

Period arrived on Friday. Normal is near, hormonally as well now: thank all the heavens for that. And my apologies to Howard, who appears to have survived the ordeal, but who endured more than the usual number of estrogen-enhanced sucker-punches. Good thing he’s slimming down; he’s a much smaller target now, and he runs faster than he used to.

I continued my ‘I Dress Better ‘N You’ mode all week, stopping only on Wednesday for a break, when I developed blisters on both feet and my right knee swelled up from all the hall-clacking I did in my new 4” black pumps with the little twisty-action at the toe. They are super-sharp, but they exact a toll for the wearing. It’s nearly 10pm on Saturday night, and my back is still aching. I really do need to get some of those faux loafers that have the casual-esque shoe look but with a tall heel. The stack heel is thicker than the pump heel, and so I have to believe that they’d be easier on my feet. I wore my rubber-soled, “sensible” shoes on Wednesday, and I actually scuffed my heels as I walked, just to make some noise.

I also spent a ridiculous amount of time in restaurants this week, a terrifying prospect, considering that I was not monitoring my daily weight. I carved up a grilled shrimp entrée so badly at the Wyndham Garden in Lisle that I’m pretty sure they’ll never seat me there again. My lunch mate, an otherwise easy-going and lovable, supportive friend, actually kicked me after the waitress left. “Geez, Amy,” she said as she ground her (pump!) heel into my shin. “Why didn’t you just bring your own lunch and cook it here? It would have been quicker.”

I happen to have no idea how to grill shrimp. I only know how to ruin an otherwise delightful recipe until I’m guaranteed that my meal’s only ‘garnish’ will be a ‘sneezer’.

My exercise program remains non-existent, unless you count the clacking-down-the-hall trips I make every hour or so to refill my coffee mug and curse the hounds who are bringing in their Valentine’s Day chocolates a whole month early. Man, isn’t the business world hard enough?

Today I saw an ad for Easter candy. Pretty soon we’ll have aisles full of “seasonal” food that’s available year-round. You can have frosted Christmas trees in June or marshmallow peeps at your Labor Day barbecue if the mood strikes. This is why I never venture into the processed-food jungles of agrocery store’s inner aisles. I keep to the perimeter, wearing sensible shoes in case I have to run away from some white-smocked, white-haired lady accosting me with meat dangling from a toothpick. I always bring DS, who hates to food shop, and so screams through the whole ordeal, and I always have Howard running hither and yon, catching things I’ve missed or forgotten, so I never have to backtrack and risk DS spotting the chocolate aisle.

Sounds pretty normal. In 0.25 pounds, I’ll let you know.

A the B(MI 25.0)

Walking Tall

So, this is new: I can only work in high heels.

When I was fat, I dressed at the lowest possible level for the environment. When I was at home with DS those first 2 years, I barely made it out of my sweats, and there was a period when I went around in an outfit that could only be described as “day-jammies”. If I worked in a business casual place, I opted for corduroys or twill pants, and I was first on board with a Jeans Day.

When I worked at the dot-com company, I bought 4 pair of denim jeans in my size (20W) and wore them, one after another, every day that I worked there. I wore pullover, collared shirts, size men’s Large, bought all at once in an array of jewel tones, hoping that would deceive my ‘viewers’ into thinking they were actually women’s clothes (didn’t work). I owned a lone button-down shirt, a man’s size 17 neck that I saved for presentations and days that I had to ‘dress up’. On those days, I wore the black jeans instead of the blue, and I stuffed my feet into my loafers, leaving my sneakers at home.

As I started losing weight, the men’s clothes went first—the pants with two numbers (42x34 for those keeping track) first, then those awful pullovers, and then, finally, the purple broadcloth. I replaced them at first with the ladies version of the same thing, but over time, as I’ve closed in on normal sizes and a normal shape, I’ve been more willing to dress in a way that draws attention to me, rather than hides me behind tent-like, Hanes-ian monstrosities.

A few weeks ago, Howard and I made an executive decision to dress him up at work. He’s a consultant in a big-time, “Big X”-like organization, one that prefers to stand out from their clients. So, when he’s on site at a client, he’s usually dressed one degree better than they are. If they’re jeans, he’s business casual. If they’re “B-C”, he’s in button-down and wool slacks. If they dip their toes in ‘wool on the bottom, cotton on the top’, he’s shirt and tie. Presentations, dinners, meetings with executives and pretty much any day ending in a “Y” gets the suit jacket brought along, at the ready for girding as necessary.

So when it came time to get some new clothes for Captain 32x30, we decided he should dress as the Partners do-shirt and tie always, no matter the situation. As Howard would be in the office, he’d be right under the Executive Microscope, with all promotion-potential eyes watching him. We tried Kohl’s but couldn’t get quite the look we wanted, and so we upgraded ourselves to Macy’s. Howard had a spectacular Christmastime experience there, and announced that we should give them all our money.

As it turns out, he was right, though not in the way he imagined. Macy’s is expensive. The first place we looked, men’s trousers stacked up like rugs at one of those terrifyingly pompous “Persian” boutiques. These “trousers” ( apparently “pants” is a title reserved for the low-rent in the crowd) had no hems, save the pinking shear zigzag at the bottom. They were clearly made to be modified, and they sported an average price tag of $158. For pants. Excuse me, for trousers. Well, then. That might be all right for the permanent wardrobe, but as we’re both still in transition, we returned the trouser treasures to their piles and slunk off to find pants.

Once we found the proper section, I stuffed Howard into a dressing room and shoveled clothes at him until we found 5 pair sufficiently dressy enough to pass the executive “Eye Exam”. We matched up with a few dress shirts, arguing among ourselves as to whether the double-stitch was more business than the single stitch (we never did decide), and whether button-down collars or stays made more sense. We threw in a few ties, found a couple pairs of fantastic shoes, and called it a day.

After we did Howard’s “Make(over) Me a Partner”, I got to jonesing for a new look of my own. I told Howard it was in solidarity to him, but really, I wanted to stand out. My colossal boss has been threatening to convert me to permanent for months, and I figured that I should start dressing the part of an Associate Director, which is effectively where I’d come in. I trolled through the racks at Steinmart, did my own pilgrimage to Macy’s, and in the end, wound up at a TJMaxx so spectacular that I found 4 pairs of wool pants in varying shades of business (herringbone, tweed, sleek black, and pinstripe), plus a tuxedo blouse that knocked me over, all for under $100. I found 2 new pairs of pumps, including a set of sling backs and a sky-high pump with gilding across the toe. That Sunday night, I laid out my clothes for the first time since the 6th grade. I felt foolish, but also excited. I was going to work Dressed.

That first week, I got all kinds of whistles and grins of approval from my co-workers. The men in my group elbowed one another in my presence, saying, “Hey look. Amy’s done turned into a Girl.” The day I wore my blue pinstripe pants, complete with buttoned bracers and a loosely knotted red tie, the metrosexual man in my department met me at my desk with a “Yowza!” All right, then. This is working for me.

That Friday, I opted to rest my aching arches and wore jeans to the office. I could barely stand myself. My feet, normally tapping down the hallways in shining stilettos now shuffled softly in my rubber-soled oxfords. And the nods and smiles I had received all week in the hallways evaporated. Where I had stood out all week long, with folks glancing sidelong at me as if I were Someone to Know, now suddenly I was Just Like Everyone Else. I fit in, and I hated it.

Monday morning, the Work Clothes came back in force, this time with a starched white blouse and shining shoes with someone famous woman’s name emblazoned across the toe. I stocked my closet with knee-hi’s and I pulled out my foot massager. Jeans are for home, and work is for play-the real kind, where image and impression matter; now to me as well as to those in the Decision-Making offices.

I dressed in jeans again today, as an experiment to see if my Slumming Slump was a one-time deal. No chance. I want to make noise as I walk.. I want to show some toe cleavage when I sit. I want to Dress Up. So what if it’s just superficial? I like looking this way, and I like that I can do it. I weighed in at 176.50 pounds tonight, just 3.50 pounds away from the BMI normal range. I’m three and a half pounds from normal. Let’s make some noise!

I do a lot of walking in my job. I’m off in a corner of the building, surrounded by finance people who never leave their desk except to have lunch, and who never talk on the phone. It’s silent back by me, and I try to honor these people’s needed quiet by holding my meetings in conference rooms, usually on the floor of whomever I’m seeing. I catch my reflection in the glass and mirrors all around me, and I’ve noticed something interesting. Where I used to slouch, I’m now bolt-upright. I thought my (very mild) scoliosis had caught up with my middle-aged bones and was busy forming a Girl’s Quasimodo Accessory on the top of my shoulders. Nope, no more. It’s gone.

When I was thin back in high school and college, I used to go around with my tummy sucked in all the time. Pull your navel back to your spine, I heard once, and I did it whenever I remembered, which was always. At some point during my Fat Years, I realized that pulling in my stomach didn’t change my silhouette. Maybe the ground crews were working on the inside, but that paunch stayed firmly in place, cutting off circulation any place it touched my clothes, which was everywhere. So I quit trying.

The other day, I noticed that I can pull my stomach in again. In fact, there’s quite a difference from ‘leaving it hang as-is’ and ‘yanking the tummy backwards’. I go from Droopy Mama Pouch to Sucked In Slimmed Down. I love the way I look. I might have as many as 31.50 pounds to go, but I’m nearly normal, I’m nearly an 8 in jeans, and I’m so light on my feet that I can wear high heels all day long. Can? I want to wear them. Why shouldn’t I? My company, and I get the best of me when I’m Walking Tall.

A the N(oisemaker)

On Bored with the Program

Last Saturday I weighed in at 178.25 pounds, though I cannot take credit for the full loss, since I cheated and did not have dinner on Friday night. I am now paying for it, because despite dropping a wee bit more on Sunday morning, I am now up about 2.5 pounds from Friday morning So unless I fast between now and Saturday (which I will not), I stand to have yet another week of flat loss or even a small gain. Oh, the pleasures of dieting.

I know what I’ve accomplished, with 73.25 pounds lost so far. I see the soft curves in my silhouette and shadows and in the mirrors that are now hanging all over my house. They remind me that I do not look like the freak I (thought I) once was, and that I still have a ways to go, but I can see the finish line from here. And therein lies the problem. I am bored with this diet. Bored, with a capital yawn, and no caffeine in sight.

For nearly 6 months, I’ve cataloged every bite of food that’s gone into my mouth and walked away from every tempting morsel that used to comprise the staples in my diet. I’ve spent half a year chanting phrases such as, ‘the pain of discipline is easier than the pain of regret’, and ‘if you bite it, you write it’, and ‘this is not a diet. It’s a lifestyle change.’ I’ve said them all, I believe them all, and now, I’m sick to death of them. I’m mired up in a tangle of aphorisms that are meant to encourage, and they do. But sometimes I just want to stick a fork in the speaker. Or better yet, stuff in a chocolate éclair so I won’t be tempted to indulge myself.

I’m bored of counting points, bored of combing menus for ‘program’ foods and I’m doubly bored with stuffing the vegetables and mushrooms into my mouth so that I’m not tempted to eat (gasp!) extra turkey breast. I’m tired of pretending that sugar-like pudding is a satisfying treat, and I’m really sick of the need to floss a second time every day, just to coax the 94% fat free popcorn kernels out from between my aging gums. I’m sick of being The Dieter, tired of living every day on the Edge of Dread, knowing that temptations abound, realizing that I’m the only one of Me, and since my Fat Trap has announced my weight loss worldwide, knowing that each bite loaded on to my fork gets calculated and cataloged by everyone within eye-shot.

There is no way to fix this. I have no desire to return to my 4 Pop Tart breakfast with a triple-bowl cereal chaser, and having to air dry my size 20W stretch jeans, just so I could wear them while breathing. I’ve happily removed myself from the Women’s section, glad to be carousing in the Misses and flirting with size Small sweaters. I love it that my size 12 dress pants are starting to hang on me, and that I’ll be at Stage 3 with my size 8 jeans by the end of my next period.

Despite all this excitement and all this success, though, I’m weary of the effort. I’m at the 7-month itch of the program, I guess, where I have made great gains but I’m still far enough away from my goal that I can’t really think about maintenance yet, except in the ‘I’m not ready to think about maintenance’ way. My enthusiasm dampens with every meal. Before I started, I was in a rut, not knowing how to eat in order to lose weight, and not having the support I needed to venture forward and find the path to thinness.

Now I’m in a rut of a different kind, where I know what I can eat to keep losing, and so I eat only those things, with very little deviation. Eggs and Canadian bacon for breakfast, salad with 3 oz of lean meat or a safe wrap for lunch, stir fry with 4 oz of a different lean meat for dinner, paired with half a cup of couscous or fat free hummus. Popcorn for snack, sometimes a protein shake instead if I’m low on muscle-food for the day.

I’m wary of new foods, even ones that appear well-suited to my food lifestyle. I keep to the innermost of inner circles when it comes to food. I console myself that I can branch out once I’m on maintenance, whenever the Frig that will happen, and maybe I can have real treats once in a while, if ‘once in a while’ means twice a year instead of once a week. If I stayed on Lifetime with WW and continued to go to the meetings, eventually I could trust myself, and the other cooks out there, to feed me in a way that would allow me to keep my shape and enjoy a wide variety of foods. Maybe. But I don’t really believe it, and so I stay with what works, stuck in the pit of my own success and now, hating every nutritious bite.

I could eat differently; after all, Howard’s diet is much more varied, and my WW meeting mates talk of eating ice cream, pizza and cheeseburgers as part of their regular diet. I could try this. In fact, I think I will, just as soon as it rains hundred-dollar bills in my kitchen and then I grow that Flawless Diamond tree with the mulch.

It’s a plateau, one of enthusiasm rather than action. I don’t intend to do anything different, except maybe find some other place to have lunch besides the Rubber Chicken on Damp Dishrag Wrap chain that has now ‘earned’ my business back. And I still have success, and that helps. My boobs have stopped shrinking, even though my torso continues to drop. My band size is now a 31.50 and I’m still an “F” cup. Of course, when was the last time you saw a 32F?

Even Frederick’s of Hollywood doesn’t carry them. Their stash of size 32 bras ends at DD. When I went in there this weekend asking for help, they simply advised that I stuff everything into an extreme cleavage bra or a cup minimizer. Excuse me? Isn’t this the nearly-naked sex shop, the precursor to trashy adult stores everywhere, the reason that Vicky’s Secret and Lover’s Lane and Mello Mail all exist? And they’re suggesting I reduce my visible bustline?

I have nothing to say.

In the mean time, my weight loss is slowing down. That’s one nasty cocktail to swallow, bored with the program and braking results. I guess this is all part of the journey. The beginning is fun and fast, the middle is comfortable and satisfying, and the end is arduous and prone to complaints. I’m trying to take the Buddha approach here, and remind myself that I won’t remember this hitch a year from now. And that’s probably true. But in the mean time, I admit that some days, shopping for new, smaller, sexier clothes isn’t enough.

I want tactile stimulation; something delicious and delightful and daring to pass through my lips and over my tongue. I miss the seduction of those devilish delicacies, the things I ate with abandon when I was fat already, because what was one more piece, one more indulgence, one more scoop? I gave it up. That’s the real cost of this weight loss. It isn’t the clothes I can only wear for a couple of months, and it isn’t the Saturday mornings I give over to WW meetings, and it certainly isn’t the higher grocery bills I have now. Those are all true, but they are the additions. I’ve never really looked at the sacrifices.

I’ve given up the seduction of the mouth, and the tickling of the senses. I’ve abandoned my desire to roll my eyes and moan as something new and sinful slides into me. I yield no more to the temptation of the sweet or the sugared. The pragmatist and the goal-driven Amazon in me adores the militant, sterile and fact-based way I talk about Food as Fuel and know all the details of every morsel that passes the ‘Are You On Program?’ test for me. It’s what I want, and now, thanks to all this effort, it is who I am.

I am not a cheater, and I do not desire to become one, even ‘once in a while’. I am this, and this sacrifice is worth it. But it’s not without pain, and it’s not without regret.

I love how I’m eating. I love the results. I’m just not all that keen on the process right now. With Howard’s help, there are small additions to my menu. The fat free hummus led to a grilled shrimp-on-top concoction, and then last weekend I discovered jicama salad, seasoned with lime juice and cilantro and yummier than I ever could have imagined when describing a root vegetable.

Tonight I went out with a few work friends for a drink, where ‘drink’ is Corporate America code for ‘down beer or alcohol until your tongue starts wagging and then try to stifle your gossip with fried foods meant to resemble dwarf chicken parts (“drummies”)’. Half an hour into the festivities, the menus rolled out, and 5 minutes after that, plates arrived piled with nachos supreme and a goat cheese/toast points combination that had me squirming in my seat until my knickers twisted. I wasn’t really tempted though, and anyway, everyone at the table knows what I’m doing, and so did not offer me any of their fried cheese goo. Thank you all for supporting me. I left having ingested no food and staying as long as I wanted. I did the right thing, and I’m proud of myself for my restraint and for my commitment to my weight loss.

So maybe this is nothing really; just a realization that it’s time to branch out and find a way to fit the program to my life, rather than the reverse. It’s time to see, and to learn, how to Eat Well in Amerca, so that when maintenance comes, it’s a simple step to keeping the scales balanced.

Recently, I re-read a copy of a wonderful book called Everyday Sacred by Sue Bender. She quotes a letter from a friend, who writes, ‘why be unhappy about something you can’t change? And why be unhappy about something you can?’ I can change this, and I will. Perhaps in the process of flipping through the new WW cookbook, I’ll find something new and exciting, and then, when I get up to make it, I’ll notice that my size 10 jeans are getting a little saggy in the seat.

What’s a little boredom, when I have my health back, my body back, and everything in my life is so spectacularly happy that I think all my good karma has cashed in at last? It’s nothing. Boredom is nothing. It’s a place I’ve looked to find all my life. Look at that: after all this bitching, I’ve come to find that I’m right where I want to be.

A little whine with dinner? Why yes, I’d love some.

A the D(elightfully Dull)