Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

Well, it’s happened again (and, not surprisingly, at just about the same weight). My Superman ring now fits on my index finger. When I first got it as a gift, 9 years ago, it only fit on my ring finger. Then, I lost a little weight and I’ve worn it on my middle finger ever since. This week — schwoop! Another change.

It’s sort of cool to go to therapy once a week. Because my therapist is also an artist, she is somewhat attuned to the visual weight of shapes and spaces. In a way, going to see her provides a kind of visual weigh-in. I go there with the same regularity that Weight Watchers uses for their weekly weigh-in — once a week, at the same time each week. It’s great for measuring progress, and my therapist shared her mental notes on my body’s weight loss pattern this week.

She said she notices it in my face and neck first. Then my hands and wrists. Next stop? Arms. Her prediction was evidenced this week in another wardrobe staple:

I’ve owned that jacket for about 3 years. When I bought it, I remember thinking, “Well, it’s too small to button, but it’s cute and I can just wear it open.” And I have worn it open. I’ve worn it a lot. This jacket has a cute cut and so, even when it was far, far too tight, I’ve worn it in family portraits, dance clubs, and holiday parties. Having few other alternatives, I’ve worn it.

This week, though, I can suddenly button it. All the way from top to bottom. In fact, I can button it with a little room to spare. The extra room is also noticeable in my arms, just as my therapist predicted. They aren’t squashed into the denim tubes like sausage casings. They sort of just ride in there. Cozy-like. Comfortable.

And even though I wore the jacket unbuttoned on Monday, I still got a lot of compliments on my “new” jacket. New. Jacket.

Old jacket. New body.

How good were these muffins on Saturday morning? Here, I’ll help you out with this one: THEY WERE SO GOOD. Also, according to my calculations, they whittled down to a measly 170 calories, 3 grams of fat, 3.5 grams fiber, and 5.6 grams of protein (3 Weight Watcher Points) each. Not bad for JUMBO muffins. No little puny cupcakes here. These muffins were big time.

Cranberry Orange Muffins

• 100 grams (about 1 cup) frozen cranberries
  
• 1 cup water (for the cranberries)
  
• 3 oranges, peeled and segmented¹
  
• 2 eggs beaten²
  
• 185 grams (about 1.5 cups) Trader Joe’s Multigrain Baking Mix
  

A few notes before I give you the instructions:

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1. Instructions here and here, if you don’t know how. Free yourselves from the syrup-y tyranny of canned mandarin oranges! [↩]
2. Next time, I think I’ll try it with one egg and see if it makes the recipe more light. [↩]

Just a follow up to my horrendously bad fashion attitude from the post about The Twins. Regarding the uber trend here in Los Angeles (Elsewhere, too? I don’t think there is any other climate that could support it) of pairing Uggs with shorts and/or mini-skirts, my boyfriend pointed me to this snippet from the most recent Entertainment Weekly:

Oh, America Ferrera. You are adorable and your body is all yours which, in this town, is really saying something.

I hated The Twins the first time I saw them.

This is the story of how I cut them some slack.

I was a little late to my Weight Watchers meeting and was waiting in line, grumpily, wearing pajamas and flipflops and a 50-inch waist. The meeting had already started and so, as I daydreamed and drifted in and out of paying attention, my thoughts were peppered with applause and cheers. People behind me were sharing their victories and goals but I was just waiting to be weighed and hoping I hadn’t lost 12 pounds again, like I had during the first week of The Program.

I looked up from my thoughts, sorting through the people in the room as I always do, sizing them up: fatter than I, thinner, taller, shorter, whatever. I caught a few other people doing it, too — playing that old women’s game, “Who’s bigger?” No one wants to be the fattest person in the room, but those feelings are somehow intensified in a meeting full of women who gather together to clap about weight.

Then the door opened and two girls pranced through. I didn’t know at the time if they were sisters, or twins, or just best friends with matching inferiority complexes who felt compelled to use each other as mirrors. They were young, around 17 I’d say, and both blonde (but bleached blonder) with long, straightened hair. Both wore tiny little nylon shorts with a word splashed across the ass — “Hott” or “Princess” or something equally revolting. They were different brands of shorts on each girl, different colors, different cutesy words, but tiny little racing shorts all the same.

They wore trendy little tank tops under their trendy little hoodies and the wholly unforgiveable Uggs — different cuts, different colors, but Uggs. Four Uggs in one room. Four too many Uggs. God, I hate Uggs.¹

Neither of them could have weighed more than 120 pounds.

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1. But I hate them most of all in Los Angeles, where they make no sense and girls always seem to pair these cold-winter clunks with micro-mini skirts or, as is the case, tiny little running shorts. [↩]

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Starting weight: 335.8
Last week: 321.4
This week: 318.2
Change this week: -3.2
Overall change: -17.6
Milestone passed: 15 pounds gone
Next milestone: 20 pounds gone

I met last week’s goal of passing the “15 pounds gone” mark. Yay me. I liked last week’s goal because it was little and I was pretty sure I could attain it. This week, I want to shoot for losing 2.4 and hitting “20 pounds gone” but if it takes me 2 weeks or more, I’m okay with that.

I broke my tailbone over Christmas break while visiting family in Utah. (Hello, icy, concrete steps. Meet my ample ass.) However, the pain has been greatly reduced in the month between then and now. I probably shouldn’t be adding in any crazy yoga moves which balance on my hips, but if I start adding in some extra activity (i.e. walking the dog), it may help me achieve this slightly-larger goal (and result in me being slightly smaller) by next week. We’ll see.

Actually, I’ll go walk the dog now, before I take a shower.

My question is, why should this surprise anyone? Apparently both the Food Network and McDonald’s are claiming that this one-frame advertisement placed in the Iron Chef America episode was an accident, but with McDonald’s already poised as a prominent sponsor for the show, who believes that?

I haven’t had television in my house for almost 3 years and I don’t miss it. After this, I miss it less than ever — as if those Pizza Hut commercials with the gooey, melted strings of cheese weren’t enough?

Here’s what happens. You get used to your body looking, feeling, and being a certain way. You know, from an insider perspective, what it’s like to walk around in your own shape. You have a sense for your edges — an intimate knowledge of the line where you end and the rest of the world begins.

You get used to eyeballing things. You can tell, from a distance, if you’ll have to turn sideways to squeeze through

• this group of people
• that turnstile
• the doorway
• etc.

At a glance, you’ll know which chairs in the room will fit you. Sure, you’ll take a chair with armrests even if you know that it’ll uncomfortably cut against your hips after the first 25 minutes of the meeting. You’ll do it if you have to, that is. But, if you get to the meeting early enough, you can choose the chair that will best fit your ass and avoid the whole scenario.

You don’t do this by test-driving each chair, filling out a satisfaction survey, or telling yourself the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears until you find the chair that’s “juuuuust right.” You do it on sight. You have an internal meter. “My hips are this wide,” you think, and you eyeball the world accordingly. For the most part, you are dead right.

Then, the line which divides you from the rest of the world begins to change. Maybe you’re exercising more. Or eating fewer cupcakes. Maybe you are in an accident and lose a limb. Maybe you become confined to a wheelchair. Whatever it is, your body has changed, and your eyeballing skills make a sudden drop.

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I guess, truth be told, I had to get a boyfriend before I could lose weight. It wasn’t that I needed someone to look over my shoulder or police me. It wasn’t that I needed a portable cheerleader to say “Good job, honey” at every turn. I definitely didn’t need another excuse to lose weight, and much less an excuse which was based on what someone else thought of me or my relative attractiveness.

What I needed was verification. I wanted to be proven wrong in my lifelong belief that I wasn’t good enough because I was fat. I had to work the fat-girl chip off my shoulder a little bit, to stop blaming everything in my whole damn life on my weight, and to be — just once — seen for who I am on the inside just as much as for what I am on the outside.

I also feared that if I were to wait until I had lost a bunch of weight before I started dating, I’d be bitter against the men that would be attracted to a thinner me. After all, the list of things I’ve got going for and against me will¹ basically be the same.

I’ll still be an artist, a therapist, an intellectual, an NPR snob, a musician, a world-traveler, and a culture geek. I’ll always be a writer and a designer, a bit of a packrat, and a sucker for fluffy white puppies. I’ll always know too much trivia about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’ll always know the words to every single Rogers and Hammerstein musical. I’ll always have to pluck that hair from my chin every 5 or 6 days. I’ll always be me.²

In spite of my good qualities, though, I had managed to go 30 years without a boyfriend. 30 years without being kissed. 30 years, for Pete’s³ sake, without even holding anyone’s hand. It wasn’t for lack of wanting or trying, believe me. It was the chip on my shoulder — the belief (not the fact, since I know lots and lots of overweight people in relationships) that no one would ever want me. That’s why, when the Record Store Romeo asked me out on a second date, my response was a startled, “Really!?”

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1. With the possible exception of increased self discipline and motivation, not to mention a little boost of esteem that comes from achieving goals but let’s face it. I don’t really need huge esteem boosts. [↩]
2. I realize that this may or may not be true… but it’s just my current line of thinking. What do I know? [↩]
3. Pete who? [↩]