Weight Loss

Weight loss is always a big topic, isn't it?  Everyone wants to lose weight and everyone seems to find it hard.  There are a bazillion products on the market to help with weight loss, and if any one of them really worked, it would likely be tremendous news.  Actually, a few of them have worked over the years, and they get pulled off the market because they're dangerous.  Remember PhenFen?  Remember MaHuang and Guarana?

I thought I'd share my story.  I've debated whether or not to do it for quite some time.  It might make some people angry.  It might help.  Keep in mind, I'm not telling anyone what they should do, just making my own observations and talking about myself.  Disclaimer over.

Before I get to the actual losing part, I'll back up a bit.  Okay, more than a bit.  (Get ready, Billie has a lot to say.)  I started ballet lessons when I was 4 and continued dancing until I was 17.  My junior year of high school, I was dancing 40 hours a week.  My senior year of high school, I was attending North Carolina School of the Arts.  I had a contract to dance professionally for Southern Ballet Theatre (now Orlando Ballet) in hand and turned it down.  I joined the Marine Corps.  I got involved in both the women's run team and eventually the men's run team.  I started lifting weights.  When I got out of the Marines, I became certified as a personal trainer and aerobics instructor.  I started training for body building competitions...  All this to say, that at points in my life, I could consume 9000 (literally) calories a day and not gain an ounce.  I was too active.

At one point while training a client, the lady looked at me and said, "I used to be just like you, you know.  Until I had a baby that is.  I just lost 30 pounds and finally feel like I can walk in here and get help to lose more without being embarrassed about being seen in exercise clothes.  When you have kids, take care of yourself.  Don't let this happen to you."  I remember smiling and thinking what I would never say, "What kind of a person would let that happen to them?  I would never!"

And then I did.

Sure we all know people who have a baby, and then put the kid in the gym daycare while they work out.  We all know people who can have a baby and keep exercising.  Before having children, of course, I was going to be one of them.  But then I wasn't.  I certainly don't want to blame my children, but having children changes a person.  Suddenly, it wasn't important to make healthy meals for myself when I had a crying baby.  (Our first was allergic to the formula, but the doctors insisted it was fine, so he cried All. The. Time.)  It was important to hold him in the way he felt most comfortable and sing to him while pacing the house for hours on end.  And eat Snickers because it could be done with one hand.  And have you ever seen the rooms for children in gyms?  I'd have a hard time leaving my dog in them and my dog lives outside.  They're that bad.

When I turned 33, I went in for my anual physical.  I weighed 178 pounds.  At 5'2", that was clinically obese.  Obese.  OBESE.  obese.  obese.  obese...  It was a year after I had delivered Shiloh, and I hadn't lost any more weight than I had a week after delivery.  (I topped the scale at 199 pounds the day I gave birth.)  I had become that woman I vowed never to become. 

Why?  Because I was taking care of everyone else and felt like it would be selfish to take care of myself.  I didn't think about what I put in my mouth.  But when I realized that my health could cause me to be a greater burden on my children sooner rather than later, and that I wasn't the person I wanted to be, I decided it was time to do something about it.  I wasn't happy, and I was tired of being unhappy.  I realized that I put more effort into taking care of my teeth than I did my body.  If it was okay to spend the time I spent brushing and flossing to prevent cavities, why wasn't it okay to spend the time preparing healthy food and counting calories to ward off all of the other weight related diseases?  Diabetes, heart attack, stroke...  seems a little more important than a cavity, don't you think?

I think there has to be an emotional trigger to make someone really decide to get serious about losing weight.  It has to be more than just wanting to be thin.  It has to be something that will sustain resolve, something to cling to when your willpower is at its breaking point.  It isn't easy.  It will make you cry.  It will make you angry.  It will make you hungry.  Did I mention that it will make you cry?

I still didn't have the opportunity to exercise.  4 kids, no babysitter.  I couldn't get up and go walking before everyone got up, because the baby inevitably needed cuddling and feeding.  I couldn't exercise when everyone was awake because the kids would climb on me or get in my way.  I couldn't get out of the house because there was no babysitter, and my husband's schedule wouldn't allow him to hold down the fort for a bit without me. 

That's no excuse.  When I trained clients, I told them that what we did was 20% of the equation.  80% of their weight loss goals would be met in their dining room.  It was what they put in their mouths--or didn't put in their mouths.  It was time to practice what I once preached. 

My doctor had told me that without exercise, there was a simple formula for determining how many calories I needed to maintain my weight.  If I wanted to stay 178 pounds, I needed 1780 calories a day.  If I wanted to be 120 pounds, I needed 1200 calories a day.  If I was 178 and wanted to get to 120, start with 1500 so I don't go into starvation mode, and then as I get close to 150, lower my caloric intake more.   If I exercised, I could eat more, but there was no good formula for that.  Everyone's body composition and metabolism are different, and that has to be something that you keep careful track of and see what works for you.

I'm going to break from my experience a bit and note an observation I've made.  People who are naturally thin have a different relationship with food than people who are not naturally thin.  And most people are not naturally thin.  Those that are (and don't have an overactive thyroid or some metabolic dysfunction that the rest of us could only hope to have) usually think that they eat a lot, but they don't.  They will sit at a restaurant talking about how much they eat and are capable of eating, and then they have to ask for a to-go box because they can't finish their meal.  Watch them.  (Don't let them know you are watching them, because that would be rude and make them uncomfortable but just happen to notice.)  They are stuffed after one hot dog and think they are such pigs because they ate a hot dog. 

People who aren't thin (and I count myself--or the me of 2 years ago anyhow--squarely in this category) think that they don't eat a lot.  I once watched my mom ingest about 800 calories and count it as a snack--not really a meal--it didn't count.  I was like this.  I think that if we're really honest with ourselves, we eat a lot more than we think we do.  We eat 2 or 3 hot dogs, and because we could eat more, we think we are practicing restraint and say we don't eat all that much. 

Write it down. 

If we write down everything we eat, two things will happen.  First, we'll eat a lot less, because we'll be embarrassed if we have to actually write down everything that goes in our mouths.  And read it.  And someone else could see it.  The second thing that will happen, if we record the number of calories for each thing we eat, is that we will begin to see exactly why we weigh what we do. 

Actually, I should have weighed a lot more.

I have a handy book that is a nutrition guide--it is like a nutrition label for every food--calories, fat, carbohydrates, fiber, sugar, protein, vitamins, and minerals for every food out there.  Well, the ones that don't typically come with nutrition labels--which might be redundant, because those that do are often not really food.

I kept careful notes and wrote what I ate and when I ate it.  I weighed myself every day.  It sounds obsessive, but it taught me a lot about myself and how my body works.

I learned that if I ate bread, I would be hungry with only 1200 calories.  I learned that meat, eggs, cheese (in small amounts), nuts (in small amounts) and lots of veggies would keep me from being too hungry.  I learned that if I cut off food at 4 pm, I lost weight more quickly, and my carpal tunnel syndrome didn't wake me up at night.  I learned that if my meals had lots of flavor (read garlic) that I would feel more satisfied.  I learned that saving 150 calories for a glass of wine when my family wanted to eat dinner after 4 pm made me feel as if I was indulging rather than being deprived.  I learned that cutting sugar and high glycemic index carbs out of my diet meant that I didn't get sick.  Huh.

This is the easy part.  The hard part is that I often was hungry.  They say it takes about 3 days for your stomach to get used to not being filled to what "normal" has become and to create a new normal.  Those are three hard days.  Those are the days when you stare at yourself in the mirror, at all the parts you want to be smaller, and cry.  You cry because your stomach is telling your brain that you need to feed those parts and you have to tell your brain that your stomach is wrong.  When you have a cheat day (because everyone tells you you should) and you fill your stomach to previous capacity, you have to go through those 3 days all over again. 

There are times when you know you are at your calorie limit for the day (or for the time of day) and want more.  You have to forego the satisfaction of curbing your hunger for the satisfaction you will get when you step on the scale in the morning. 

The good news is that unless you're close to your goal weight (for me that's about 10 pounds) that the weight can drop off pretty rapidly.  Making healthy meals that will taste great and keep you satisfied become indulgent treats --better than getting a pedicure. 

I often hear that it costs a lot of money to eat healthy.  I found it to be the opposite.  Sure, if I ate just as many calories of lettuce as I did in hot dogs, it would be more expensive.  But that wouldn't change anything, would it?  Eating 1200 calories of healthy food costs a lot less than eating 3000 calories of any food.  I made more trips to the store for produce, so maybe the gas bill went up, but our grocery bill went down. 

When I went for my anual doctor visit a year later, I weighed 128 pounds.  I lost 50 pounds.  My doctor said, "What did you do?"  I said, "Just what you told me."  When I went back to her again this past birthday, she lost 28 pounds.  She said it was because of me.  Now isn't that exciting?

I started taking martial arts with my children after losing all that weight.  I found that I could eat more, but it was tricky.  A balancing act had to happen after I started exercising.  I wanted to eat more than I could, so I had to figure out through record keeping both of what I ate and what I weighed from day to day just what my new calorie budget could be. 

I got as low as 126 pounds, but am now back up to 133.  I know why.  I am eating more, and later in the evening.  I know how to fix that, I just have to gear up my resolve. 

I mentioned a calorie budget.  One of the things that helped me with all of this was to think about food as if it were money.  With money, we all have a monthly budget.  We have to pay our bills first before we buy fun stuff.  If we overspend, we go in debt.  If we underspend, we get to save.  Food isn't all that different.  We all have a certain number of calories we are built to run on (it varies for each of us and at different times with different activity, just like income varies, but wherever we are at the moment, that's what we have to spend.)  Vegetables and protein are the bills--the mortgage, water, electricity.  Cheesecake is the beach vacation.  If I can't afford the beach vacation this year, so be it.  I have to pay my bills first, or I'll be homeless or indebted.  I have to eat the veggies and protein first or I'll be hungry, or gain more weight. 

One other thing worth noting:  When I got close to my goal weight, the weight only came off one week a month.  The rest of the month, I maintained.  The week I lost was a double edged sword--it was the only week I could lose, and the week I wanted most to cheat on my diet.  So, when people say there is a hormonal component to weight loss, I will buy that, up to a point.  But since I was already no longer clinically overweight even, I don't think it's as big a deal as it's made out to be, but maybe I'll view that differently when I hit menopause? 

In closing, I'll mention that it's pretty unconventional in our society to suggest that it's okay to be hungry.  I have to wonder where this comes from?  Have we made an idol out of comfort and satisfaction?  Fasting is of course found in the Bible and practiced in Christianity as a religious observance.  I've also learned that other religions more common in other parts of the world pratice fasting for various reasons.  If it weren't ever okay to be hungry, why would this be so? 

I hope this is helpful if you're seeking to lose, or even maintain weight.  If you're not, I hope you've at least found it somewhat entertaining.  :)