There's one thing I'm really good at

I've been focusing a lot on the negative aspects of my weight loss journey. I often talk about the things I don't do right. It's a never-ending list. I don't always track my food, I eat too much, sometimes I eat things I shouldn't. I don't do this right and I don't do that right. Blah. Blah. Blah.

However, in spite of all the things I don't do right, there's one thing I excel at doing  when it comes to a healthy lifestyle and that's exercise.

I'm fifty-five years old and throughout my life I've had phases of exercise craziness. I would pick some exercise, such as high-impact aerobics, in my twenties when all my girlfriends were doing it. Or running because I thought that was what all the cool people did and it burned the most calories. Or or weight lifting when I worked at the police department with all the buff police officers and the department had it's own gym. Or whatever exercise struck my fancy, and I'd go full throttle with it.

My problem was that I would only do it for a few weeks or maybe a few months, then I'd completely stop, cold turkey. My reasoning was simple. It hurt. Who wants to do something that hurts? I personally don't like pain and have a rather low threshold for it.

On February 12, 2008 I started Weight Watchers. At the same time I started going to my gym four times a week. I had been a member since 1996 and had rarely used my membership. After about six months I started going five to six times a week. Now I ofte go for fourteen stretches without a day off. Although recently I'm trying to cut back to taking at least one off day a week.

What happened to change me? How did I go from hating to exercise to not hating it so much to almost liking it? How did I go from a couch potato to working out six days a week, 60 to 90 -minute workouts each day?

What happened to snap me out of my inactive lifestyle is something I've written about before. You can read about it here. Basically, I felt like hell at 240 pounds. I thought I might be dying, and I might have died if I didn't do something about my physical condition. Since I really didn't want to die yet, I had to start exercising and lose weight. Let's see...death or exercise? Or perhaps a wheelchair or exercise? It was a pretty easy decision.

How I started
When I started exercising February 12, 2008 at 240 pounds, it was HORRIBLE. I'm talking real pain. I was miserable even just walking on the treadmill. I quickly gave up the treadmill and went to the elliptical. It was still hard, but I could set my own pace without being totally embarrassed. That was my big fear, being embarrassed at the gym. That's so stupid because really, no one gives a damn what you do at the gym. I barely even look at anyone else, because I'm totally focused on myself.

When I absolutely hated going to the gym
For the first two years I had a "five-minute rule". I decided right at the beginning that I would exercise in the morning. I knew if I tried to work out at night I'd find any excuse in the book to miss a workout. So I started getting up at 4:45 a.m. and was at the gym by 5:15 a.m. There were many mornings when I really thought I'd just rather die than go to the gym. The problem was that I probably would die if I didn't exercise. I decided to start my "five-minute rule".

It's really simple, when I would wake up and think "I'm exhausted, I don't want to get up and go to the gym. I don't want to exercise and feel pain! I hate this!", this is what I would tell myself:

"Diana, get up, get dressed. Get in the car. Drive to the gym. Go inside. Get on any piece of equipment you want. Exercise five minutes. If you're so miserable you can't stand it, you have permission to go home. Stop thinking about it and just do it."

Just knowing I could go home if I wanted to, took away a lot of the pressure. I had an out if I needed it. In three years I've only left the gym one time after five minutes. I had bronchitis and really had no business exercising.

The funny thing is that I haven't even thought about my five-minute rule for months. Now I just tell myself to stop thinking about it and go. I rarely give it much thought. I just do it. After three years, it's become a part of my life. I can't imagine ever stopping.

I have more tips for getting into an exercise frame of mind, but it's almost 9:30 p.m. 5:15 a.m. comes really early so I have to go to bed now.  More about exercise tomorrow.

Woulda, shoulda, coulda

From WiseGeek.com:

"For many of us, there is a clear distinction between what actually happened and what we wished would have happened in a given situation. Sometimes people realize a number of options they could have or should have taken instead of the action they actually took. This feeling of regret or second-guessing is summed up in the expression woulda coulda shoulda."

A friend of mine made a new year's resolution to stop her "woulda coulda shoulda" habit. Each time she says one of these words she has to put a quarter in a jar. She then proceeded to tell me about her vacation, and said "we should have made our reservations....". She stopped, and said "whoops! Another quarter!".

It's so easy to slip into a pattern of regret, where we wish we'd made different choices. We often criticize ourselves for making bad choices, thinking we could have, should have, done things differently. I often do this to myself, then I proceed to berate myself for the bad choices I made when I know better. Does this do me any good? Absolutely not. If anything, it perpetuates a feeling of defeat and that I'm just not good enough or smart enough to lose weight. It makes me feel weak and helpless to dwell on my failures. It serves no real purpose.

I've decided I'm done with the past. I posted recently that 2010 was a lost year. I didn't gain weight, I didn't lose weight. Now January 2011 is a lost month. I continued my no gain, no lose pattern..

It's time for me to stop looking back at my failures and time to start looking forward. I have the Big Climb in exactly seven weeks. On March 20th, I'll be climbing 1,311 stairs (69 floors). I can't cancel or just not show up for this event. I'm the team captain, and many of the team members are coworkers. As a team captain I'm required to be present. It would be not be cool of me to drop out, it's not an option.

I call 2010 my lost year, starting and ending at the same weight, 180. Now January 2011 is another lost month. Starting and ending at 180 pounds. Not exactly where I'd hope to be, but not at the 239 pounds I started at February 19, 2008.
The good news, February is notoriously my month to lose weight. I've started many successful diets in February. In fact, February 19 will mark three years of Weight Watcher meetings. I don't know why it's my month, perhaps because spring seems like it's just around the corner and spring is my season (with summer a close second). Spring means skimpier clothing, and right now, none of my size 10 summer clothing fits.

Moving forward now...

The wine was my downfall

After three days of being really good, eating on plan, feeling a few hunger pains during the day (a good thing),and having a late night healthy snack at 9pm each day that seemed to put a stop to my binges, I totally blew it.

It started out well yesterday, healthy breakfast, healthy lunch, and super busy at work. So busy that it took me four hours to eat my salad of spinach, shrimp, and clementines with balsamic vinegar and a teaspoon of oil. It's my latest most favorite lunch (at home I add a little red onion, but not at work). I worked through lunch, with  barely time to eat a few bites, then meetings all afternoon. I'd grab a few bites between meetings. A crazy day.

I had a fantastic workout yesterday, as I have every day this week, plus I've been doing our three flights of stairs at work twelve times during lunch each day, 720 steps (except yesterday). Every morning 110 to 120 flights on the StairMaster, plus 40 minutes of strength.

Then my eating plan went all to heck. Last night I had a date with my best girlfriend. Her birthday was a couple weeks ago (the breakfast at IHOP), but we always celebrate later in the month with dinner and a movie. Her pick for both since she's the birthday girl.

I was so busy all day that I didn't even have time to ask her where we were going. When I picked her up at 5:30 p.m. she said the dreaded two words: Claim Jumpers. This is a very bad restaurant. My girlfriend usually chooses this restaurant since it's one of favorites. When I know we're going there I go to their nutritional information on their website, decide what I'm going to eat and stick to it. This always works for me because I sort of get my mind around it, and I feel good about it. This restaurant is like hell for a dieter. Giant servings of fat-laden, delicious food. There are healthy choices, but you have to be really careful.

Last night, after a horrendously stressful work day, I couldn't even think straight (this is my excuse for what happened). The Claim Jumper website is very unfriendly and difficult to use. It takes time to look things up and it's hard to find things (because everything has a million calories and they don't want people to know). In other words, trying to do it on my Blackberry was just about impossible.

I asked the waitress to see their nutritional information. I got this story from our very sweet waitress. "Yes, we know it's the law in Washington state for restaurants to provide that information, but the restaurant chain has been purchased by a business in Texas, where nutritional information is not required. They just redesigned the menu and didn't realize they needed provide the nutritional information. They're working on it."

Oh well, I'm a big girl, and I know what's healthy and what's not. I ordered the half rotisserie chicken (and it was a tiny, baby chicken) and a dry baked sweet potato (which was huge and delicious), no bread (they have the most amazing corn bread you've ever tasted). Good so far, right?

Then I messed up. I know my girlfriend loves a glass of wine with dinner. I also know if I don't order it she won't either. I entirely gave up wine several months ago. I decided it was just a waste of calories and usually gave me a headache.

Last night I was tired, stressed with a neck thing going on, and a glass of wine sounded good. So I ordered a glass of Cabernet. It was huge (as everything is in this place except for that chicken). Probably at least two servings.

I ate every bite of my dinner (which would probably have been enough food for three people). Then I ordered dessert. My girlfriend's favorite dessert, Lemon Bar Brulee. And  no, we didn't share a piece and yes, it was wonderful. It's a lemon bar cheesecake thing with raspberry sauce and whip cream. I looked up the dessert this morning, 747 calories, 16 gr of fat, 105 gr carbs, 1 gr fiber.

Anyway, the end of the story is that I gained two pounds overnight. 180.2 this morning. I know some of it's probably the sodium. I know it was just one night. I know it's not that big of a deal. It's just that I have Weight Watchers tomorrow, which means I have to weigh in. Sort of depressing.

The movie was great though. No Strings Attached. Very funny, cute chick flick with Natalie Portman and Aston Kutcher (love him). I had a great visit with my girlfriend. It was very fun and yes, I would do it again, but skip the wine and dessert. Maybe. :)

Life happens, but I really need to get serious about losing weight and stop just talking about it. The Big Climb is less than two months away. Remember, 1,311 steps. Scary at 180 pounds!

555

Tonight I watched the new A&E show, Heavy. Most of the reviews I've read by other bloggers weren't very positive, but I liked it. I wouldn't call it entertainment because it was difficult to watch. It wasn't really educational either because I already know how to lose weight. Yet I was compelled to watch it.

There was a woman that weighed 278 pounds and a man that weighed 555 pounds. I identified with the man because of his weight. I'm positive I have the propensity to weigh 555 pounds. My husband, friends and relatives all tell me I'm crazy to say I could weigh over 500 pounds. They really don't know me. They can't grasp how I view food. They don't understand the ongoing battle in my head about eating.

This is a conversation I had last night with my husband, Jack.

Me:  Do you ever eat just because you're bored or lonely or sad, but not really hungry?
Jack:  No. I eat when I'm hungry. Why would I eat if I wasn't hungry?
Me:  To make yourself feel better?
Jack:  How would eating food when I'm not hungry make me feel better?
Me:  I don't know. I was just wondering if you've ever done that before.
Jack:  No. Never.

No one really knows me when it comes to food. Not even the man I've been married to for almost 23 years. Most people in my life don't understand that I often eat when I'm not hungry. It just doesn't make sense to the normal person. I use it as a way to deal with stress and unpleasantness in my life. If I actually ate when I wanted, I would most likely be eating non-stop. It's a scary thought that I could very easily lose control with food.

I just have to take this a day at a time and continue the fight. 555 is a scary number and it's one I hope I never see.

Déjà vu...January of last year...

I'm working from home today and just pulled a notebook out of my bookshelf to use for writing down some notes. I flipped it open and there, dated January 24, 2010, I had written the following:

Day 1 - January 24, 2010 - 179.0!

* Do NOT screw up today. I work out so hard, I don't want to waste all that work for nothing. Remember, food is not comfort!

This notebook actually has the first date in it of April 8, 2005. I weighed 220 pounds. It's kind of sad to go back and look at five years of me trying to lose weight, succeeding, then failing, over and over again. I feel sorry for this woman.

I really feel like I'm living that movie, Groundhog Day.

Are men smarter than women when it comes to weight loss?

I've noticed men rarely talk about their feelings on their weight loss blogs. Generally, men don't talk about comforting themselves with food or stuffing down sad feelings with food. I wonder if they even think about a connection between food and feelings.

Men don't talk about the self-criticizing voice in their head, constantly spewing out mean comments about themselves. Do they even have this voice, telling them they're fat, ugly and stupid? That they have big thighs and a saggy tummy. No, I don't think so.

With most women, including myself, it's an entirely different story. We constantly analyze ourselves, we try to figure out why we overeat and how we can overcome it. We talk about our emotional relationship with food and how it affects us. We talk about shutting down the mean voice in our head.

I can't recall of a single man writing the kind of things that women write about on weight loss blogs. Men are pretty straight forward about it, eat less, exercise, drink water, lose weight. For them, it's a very simple formula. None of this nonsense about about food and feelings or self-loathing.

Overweight men don't seem to have body image issues either. I know this from personal experience with my own husband. He needs to lose fifty pounds, yet he thinks he's just as sexy now as when I met him (when he weighed fifty pounds less). He thinks nothing of walking around the house buck naked regardless of his weight. It would never occur to him to be embarrassed by his body. I can't relate.

I can't help but wonder if maybe the men are right. Maybe all this self-analyzing, all this worrying about how my body looks, and trying to figuring out what makes me eat is really just a total waste of my time. As I wrote yesterday, I really don't like the hard work of feeling all the sad shit that's happened in my life. Who wants to go back down that road? Not me.

Maybe men really do have the answer. Eat less, exercise, drink water, lose weight. I wonder if they know something we don't.

Why I'm fat - Part One

I've been trying to write this post for over a week. I would write a couple paragraphs on the topic, read it the next day and delete it. I've done this several times. In an effort to prevent this from being the longest post ever written, I'm breaking it into parts.

Part One - How I deal with emotional pain

The simple answer of why I'm fat is that I eat too much. The not so simple answer is something I've been trying to figure out my entire life. It's about so much more than the fact that I like to eat. There's a reason for my issues with food, and although I think I understand the "why" of my situation, I've yet to figure out how to fix it. Notice I said how to fix "it". I'm finally understanding that it's not really me that needs to be fixed, it's a behavior of mine that needs to be fixed.

As a member of the Dead Daddy Club (a phrase coined by Roxie) I learned at a young age how to deal with pain. At barely 13 years old I watched my father die suddenly from a heart attack, at home with just my mother and myself watching helplessly. At the time we were living on a homestead in Alaska in 1968, without a phone and eighty miles from the nearest hospital.

After this happened I learned the best way to deal with heartbreak was to a.) pretend it didn't happen and b.) eat your way through the pain. I've used this learned behavior my entire life, every time I'm facing something unpleasant.

I've written about this before, it was something I figured out at a Geneen Roth workshop last fall. That workshop was difficult because I had to face some things in my past and my present. Things I'd really rather not think about.

That's the problem with me, as soon as I start dealing with something unpleasant, I stop dealing with it. I don't want to go there. I don't want to deal with something that might open up old wounds, or make me face something in my life right now that's unpleasant. If there's any way I can avoid it, I will. What better way to escape than by eating? It's a cheap, legal and short-term fix to shutting down the pain.

I'm reading a book, Bob Greene's The Life You Want. It's really no different than the dozens of other weight loss books I've read over the years. Just like the other books, I find myself doing the same thing I've done before. 

I start reading the book, I get excited because I feel like the author is speaking to me. I completely identify with what they're saying. Then I get to the part, "let's figure out how to fix your problem" . That's when I put the book away. I'm done with it. I don't want to do the hard work it takes to fix it. It's emotionally challenging. It hurts. I'd rather not do it.

That's where I am right now. I either do the work or I continue gaining weight until I'm right back at 240 pounds or more. As Grace said in a comment the other day, you can't white knuckle your way through an eating disorder. She's right.

Do I have an eating disorder?

Eating disorders refer to a group of conditions characterized by abnormal eating habits that may involve either insufficient or excessive food intake to the detriment of an individual's physical and emotional health.

Yes, I have an eating disorder. Now it's time for the hard work.