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)
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)
posted by Former Fat Girl Gone Skinny | 7:58 PM
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