Freakin' Friday

Or, "The Saturday Morning Weigh-In: A Love Story"

Portions reprinted without permission from Grandma Florida, who received something very similar on her last birthday.

Dare to be a Freak about your Weight Loss.

On average, Americans gain 7 pounds a year. Do you know how many extra daily calories it takes to do that? Sixty-seven.

Sixty-seven calories is nothing. It’s 2.25 ounces of lean chicken breast, seven-eights of an egg, or three-quarters of a Weight Watchers snack cake. It’s barely a whisper of extra food. And yet, when you add it up every day for a year, there’s 7 extra pounds on your frame. For most women, that’s nearly a full size. Stretch that out over 5 years, and then switch out the low fat bread for regular, add some preserves to the muffin and plunk a sausage next to your egg, and suddenly, 7 pounds is thirty-five. Or forty. Or more.

Nobody talks about diet or eating in sixty-seven calorie increments. Moreover, nobody really talks about weight loss in terms reasonable to women, and we are by far the larger group interested in, and in need of, serious weight loss advice. Weight loss and ‘normal’ diets are all based around a 150-pound man. Nutrition information, exercise and calories burned, and percentages of protein, carbs, fat, and fiber all kowtow to that elusive male who really does not need to lose weight, since how short would a man have to be, in order to be overweight at 150 pounds?

Any woman who can’t maintain her body weight eating 2,000 calories a day (RDA recommended) must ignore all the ‘nutritional information’ and ‘dietary guidelines’ on standard foodstuffs. We have to be freaks about everything that we put in front of us, and everything that goes into our mouths. We must battle away the temptations designed to line our tummies (and eventually, our hips) with foods that are rich, filling, and devoid of everything but the ability to make us fat.

In truth, there are lots of people in WW who eat ‘normally’. They eat pizza, ice cream, and cookies, and only some of them are the low-fat varieties. They drink at cocktail hours, they indulge in the meals that they prepare for their families, and their exercise program consists of going to the bathroom during commercial breaks. They lose weight, slowly, and the line charting their progress across the calendar looks like a series of teeny ‘w’s. Sometimes up, sometimes down, and sometimes ‘y’, as in, ‘Why did I eat all those meatballs when I knew I had to weigh in this morning?’

I can’t stomach that kind of “progress”, and so for me, chocolate, peanut butter, and refined sugar are Off Limits. Of course, there are good and bad weeks, even when one is virtuous, but I haven’t figured out a way to be Zen about the gains, and so I’ve worked my program so the likelihood of a gain is about as small as the size of my desserts: teeny.

It’s hard. Unbearably hard sometimes. I know it. You want to be thin and you want to be healthy, and yet, that pizza just looks so good. You try to create a compromise, where you cut back on your favorites, figuring that you can stand a slower loss. And maybe it works for a while. But from what I’ve seen, the closer you are to eating normally, the more likely you are to look normal, which, for an American woman, is overweight. If you want to get thin and stay thin, you’re going to have to become a Freak.

Cher once said, “If it came in a bottle, everyone would have a perfect body.” Okay, she didn’t actually ‘say’ it. She was featured on a Bally’s poster that had those words. She also ‘said’ that “Excuses are not going to lift up your butt.” I happen to like that one better, because, even now at 154.50 pounds, I have a mushy tushy.

My God. I’m quoting Cher. Anyway…

It’s easy to eat normally; that food is everywhere. It’s hard to turn your back on the delicious alternatives filling the table. It’s hard, and it’s frustrating, and it’s wildly stressful. But it’s so very, very worth it.

My old WW leader gave us a mantra to say every morning: I look good, I feel great, I’m eating right, and I believe I’m becoming thin for life. We are what we repeat. I do look good, I do feel great, I am eating right, and on my life, I swear I’m becoming thin for life.

Positive self-talk works. It’s one of the cornerstones of the program. Believe it. Be it. Commit to this every day. It’s a thing we do for ourselves, and it’s more important than almost everything in our lives. Good food and activity are paramount to feeling good and living well. Chuck normal. Dare to be Freaky!

Weight Watchers has made huge strides since I joined them the first time in the 90s. I remember reading one of the early books, and it talked about the importance of water. Everything they wrote in that little brochure was accurate: water curbs the appetite, it acts as a natural diuretic, and it’s the only real thirst quencher. But they ‘marketed’ water in the worst way. “Jazz it up with lots of ice”, the pamphlet read. Oooh, cold water! Now that’s a tasty treat! Luckily, they don’t do that any more. The program is grounded and sensible, and successful. This works. Make it your own, and then make your way.

With that in mind, and with a thank-you nod to my WW buddy “Blonde”, I’m posting today’s food intake, to show you what Freakin’ Eating looks like. You are welcomed to declare or decry my style, as you prefer. Keep these things in mind as you read:

1. I make it a point to eat lean protein at every meal.

2. I consider carbs, even the handsome ones, to be Spawn of the Devil, so I barely eat them.

3. Without Howard in the kitchen, I would be eating hard-boiled egg whites and cottage cheese all day long. Or, I might still be fat.

4. Almost everything I eat gets stuffed with what I call ZPE-Zero POINTS Extravaganza. That’s code for any food that’s zero POINTS and also acts as filler. Examples include mushroom, onions, peppers, tomatoes, or any vegetable--except the starchy ones like corn or potatoes.

Breakfast (7am):

3 slices low-fat Canadian bacon (60 calories, 1 g fat)
3 egg whites, and 1 egg yolk, all completely loaded with ZPE
1 c fresh fruit (berries or melon), or 1 serving WW yogurt
POINTS Total: 5.0

Snack #1 (10am):
1 granny smith apple, skin on
POINTS: 1, Running Total: 6.0

Lunch (1pm):
4 oz lean, skinless turkey breast, grilled with ZPE
1/2 c fat free hummus to use as a ‘glue’ in the wrap
2 small high fiber wraps
Salad with strawberry tomatoes, red peppers, cucumbers and jardinière and/or salsa (salsa makes salad dressing completely irrelevant.)
POINTS: 5.5, Running Total: 11.5

Snack #2 (4:30pm):
½ bag 94% fat free Kettle Corn
POINTS: 1.5, Running Total: 13.0

Dinner (7pm):
6 oz grilled tiger prawns on skewers with whole water chestnuts and red peppers
½ c couscous, to act as a ‘bed’
A ton (okay, a cup) of grilled yellow squash
POINTS: 5, Running Total: 18.0

Snack #3 (10pm):
½ bag 94% fat free Kettle Corn
1 apple, shared with Howard.
POINTS: 2, Daily Total 20.0

We eat more turkey than seafood during the week, and there’s likely to be a salad full of chicken breast during the day. Plus, Howard and I just discovered that ostrich meat is wildly lean and very delicious, so I think we’ll be eating more of that now. He made us tacos this week with ground ostrich, and using the Trader Joe’s Greek fat-free yogurt as our sour cream (try it. Seriously.), and it was so good, I nearly cried. Howard is so great. I think I’ll marry him.

Wait a second….

Sometimes I will supplement this with a protein shake in the mornings, depending on how I’m feeling. I tend to be fine until about mid-afternoon, so I save my snacking until then. I drink a lot of coffee (and not enough water), and so that helps to curb my appetite in the mornings. But I get busy in the afternoon and my works tires me, so I’m more prone to scavenging in the pm, so that’s when I have the fiber-rich popcorn. It’s hot, it smells yummy, and it’s filling.

Not always, though, and sometimes I have a second bag. It’s completely worth it. After all, I can have two full bags of reduced-fat popcorn OR I can have 4 teeny Snicker’s minis. When I look at it that way, I choose the popcorn every time. Unless of course I’m PMSing, in which case I have both. Don’t tell Howard. :)

One more thing of note is that I don’t eat processed food anymore. I used to, all the time. Especially when I was dieting. I shoveled the Lean Cuisine and the Weight Watchers entrees into my freezer, thawed them obediently in front of the Reheating Altar (the microwave) at meal time, and then did my best to take more than 3 minutes to finish them off. Then I would pretend to be satisfied for at least an hour before I dove into the freezer and grabbed (the whole box of) WW chocolate éclairs. Guess how much weight I lost? I’ll give you a hint. It’s the first word in ZPE.

I have a number of friends who are alcoholics. When I listen to them talk about their battles in social situations, the language rings familiar. We face the same demons, even though they come in different packages. We need something external to satisfy something that’s missing inside of us, and that need is real.

I’m a food junkie. I will probably always have to duke it out with the Sugared Angels. I don’t believe in the 12 steps, and I certainly take full responsibility for all of my actions, past and present. But still, there is something in me that acknowledges the need for Bad Foods, even when (especially when?) I know they won’t help me. They won’t solve my problems, they will often add to whatever stress I’m feeling, and they tax my body.

Did you know, by the way, that the human body cannot digest refined sugar? We can’t digest it, because the body does not recognize it as food. It’s a drug, and a poison, and I’d give my right foot to be able to eat it every day, with no consequences. Note that I wouldn’t give my right hand: I need that for typing. :)

We are not given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. Weight loss goals are the hardest, because you can never give up food. At the same time, though, they are the easiest, because they are common, and they are shared. We feast together, we fast together, and when it’s all over, we celebrate. We just don’t do it with chocolate.

Well, maybe if it’s Splenda-sweetened.

See you on the Freakin’ scales.

Running on Plenty

Mystery solved!

Well, one of them anyway. Thanks to my friend Twins for decoding the ‘working out like mad and gaining friggin’ weight anyway’ anomaly. According to her, this is a mystifying, but common, problem. She herself just began a new cardio program, and is up as well, despite an eating program that makes me look like the poster child for Fast Food Nation. So I figure if Twins is gaining, then I should be, too.

And then of course, a day later, all the ‘extra’ weight dropped off. I weighed in yesterday morning at 154.50, down 96.50 pounds from my peak and sporting a mere 61.5% of my original figure. As of this moment, I have no more than 12.50 pounds to lose. I am on week 4 of WW maintenance, and I feel great.

People are starting to tell me I’m too skinny. Ha! I do believe there is such a thing, but that is not me. Normal weight for my height and build is 135-167. At 155.50, I’m on the high side of medium. I’m thin, for sure, but I’m not skinny, and I’m certainly not too skinny.

And by the way, I wore the 7-junior jeans to work today, and they were a Smash Hit. These girly pants hug my legs and make me look positively slender. I was even okay about having to leave my shirt untucked to hide the octopus’s head, which kept poking out from the beneath ultra-low waist line.

The greatest thing about life down near the 150 mark, though, is that it’s been really easy to ramp up my exercise program. And it helps that I am in love with the grind. I love running. I love it. I am to a point already where I am racing to get home on workout nights. And I’m forcing myself to take evenings off, because I don’t want to overdose on this very, very good thing.

Running erases every irritant, stressor, and agitation in my life. It’s what bubble baths are to my friend Twins: relaxing, indulgent, and delicious.

Of course the more I run, the more pumped full of endorphins I am and the less I’ll need the running to level me. But hey, I’m still Amy Cranky-Pants, even all doped up on happiness. I can invent agitations and create conflict out of banality.

Earlier this week, I was all ramped up and progesterone-depleted, on Day 18 of my cycle. I’d had a whole day of little irritants-the reception site can’t seem to get the menu right, people were late for meetings all day long, and Subway has apparently replaced their low fat wrap with something that looks like it ought to be housing tamales. So I was in no mood for anything ‘challenging’ when I hit the front door that night. DS was doped up on the ice cream that the Nanny had given him, despite my repeated requests that she not feed him refined sugar, and Howard was in his Cooking Space, where he is neither receptive nor responsive to conversation. Stage Set: Seething Bitch enters left.

I was so overwhelmed with all the inane things from The Day that I snapped at Howard when he asked me when I wanted to eat. Things turbo-torpored down from there. We spent the evening circling each other, and I didn’t even try to talk it out with him, because I could not think of a single thing to say that wasn’t sarcastic or mean.

I took it to work with me the next morning and stewed about it all day long, and then, when I got home, I went downstairs to work out. It wasn’t my scheduled night to exercise, and I did not really feel like digging in. After all, being angry over stupid things is exhausting.

But I did it anyway, and I wound up doing things at a little faster rate, increasing my run time to 90 seconds and I even did a few 2-minute run intervals. I was gulping air big time and my clothes were sticky when I was done, but it was a good workout, and I was glad that I did it.

Then I went upstairs, and as soon as I saw Howard, all my nastiness and nerves vanished. My brain offered up a solution and I smiled for the first time in 24 hours. Me smiling on Day 19! Call the priest, it’s a miracle.

I’m almost angry I didn’t discover running earlier in my life. My coaches always told me that I was too chesty to run, or that they didn’t make sports bras in my size, or that I simply didn’t have the ‘athletic capacity’ for racing—whatever that means. But I can’t be angry about any of it, because my endorphins have wiped out every negative thought from my head. I’m to a point now where, if I start edging toward rage, I want to ride the treadmill.

I know that I need to vary my workouts, because the body is a tricky creature that adapts to challenge more readily than we imagine. After 2 or 3 workouts, it ‘figures out’ how to make things more efficient, which means of course that you burn fewer calories doing it. I have the elliptical on my list of possible purchases, but now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t get a step mill or a stair climber instead. I love the impact of my feet hitting the belt, and of my body bearing its weight as I drag it though the running intervals.

The elliptical at the Y was fun, but it didn’t feel like much of a work out. I could make it so, sure, and it would be better for my joints if I did. But I have to think about whether I want it enough to trade in running on alternate nights. I want to feel the effort I’m making. I wish we had room for one of those mountain-climbing simulators. Now there’s a weight-bearing exercise. Maybe I should just stuff the house full of hard-to-do exercise equipment. I need a big purchase for hitting my goal weight. This might be it. We don’t need any furniture anyway. We’re going to be too busy working out. Fair warning to everyone (who was) planning to stay with us for the wedding: I hope you like sleeping on an incline bench or curled up next to dial-a-dumbbells.

Warm weather also suggests bicycling, and Howard has offered to teach me to rollerblade. I’m pretty sure that skating will be more a resistance workout, as in, my body resisting rolling down a hard surface on round skis, and then resisting getting up after I’ve slammed into the blacktop. But that may allow for enough variance, and while cycling out in the open doesn’t offer as much hard core rewards as the run, I can go for longer periods (I’m still at 30 mins on the treadmill), and I can work on my tan besides.

In the mean time, I’m hungry more often now, but I think it’s a healthy response to the workouts. My hunger is more insistent that it has been historically, and it's demanding the good food. Today I built a salad at work, and I traded out my usual 5 green olives for extra grilled turkey. It was so good that I actually made yummy noises at my desk, and now the guy who sits behind me thinks I like him.

So I learned three things this week: fake weight drops off naturally, running solves all problems, and it’s best to enjoy “decadent” foods in the cafeteria, where moans of pleasure are drowned out by conversation.

Mystery solved.

A the P(avement Pounder)

The Closer I Get to 2

Call me Junior.

Well, first the annoying stuff. Despite having a banner week AND working out 4 times this week, including a 90-minute marathon racquetball session on Friday night, I am up an inexplicable 2.0 pounds. WTF?

I refuse to consider this a gain, since I’m pretty sure I burned all the calories I ate this week. DS has me at 1-minute intervals, where I’m walking at 3.0mph and then running at 5.0mph. Let me tell you-for a woman who runs only when about to miss her flight, 5.0 mph is fast. So it’s not possible that I’ve gained weight, but there it is. It’s just another line item on the list of Inexplicable Things About My Weight Loss. Lucky for me, since I weighed in last week wearing everything I owned, I only registered a 1.20 pound gain, and anyway, I’m still far below my WW goal. But still: annoying.

And of course now I’m coming up on PMS (yippee!), so next week I’ll be doing full-on battle with the chocolate drawer at work, the goofs who keep leaving donuts on the hallway file cabinet, and the endless array of suited vendors who want to take me out for lunch. Happy to Be Me!!!

It’s not the out-to-lunch thing that bothers me so much as it’s where these reps want to take me. Nobody wants salad or grilled lean meats for lunch: not when the Branch Manager is buying. No, it’s deep fried oysters in cream sauce and things under silver hoods, born by waiters dressed better than I.

All I hear is, ‘let’s get to that tapas place-the plates are small’, or ‘there’s a new chic French restaurant right down the road from you.’ Okay, a little food tutorial here. ‘Tapas’ is code for ‘your ass is going to spread out like a sombrero’, and ‘chic’ means ‘this is why Americans hate us: we eat healthy, wholesome foods and feed you clowns the bread-laden fatstuffs covered in sauce.’ And by the way, the ‘small plate’ phenomenon is meaningless when it comes to tapas. They have to serve those things on teeny coffee plates, or customers would die of instantaneous heart disease while deciding on dessert. So no, I’m not going there.

One vendor asked me where I wanted to go (now THERE’S an idea!), and when I said I wanted go to go Chili’s to get the grilled Caribbean chicken salad, he nearly choked on his tie. Chili’s? When I have approval to get flaming crepes and I could sneak in a glass of wine and say it was for you? What kind of procurement person ARE you? I can’t even make a coffee meeting civilized. When I offer to meet them in the building for a brief, no-food talk, they always try to get there ahead of me and then produce a tray full of All Things Lard-Laden as proof of their desire to work here. So lately, I have to leave my desk early to beat them to the cafeteria, and fill my mug before they get there. Even then, I get, “oh, well, if you bought your own coffee, then at least let me get you a danish. I’m getting one for myself, so it’s no problem.”

Not for you, maybe.

On the up side, I’ve been on expeditions the last few weeks, shopping for the next piece of my transition wardrobe. I’m pretty sure that if I could find a pair of 1% lycra jeans in a size 2 long that they would fit.

Ah, but herein lies the problem. Where I was once too large to shop at Kohl’s, unless I was willing to be seen in Mavis Fuentes wear (that’s Daisy’s older, fat sister, btw), now I am too small. The lowest size on most of their jeans is a 6, and the few brands they carry in a 4 don’t go long. I’m a 34 inseam. It’s not Nicole Kidman long, but I’m not Queen Torso either, and I’m still insisting on pants that go all the way down to my shoes. I tried on a pair of Capri pants, just to see, and it’s just not going to work for me. As with everything in my life, I exist only at the extremes. Short-shorts or pants to the heels: nothing in between. The only thing I can wear that shows leg is a skirt, and even then, it must be knee-length or it bombs. Shin length and all the high-fashion equivalents (tea length, intermission length, ankle-sweeping) make me look dowdy. Forget the short varieties: let’s just say that they suggest that I’ve switched professions from vendor management to something much, much older.

Anyway, I started at Kmart, looking for the low-rise stretch that hailed up the 4L that I threaten to wear out. Nothing. Not even a 2 Average to let me try. Next I try Eddie Bauer. They have them, but the button placement weird and wrong. It’s not above the zipper, and really, it’s closer to the right pocket than it is to the fly. I ask the clerk about it. “Yeah, that’s how they’re made,” she remarked, stating the obvious. “You might be able to get them on line.”

“It’s not the size, it’s the button. Don’t you have any with the button in the right place?”

She checked her ‘stash’ of 2L, which basically amounts to the pair I don’t have in my hand., “Nope. That’s how they come.”

Okay, then.

I can’t find a 2L anywhere that fits. The places that have them (Ralf Lauren, Gap) make them in 100% cotton, and I’m still a 4 in a zero-stretch. Not to mention that the Ralf pants are so low that they actually sit below my hip bones. I would have to dig out my old maternity blouses, or maybe buy one of those mini-dresses that I can’t wear, just to cover up the octopus. Who can wear these things? Anyone who’s had even a single meal in a college commons would splay out of these babies. So this won’t work.

Determined and more than a little frustrated, Howard and I set out last weekend to find new jeans. He scored, even adding inches to his inseam in the process, but I continued to bomb. I did discover that I’m a 30x34 in men’s pants, but come on! Do I really have to go back to Menswear just to get fitted clothes? Besides, I’ve rather grown to like the way that stretch jeans curve with me.

Men’s pants are like a double-denim erection. Everything stands straight at attention-no curves anywhere. I appreciate their extra room in the tummy, though I acknowledge it is not built for the ladies. These pants “fit”, but they’re not curvy, they’re not flattering, and anyway, they stop making the 34” inseam at 30”, so as soon as I drop anymore weight, I’m right back to hunting, and this time, I have Make Me Stiff jeans that are, well, flaccid.

No.

We blanked all over Oak Brook Mall and were about to hurl the white flag at Kohl’s when Howard suggested I try the juniors section. Flooded with memories of Jordache, Gitano, Bill Blass and Diane von Furstenburg from the 1970s, I sidle on over to the Young Miss section and start hunting. Within minutes, I discover a few facts.

Fact #1: Teenage girls are slobs. I knew this on some hypothetical level, but wow, they are pigs. Every dressing room was littered with discarded clothes. I felt like I’d stumbled into the high school girls locker room after the Cheerleader Rapture. Clothes everywhere. Shoes everywhere. Not a clerk in sight. No wonder Moms of Teens go gray. It’s a wonder any of these skinny pre-pubes ever make it to prom.

Fact #2: No one in high school has a figure. All the clothes have curves built into them, suggesting the shape to come, and yet somehow falling short, because, let’s face it, the goods just aren’t there yet. Oh, sure, hints sneak in occasionally, and there are all form of clothes to flaunt it. But they all rest above the (exposed) belly button. Crop tops, lace-up blouses, sparkly wife-beater-like creations with deep dips front & back. But the girly-girl hips don’t really exist yet, and the jeans are there to prove it.

Fact #3: If the designers of young girl fashions are trying to help these girls look older, they failed. That is, unless every 16-year-old in western suburban Chicago wants to look like Annie after she’s done the mosh pit. These clothes look young. I know I’m 42, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve been in the Junior section to buy something for myself. But seriously, these clothes all look like the Juniors are turning wistful eyes back to grammar school.

But size does matter and I can’t find a 2 anywhere, so I dig through the (disgusting!) piles of denim and choose a size 5, size 7, and size 9. Encouraged that there is a plethora of size 0 long, I shove my way to the dressing room, kick the clothes off the floor (hey, I want to fit in!) and slam the door.

The 5s are true hip huggers, and like I said before there are no hips built to hug, so I get them to the top of my thighs before I have to sit down and let the blood return to my limbs, and to keep myself from fainting. I jump up to the 9s, and they are too big. Size 9 junior is too big. I cross my fingers, suck in the jellyfish tummy and slide the 7s on.

A match!

They’re low-probably too low, but they fit, they’re stretchy, so they’re curving, even if by youngin’ standards, and they’re plenty long. I take about 1 second to debate the merits of the men’s 501 button-fly before I chuck them on the floor (Hey! Everyone else was doing it!), and tuck the 7s into the cart.

I am now the proud owner of Girls Jeans. Size 7L-J. They’re not an obvious junior, and the hip pocket design is unisex and simple-easily passable for a Misses. And now they’re mine, lying side-by-side with the 4L-M and waiting for me to find a blouse long enough to cover up whatever might seep out from beneath the ‘hip’ huggers.

I might never find my 2, and I don’t see getting into a 2 Junior unless I liposuction an entire leg away. But I think I’m all right with that. I’m in Junior jeans. How about that? Maybe I’m all right with a gain this week: It’s just what I needed to fill out my new clothes.

A the T(eenie)

Poison Control

I’ve now upgraded myself from Idiot to Complete Buffoon.

First, I weighed in last Saturday at 155.50 pounds, down another 2 big ones since last week. I’d lost so much weight while on WW maintenance that I weighed in wearing a sweater AND in my favorite cardigan, and I almost stepped on the scales wearing my shoes. I have to tell you, it’s an awesome problem to have, explaining to Maria the Spectacular why I’m dropping weight on my maintenance trial period.

I worked out 4 times in the last 7 days, and at the last workout, I was running 2 minutes at 4.0 mph for every 1 minute I walked at 3.0. It was tough going but I was handling the running times, and even enjoying them a little. Seriously, why did I wait so long to start exercising? Scratch ‘Complete Buffoon’. Insert “Utter Moron” right here.

I was so motivated by my loss and my workouts that I went the Elmhurst YMCA for some GroupSweat with Howard. I logged 32 mins on the elliptical, something considerably easier than running (and with fewer calories burned (annoying!), so I did it a bit longer). We also did some lifting. As I’ve mentioned before, I LOVE lifting, so I was careful not to overdo it—too much. We capped the evening with Chicago-style sushi and I laid down that night, feeling virtuous and successful.

So much so, in fact, that I’d almost forgotten the near-hit I had earlier in the week with the chocolate-stash drawer at work. As you know, they’re serving dark chocolate miniatures now, and there’s something mysterious and captivating about that dang file cabinet that jabs at me every single time I walk by. Several times during the last PMS episode, I actually planned to stay late at work, so that all the cubies near the stash would have gone home, and I could raid it without witness.

That’s a dangerous thing for me-alone with sweets. I know it, too, and so I made sure to leave for home early. I lost almost 2 hours of billable time that week, protecting my weight loss and keeping the Chocolate Overdose at bay.

Then my period came, which usually signals the end of the Cocoa Sirens temptations. I did a lunch run to Walgreen’s to pick up some supplies, and was on my way out when the newspaper rack lured me in with a Discover magazine cover on the brain. I am a closet brain freak. I know very little about the brain, but it is a lay fascination for me, and it’s become moreso since DS’s diagnosis (Asperger and PDD-NOS being classified as neurological disorders). I choked on the $7.95 newsstand price but figured that learning is good, even at market premiums and I pointed my wallet toward the cash register.

And that’s when I realized that I was in the candy aisle.

Oh, Walgreen’s, maven of the Greatest Sunday Fliers, home to the lone place where I can buy my tampons, purveyor of seed packets, Diet Coke in 20 oz bottles, and enough office supplies to sate me without emptying my wallet. Mistress Pharmacy you lured me in and then dumped the golden goose at my feet. Whatever is a Weight Watcher to do?

Duh. I panicked, of course.

But rather than race to the register, my eyes fell to the packaged jewels in front of me. I’m not looking for anything, I rationalized. I’m just seeing what nasty post-Easter drek lies on these shelves. I’m just congratulating myself that these no longer tempt me. I don’t have any desire to….hey! That’s a bag of dark chocolate miniatures.

Oh, friends, the pain of confession is indeed the Greatest Rift of All.

I held them in my hands. I read the nutrition information and I balked. I knew the reality of what I considered. I wouldn’t have just one mini and then donate the rest to the drawer. I’d shovel the whole of that 5-serving bag into my erstwhile trained mouth, downing most (all?) of it before I made it back the 3.2 miles to the office. Whatever remained I would sneak upstairs in my bag and devour at my desk before I even finished dialing in for my voicemail messages. Danger, danger, danger!

The Fat Lady bitch-slapped my psyche as I stood there, contemplating a 90+pound weight loss against the quiver of my taste buds and the flutter of my tummy, freshly underfed with my standard chicken breast wrap. I held the chocolates, I fought back every WW thought I owned and held dear, battling with all things from my old life. The 251 pound Queen of Rationalization held court in my head, and for several moments, I could not have told you anything that happened around me other than the crinkle of the bag in my hands and the silent whir of my brain counting POINTS against the calorie count on the package. One POINT per mini. Twenty-five POINTS in the bag. More than I eat all day. More than I used to eat in 2.

I put them back.

No, that’s incorrect. I chucked them back. I spoke aloud, to myself, talking loud enough that the clerk looked up from his Sudoku book to check on me. “No,” I said. “I’m not getting them.” I hurled the bag back into the bin, and then I did sprint to the cash register. Had I not needed the other supplies in my hands, I would have bolted straight for the door.

I worked out that night, something I rarely do when I’m having my period. Normally, it’s too much trouble. My body is exhausted from draining me, and my hormones are all over the map. Adding oxygen deprivation, a sweaty t-shirt and a chatty preschooler to the mix really does ask for me to pummel someone for smiling a ‘hello’ anywhere in my direction. But I climbed aboard the treadmill and I huffed it out for half an hour. I listened to my music, but all I could hear was the crinkle of that bag and the chop of my “No” in the fluorescent pharmacy air.

I don’t know how I can still be tempted by these things. I really don’t like dark chocolate, I got fat eating those very minis, with their deceptive, ‘oh look how little! But how perfect. You can have just one and be satisfied!’ I like my vegetables and my whole wheat wraps and the zing of the wasabi-speckled soy sauce dripped over my Sashimi dinner. I want to be thin, and I’ve battled every day for 39 weeks to get to here. I’m 155.50 pounds, and I’m so close to the big 100.0 pound loss that I can literally see it from here. In a few weeks, allowing for exercise and sanity, I could drop the big bar down to ‘100’ from ‘150’ and then never, ever have to put it back up again.

That’s what I want. Those are the things that inspire me, and make me celebrate. I don’t even think of food as celebratory anymore. I eat sushi when DS is with X, but it’s just our date food and really, since we don’t eat the rice and we don’t order anything with mayo, avocado or tempura, its’ really a thinner meal than what we eat during the week. I had angel food cake for my birthday, and I liked it, but I threw out the rest of the cake after dinner (which was most of it), and I didn’t even give it a second glance. It was a ritual, and once it was over, the need for the food in the house vanished with it.

So what happened? I was alone, I was hormone-deprived, I was curious…or maybe I was just tempted. I think I’ve come to decide that I will never stop the temptations. Each victory makes the next battle easier, but it will never be easy. I’ll never look on chocolate with indifference. I’ll never shrug at dessert and mean it. I’ll decide it isn’t worth it, I’ll celebrate my strength, and I’ll respect myself in the morning, but the urge will always remain.

I think it’s enough to know this, and to know that while I consider myself a Recovered fat person, rather than recovering, that the beast of who I was will always live in me. The lure of the Instantly Gratifying or the Because I Deserve It, or even the deceptive ‘Oh, It’s just one little thing every once in a while’ still holds sway with me. The Fat Lady lives on. She’s inactive for sure, but she’s far more Mt. St. Helen’s than she is Diamondhead.

Howard says this was a victory. Maybe. I did win, I suppose. I was almost persuaded, but I walked away. It was more retreat than march, but still, I left without the bag, and I haven’t been back to visit. But it doesn’t feel like a victory so much as a Death Battle. I won, sure, but I’m battered and bloodied and weakened from the fight. For the first time in my life, I feel lucky to have 3 weeks between PMS bouts. I need every moment to rest and recuperate before Princess Toblerone sends her tendrils up my nose.

It’s Day 14 now, and I’m walking past the drawer at work without a glance. I left tonight with the place surrounded by cubies and I didn’t care. But I did notice. And I also know that next week, I will wage war yet again.

On the up side, I bought a Calvin Klein suit today in a size 6, and 2 blouses over the weekend in a size Small that are almost too big for me. I’m battle-worn and weary, but I sure do look good in my ‘bandages’.

A the C(ocoa Free)

Fool's Paradise

So, clearly I’m an idiot.

For 37 weeks and 3 days, I’ve worked to crave healthy food and shun the nasties that made me fat. I wrenched my way through the chocolate needs, both real and PMS-induced, and I’ve endured hours of hunger pangs, so that every week, I could stand on the scale and see a loss.

I’ve succeeded. As of last Saturday, I was down 93.50 pounds, to a new low of 157.75. I have re-energized my resolve, and I have now tricked my brain into returning to Loss mode. As of this writing, I am no more than 15.25 pounds away from my goal.

I logged a full 2.0 pounds from last week, the biggest drop I’ve had since February. I did get my period on Thursday, which helped, but even so, I don’t really understand how this food program logged teeny losses for 5 weeks in a row, only to go Full Blown loss last week. It’s one of the million things I do not understand about weight loss, and my weight loss in particular. Whatever jump-started me, I now have found my brain, lodged between folds of the octopus, apparently, and have now turned it to the business at hand: getting these last pounds off. After 37 weeks and 3 days of struggle, I believe I have at last ‘run’ across the method that will work forevermore.

I’m exercising.

Yes, patrons, it’s a fact at last. On Thursday, I donned my workout clothes, stepped up on to Howard’s treadmill and stuffed the headset buds into my ears. Since I’m such a nutcase about everything, I have a tendency to start working out too hard, and then I get injured and then I have to quit. So I decided to do an easy walk and see how it went. I knew I couldn’t (wouldn’t!) go fast, and so I put the incline up to 7.0, figuring I could burn some extra calories by walking “up hill”.

I still had trouble with the MP3 player on my phone, and the right ear bud kept falling out, but I stayed on, knowing that if I could make it through the first workout, then the next one would be easier. Eventually I got a 2nd wind and then the music picked up, and by the end, I had bumped the treadmill speed from 2.5mph to 2.8. When the 20-minute mark hit, I was at 185 calories burned, and so I decided to keep going until I hit 200. Then of course at 200 calories, I was at 22:35 minutes, so I decided to keep going until I hit 25 minutes. At the 25 minute mark, I’d burned exactly 225 calories. My legs hurt, I was out of breath, and it was time for DS and Lynda to come home, so I stepped off. I was wobbly, but I felt good.

Then Saturday hit, and I’d dropped TWO POUNDS from the week before, and so I decided to work out again. DS was home, so I put his trampoline next to the treadmill, showed him how to drink water from my bottle, and turned on the machine. I started at 3.0 mph, figuring I wanted to burn as many (or more!) calories as I had on Thursday. He jumped and spun with me for a few minutes, and then he said, “Mommy, let’s go fast!” I ‘cranked’ it up to 4.0 mph, which requires me to run. DS responded with glee, running in place and jumping around until his face flushed. “Stop, Mommy, slow down!” he yelled. Grateful, I switched it back.

And so it went. For 20 minutes, I let DS be my ‘interval coach’, moving up to a run when he wanted and then slowing down when he asked. He was consistently at 1 minute intervals, which was fine with me. At the end of our workout, I’d logged 250 calories in 20 minutes. DS and I collapsed on the lounge chair in the basement for exactly 1 minute before he said, ‘hey, my turn!’ I put him on the treadmill, turned it to the lowest setting and switched the music on. Wow, the smiles! He grinned all the way around to the back of his head.

On Sunday, DS wanted to exercise again. We got interrupted by a potty break, but we did 30 minutes instead of 20, and I did much longer running intervals. I burned 400 calories, and my knee wasn’t even hurting. It’s a little sticky this morning, but I think I’m all right. The best part is, I feel great. I can already tell that I have more energy, and I’m sleeping better at night.

Not last night, mind you. Howard and I got DS a bunk bed as an early birthday present, and last night was the first time he slept in it. He opted for the top bunk, naturally, and the ladder isn’t as sturdy nor as safety-conscious as I’d like, so I slept all night with one ear tuned to a 4-year-old boy crashing to the floor from 7 feet up. As it happened, though, he did get out of bed around 4am, but he did it without waking me (lately he’s been ‘announcing’ his intent to get into bed, and I have to wake up and escort him over). He simply climbed down the Death-Defying Ladder, in total darkness, padded around to Howard’s side of the bed (also new) and climbed in. I didn’t even know he was in with us until I got up, and saw his angel face on my pillow. That’s how good I’m sleeping. A little too well, but luckily, I have Howard as backup.

So there it is. I have a new commitment to exercise, and I have a buddy to do it with me. It’s good for DS, too, who is a little weak in his core area (according to Little Friends). He’s also showing some interest and talent in his “Kickers” class (soccer), and so some aerobics with Mommy will surely help his endurance when he scrimmages with his other buddies. I don’t know if I’ll work out tonight-I had planned for a Tu/Th/Sa routine, but now I’m feeling so good and want to take advantage of my momentum, so I might go ahead and mount the treadmill again tonight.

WW says that I should be burning 4 “POINTS” of exercise per day. I checked, and the 30 mins of walking/running I did accounted for only 2 POINTS. So I either have to do that for a full hour EVERY SINGLE DAY, or I have to notch it up to High intensity and do it 30-40 mins for 4-5 times a week. Either way, it’s a lot. I should probably figure out how to work in aerobics classes or weight training or belly dancing or something other than the treadmill, because even with DS helping me, standing still and running on a belt is going to get old. Even I cannot commit to that kind of tedium for the rest of my life.

It’s getting warmer, and I’ve always, always wanted to be a runner, so I might invest in some good running shoes and take my workout to the streets. But then, I can’t do it with DS. Running with him on the trampoline is dangerous enough-he’s constantly jumping so I think he’ll land on the belt and break us both. If I took our gig outdoors, we'd be road pizza for sure. But I still like sharing this with him. We’ll see.

My accountant informed me that I’m to get a large refund back from the Feds this year (yay!). It’s my first real windfall ever, and I’ve been trying to figure out how exactly to spend (some of!) it, using it as a reward for breaking 160 and hitting my WW goal. I wanted to do something special, and not just blow it all on TJ Maxx temporary wardrobe items or groceries and the light bill. Then on Saturday it came to me. I’m going to invest in my home gym. I’ll get those fancy dial-a-dumbbell things and a good bench with a squat bar, and then I’ll add an elliptical machine to the mix. That downstairs room is just begging to be turned into Jock Central. If I work out during peak DS hours, I’ll have a friend along. I need to keep the weights away from him for obvious reasons, but I can do all my cardio and have a friend along for the ride.

So, yes, I’m an idiot. I’ve robbed myself of all this cardio-high for months. I could have been 37 weeks and 3 days into a fitness program. Just imagine how I’d look now if I had. The octopus would have turned into a sourpuss months ago, and my mary-jane "flappy" arms would be something that I used to have. But I’ve learned my lesson, I’ve fixed the problem, and now I’m so motivated that I can’t believe I’m still sitting here. Bring on the lung burn! Hard body, here I come.

A the G(otta run!)

ASPER Normal

DS has a new diagnosis. Sort of.

After 15 hours of my darling boy’s time, during which he was test-battered by a PhD specialist, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, counselors, teachers, administrators, and us, the Little Friends Center for Autism has announced that DS is PDD-NOS. This is, of course, identical to the diagnosis I received last fall. This time, though, the announcement comes with extra, and encouraging, data attached to it.

First, while he classifies as PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified), he “presents” more like Asperger Syndrome, and a mild case at that. Asperger is sometimes nicknamed “Autism Light” or “The Little Professor Syndrome”, indicating that Asperger kids are often frighteningly brilliant, and take interest in all those subjects that typical kids loathe (science, math, engineering). Apart from their social quirks, they are considered, more or less, to be brilliant geeks.

It helps that they’re all so smart, so even though they lack the ability to read the nonverbal message cues that most of us learn automatically, their intelligence allows them to learn it all by rote, so they can fake their social skills and ‘pass’ for typical. And so it goes for DS. The doctor says he is very bright, has a phenomenal memory, and everything that challenges him can be handled through meticulous organization skills that eventually he’ll manage for himself. Visual schedules become written lists, which then become paper (or electronic) documents in his own personal planner when he’s old enough to manage one.

That’s my boy.

There will still be challenges, of course. He handles change pretty well at home, but poorly in the classroom. I expect that to continue, and for the school district to label it a behavior problem, rather than a function of his condition. But with this diagnosis at least, DS will be in the mainstream class and not sequestered in the ‘short bus’ classroom, with the schoolyard equivalent of a target painted on his Special Ed chest. It’s enough to make my PMS-induced hormone hysteria weep with joy.

He also hates it when people touch him without invitation, particularly if they sneak up on him or startle him. And he’s loud when he gets startled. Asperger kids don’t understand whispering, and so everything DS says, happens at the top of his voice. If I alert him to it, he’ll quiet down. But it’s impossible to reason with him if he’s been “accosted” by some well-meaning old lady who finds him too cute not to touch. Also, we can’t take him to WW meetings, since he simply cannot speak in a low voice. But these are things he needs to learn, and so it looks like we 3 (Howard, DS, and I) be working on a ‘meeting voice’.

The best part is, of all the Autism Spectrum Disorders, Asperger’s children are the most likely to go to college, get married, and live normal lives. And spectrum disorder ‘symptoms’ peak in the pre-school years and dissipate over time. So even though he’ll always ‘test out’ as an Asperger person, the symptoms will mellow with time, as his experiences and exposure teach him to read the social cues that most of us learn innately. He might always be socially awkward, and he might never be able to master the art of small talk. But I have to admit that, while these aren’t choices for him, there’s clearly an advantage to being able to bypass Cocktail Hour Speak and concentrate on Things That Matter.

So, there it is. Real, kinda frightening, but utterly manageable. And really, we’re in the worst of it right now. It all gets better from here.

Howard’s Mom, “Grandma Florida” has told me that she thinks DS will continue to improve as he ages, until eventually a stranger wouldn’t be able to tell that DS has “issues”. I wanted to believe that, but I didn’t dare. And now, of course, I can’t pretend that age and experience will ‘disappear’ these hurdles. But now, I think she might be right. He’s so much better than he was a year ago. He talks like crazy, and while he still confuses pronouns and his grammar construction is odd, he’s understandable. He’s also affectionate (just ask Grandpa Florida), attentive, empathic, and totally into his Rosen. The “boys” are building things together in the house and taking out the trash, and shouting at one another over whose turn it is during Candy Land marathons. From where I’m sitting it’s all looking pretty normal.

Well, ASPER normal. But I’ll take it. The diagnosis is the same, but the prognosis has hats & horns all over it. Maybe I’ll go home early so DS and I can spend the afternoon shouting out our joy.

A the R(elieved to be ASPER Normal)

Bitter-Sweet Sixteen

It was a mistake to declare my WW goal.

My brain, in its expanded capacity of helping me, has decided that since I’m at goal on WW, I should stop losing weight. After dropping an average of 10 pounds a month since the beginning, I logged a paltry 4.75 pound loss in March. I admit to some PMS puffiness this week, but I have been strict and adamant and not putting anything near my Pie Hole that isn’t whole, fibrous, and lean, and still, I remain flat. Sucks.

So even though I want to lose up to 16.50 more pounds, my brain has ‘decided’ that I’m done. I eat exactly the way I have been eating since Day 1, and I’m even mixing up my meals to confuse my metabolism. The scale tips and teeters, but doesn’t really move. After hanging at 160 for this whole week, I dropped to 158.75 yesterday (yay!) only to jump back to 160 this morning. Sucks.

It hurts me further that I don’t exercise (seriously, what is WRONG with me?), and THAT is further exacerbated by the fact that I have somehow developed knee problems. I have no idea how I managed to get a bum knee after I lost 92 pounds. I wonder if it’s something akin to when my grandmother didn’t have a “sick day” for 25 years while she took care of my ailing grandfather, but as soon as he died, she got cold after cold and then developed some weird lesion on her nose that required hospitalization. Maybe my brain knew it couldn’t lose its motive power when I was huge, but now that I’m better mobilized, it’s okay to give me a flat. I raked leaves for 3 hours on Saturday. Nothing big, nothing turbo, and really, I just swept them into piles so Howard could vacuum them up, and now I can’t sit or stand for very long without doing that Old Lady wince-and-rub-your-rheumatism grimace.

Sucks.

After grousing and obsessing about this for a week, I’ve decided that the best way to tackle this is through denial. I deny that I have reached my goal. I refuse to accept a clothed 163 as my final resting place. I commit to losing more weight, as much as 16.50 pounds to go before I sleep.
Sixteen pounds is a lot to lose. It’s pretty close to twenty, and that’s 2 whole sizes in the Misses world.

Twenty pounds is the Magic Weight Loss Number, a figure that kick-starts people into dieting. You can suck in your stomach or blouse out your clothes and hide ten pounds, or even fifteen if you're tall, but at 20 pounds, the body looks different. When people ask me about my weight, they usually offer how much they’d like to lose, and that double-dime figure is a popular one. ‘Boy I sure could stand to lose 20.’ ‘If I could only get 20 off, I’d be happy.’ 'I’m going to stick to this fricking diet until I lose all I want to lose.’

That last one was me. I’m in this crowd, too. I have (nearly) 20 pounds to go. It’s time to re-start the program.

I’m doing Phase 2 –aptly named The Pushing Stage (see post below, “Bearing Down”) as a Recovered Fat Person who wants to lose some more weight. Frankly, I think this will help me, since I won’t have to battle my own “I’m still fat” demons as I work my way down into the 140s. I figure I’ll take the Slimy Salesman approach to this, where the idea is that people who’ve just spent a bunch of money on something new (house, car) are more apt to buy yet more new things (Kirby vacuum cleaners). So it goes for me: the place I’m most likely to lose weight is right after I’ve lost a bunch. Here’s hoping.

So, here they are. The details of Lose the Fat, Phase 2.

Goal #1: I promise to get off my bony, squishy arse and do a minimum of 20 minutes of ‘movement’ at least 3 times a week.

You’ll note that I use the WW term ‘movement’ and not the actual term, ‘exercise’. Coward! But hey, I crushed my knee by raking leaves! That’s so sad. At this juncture, I’m happy that my legs are working, never mind pumping at 60 rpms on the elliptical. Still, it’s getting warmer, DS wants to zoom his scooter all over creation, and there simply is no more excuse. I am going to get cardio.

I think part of my issue with delaying the exercise program is that I wanted to see how far down I could get before I stalled. (Note to self: it’s right here, you jerkoff!). The other piece is that I’ve never stuck to a ‘movement’ program. I start great. I get all fired up, I start packing my gym bag at night, so it's ready in the morning, and as I get firmer, I push harder. It all boils over on itself until gym time becomes a true priority. Sometimes I will get to a place where I start to look at my workouts as calendar items, like doctor visits, where only death and disaster should keep me from honoring the ‘appointment’. Of course my dentist called this morning and cancelled my 4-month old appointment scheduled for this Friday since his hygienist ‘needed to take a day off’. Uh, okay. Guess I’ll use my appointment time to find another tooth scraper. Anyway….

I get into exercise. I love it, and I love how my (secretly athletic) body responds to workouts. I start working out, and I vow on the spot to belong to the gym for a lifetime, and to go every day until I die.

The first part is true: I’m a member of the YMCA indefinitely. The second part falls distinctly into the ‘Ah, not so much’ category. Inevitably, something happens to make me miss a workout, and then I'll miss another, and then suddenly, I'm going 3x a week instead of every day. Then I get a heavy period or I go traveling and the "fitness center" at the hotel blows chunks, so I stay in and eat room service instead of exercising. Before long, I notice my gym bag only because I haven't pulled my clothes out from the last workout, and they've started to stink.

I'm in this time. I owe this to myself, and I want to make workouts a part of my life. A real part. Not auxilliary, not ancillary, and not when it's convenient. It's necessary, and I want to do it. I will get my bony arse moving.

Goal #2: I will remember that I am a moderate at nothing, and that this works to my advantage.

I will drive toward the finish, rather than coast. Coasting is going downhill, and I am most decidedly not doing that. This last piece is hard, and will continue to challenge me with every flipping walk past that stupid chocolate-stash drawer, which, by the way, they have now filled with dark chocolate miniatures. Sometimes I really hate this place.

But, since I am not a moderate, and since I trust myself that I can commit to this for a lifetime, then I will remember that whatever I start, I can finish, and whatever I finish, I can maintain. I have no worries about staying on a healthy diet after the last pound has been wrenched off of my body. I will find a way to have the same faith in myself when it comes to exercise and mental strength. I know that I can do this, because I have. Sticking to something is its own challenge, but I’m not there yet. I will work through that when it arrives. For now, I’m 0.0 pounds into this goal, and all my energy gets channeled to the Loss.

Goal #3: I will become okay with the fact that, while I am as thin (ish) as I was as a teenager, that my body does not look like that anymore, and that's okay.

I like myself so much more now than I did when I was young. I am calmer, more self-assured, and more centered than I ever was as a skinny kid. And yes, I know that seems hard to believe when I’m ranting, but really, I am, at least comparatively speaking. But there’s a way to go before I’m considered calm by Normal standards. Now is the time to become that. I need to be who I am, and to like who I am, in order to succeed. I have to look at my window-shade breasts and the last, drooping bits of the octopus and that weird little fanny pack on the back of my legs, and laugh.

Or chuckle, or maybe just smile for now. I don’t have that tight body of Once Upon A Time, and I will likely never have it again. I might always have the tricep “mary-janes” that flap when I wave my arm, even if I get hard-core into bodybuilding, and my tummy may always sport a little convex curve to it.

The things that count are beneath my stretched skin. My health, already so much better, stands to gain even more. I have a cholesterol reading of 121, and everything that got tested in March is in normal range. Well, everything except the good cholesterol. No idea how that happened or what I can do to fix it. But I’m not anemic anymore, my triglycerides are normal for the first time since they’ve been tested, and I’m of normal body weight on every scale in the western world (I haven’t the same high hopes for my weight in Asia, but I don’t live there, so I’m not bothered by that.).

I’m proud of the stretch marks on my tummy, that show where my DS lived for 39 weeks. I like the fact (sometimes!) that my breasts bear the marks of being functional for 4 years. I’m proud of my scars and my crepe-like skin, and I’m even getting used to the gray in my hair. I might look more like the MOTB in my wedding dress, but I earned every silver streak, and I’m happy to display them.

So it makes no sense that I’d want that old body back, because (a) I can’t have it without zillions of dollars in surgery and then I risk looking like Joan “stretch my face until I look like I’m an astronaut in training” Rivers, and (b) if I could go back, it would have to be all the way, and I don’t want that. I like me as I am, sags and all. So I will learn to love me. And then I will work on firming up those weird saddle bags “out back”. Seriously, they are weird looking.

So, off we go! I’m leaving work now, at 4:45pm, so I can get home, change clothes, and take a leisurely walk. I’d do it hard core, but I fear for my knee. If I burn fewer calories, that’s okay. I might make up some of it while I’m shivering, since it is now Springtime in Chicago, which means 40 degrees and 20 mph winds. Sometimes I hate this place.

But in other ways, I love it. I love This Place, where I am thin and happy, and where I am perched on something fantastic and important. All I need is me to get there. Luckily, there is less of me to drag along to the gym. AND I’ll get a little boost next week when my period arrives. Things are looking up re: moving down already.

A the S(ixteen to Go)

Bearing Down

I reached my WW goal this week.

Actually, I suspect that I reached it last week, but I was on vacation in Florida, and I wasn’t about to start WW maintenance with a leader other than Maria the Spectacular.

I weighed in at 159.75, which translated to 161.40 at WW, roughly 1.60 pounds below my stated goal of 163. If I stay under 165.0 between now and May 12, I will achieve my final WW milestone, Lifetime Membership. If I continue to weigh in at least once a month and stay within 2 pounds of my WW goal, I can attend meetings free for life.

Even though I haven’t yet reached my personal goal, I feel that now I’m embarking on Stage 2 of my journey. I’ve been thinking about what changes I’ll make as I move from Loss Mode to Stasis. I’m planning for how my life will be different, now that I’m a Lifetime Thin Person.

I really believe that: that I’ll be thin for life. It’s exciting to me, and also frightening, since I’ve never been in a place where I felt I looked good. Even in all the years I was thin, I always felt I had a few pounds to lose, or that I would be better off a size down, or that if only I could weigh less than this, then I would be satisfied. Something always kept me from believing that I was finished with losing. I never trusted that I had created a New Me, and that this girl was here for the duration. I suspect now that this had more to do with my general unhappiness than the scale’s reading, but whatever the reason, I’ve never been where I wanted to be, weight-wise or any-wise. But I am now. The weight is the last thing, and it’s almost over.

The loss was different this time. I’m not just eating smaller amounts of regular food; I eat healthy things, and I eat them with gusto. Last week, I drooled over a WW ad for fat free hummus and steamed vegetables. A day later, I was face to face with a chocolate sheet cake, and I turned my back without hesitation. I am a changed person. I am no longer a recovering fat person—I am recovered. I pulled myself out of all those habits, I said good-bye to all that unhappiness, and I am looking forward to a lifetime of good meals, great choices, and fabulous, skinny health. I’ve become someone new entirely. At 42 years old, I will soon be reborn as Amy, Thin Forever.

I’ll ‘give birth’ to my new self on the day that I reach my personal goal weight. True to the origins of this rite of passage, I’ll probably be naked (I weigh in at home au natural), and once the scale reads that final, delicious number, I’ll probably cry. And scream.

Just so we don’t take the analogy too far, I’d better not be smacked on the tuchus. Fair warning to everyone in ‘striking’ distance. I’m a new babe, but I’m still a black belt, and odds are, I’ll hit my goal on a day when my hormones are soaring.

I got to thinking yesterday that this whole Me Rebirth really does mirror labor. It has 3 stages, just like the stages in birth, and the pain is as unique and intense as any newborn delivery.

Stage 1 is the labor. Labor, as in painful stomach contractions, long periods of time when I couldn’t eat, even though I was hungry, and the dread-laced certainty that this will go on forever.

In medical terms, labor is when the cervix opens and the body prepares to urge the new life out of the womb and into the world. In Stage 1 of my weight loss, I opened myself to the possibility that I could eat well and still be satisfied, and that I could find a way to shed all my extra pounds, even though the task seemed insurmountable. I had no idea who I would be at the end, nor really any clear idea that it would be a new person at all. I had visions, certainly: fantasies of how I would feel, or what my new body would look like. But the ‘who’ remained shadowy and blurred. My ‘sonogram’ was 2 dimensional, blurred, and didn’t look much like a person. She was a creature, a foreigner. I wanted to know her, but we both knew that she would remain hidden until it was time to push her out.

As with a newborn birth, Stage 1 is the longest. It’s been almost 10 months that I’ve been in weight loss mode. Ten months of weigh-ins, each time hoping that the number would be lower than the time before. I’ve shed 92.5 pounds from my frame, roughly 36.8% of my original body weight. Every morning when I shuffle to the scale, I do it with my breath held and my stomach tittering. Will I have a loss today? Will I be lighter today than yesterday? Will the octopus move one step closer toward extinction?

These last few weeks have exhausted me. I’m close enough to my goal that, since I still don’t exercise, my body flirts with finishing before I want to be done. This is the transition-where the pain is most intense. Most of the work is done, but that last ten or twenty percent takes more effort than the first eighty. But I had a good loss while I was on vacation. I broke the 160 mark, a barrier I hadn’t crossed since 1988, and the balance scale teases me, showing me that if I can drop 9.75 pounds more, I can move the big marker down from 150 to 100. I can see my goal from here. I can see Thin Amy. She’s just a few weeks away. But there is still much hard, bloody work ahead.

For me, this is the time to hunker in, to grip the handrails of this ride and steer it along these last curves until I’m holding the New Me at last. I’m urging my new self forward, giving Thin Amy some leeway to take the wheel from me and steer us into the express lanes. I’ve been on the entrance ramp for ten months now, accelerating and dodging traffic, waiting for an opening on the Goal Highway with all the other “Afters”.

Stage 2 is where the body pushes the newborn out. It’s much shorter than Stage 1, but it’s more intense, and it’s where many give up and beg for drugs. I’m tired and I’m hungry. I can’t do this anymore. I need to rest. Next thing you know, you’re back in Stage 1 (for weight loss only, thankfully!), with pounds returned, and this time they’ve brought friends. Well, I don’t want to give birth to twins, or any multiple, for that matter. This birth is hard, and I refuse to make it tougher. The last stretch is the toughest, but I’m leaner and stronger now. I can do it.

Stage 3 is the last piece-the new person emerges, a whole confluence of changes take place, and everyone hugs and kisses everyone else. Calls are made, flowers sent, celebrations abound. The cord is cut, and the new person is ready (sort of) to live life as a separate human being.

This is what awaits me. I am somewhere between 5.50 and 16.50 pounds from Stage 3. I am in the final throes, the last few moments before I meet my New Self, cut the cord with the Fat Lady and begin life as Thin Me. Somewhere between now and the day I reach my personal goal, I’ll be in Stage 2-bent in half, yelling at anyone who tries to distract me, and blaming Howard for all my suffering. Oh, the fun we’ll have. Poor Howard. He’s largely responsible for all of my success, but since he’s right here, he gets battered harder than any unsuspecting father in a delivery room. The only thing I can think of that he can be thankful for, is that at no time will I declare that Sex is Bad.

Stage 3 is almost here. I can see that New Girl in the mirror, but she’s not fully here yet.

I celebrated a birthday last Saturday. I wish in some way that I had hit my goal on that day. But maybe it’s better this way, that my Re-Birth Day has its own space on the calendar. A year from now, it won’t matter when I hit my final goal. It will matter only that I made it, and that, once it was over, I couldn’t remember any of the pain.

I believe in Amy, Thin for Life. And I can’t wait to meet her.

A the S(omebody Boil Some Water!)