Tag: Fat

Off the Couch

 

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I’ve coveted a lot this summer:  a smaller pair of jeans, a stronger body, a more active lifestyle, and that really cool running tank to wear for my first 5K in three years. I checked most of the things off my wish list by getting fit enough to finish the afore-mentioned 5K.  However, while getting able to complete those 3.1 miles did indeed let me squeeze into a smaller jean size and a more active lifestyle, it didn’t shrink my body small enough to access the work of fitness high fashion.

As I was reminded during my search for the perfect tank top, an XL at the discount store is not an XL in fitness (or designer) wear.  I could have worn one of my old t-shirts, but the race was a family tradition that was being revived.  I wanted something special.

I traipsed through online and offline offerings, rarely finding anything above an L or XL that didn’t fit or look more like and M.  I was losing hope.  I’d sweated all summer.  Surely something in either of my sizes – old or new – wasn’t too much to ask.  There’s every other option for active women, right down to a plunging, push-up sports-bra (still scratching my head trying to find the competitive advantage of THAT feature), but there was little for larger women who want to get off the couch (as we’re always told to do) and into activity.

So this year I did what I once did when I was too broke for store bought.  I made my own.  I’ve been finding my own groove this year.  It’s off the couch, and dancing to that beat has done a lot more than just make me smaller.  It’s made me stronger and happier and even more productive.  So I made a shirt to celebrate this new life off the couch.  It’s a change you should be able to celebrate at any size.

I’m putting my designs where my mouth is CafePress.com.  You can find T-shirts and a few other items in sizes to fit most from 0-5X.

The Numbers Game

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243 was the number on the scale Monday May 25, 2013. 

1412 was the number of calories to eat each day to lose 2 1/2 pounds each week.

15 seconds was the longest I could run without stopping.

22 was the number on the label inside my  jeans.

6 is the number of times I had to run day 1 of my fitness program before I could finish it.

2 is the number of kids who were depending on me to be strong enough to take care of them.

24 is the number of runs I’ve done since the first time I actually got through a routine.

9 is the number of weeks I’ve been counting calories.

12 is the number of days I slipped up on a vacation 14 days long, and 

18 is the number of days in the last month I behaved – for the most part. 

3.68 is the number of miles I ran yesterday without stopping.

1282 was the number of calories allowed on the calorie counter yesterday, and 

209 may still be a big number on a frame that’s only 63 inches high, but it’s the sum of a summer of small but meaningful successes.  

 

 

The Pack

 

At the beginning of the summer, I could barely walk up the hill of our 900 hundred foot driveway without stopping to get more air. For most of the spring, I rationalized my 'performance' with the excuse that I had started the year with pneumonia. Knowing that not moving was worsening my lung condition didn't get me off the couch until late night chest pains sent me to the hospital for stress tests.

The long-tern lung infection was to blame for the chest pain, but I knew my deep and gorgeous hunger (as Cary Grant might describe it) and less gorgeous physical sloth were not helping my lungs get any better. So, as I sat in the doctor's office, watching him tap a place on my chart where I had been about 50 pounds lighter, I got to my tipping point.

A few years ago, I had another similar moment of Zen that led to a summer of good nutrition and walking. I let myself get stymied at the end (something I've already moved to prevent this year) by shortening days and a bad attitude, but I remembered that the biggest changes began when I started running. This time around, I decided to start the running with the eating plan, and taking the two roads together has made all the difference, and in a way I never would have expected.

I started very slowly using a plan that had worked three summers earlier (C25K from Runner's World – try it, it works). The plan starts you with 30 second runs followed by 90 second walks and repeats until you've been run/walking for 30-35 minutes. I am not proud to say that at the beginning of the summer, I had trouble making it once around our house or even trotting for 30 seconds. Yesterday (a few days before Labor Day), I ran 3.68 miles with hills and no stopping. Part of me wishes I could say I did it all by myself, but along the way I discovered something even more valuable than my little app. I discovered encouragement.

My first runs were always on our sloping driveway and around our bumpy yard. I was embarrassed to have anyone see how slowly I ran. Then I mentioned my new plan to my sister who's currently getting ready for a 20K. She didn't ask my times. She didn't ask if I thought I could do it. She just gave me a verbal pat on the back and said, “Keep going. I'll get us signed up for the Labor Day 5K.”

We've run the the 5K together before, and, to her credit, she ran with me the first time – giving encouragement the whole way. Then, I was very conscious of the faster runners that seemed to flow around us like gazelles cutting swaths around a slow-moving elephant. Now, I barely notice it.

In the last few months, I've begun to notice more runners on the road. I've seen them in all shapes and sizes. I see slower ones and faster ones. When I'm running, we wave at each other. When I'm driving, sometimes I'll honk or yell, “Go for it!” at them whether the windows are up or down.

They're all doing it, and when I talk with other people I know who've been running or even just started, we never compare times. We talk about going the distance. We talk about how far we've come. The women who've traveled farther share their acquired wisdom with those of us who are at the beginning of the journey. The times matter, but I never feel like I'm competing with someone else – I'm only competing with my old time.

So, if you're running (or walking) on the road, and a strange lady passes you, shouting at you to keep up the good work, she is nuts. But I've decided that if you've started your journey – no matter where you are on it – you are doing good work. And that deserves encouragement, so I'm passing it on.

 

What You Don’t See

 

Dear Mr. Retailer,

 

You carry my old size, but you never carry it in the store because you see my wallet, but, apparently you don't want to see me (or the other thousands of American women who you ask to order online rather than come in your store to shop). But I'm eating better and working out, and my body's getting stronger and tighter. Now I even wear one of the coveted sizes you do carry in the store, but I don't think I'll be back.

 

You see there were places that did want me as well as my business when I was bigger. They saw not only a person who was fighting the battle of the bulge and needed a uniform, they saw something more. They saw the person that can afford to buy your plus sizes because she has an income. They saw the person who finances the wardrobes of her non-plus-sized kids in the same store. They saw a person worth doing business with.

 

So, now that I can get into your clothes, it's tempting to be part of the crowd you do see – that part of the crowd that doesn't have to special order the sizes you're too embarrassed to carry in the store because someone 'unfit' might be caught browsing there. But while your clothes may hang better on my body, a retailer who couldn't see me as a person when I was larger, just isn't a good fit for me now that I'm getting smaller.

 

 

 

 

 

The Family That Plays Together

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The diet is mine.  Fitness is a bit of a family affair – or at least it’s a team effort as far as my life coach and son, six-year-old SuperDude (he really does have super powers), is concerned.  Trailing me on my morning runs up and down the driveway and around the parking circle, his endless chatter and questions distract me from any aches or exhaustion.

We walked and ran this road a few years ago when I was on my last diet.  Pound after pound, SuperDude chased me around my makeshift track, hugged me, and greeted the morning sun with me as we Downward Dogged and Mountain Posed our way through the summer.

He’s older now, but while wisdom threatens to peel some of the fantasies from his vision, his primary power is stronger than ever.  Even as I sit down to write and draw, he’s at the video cabinet finding the perfect routine for tomorrow morning.  And in the morning he’ll cajole and pull me off the couch.  He’s half my size and his chirping and chattering will be powerful enough remind me once again that every gram of muscle I rend from my own fat is not converted just for my own sake.

The Light Switch

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It’s like turning on a light switch that had been weighed down by despair and self-loathing.  Like a compact fluorescent that gets brighter and brighter, however, I’m feeling my own power over my life.

I’ve lost about fifteen pounds (with a hundred still needing to go), but things began changing well before this morning’s penance at the scale.  The outward signs of the change are still small.  When you’re seriously overweight, it takes more than a few pounds for the loss to show outside, but I am feeling in the change inside.

The Big Guy gets credit for a lot of things, but he especially gets credit for telling me I’m beautiful when I’m significantly overweight.  I don’t believe it, but he makes me believe he believes it, and that’s everything.

Being overweight in this country has become almost a moral failing, but when I start to lose, I don’t suddenly feel more moral or even more beautiful.  I breathe better.  My body begins to function better.  Mostly, even though my jeans are starting to need a belt, I can’t squeeze the loathing in as easily.

The trick now is not to turn on the switch, but how to keep it on this time.

Magic Pills, Ills, and Long Forgotten Cures

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As I’m lying down with my little one for his bedtime snuggle, I’m realizing that I haven’t retreated to the fantasy world that gets me through depressions lately.  At first I though it was the magic pill I’ve been taking, but I think something better is happening.

When I first started taking the pills, I tried to get in and I couldn’t.  Something was blocking the door.  It wasn’t me, it was the pill.  But in the last few weeks I’ve begun taking care of my physical health, and while that switch took a herculean effort to move to the on position, it’s like watching a compact fluorescent’s power grow as it absorbs powers.  At first it’s only little successes, but then a sense of physical well being takes over, charging the mercury until all the rooms in my head are bright, and my vision is clear.

Now running about a mile or mile 1/2 a day, hoping to get up to three so I can run with my sister in August, I’m starting to feel the effect of a natural magic pill.  As I was lying next to my beautiful sleeping boy, I noticed I still couldn’t get into the room, but for the first time in a long time, I didn’t need or want to.  Some of that need may have been quashed by pharma, but it’s nice to know that at least some of that lack of desire may be my own doing.

A Journey of 5000 Meters

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Diet-wise, this year is looking pretty much like last year and the year before – two pounds forward and 2.5 back.  There was one year where I did have diet success.  It was more of a lifestyle victory than a diet.

One spring about three years ago, I started a job with abysmal pay and benefits but lots of walking around the building.  I added a walk to my lunch routine.  An app junkie, I found a calorie counter and began controlling my portions. Summer progressed, and getting really serious, I started running.  With the aid of  another app, at summer’s end, I ran my first 5K with my sister and her kids.  It would turn out to be my only 5K.

That fall I headed into one of the periodic depressions that have plagued me since childhood, and I fell off the the diet and exercise wagon.  I fell hard.  Even with a better job with great people, pay, and benefits, I started spiraling down in early fall.  I knew the mental health benefits of daily exercise, but I could not get myself to run (after 40+ years, I’m still surprised that depression isn’t always rational).

This winter has been a lot like that winter three years ago.  Work was good.  Life was good, but every single day was a struggle to get out of bed and, once out of bed, not give into the temptation to dive into a permanent oblivion.

I plodded through winter, knowing the cycle would progress eventually and getting help when I knew I needed it.  I’ve been coming out of this curve for a few weeks, seeing pieces of the moderation and even the mania that will follow.  Spring is coming.

Outside, spring is here.  As with the last two years, sun has inspired thoughts of exercising again (dieting is a more distant goal).  Last Monday, however,  news of the Boston Marathon Bombing took all attention away from spring and diets and work.

Tuesday it rained.  The weather fit my mood in the aftermath of the tragedy.  It didn’t inspire running, but it became a good day for reflection.  Knowing little would change during the day, and that there was even less I could do to change things, I’d already decided not to gorge on news of the bombing.

The kids home for Spring Break, so working and keeping them busy helped divert me.  Thing1’s improved report card had won him back some forfeited computer time, and Thing2 embarked on a new construction paper sculpture.  We all worked quietly for a while.  Then, forgetting it was a rainy day, I accidentally broke the relaxed rhythm.

“Why don’t you two go outside?”  It was an automated question, timed, after all these years, to go off when children have been inside for too long.  “Go do something. You’re wasting your lives in here.”  Thing1, with the perfect amount of pre-teen sarcasm, quickly reminded me of the downpour outside.

Rebuffed, I lumbered back to my desk.  I sat down, my girth forcing air out of the seat cushion with a sharp whooshing sound.  I didn’t, as usual, automatically push from my mind the irony of a behemoth of a mom telling two wiry kids to get moving.  Today, I reminded myself, once again, that they deserved a mother who could keep up with them now and into their futures.

I shook off the irony and clicked on my email.  Then, despite my resolve, I clicked on a Boston webpage.  Pictures of Monday’s victims flashed on the screen.  Below, there were life stories of people who had been physically whole until the day before.  Then I saw a story of a school trying to raise money for the wounded.  My spirit lifted a bit as I found another story of a man who had never run a mile resolving to run the marathon next year to fundraise for the survivors. Through all the stories ran a theme of people trying not only to help but to live fully.

I got back to my email.  I’m physically whole, but I had to admit that I take a lot of my life for granted.  There are even some parts of it, like my health, that I toss aside very casually.

Wednesday morning I got up before the kids.  The rain was gone.  Without waking the boys, I slid on a pair of running shoes that hadn’t seen daylight since October 2010 and slipped out the door.  For the next 30 minutes I ran when my app told me to run and walked when it told me to walk, and there were times I had to stop.  I doubt I’ll be in that marathon group any year, but, chasing my acorn-squash shaped shadow through the woods around our house made me hope that I was taking the first steps of a better journey.

Laugh, Cry, Diet

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It’s the eleventh of February which makes this almost the 41rst first day of my new diet.  

It’s not a fad diet.  I know those don’t work.  The only ‘diet’ that’s ever worked (for me) was keeping a journal on paper or on my iPod and keeping myself accountable.  But the part of dieting I really hate is not the calorie and fiber tracking.  It’s not the preparation – I’m a surprisingly decent cook for someone who’s built a blog around being a bad housekeeper.  It’s not the exercise which can be addicting once you get going (those endorphins are better than prozac).  It’s not even the food itself – a lot of healthy food is actually pretty tasty.  

The thing I hate about dieting is that it’s not a diet.  It is recognizing that the bag of sour cream and onion chips I’m having for breakfast really does have to be off the list – forever. (Maybe not for everyone, but for me the salty sweet stuff is like crack to a drug addict.)  It is accepting sensible portions for the long haul.   It really is about making a life change.

My early adult years were characterized by many things, but one of them was not restraint – in any part of my life.  I played. I partied.  I sinned.  And I ate.  I ate anything I wanted.  Food – especially good food – was my drug.  When the Big Guy and I first married, we moved to Boston’s Italian North End, and I denied my palate nothing.  When we travelled, indulging in local flavors was as much a part of the experience as the art and the sights.  In my early twenties, youthful metabolism and a lifestyle centered around dancing and walking helped my body combat the effects of my food lust.  I look at pictures of myself from back then and can’t believe I thought I was fat as a size 6 or 8 (does anyone ever NOT thing they’re too fat).

A few years after we were married, I took an office job that had me driving to and from work for an hour a day.  Not surprisingly, retribution had an easier time catching up with me in a car than when I was walking to work everyday in the city.  But when my jeans got tighter, I didn’t get wise.   I got new jeans.

Now, many years and sizes later, I’m still trying to get my fat butt on the diet wagon and find a way to keep it there.  I know that my issue food is not just about flavor.  It is about fullness, however.  I know that there’s been an empty part me for as long as I can remember, and I am sure I am not the only person who uses food to fill that void – even when my body is crying uncle.  The worst part is, the more you try to fill it, the bigger it gets because you’re also filling it with shame and loathing.

I used to tell myself the big jeans didn’t matter.  Being good at my job matters.  The Big Guy matters.  Thing1 and Thing2 matter.  

But as I watch twelve-year-old Thing1 pour out my Diet Coke when he thinks I’m not looking (don’t let your kids read about all the things that could cause their mother cancer or diabetes), I realize the big jeans do matter.  So far, I’ve dodged the diabetes bullet and a lot of the other ailments that go along with being fat.  What I don’t do, however, is get out on the ice with my kids at skating practice.  I don’t go one walks or take slides down the sledding hill because I’d have to climb back up it.  And worse, I let shame dictate how I interact with the people who interact with my kids, and that does affect them.

Most of my diets start in the morning and are over by dinner.  Today I’m trying something different and clearing out the crap before the family comes home.  Dinner will be on a salad plate, and the kitchen will be closed at 8PM.  And when I’m tempted by the cookie jar, I’m going to get out my journal and write a note to myself that it matters because they matter.  

It wouldn’t be bad to be able to zip up that little number that’s been hanging on the back of my closet door for the last three years either.

 

 

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