I Didn't Fall Off The Wagon...I Jumped

I'm struggling to find my feet again after Easter.

Not only have I fallen off the wagon, I've smacked the butt of the horse it was hitched to and watched it gallop off into the distance.

Why is it so hard to keep that initial fire for losing weight? After two or three weeks old habits slowly begin to seep in, a little here, a smidge there, until you realise all your little slip-ups actually total quite a colossal slip-up. And then you get disheartened, have a little sook, and go running into the arms of the one thing you know will never judge you - food.

Two weeks ago I was in the midst of that first gung-ho week and everything was right with the world.  I was cruising along nicely - I'd decided to give Weight Watchers Online another chance after finding a two week free trial code on the interwebs.  I owned those points, and I made them sing.  It only took a few days for my digestion to improve, my bloating to subside, and my enjoyment of sweet, fresh fruit to skyrocket.  It's an amazing thing when you can actually feel your body alter.  It's not about the weight loss (yet), it's about those immediate changes.

Today? Well, the less said about that the better.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the 'how' of getting back on track.  Easter was Easter, nothing much I could do about that, and with three kids in the house there was always going to be the issue of keeping chocolate consumption down. In hindsight, starting the plan right before Easter was probably not the cleverest thing I've ever done.  But motivation was high, and I wanted to ride that wave before it fizzled.

Keeping committed to a healthy eating plan is really hard work.  They don't tell you about the commitment thing in the happy little weight loss commercials.  They're banking on the fact your motivation will hold out just long enough to hand over your credit card details - after that, they don't really care if you succeed or not.

First things first - planning.  Planning really is the key, isn't it?  Tomorrow I'll go back to basics with a menu plan and pre-count all my points for the remainder of the week.  I'm also going to set an exercise goal - if I can get on Freddy Treddy three times (before my next weigh in on Thursday), then I reckon it will help erase the bad start to this week and get me lined up for a good exercise plan for the following week as well.

I will get this motivation problem sorted.

In My Future Life, I'm A Runner

Banes of my existence, both of them.

It might surprise some people, but back when I was a kid, I loved to run. I used to compete in school sports days in the track events and was actually pretty good.

And then I grew up, found myself married and with three kids by the age of 22, and got fat.

Naturally, I stopped running.

Running has always held some sort of magical appeal for me. I imagine I'm at my goal weight, sprinting around an oval or gliding my way down the footpath, wind in my hair (in your dreams you're allowed to forgo the practicality of a ponytail), stamina in spades. When I finally stop, I'm puffed, but not out of exhaustion - I'm exhilarated. I'm sweating but it's a delicate sheen and not the 'blotchy, red and dripping' scenario that is closer to my current truth.

At 25 kilograms heavier than I should be, running like this is nigh on impossible. But the dream persists.

Couch to 5km programs promise to make me a runner in 9 short weeks, but I've never made it past week 2 before. I once tried to progress and collapsed in the grass on the side of the road with a stitch so bad I thought I was having a heart attack. I'm not ready to try again. I dig being conscious.

My treadmill - affectionately called Freddy Treddy - is a great hulking beast that takes up half my loungeroom. When I hit a groove in my walks with Freddy, when the tempo of my iPod accelerates toward a song's chorus and the familiar urge to just let go and run, run, run wins out briefly, I imagine I'm 13 again. I'm going to win this race. I can see the finish line.

And then my breath gives out, or my legs cramp up, and the voices in my head scream at me to stop. I've reached capacity in just 20 seconds. But Freddy doesn't judge. He just waits for me to come back tomorrow.

One day, I will run again - and not because I have to. I will run for pleasure and for the thrill of entering (and god-willing, finishing) races.

Imagine! Running a whole 5km!

Easter & Thoughts On Food

Ah, Easter.  The soul-crushing experience of every dieter....well, everywhere.

Two weeks ago I signed up for a free trial of Weight Watchers, and had, for the most part, been going fairly well with points-tracking since.  Things started to slip on Saturday afternoon though.  We had family over for a roast chicken dinner.  I started cooking the meal already mentally portioning myself out my food - and by the time the meal was ready for the table, all resolve was gone.  Easter Sunday was a complete write-off and now today, Easter Monday, I'm surrounded by chocolate as far as the eye can see and have eaten enough of it to know that this week in its entirety is pretty much a bust.

But I don't feel as upset about the slip ups as I could have been, which is a strange thing for me.  Yes, there was (still is) an awful lot of over-indulging and that's not healthy for anyone, but I don't feel guilty.  I enjoyed myself, I was with family, and I was relaxed.  This wasn't emotional eating.  This was drawing loved ones near and celebrating the season with them.  And it felt good.

In the past, food hasn't always just been food to me. Sometimes it was comfort. Sometimes love. Sometimes even anger or frustration. Which is completely screwed up. Food's just food, right? Just a means to get energy into your body so you don't keel over and die? Well sure, on a practical level. But then you add processing and sugar and fat and convenience and deliciousness into the mix and before you know it you're eating out of habit, or because you like the way a flavour sits in your mouth, or because it's 6:00pm and that's when dinner is served, hunger be damned.

It really is backwards when you think about it. I've never been able to 'let my body tell me it's time to eat'. If I was fully trusting of my body's natural ability to regulate it's own hunger then I probably wouldn't be sitting here 25 kgs overweight! I know that when I'm eating more on the healthy side I'm going to be hungrier during the day than I am when I allow the horse to bolt on my bad food habits. When I'm controlling my portions, when I'm choosing foods for vitamins and 'bang for my nutritional buck', I just feel the hunger more often and keenly. I know down the track this diminishes, but in the meantime, I can't trust that my body will give me signals based on what's the best thing for me. So I try to suck up the annoyance and distraction of never being completely full and try not to dive headlong into the nearest carb source.

But it's still hard. In fact, it's probably the hardest thing about trying to lose weight - controlling this urge to eat, retraining my brain to view food as fuel rather than the cause of a pleasantly full stomach.

Food isn't out to get me. I just have to learn its language.

The Dress

My story begins with a dress.

I'm a jeans-and-tee kind of girl. Always have been and I suspect always will be. Wearing a dress is not a natural state of affairs for me. And as I've grown larger over the years, shopping for a dress has become torturous. But this time, it had to be done - I was going out with some of my girlfriends and had been beaten into dress-wearing submission on pain of death. I took one of these friends dress shopping with me. A much slimmer friend. Who (of course) had already found her dress on deep discount and only had the fun stuff left to do, like shopping for shoes. I went to every women's fashion store I could find. Anything that looked good didn't fit. Anything that fit looked hideous. Up until then, I'd been moseying on quite oblivious to this phenomenon, since it's still (relatively) easy to find a decent pair of jeans and a sassy top in my size (Australian size 16-18, or US 12-14). I have a favourite jeans store. Their denim fits wonderfully over my ever-expanding rear. But buying 'going out' clothes in general? It was a massacre.

There I was, stuck under unflattering changeroom lighting (which only highlighted the t-shirt-shaped expanse of bright white, non-tanned skin over my torso) and I could not find a single thing to wear that I could relax into. I was not comfortable baring my arms in a sleeveless dress (a deathly fear of Side Boob is partly responsible) and I'd rather pull my eyelashes out one by one than wear a strapless dress (the strength of the strapless bra required to pull that one off? *shudder*) but do you think I could find a sleeved dress that didn't drape like a muu-muu?

It was a soul-crushing experience and one I hope I don't have to repeat for a long, long time. I did eventually find a little (big) black dress, but in order to make it 'work', there was the 'you don't need that spleen anyway' corset-like shaping underslip thing, the camisole (to minimise the cavernous flash of cleavage the dress gave in its natural form) and the jacket required to cover the bare arms. I felt sucked and pinched and bunched up all night. I couldn't relax. I wasn't me.

I don't always want it to be this way. I remember when I was a wee slip of a thing and the number 10 was on every item of clothing I owned (US size 6). I have a distinct memory of laying on my back and following the curve of my stomach with my hand - and it was concave! Imagine! I saw so many pretty styles on the racks but most were several sizes too small (in one national upmarket department store, I couldn't find anything above an AU size 12 and the majority were still 10s and 8s - when the average size of an Australian woman is now 14-16)

Am I trying to lose weight for the health benefits? Oh, absolutely. Both of my parents have had heart attacks, one fatal. But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't partly vanity as well. We all want to be able to walk into any random store and know that any fancy-pants outfit on the rack will fit.

In the meantime? Dress shopping can bite my ass.