A Down Day

And then there are days when I feel like this whole process is so, so slow.  I am so tired of the way things are now, and I feel like I'm doing those things that are necessary to get me to where I want to be, but it's taking so long, it feels like I will never get there.  Is all of this really worth it?  Because sometimes, it just feels like a whole bunch of work for very little payoff.

(You know those people who say, "And the weight just started falling off of me?"  Yeah.  That's never happened to me.)

I have thought about going to see a doctor a couple of times.  I have two issues I am concerned about.

1. Possibility of a thyroid issue
2. Possibility of exercise induced asthma

The thyroid issue might explain why my weight loss is very slow.  And why I am so tired. Although both of those might also be attributed to breastfeeding and the ins and outs of having a new baby.

I have two siblings who have fairly severe asthma (so there's some family history there), and I often find myself wheezing and feeling like I have a tight chest when I exercise   But maybe I'm just being a whiner and that's how exercise is supposed to feel.

I suppose you're thinking, "Stop complaining and just go see a doctor!"  And you would probably be right.  I don't go because I'm ashamed, I'm afraid of what they'll say to me, of what they'll think of me.  As someone who tries to do the right thing all the time, who wants to be successful and accomplished, going to the doctor while overweight is like walking into a test you know you're going to fail.  The anxiety I feel over disappointing individuals I respect is very real.

Anyway, today is just one of those days.

Maybe I just didn't get enough sleep last night (do I ever?).



P.S. Don't worry, I'm going to go see a doctor.

Parenting and Food

Here's my big question of the hour: how do you raise kids with a healthy attitude towards food, even if you don't have one yourself?

This is a big one.  I'm not just talking about over-eating and avoiding obesity, but how can I help my children (and in particular my girls) avoid the dangerous pitfalls of anorexia, bulimia and any other sort of disordered eating.  Really, all of these  issues come from the same idea, abusing food to meet emotional needs (whether that is comfort or control).

Look at these cute girls.  They deserve cookies!  Oh yeah, and a healthy attitude about food... that too...

How can I teach my daughters to put food in it's rightful place?  How can I teach them that food isn't the be all end all in the world?  That there's a whole world waiting for them, and if they treat their eating with respect that they will experience so much joy!

I don't know the answers, but I have a couple of ideas that I am implementing, even now while they are so young.

1. Respect their hunger.  This means that there's isn't a "clean plate rule."  If Clara sits at dinner and eats one bite, I don't coerce her to eat more.

2. Let the child be in control of the food.  It's one of those really difficult parenting things where you just have to let it go.  The food has been offered, it's up to the child to put the food in their mouths.  If Clara only eats her grapes and leaves the rest, then I just let it go.  Even if I know she's still hungry.
(Note: That is not to say that she gets cookies if she eats dinner.  If she doesn't eat what I offer her, then she doesn't eat.  No snacks, treats, or making her a meal that she says she will eat.  Mom =/= short-order cook.)

3. There are no bad foods.  A cookie is not "bad."  But all things in order and moderation.  Clara and I have a little tradition that she gets a little fruit snack when she wakes up from her nap.  A little fruit snack, even once a day, isn't going to cause a problem.  But if I was giving a fruit snack as a bribe multiple times a day in order to make my life easier, that's probably a problem. (Ok, there are totally days I do this.  But it's not EVERY day...)

4. Don't talk about losing weight in front of my kids or vocalizing my guilt when I eat something unhealthy.  I really think kids internalize this and then start to become hypercritical of their own eating and bodies.

These four things are the biggest conscious choices I've made to help my kids have a healthy relationship with food.  I think I'm on the right track, but I worry if I'm doing enough, or if there are things I'm doing unconsciously that might detract from my goal.

The biggest one is I try to respect their hunger.  When my children were babies, I nursed them on demand.  When I started adding solids, I fed them at regular intervals, but I never required that they finish their plates.  I always offered a variety of foods (including fruits and veggies) and they could eat what they wanted and leave what they didn't like.  There's no "clean plate" rule.  I hope what I'm teaching my toddler is to trust how she feels.  If she's full, she's full, and I'm not going to force her to eat.  I also want her to feel is that she is control of the food she eats.  It's one of the those things where all you can do is put food in front of them and offer it, and then they have to do the rest (without any coercion .  I think it's important to find those moments in parenting where you can give the child total control.

Here's one concern I've been considering: truth is, I don't want food to just be for nutrition.  I want my children to build happy memories around good food.  I want sitting to the dinner table as a family to filled with laughter, fun, and good food.  If we want to eat some homemade, fatty fat-sauce chicken cordon bleu, well, I'm making it (respecting portion sizes, of course)!  My worry is, though, by creating even the happy memories around food, it attaches an emotional quality to food.  Does an emotional attachment to food, even if it's a good emotion, cause problems in the future?  I don't know.  I'd love to hear some other perspectives.  Any ideas?  Anyone have any family food rules they follow?

Current Successes!

Today, I hit my 5% goal.  It took me what felt like forever, but I got there.

I have continued to make good exercising progress.  I can jog for 20 minutes strait (extremely, extremely slowly).  The Jillian Michael's workouts are getting both easier (meaning I can do nearly all of the exercises) and harder (meaning the workouts are getting progressively more difficult and my legs have been sore for a week strait).

I eat my fruits and veggies everyday.  I drink at least 8 cups of water, usually 12.  I have successfully done a low-carb week, and it went so well, I plan on doing another.  I have had no milk supply issues (yay!).

So, because I haven't had any supply issues and it's been going so well, I'm thinking about cutting my points again to say that I'm nursing "part-time."  With weight watchers, if you are exclusively nursing, you get an extra 14 points (!!!!) a day.  That's what I've been using.  When you are supplement with formula or solids, you get an extra 7 points a day.  Since we're moving into adding solids anyway, I'm going to see what happens this week if I cut back by 7 points a day.

My next weight goal is to hit 10%.  I hope it'll happen before I head to Alaska in May!

Perfect Bingeing Storm

So.  Jordan's "out of town."  But not really.  Every year he has this health care forum he goes to with the entire health care department of his company.  People from around the world come to these forums.  As it happens, I've been out of town every year since he go this job.  This year, I'm here.  And he's actually "gone," but really he's about 10 minutes away staying at a resort.  Say what?  I know.

So even though he lives here in Phoenix, he has this hotel room and he has to stay at the resort (again, in Phoenix) during the forum.  I find it extremely annoying.  I mean, it's right there, why can't he just stay at home and go to the forum in the morning like a regular job? But he can't (don't ask me why, no one's bothered to fill me in on that part).  So I'm at the house by myself for the next two days, while my husband is practically down the road.  (Good news: I do have the car, so it's not like I'm stranded here).

When I was dropping him off tonight, I was feeling a flurry of painful emotions.  I (like most married people, I assume) do not like being away from my spouse.  It honestly, truly feels like I'm missing an appendage.  I didn't realize how much I relied on the fact that he does indeed come home at night.  Even if he has to come home at 1am, and then leave again at 7am, at least he's home at some point.  Well, he's not coming home tonight, or for the following two nights.  And here I am, dropping him off in the car, honestly about in tears because I already miss him.  And I feel like a complete idiot because #1- he's not even gone that long and #2- he's not really gone, he's down the street. 

This isn't the first time he's had to spend a night away (and I've often left him for weeks at a time), and I'm wondering why this feels so painful even though he's not really gone.  And the answer is that usually I make a night of it when he leaves.  I order some nice take-out, and I get some delicious food, and I totally enjoy a binge night.  Oh yeah, baby.  But guess what?  This time I can't binge.  And although I didn't consciously recognize it as I was dropping him off, I realized that when I got home that there's nothing there for me.  What would be there for me?  Food.  My wonderful friend food who always gives me a tasty treat when I'm feeling lonely, sad and insecure.

By not having the food there, it's forcing me to face all these painful emotions without an antidote.  I'll be honest, my initial reaction of not having food is to be resentful of Jordan *which is not helpful.*  This isn't Jordan's fault, because I know if he had a choice he'd choose to stay here with me.  My next reaction is to snap at my kids, which is also *not helpful.*  So how do I channel these crappy (and, let's be honest, totally pathetic) feelings?  No idea.  Probably some sad music and a good cry session.  And an early bedtime.

And tonight, I'm certain I'll be dreaming of a gallon of delicious, delicious ice cream.

*Note: if you found this whole blog about me bawling my eyes out over my husband who isn't gone that long and who isn't really even gone totally pathetic, you would be correct. Rolling your eyes and/or laughing are appropriate reactions.  Don't worry, I am duly embarrassed.

The End Game

One of the most disheartening things about weight loss is thinking about what actually happens when you lose the weight.  One of the sayings I absolutely HATE is hearing "Maintenance is even harder than weight loss."  Really?  Harder than all this work?  Then what's the point?  Got any other "inspirational" information for me?

Anyway...

I often think about what I want my relationship food to look like when I get to my goal. I want is to be able to eat a cookie.  Just one.  And be happy. And not crave a second.  I want to make my family delicious food that we all enjoy, and eat in moderation.  

More than anything, I want to be in tune with my body enough that I intuitively know when I am truly satisfied.  I don't want to be obsessed with food the rest of my life.  That's my current problem, a preoccupation with food.  I want to put food in it's proper place, there to give me nutrition and bring me pleasure, not as an aspect of either emotional fulfillment or a point of control.  

I guess that's why I get so upset when I hear that maintenance is more difficult than losing weight, because it suggests never solving the underlying problem.  I worry my goal is unattainable and unrealistic.  I suppose I won't know until I get there.  (so I end on a happy note, I'd like to point out I used the word "until" instead of "if."  Go me and my self-assured success!)

Making goals

I have started to make a different goal each week, trying to figure out what weight loss techniques work best for me.  In the past two months I have tried:

-Eating all my fruits and veggies every day (this was resounding success, and I have been able to keep up with this since)

-No eating after 7pm (a great goal, but one that is extremely difficult to pull off when making dinner for my family.  I need a different approach...)

-Do a Jillian Michaels DVD for 6 days in a week (way.  way.  way too painful)

-Focus more on cardio for a week (I thought this might help me lose a bit faster.  It didn't really work)



There have been more, but those were the major ones.  The one other big thing I tried was to go low-carb for a week (in addition to staying within my weight watchers points), and it went really well!  I allowed myself unlimited fruits and veggies, I just didn't eat any sugar or starches for a week.  I lost the most weight I have ever lost in a week.  The only problem?  My milk supply took a complete nose dive.  It got crazy.  Lucy was up eating ever 2 hours through the night, and suddenly I was trying to recover it (read: pumping like crazy after every nursing session.  No bueno) when I had never had a problem before.  So I figured as great as my body responds to low-carb, that wasn't something that I could attempt until I weaned.

Until I realized there were some other factors at play (possible TMI: my period came back, and I while not common, it's possible for your milk supply to drop in the time right before your cycle begins).  So, I've waited a couple of weeks, and I've decided to reattempt low-carb and see how it goes.  Here's how I do "low-carb":

1. Unlimited fruits and veggies.  Sorry, I just can't cut out fruit.  Also, this helps make sure I am indeed getting enough calories and carbohydrates to maintain my milk supply.

2. Regularly have oatmeal in the morning.  Again, another step to protect my milk supply.  I don't have to have to eat it every morning, but at least 3 times a week.

3. Other than that, I don't count my carbohydrates meticulously  but rather I avoid starchy foods.  No bread, no potatoes, and definitely no sugary foods.  No snacking on sweets in the evening, even if I have the points for them.


I'm heading into this optimistically   I'd love to walk away from these two weeks with fewer sugar cravings and a better evening snacking habit.  I start tomorrow, and I"ll let you know how it goes!

Loneliness

At some point I'm going to write down my history with gaining weight, but the last few years in can be summed up in one word: loneliness.

When Jordan got a job in Phoenix, we were so excited and so grateful. We had been looking for a job for months, and he got a really, really fantastic one.  To this day, we often look at each other and talk about how very lucky we are that he got this job.  At the time, I hadn't really considered the implications for myself.  I had been thinking about how Jordan's life was going to change, how he was going to have to go to work and work hard, but I hadn't even spared a thought of what that meant for me (ok, except the money part.  I won't lie, I was pretty stoked to get an iPhone).  And then, suddenly, I was at home, by myself, without any friends, just me and my cute baby Clara.

Here, have a picture to break up the words  in this long post.  :)

I had no resources to make friends.  At least not resources I was used to.  I wasn't attending school. I wasn't going to work (the two most important places I had always made friends before).  Church was just 3 hours a week, it wasn't enough time to build any sort of meaningful relationships with people (it doesn't help that Jordan doesn't like to linger and talk after church.  He practically chases me out of the building).  I didn't know anyone in this city.  Jordan was suddenly working long hours, so I'd often be by myself for 10 hours a day.  We had one car, and I didn't always have access to it (still just have one car, btw), so I was often literally stuck in my apartment.  I was painfully lonely.  Clara was great and wonderful, and I was (and still am) grateful that I could be with her all the time.  But suddenly I was isolated, lonely and bored.  So I ate.

It was during this time that I hit the highest weight I have ever been at.  It did nothing to help me make friends.  Now I was isolated, lonely, bored and ashamed.  Honestly, this is the closest I'd ever felt to being depressed in my life.  I soothed myself by eating.  Frankly, it was the only "treat" I had to give myself.  Long day with a crying baby? Have a cookie!  Or 5.  Day been so mind-numbingly boring that I'm just looking to feel something?  How about I make a new recipe and eat the whole thing!  At one point I was describing to a friend of mine how much I relied on food for my entertainment.  I said, "There's almost nothing more exciting to me than a cupcake.  The only other thing I can think of off hand is a roller coaster."  Really, for me, food was like an amusement park ride compared to the monotony of my day.

I hadn't realized how directly linked my weight gain was to my loneliness until I went to Alaska for a month.  I had friends and family to talk to all the time!  I could get out and spend time with people, and it wasn't so painfully hot.  And I lost 10 pounds effortlessly.  The only change in my behavior was having people to talk to during the day.

There's a lot of stuff that has happened between then and now, including losing 25 pounds before I got pregnant with Lucy, moving to a house, pregnancy, giving birth, breastfeeding and making more friends.  My struggles now are similar, but for different reasons, but now I know my big, monstrous trigger, and I"m working on ways to deal with it.  I have friends I can call and talk to on the phone.  I try to take the car at least once a week to get out of the house.  The horrible binging habits I developed while dealing with my loneliness are still there. In the evenings, I STILL want to sit and eat 15 cookies, but by carefully writing down my food intake, I've been in way more control of the amount of food I eat.  I can tell myself no, or if I do binge, I have to write it all down and face the numbers on my food tracker.  This is definitely still a work in progress, but I'm happy with my progress in learning to deal with my loneliness.

the most unhelpful of emotions

I have had this blog for over a year now.  I have written in it very occasionally   I purposely didn't tell anyone about it.  A few of my friends have discovered it by chance.  I know my sister Melanie "follows" me, and there are possibly others who follow me (in secret) as well.  Why haven't I shared with any one else?  One word:

Shame.

I am so very, very ashamed that I have weight to lose.  I'm so ashamed, in fact, that I even don't want to publicly celebrate my success, because that would mean I have to admit how much weight I need to lose in the first place.  I have been so ashamed, that I often pretend that I'm ok with the way I look, that perhaps I weigh this much because I want to.  Crazy, right?

Shame is not a helpful emotion for the emotional eater.  Why?  Because shame makes me want to binge.  To hide that feeling under 15 brownies (side note: Mmmmm... 15 brownies...).  It makes me want to crawl into my bed and hide from the world, to avoid all those issues I need to face.

I am also afraid.  What if I fail?  What if I share this blog, and people read, but then they go, "What a hopeless case, she just goes back and forth and back and forth?"  I was seriously afraid of failing, like every other time I have tried to lose weight.  But now that I have proven to myself this is something I want to stick to (even if weight loss is so very, painfully slow), I feel like I can face sharing my experience with others.

So today, I'm facing the shame and the fear.  I'm sharing this with those that I know want me to be successful, who won't think less of me just because I have a certain amount of weight to lose.

I was gone for a bit...

.. but it's not because I fell off the wagon!  Woot!  I stopped writing honestly because life got so busy!  Two kids with two schedules, working in exercise in there and trying to keep the house in some sort of decent shape, and daily writing on the weightloss blog was the first to fall through.

But I have great news!  It took me 2 months and a LOT of work, but I have lost 10 pounds!  Woot!  It's much slower than I hoped, and that's been really demoralizing sometimes.  There was one day when I realized hadn't lost a single pound even though I thought I did everything perfect.  Jordan was there to console me as I cried and cried, but I haven't given up.

I have written down EVERYTHING I have eaten for the last two months.  This has proved to be the most important thing I could have done.  It's given me control of what I'm eating, even when I DO overeat or make mistakes.  If I write it down, I am in control of it.  And because I have written stuff down and I'm in that habit, I can't lie to myself.  It's helped me to set weekly goals for myself.  Really, I'm in control where before I was out of control.

I have worked out at least 5 days a week for the last two months.  I finished the 30 Day Shred, and now I'm working through Ripped in 30.  This has helped me feel SO GOOD!  I also have worked through Couch to 5k, and yesterday I ran for 20 minutes strait without stopping.  Now, it was slow (REAL slow), but I did it.

Losing weight slowly is still really frustrating, but the truth is that it's so so good for me.  I have to develop the habits, the life changes that will last.  I hope it will eventually speed up, but even if it doesn't, I guess that's ok.