Unsafe at Any Size

Huzzah!  I finally got a letter.

The backstory: after losing 110 lbs on Weight Watchers, I’m at a point where I’m feeling happy and healthy.  I’ve met my personal goals for weight loss.  Weight Watchers lets you come for free after you’ve maintained your goal weight for a certain amount of time.  These “lifetime” members get the support from other members for maintaining their weight loss, and can inspire them as they lose their own weight.

There are two ways to become a lifetime member: your weight can be within what the BMI says is healthy, or you can get a letter from your doctor saying a different weight is appropriate for you.

I haven’t lost enough weight to get to the BMI range for my height, and I haven’t after 2.5 years at WW.  I probably could, but I’m happy right where I am.  I’ve made a huge number of lifestyle changes, and at this time don’t feel like making more.

I thought that my regular doctor, who was on Weight Watchers himself and lost weight with the program, would be sympathetic.  But at my annual exam, he argued that based on statistics, people who are in the “normal” BMI range are healthier than those who aren’t.  Even those like me who have good cholesterol, blood pressure, etc. are more likely to hurt themselves when they fall because the weight makes them more top heavy.

Huh?

It’s hard to argue with someone who’s fully clothed when you’re wearing a paper napkin.  And he’s right, statistically speaking.  But there are statistics, and then there are the needs of individuals.  And this individual is DONE!

Fortunately, my gynecologist agreed with me!  At my visit yesterday I told her my plight, and she took mercy.  I now have a letter saying an appropriate weight for me is 170.  I finally feel like I’ve got some agency back!

As great as this news is, it doesn’t mean I can go on lifetime yet.  During my months-long hissy fit, I gained a few lbs I need to lose to get to that 170.  And Weight Watchers has you do 6 weeks on maintenance before you’re officially lifetime.  After that, if you go too high over your goal weight you need to pay.  Now THAT would be motivating for me.

So chocolate chip cookies?  Not interested.  Peanut butter sandwiches?  Nuh uh.  I’m on mission!

Well sorta.  I know tracking works, but my perfectionism is getting in the way of tracking.  Instead of seeing it as objective information about what I’m doing, I see it as damning evidence that I’m doing everything wrong.

When I lost 100 lbs, I was a great tracker.  I was doing something I called “flore”, flex points but eating mostly core foods (now called filling foods).  I didn’t eat activity points or extra weekly points.

I can’t do that now, so instead of owning what I’m doing, I’m just not tracking.

So, instead of tracking online, I got myself a little notebook.  I’m starting by just writing down the foods I’m eating–no quantities, no points.  Some days I’m getting everything in, some days I stop at noon.  But I’m not letting it drop.

How do you get back on track(ing)?

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Whaddya know!  Tracking works.  You know that, and I knew that.  I know it again, too.  I lost 2 lbs this week, for a total of 113 lost.

I know that tracking works, so why did I stop?  Because it was all too much.  When I was originally tracking, I was doing flore- eating core foods but tracking points.  I wouldn’t eat my weekly points or my activity points.  Not surprisingly, it was very effective, but also hard to maintain.

When I got down to 22 daily points, I panicked.  This isn’t the way I wanted to live my life!  So I stopped tracking.  For the most part, my diet has changed enough so that worked well.  But after the Halloween debacle, it was time to get serious again.  Not too serious, though–I’m going over my daily allotment of points by a few each day.  And that is ok!

I’m hoping Thanksgiving won’t be very challenging this year, even though I’m not doing the cooking.  We are traveling to LA, and my sister and mother in law are both doing Weight Watchers.  We’ll have pumpkin pie for the kids, but we’re going to try Hungry Girl’s Pumpkin Smash.

Speaking of pumpkin, I now do a variation on the Hungry Girl pumpkin pudding, but instead of using premade pudding I use an immersion blender and blend in a can of pumpkin into 2 cups of milk, vanilla or butterscotch pudding mix, and some pumpkin pie spice.  Add a little lite Cool Whip, and you’ve got a fantastic dessert.  No, it’s not pumpkin pie, but it’s great for every day.

But oh no! Apparently, we are looking at a pumpkin shortage this year! Ohhhhhhhhh noooooooo!  Should I go and buy a crate of pumpkin now?  Screw the Eggo waffle shortage people; this is serious.  (Serious=it affects me.)

At least half of the Hungry Girl recipes feature pumpkin; why, I’m eying a chocolate and peanut butter fudge recipe on her site right now that uses a can!

I AM going to clear out the local Lucky.  If you can’t find pumpkin to make your pie, you can blame me and my pumpkin hoarding.

Not my feet, not my scale, not my weight

Finally got rid of that pound I gained when Joel was in the hospital (yes, I’m not above blaming him stressful circumstances).  I’m at a point now where I’m seeing where things take me.  I’d like to get down another 9 lbs or so, but it won’t kill me if I don’t.

I made some headway in thinking about my halloween candy dilemma.  I realized that the only differences between the candy at work and the candy at stores were 1.  an unaccustomed location and 2.  it’s free.

I’m used to putting on my virtual blinders when I go to the store so I don’t “see” the candy.  But finding it at work is tough after it’s been relatively junk-food free for a while.  I did just fine when we had huge amounts of junk food at work because I had trained myself not to see it, and I just need to do the same now.

The second piece of it is they are “free.” When I see candy in a store and I purchase it, I have to make a conscious decision and pay for it.  When it’s free at the office, that piece of decision making, the very act of making a decision, is removed.  It’s not like the money involved in purchasing a candy bar is so onerous; it’s only a dollar.  But it does make the transaction conscious in a way that grabbing candy out of a jar doesn’t.

So, I’m going to pay someone (some cause I don’t like? The George W. Bush Library Foundation?) a dollar every time I get a candy bar out of the free jar.  It’s a bad deal, since I could get a big candy bar at the store for a buck instead of a “fun” size.

Will that make the difference?  Maybe!  Similar capricious rules have worked for me in the past.  And really, why should I eat something just because it’s there, when I can spend a buck and get exactly what I want?  Because I don’t really want it.

Well, whaddya know… you can go on vacation, eat a chocolate souffle, and drink a glass of wine and still lose 0.4 lbs, for a total loss of 103.8!  DH also lost 0.4, so that must have been the magic number for this trip.

We certainly didn’t diet (that chocolate souffle was very good!) but we didn’t go crazy, either.  Well, I TRIED to go crazy with that burger, but my body doesn’t do crazy anymore, apparently.

Speaking of magic numbers, there’s a lot of those going around this week.  These numbers are magic because they magically derail success, or put it on pause anyway. They’re magic because of the power we give them.

My thinking on this started with reading Katherine’s blog Weight for 160, where she wrote she was stuck hovering around the 200 mark (she succeeded this week!).  And then, the weird way things work, someone in my meeting discussed how she was stuck after having lost 20 lbs.

My magic number is 100.  I’ve lost 100 lbs, and I’ve had the damndest time making any serious dent in it since.  It is a scary number, and it represents a scary place.  My weight loss has gotten to the point where my mom admits she sometimes doesn’t recognize me.  Heck, I saw my two kids in the mirror at a store the other day, and it was a moment before I realized the person holding their hands was me!

Part of my reluctance is due to this disorientation I’m feeling with having made such an enormous change, and I’m giving myself time to sort that out.  But part is also resentment: what, 100 lbs isn’t enough?!?  It feels like enough for me right now!  I can do everything I ever dreamed about, and lots of things I never considered.  So who is this BMI who says I need to lose more?  And why is my Dr happy, but thinking I can get down further?

I’m also a little afraid; I’ve made so many changes in my life; how many more changes will I have to make?  Will my life be unrecognizable?  Will I?

There’s nothing in the number 100 in and of itself that is magic; if I was anyone else in the world, it would be 45 odd kilos, and it’d be 50 kilos lost that would no doubt be my magic sticky number.

So maybe instead of thinking of my goal in lbs I’ll think about it in kilos.  Once I’ve lost 50 kilos I’ll be down 110, and only 20 lbs or so away from the magic number dictated by BMI.

I have completely unrelated pictures!  Here’s one of me in the tank top I was so scared to wear to my workout:

That’s Sam trying to feel my muscles.  Here’s the photographer, Nate, who took the picture:He’s got a good eye!  He must have gotten it from his photojournalist daddy, who was otherwise occupied painting:

He’s so handy!

So what’s your magic number?  What did you do to turn it back into a regular ol’ number!