Unsafe at Any Size

Joel, feeling better

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.  But fortunately, when my DH Joel fell yesterday he wasn’t nearly as big, and didn’t fall nearly as hard as he could have.

He’s back from the hospital now, but we’ve had a scary two days. He was covering an assignment at the hospital when he collapsed there.  The medical staff couldn’t find a pulse or see whether he was breathing, so called a code blue on him and performed CPR on him for less than a minute.

He is ok.  He was admitted to the hospital, but didn’t have a heart attack.  They scanned his brain (he has one, without blood clots), and took Xrays of his spine (he has one of those, too, intact).  He has two cuts over his eye they stitched up and a black eye so he looks like a boxer.

We don’t know why he passed out, but we’re happy that he’s home. I’m happy that he’s been taking such good care of himself that when I got the call to come I didn’t think he had a heart attack, but passed out from seeing the procedure.  I’m glad that he weighed less and exercised more so perhaps that’s what protected his back. And it was certainly easier for the staff at the hospital to care for him.

Welcome home, hon.

I’m having a hard time formulating my weight loss narrative.  This is what recovering English students do: we  try to decide what kind of story we’re living.

Scoff all you like, but a lot of how we think about ourselves and the meaning our lives have depends on the stories we tell about ourselves, our familes, and our communities. Having lost over a hundred pounds, I am telling people my story a lot, and thinking about what it means to me, and what it might mean for others.

The typical weight loss narrative is very similar to personal salvation stories: the poor sinning fat person is miserable, sees the light and loses weight, and is saved from a life of obesity.

Being Jewish, I’m a tad suspicious of salvation narratives, especially as the desire to “save” people from whatever imagined spiritual ills has led to the torture and death of so many through the ages. And indeed, many of the “cures” for obesity seem akin to torture; what else do you call surgery that so alters a person’s body that they can’t absorb sufficient nutrition or they vomit if they eat more than a thimble full of food (yes, I’m generalizing here and there are lots of people who don’t feel tortured by their weight loss surgery).  Certainly, many people torment themselves because they don’t look like a societal ideal.

I’m also skeptical about how terrible the “fallen” state of obesity really is.  You can be fat and healthy.  You can also be thin and unhealthy.  You can be unhealthy, fat or thin, and still be a worthwhile human being.

The journey narrative is working better for me.  The quintessential journey is the Odyssey; coincidentally, I drive an Odyssey. If it isn’t pretentious to name a minivan for one of the world’s greatest epics, surely thinking of my life in these terms can’t be.  I’m done fighting a war, and I just want to go home, but there’s many curious things keeping me from my goal.  Some places are so comfortable I just don’t want to leave; in others, monsters prevent me from leaving the cave of my fears.  On the way, I need the help of others to keep from jumping overboard and drowning myself, so great is the temptation.

An epic sounds much more interesting than a comedy, and, really, there are much funnier people writing about weight loss than me.

Ultimately, if there is any meaning for others in my story, it’s this: you can overcome inertia.  You can make major changes to do things differently, to be different. You can effect positive changes not only for yourself, but for your family.  Ultimately, the decisions lie with you.

So, what’s your story?

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Despite my nut eating adventure earlier in the week, I still managed to lose 2.2 lbs, for a total loss of 112.6.  I actually lost more, but wore a sweatshirt to my weigh in, hoping to keep the loss at 2 lbs so the e-tools on Weight Watcher’s wouldn’t scold me.

So why the sudden success?  My idea of allowing more weight loss to be provisional is helping the most.  I’ve made so many changes, and have been reluctant to make more that may be too difficult to sustain.  I’m trying out new things, but if they’re too hard to sustain I’ll be ok with stopping them and returning to where I’m at now.

Which is a damn fine place.

The new changes I’ve made that apparently are making a difference are:

1. Adding a daily walk to the mix. As a manager, I always have a lot to do and not enough time to do it in.  But let’s face facts; working through my lunch won’t add up to that much extra work done.  I’m not getting any mystical wonder worker brownie points (not a good metaphor… tofu points?  carrot points?) for denying myself a 30 minute walk in the middle of the day.  So long as I don’t walk to Berkeley Bowl and buy nuts, it will improve my health and my mood.  As I wrote in a previous post, recess isn’t only for kids.
2. Asking for help. DH has substituted all of the old snacks in the house with portion-controlled 100 calorie snacks, a definite improvement.  But instead of having just one for dessert, I’d been having one of each.  I don’t like making choices for dessert; give me all of them!  I asked him to put them away so I don’t have to see them, and have made a promise (to myself!) to not look for them.  I also wrote about how asking for help isn’t easy, but people genuinely want to help if you give them a chance.
3. Substituting new foods. I’ve started eating apples with low-cal caramel dipping sauce.  I’ve NEVER eaten apples before, but find they are ok if dripping with caramel (really, isn’t everything?).  It makes for a very satisfying snack.  I’ve also started making the Hungry Girl pumpkin pudding.  She makes it from the premade jello pudding, but I make it from “scratch”: one can pumpkin, one carton jello instant vanilla pudding, 2 cups milk,  one teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, one carton lite cool whip.  Mix together the pumpkin, pudding, milk, and spice, and chill.  Add cool whip and eat.  It’s dessert AND a vegetable.

Speaking of pumpkin, it’s off to the kitchen!  I’ve got a nice big kabocha that I’m going to turn into Morroccan lentil stew and other yummy things.  I think I’m going to turn orange again with all the orange veggies I’ll be eating!

Oh noes!  Some of our favorite lite food… isn’t.  According to Snacks: You Lie on The Daily Beast, some of my favorite munchies are lying about how healthy they are.

Skinny Cow, for example.  We always have a box of bars at our house, but apparently their Weight Watcher Point counts weren’t supposed to be used (meaning they didn’t pay WW) and weren’t calculated correctly.  I was in fear that the one point fudge bars were actually- gasp!-two points, but fortunately the WW site says they are still one point.

Many of the too good to be true foods were in the frozen dessert family, but there was also Sarah Lee with its  “whole wheat” bread.  I can just imagine the marketing folks designing that wrapper… “hey, it’s got whole wheat in it, and the white flour is also wheat so it’s still WHOLE wheat, right?”

I had heard about Pirate’s Booty being too good to be true and having to change its calorie count.  It makes me suspicious about all health claims on labels, especially about “low cal” foods.  And it should.  Food manufacturers have figured out there is big money in appealing to dieters trying to get their daily fix snack without going overboard, and they’ll use everything they can that’s legal–or not.

What are you eating that you think is too good to be true?

Do you ever slip up on your eating plan?  I slipped up big time yesterday.  I felt very virtuous walking to the new Berkeley Bowl West from my office to pick up bread for the boys and a little sushi for me.  And some tamari nuts-what’s the harm, right?  Nuts are healthy!

Except not so much when you eat most of the bag.  And I didn’t really check yesterday how much was really in that bag; I was just surprised I wasn’t hungry all day.

When I went to dip in that ol’ bag of nuts today, it was mostly empty.  And then I wondered… just how much DID I eat yesterday?  Turns out nearly half a pound!

Yikes!  So what did I do?  Did I vow to starve the rest of the day?  Did I smack myself repeatedly?  Did I try  to do a double workout?

Nope.  I didn’t do anything.  Well, not quite–I laughed and forgave myself.  And I recommitted to doing better for the rest of the day.

You don’t lose a lot of weight without messing up.  A lot.  The trick isn’t to try to be perfect, because you won’t hit that.  As Michael J. Fox said, “I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.”  I don’t know if God ever ate half a pound of tamari nuts, but if He did I hope He enjoys them as much as I did.

No, the trick isn’t being perfect, but to start again when you’ve done something you regret.  I can’t hope I won’t make mistakes, but I can hope I can recognize them when I make them, and come up with a plan of action for next time.

I don’t regret eating those nuts, but I do regret not portioning them out immediately after I got them so I could enjoy them for the entire week.  I realize that these nuts are a trigger for me, so I might need to either buy them in tiny quantities or forgo them altogether.  I need to remember there will be more nuts when I want them, and I don’t need to eat them all at once.  No one will take my nuts!

How do you bounce back?