weigh-2-go.org

Here’s a blog post on the Huffington Post that I wholeheartedly agree with:

Do We Need a Fattitude Adjustment?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Here’s the comment I wrote:

Amazing, the diversity of viewpoints here. Some questions not yet considered:

– I agree that parents’ behavior is at issue for childhood obesity. But “lack of willpower” doesn’t explain the phenomenon, either. Millions of adults genuinely try, but fail, to lose weight. Why?

– Yes, parents “should” control their kids’ eating, but we don’t live in a society where parents have that control. Kids feed themselves now, candy machines are everywhere, school lunches are filled with junk, and parents are too busy to cook nutritious meals with real ingredients. Fast food fits the lifestyle of parents *and* their children. How do we fix *that*?

– Sugar in its many forms is hard to escape in our food supply, and it’s an addictive substance that causes the brain to want more. (If you don’t believe this, try living without any processed/packaged food for 2 days.)

Dr. Katz, thank you for articulating an intelligent response to the “rock and a hard place” we find ourselves trapped in, as we work to fight obesity, not the people who are obese.

By the way, if the official definition of obesity is the 95th percentile, what happens when 20% of kids are obese? Do we need a definition based on symptoms instead of statistics?

Yes, I’m the same as everybody else. Believe it or not, that’s an affirmation.

I woke up this morning from a deep sleep and it’s the first thought that entered my conscious mind was: “Stop thinking you’re special.”

• Stop thinking you deserve the cookie Friend is offering to share.
• Stop thinking you can manage your food intake without food journaling.
• Stop thinking you need a biscuit, because today was a rough day–and that it won’t matter.
• Stop thinking those size 10 slacks will fit just fine tomorrow.
• Stop thinking you’re getting away with “sort of” following the program. You’re not.

And with this personal comeuppance in mind, I went straight to the mall this morning and purchased 3 pairs of pants, size 14. They fit comfortably. Sigh*.

I wrote down my food. I packed my healthy snacks.

I’m coming to terms with my normalness.

By many accounts, this is the first step.

That’s right, since my “after”pictures were taken in 2007, about 2.5 years ago, I have gained 25 pounds.

At that rate, 10 pounds per year, I could back to my pre-loss weight by the time I’m 54. Not acceptable.

So, here’s my plan: to lose the 25 pounds I have “found” by Labor Day, 2010. That’s losing at a rate of less than a pound a week. That is acceptable.

I hereby declare myself challenged. The gauntlet is thrown–upon myself. By announcing this to you, my 10 readers, I am accountable.

Let the losing begin.

A couple of weeks ago, I weighed in at Weight Watchers, and the nice receptionist-weigher said, “I see you’re up above your original weight, so I’m just going to reset your starting weight so you’ll get credit for losing it.”

I knew I had gone up. This wasn’t a shock, and it didn’t upset me–yet.

I said, “Oh, that sounds great, thanks.” I always like getting credit for losing more weight. With a click of her mouse, I was reset.

“Here’s your ‘Getting Started’ booklet,” she said. I accepted it reluctantly the same way I accept a receipt from Starbucks. I don’t really need it–half the time I say so, half the time I don’t. I took the booklet, put on my shoes, and went to the meeting.

The following week, the same receptionist-weigher said, “Here’s your Week 2 booklet and your bookmark.” I was incensed.  (You might have to be a WW veteran to understand the bookmark–receiving it is a rite of new WW membership.)

The bitchy little girl inside me wanted to scream, “Do you know who you’re talking to? I’m no newbie! I don’t need no stinking bookmark!” But I didn’t say it out loud.

And that started the eruption. It’s like PMS except it’s about something. It isn’t about the bookmark, or even being reset. It’s about pride in my accomplishments–that is, losing it.

Today I was angry: angry about having to show up to do a volunteer duty I promised. Angry at the cars in my way on the highway. Angry at the guy who didn’t say hello to me. Angry that the errands I had to run hadn’t been run yesterday. Angry at people who wanted to stop and chat politely, when I was in the mood to be rude and be my myself.

I have a theory about anger. Although I do think I have some good reasons to be angry (because real life does induce anger), and aside from the Weight Watchers restart debacle, I believe that my anger might be induced by sugar.

I’ve been eating sweet foods like a goat eats–everything.

And today, the simplest carb I had was a sweet potato. Maybe my body is just pissed off.

To be continued.

When blogs were new, many busy people expected they needed one, but they weren’t sure why, or what to say. (I suspect the same is true about Twitter today.) But because blogging was free and easy (as it remains), they went ahead and started blogging.

Today, among the blogs, I notice a stratification between followers and leaders.

• Leaders are the ones who are blogging naturals. They have unique knowledge or experience to blog about.
• Followers also write useful blogs, but their blogs aggregate other information and comment on other blogs. They may have a unique insight to add, but they don’t generate the  ideas that start the discussion.

When I started this blog, I had a unique experience: I had lost 80 pounds. I felt like a leader.

Lately, my experience is not unique, but common: I’m gaining the weight back. Now I feel like a follower. So, unsure about what to write–or why–I stopped blogging.

But I haven’t stopped writing. It’s been a productive hiatus.

In November, I spent my writing energy participating in NaNoWriMo (I’ll let nanowrimo.org provide the details), for which I drafted a novel about weight loss.

In December, I dealt with a series of unbloggable events, and then the ho-ho-holidays. I journaled, and continued developing the novel.

In January, a big work project hung over me like a cloud. Having lost my blogging momentum, I let it go. But I did resolve to take a vacation in March to get that momentum back.

February–what happened to February? I did take a writer’s workshop where I got excellent feedback on excerpts of the weight loss novel.

Today, the new momentum begins. My mission: to blog like a leader.

So my friend P emails me:

…I’m at the 3rd stage on SparkPeople and wondered if you would be interested in doing any of [list of suggestions] together, any time soon…”

And I’m, like, “SparkPeople? Like, what’s that?”

And she writes back: “Ah–I should back up. So, do you know about SparkPeople? Free weight loss site used by millions!”

I guess I’m the last to know–unless, of course, I’m the first to inform you, dear Reader.

The SparkPeople site is very cool. And it has so many features that I can only scratch the surface before my enthusiasm compels me to blog it.

• Personal blogs and forums for members to share their progress, motivation, setbacks, and stories. A more robust and accessible community than the one on WeightWatchers.com, and it’s free.
• A wonderful food tracker, with a database that appears to be about as deep as Weight Watchers, but it tracks many other nutrients (like sodium, saturated fat, fiber and protein)
• Online fitness programs with tools to schedule and track activities.
• A “Reports” page with information such as “Calorie Differential Over Time–You set the dates to see your calories in versus calories out over time.” Cool–can’t wait to have some data for them to analyze.
• News headlines related to health.

SparkPeople is funded by ads. The site is well crafted and professional, and the ads are not in my face.

Today I logged my food on SparkPeople instead of Weight Watchers, just to give it a try. It is possible to log on SparkPeople, and then calculate POINTS from Calories, Fat, and Fiber totals per meal on Weight Watchers. I’ll be giving this a try to see which I like better over time.

I don’t make very good decisions in the moment.

It’s 5:30 am and I am faced with this decision: “Get up now and have oatmeal, fruit, and yogurt for breakfast, and have some extra prep time for my morning meeting?  Or sleep another 15 minutes, wing it at the meeting, and enjoy a muffin and coffee with cream while I’m there?”  Guess which one I will pick.

It’s 1:30 pm on a busy working day. My decision: “Stop, take a break, go to Whole Foods Salad Bar? Or order Chinese with everybody else in the office and get a few more things done?”  One choice is good for my job–and other people in my office–and one is good for my body. I tend to “sacrifice” the personal benefit for the common good.

5:00 pm, and time to leave work. “Hmmm, I need to de-stress. Should I rush to make Betty’s 6:30 yoga class? Or sit on the sofa and watch ‘House’?” The latter sounds less stressful–but the yoga class would be better at helping me manage stress. But I’m more likely to pick “House.”

I tend to pride myself on my ability to improvise. However, I don’t make the best choices unless I plan ahead.

So, my new challenges:

• Plan meals in advance
• Schedule exercise in advance, with a buddy who expects me to be there
  (E.g., I always get the Y on Tuesdays, when Jill meets me there. I have missed Monday yoga for weeks, though, because nobody is expecting me. Time to make a yoga pal.)
• Nail down a morning routine and “just do it” before I have the time or the mental capacity to talk myself out of it on any given morning.

I have been thinking a lot lately about thinking.

I am taking a class that deals with ethics and rationality. The thrust of the class is that to be happy, we must be rational and conscious. We must honor our emotions and our instincts, but not them run our lives. We get our best results when our conscious minds are in control.

My classmates apply this philosophy to their jobs, their relationships with their relatives and friends, and their positions on politics and religion. I apply it to eating.

When my diet goes awry, it is because I have lost conscious control. I eat emotionally. I eat to feel good, to be comfortable, to have fun, or to regulate my mood.  When I lose consciousness about food, I gain weight.

And it is difficult to get this control back. It takes a lot more conscious thought than simply remembering how many calories are in a bowl of cereal for me to gain some control. It is not one decision I make, such as, “From now on I won’t eat big bowls of cereal.”  Instead it is a habit I have to cultivate, constantly and iteratively, because it is too easily, and so frequently, lost.

But this is just me.  I know other people who think about everything they eat, and even keep a food journal and count POINTS. But they still struggle with weight or general health.  Even Oprah, with Bob Greene, Dr. Phil, and all the wisdom amassed by the authors of her Book Club books, has not–I venture to say–mastered her mind.

I wish I could be like Grammar Girl, or Hungry Girl, or the Nutrition Diva, and broadcast quick and dirty tips on how to become conscious about eating. But it would be more like psychology, or even philosophy–like my class.  And the resulting tips wouldn’t just apply to weight loss or maintenance, but to any goal.

…not as I do.  I don’t recommend the following course of action:

I quit Weight Watchers last week.

I love WW and really believe in it.  My reasons for quitting are a combination of my own bad timing (stupidity?), recent backsliding, and new income situation.

In other words, I should have claimed “goal” and gotten Lifetime (free membership!) but I didn’t.  Now the fee is a little too steep and I need to opt out.

If you can learn from my mistake, please do.  My WW story is like so many others.  I got cocky.  I thought I had it in the bag.  I just missed that goal by a few pounds, and thought I’d reach it soon enough…but I never did, and I never stayed there for my 6 weeks to earn the free Lifetime membership. Doh!

And like so many others, I’ll be back.

Last week I had a bit of a personal revelation.  Several events, both in my own life and in the world at large, are pointing me to one lesson:

We think we deserve too much.

Years ago I took a course on money management (based ont he book Your Money of Your Life), and this was a central theme.  Once people get over what they think they deserve–the car, the house, the meals in restaurants, and all the little treats that add up–then they can really manage their money and their lives.

Today, we are facing the consequences of too many people who “deserved” a big house with a little mortgage payment.  Today, I am dealing with a family member who feels he deserves more than he earns.  I have done the same the same thing and have gotten into debt–and now I’m working it off.

I have a bad habit of thinking I deserve food.  I also think I deserve evenings of rest instead of exercise.  I deserve neither.

“I work so hard.  I have problems.  I need some joy.  Aren’t I a good person?  Shouldn’t I be happy?  Doesn’t everybody else get their share too?  Why can’t I have mine?  When is it my turn for a change?  This is a rough day.  It’s time to take a break.  My body needs the rest.  My mind needs the rest.  My soul needs the rest.  I should reward myself.”  Do thoughts like these sound familiar?  How much do we use these to rationalize…everything?

In reality, we live in a world of such plenty and luxury that we do not–and we could never–”deserve” all of the treats and rewards available to us. So where does it stop?  I assert that it is in our nature as humans to take more than we need.  And since we can, we do.  This goes for food, property, recreational substances, everything.  More, more, more…how do you like it?

I’m becoming convinced that it is the mindset of derserving that has the potential to break down our culture–yes, America–in profound ways, if it hasn’t done so already.

For me, it starts with that brownie.