'Tis the Season

Christmas is in full swing in all the stores (at least here in America). It puts me in the Christmas spirit and makes me want to start decorating now. Unfortunately, by the time Christmas actually gets here I’m totally over it. Being pumped up for Christmas for a solid two months is exhausting. I really wish they would put the holiday back where it belongs in December. Give Thanksgiving a chance, man.

Thinking Christmas makes me think about Christmas food -- chocolate boxes, cheese platters, fudge, pies, chocolate-covered-everything, cookies, and cakes. Starting a diet life style change just before the holidays is probably crazy.

I know everyone from my mom to my friends to diet experts say that you shouldn’t deprive yourself, that minor cheats in moderation are good. There’s a very simple problem here. If I could eat in moderation, I wouldn’t be fat.

I’m a binge eater. One single piece of chocolate can send me into an eating frenzy for days. Then I feel bad about myself. Then I give up on eating healthy. Then I gain 20 pounds. It’s like telling a recovering coke addict, “One line won’t hurt you.” Oh, it hurts. It hurts bad.

No, having cheat days really aren’t an option for me, at least not yet. I would love to get to a point where I can have some naughty, tasty, little treat every now and then, but I’m not remotely close to the point where I could do it responsibly. I know my trigger foods and I know to avoid them.

I’m debating how to approach the holiday situation now. I want to be prepared. I want a plan.

Thanksgiving dinner I can handle well enough. We usually keep it small. I eat homemade tofurkey, anyway. I’ll just have to hold back on the mashed potatoes (I can eat piles of them). I’ll find a healthy alternative to pumpkin pie. I got this.

It’s Christmas that could kick my butt. Luckily, my family does Christmas at my house, so I have a lot of control over what’s served. We don’t have a big Christmas dinner. We do plates and plates of appetizers (appetizers are my favorite kind of food). At least it’s easier to healthify appetizers than it is a full-on traditional meal. Fruit and veggie platters are always nice, and I can find recipes to whip up some other healthy bites. I could make a small cheese platter that way those who want it can have it and hopefully it will get wiped out fast. Dessert platters are a must. I can’t deprive my family of their favorite treats because I’m unable to control myself. What I can do is leave those platters in the kitchen out of my sight and send any leftovers out the door.

I think that’s doable. I can and will make it through the holidays without losing my grip.

Feelin' Stoked

In my new position at work I move up and down a lot. I’m literally getting paid to do squats all day long (well, squats and the work I’m doing while squatting). My legs are killing me. It hurts to even touch the tops of my thighs. It’s awesome!

When I got home I got sassy and cranked my treadmill up to a whopping 4 mph. I jogged until I felt like I was going to die from lack of oxygen. Fitspo assures me that my body isn’t giving out; my mind is, but I’m pretty sure my lungs gasping asthmatically were trying to tell me something.

Fitspo stick lady is incorrect.

It’s funny. I’ve got this total fitness mindset going now. I feel like I can conquer the world. It makes me forget that I’m still huge, completely out of shape, and need to take things slow.

I just hope this motivation lasts. As long as I stay pumped, I can do this. But when I have to rely on willpower, that’s when things go downhill. Real. Fast. A paperclip has more willpower than I do. I’m trying to build in safe guards, like routine, habit, vegan eating, meditation, and blogging, to keep me going even when motivation fails me. The problem is I haven’t been doing this long enough to have my routine feel like habit.

They say 21 days is all it takes to build a habit (I think they’re full of poo, but it sounds good at least). I’ve got a long way to go just to get to 21 days. But I’m going to make it. Then I’m going to make it to 42 days and beyond. A year from now I will be at least 80 pounds lighter.

What is Healthy?

I know that we all have our own opinions as to what healthy* eating means. But, seriously, look at that cheese. That’s a lot. That isn’t healthy, regardless of what the description says. I'm not just picking on this pin. I find so many recipes on Pinterest that claim to be healthy, but simply aren’t. A pasta dish with heavy cream, for example. Heavy cream. Or “Healthy” chocolate chip cookies. That’s impossible. I’ve made chocolate chip cookies with chickpeas that were better for you than regular cookies, but I never once, with their sugar and chocolate content, thought of them as healthy. They were ultimately bad for me even though they tasted oh, so good.

I get it. There are people looking for gluten-free, or low-carb, or low-fat, or whatever, and they think that if a recipe doesn’t have gluten or is low in carbs, then that makes it healthy. But that’s wrong. It just meets your dietary request. I don’t eat meat. I can’t call chocolate cake healthy just because it doesn’t contain meat.

This is such an important part of the weight issue so many Westerners have. People don’t truly know what it means to eat healthfully. Fad diets are touted as being based on hard science. News reports are constantly coming out telling us about the newest ‘scientific’ evidence on how to eat. It’s all conflicting and confusing.

When you combine all the conflicting news coming to us through perceived reputable sources with the information we get from the food industry, things get really convoluted. While there are so many products touted as being good for us, but aren’t (Bel-Vita! Who doesn’t want cookies for breakfast?) I think the one that really sums it all up is Ensure. Ensure is a line of nutritional shakes, if you’re not familiar. It’s supposed to be consumed to fill in the gaps you might have in your nutrition, or used as a meal replacement. Kind of a drinkable vitamin, very healthy, allegedly. They contain 18+ grams of sugar and 11 grams of fat. But the factoid I love about this “healthy” drink is that it is often the food of choice used by scientists to make lab rats obese in scientific studies. Granted, rats aren’t humans, but I think it kinda says something.

So how do you make people aware of what is healthy for them and what will kill them? I think science reporters who really understand science would help. Rather than just tossing the juicy bits of a science story, someone could explain the whole study and what it actually means, if it means anything. Forcing companies to be honest in claims they make about their products would be a huge help. Nutella couldn’t say their product is a healthy breakfast food, most of the granola or protein bars wouldn’t get to claim to be good for you, and Ensure would have to confess to being a dessert, a yucky, yucky dessert (though endorsed by lab rats everywhere). Gimmicky diet books could have warning labels admitting to the wonky ‘scientific’ findings they contain. Menus would have to outline the calories and fat their offerings contain. I’m sure there are plenty of other actions we could take to help people better navigate the modern food labyrinth. Anything to stack the deck a little more fairly would help.


*It really should be ‘healthful’ but that sounds snobby since no one talks that way. However, using ‘healthy’ in place of ‘healthful’ bothers me every single time I do it.

Hello, World

I’m a fat chick. Not chunky. Not a-little-more-to-love. Not chubby, tubby, plump, voluptuous, or heavyset. There is no nice way of putting it. I am fat. The past eighteen years have been spent yo-yoing. In 2007 I lost 80 pounds, but I've gained them back and they brought friends. I weigh 113 pounds more than I should. It’s shocking and disheartening because the blame lies solely with me, and I’m not sure why I’ve allowed this to happen.

I’ve tried every diet out there. My bookshelf is laden with books on how to eat properly (or not so properly) and lose weight. I read every website I come across on the topic. I know so much about nutrition and its effect on the body that I deserve a masters degree. I know exactly how I should eat, I just don’t know how to do it long-term. It’s very easy for me to lose 10-20 pounds; it’s very hard for me to keep it off. I lose momentum. From my stand point permanent weight loss seems like a Sisyphean feat.

Last night we ate for the first time at a highly recommended restaurant. The food turned out to be rather bad. They served me the worst pasta salad I have ever had in my whole life. It tasted like rotten socks dipped in vinegar. It was so bad that the restaurant should have closed it’s doors permanently as an apology for serving this awful concoction to its patrons. Terrible. Disgusting. Gross. Yet, I had to push it all the way across the table to keep from eating it. Because it was “food” and in front of me, I couldn’t stop eating it. Even though it was gag inducing. That is a snapshot of how bad things have gotten.

So what to do? I keep waiting for some life changing epiphany to draw me off this path, but I’ve had many epiphanies. I’ve realized they don’t change my life. I’m lucky if they change my day. I seem to keep stumbling across the same lessons over and over again without the benefit of them sticking. I can’t fathom that this is my destiny, that I’m going to continue my life thusly, yet I can’t seem to make the right choices to create another outcome. It’s a loss of control which, as a control freak, doesn’t make any sense to me.

And so we come to the point of this blog. I’ve read repeatedly that people who keep a diet journal are more likely to lose weight and keep it off. I’ve tried it in the past, but have never put much effort into it. That’s what needs to change. I have to put the effort into being successful at this. It isn’t epiphanies that will make the difference. It’s hard work.