Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

Edited 2 March 2007:

I bought the black pinstripe suit last night. I went back to the store, tried everything back on, and said to myself, “Oh what were you thinking? It was always the black pinstripe suit.” So, now I have something that feels right and, according to the majority of y’all, looks right. Yes, I caved in and bought the Spanx.

I’ll pair it with a white blouse and maroon shoes and a maroon necklace. Being a therapist is a bit weird… you have to be at once uber professional and also uber approachable. I err on the side of uber professional because, as an art therapist, people are always afraid I’m going to show up in a gypsy skirt with a skarf tied around my purple hair and carrying a tambourine. I’ll compromise today in a black suit but with the hair down and curly. And brunette.

THANK YOU a hundred times for all of the commentary and votes yesterday. It really did help, since I don’t have a good sense for the way I look these days. I’m nearly 25 pounds down and nothing fits the way I expect it to. Your comments really helped seal the deal. I didn’t even have to call it a delurking day or anything!!! We girls do love to shop, and I love that through my cell phone cam, we could all virtually be in the dressing room together!

Thanks again…

I was called today for a sudden, ultra important interview on Friday afternoon and I need your help. Please help me pick an outfit!

I zoomed over to every fat girl’s favorite favorite nemesis, Lane Bryant, to see if they had anything smart and slick. Since I’ve begun to lose weight, I didn’t have any idea what size to grab off the rack. I could no longer just grab The Biggest and assume it would fit better than anything else. Aggrivating.

I’m down nearly 25 pounds now and I must say that nothing I own (mostly 28’s and 30’s) fits me in a way that feels even remotely impressive. On Friday afternoon at 2:00, I need to impress. You can help!

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I ♥ New York.

First, they legislate a ban on trans-fats. Now, they will require any restaurant with 10 or more locations nationwide to list nutrition information in their menu.¹ Okay, this still won’t help if you prefer to eat at local mom-and-pops or sketchy, street-corner taco trucks, like I do, but it’s a fine place to start.

Some people won’t care that, as one “watchdog” group points out, many choices for appetizers, entrees, and desserts at national chain restaurants will cost an entire day’s worth of calories (up to 2,000, in some cases). That’s okay. Not everyone has to care.

But, those of us who do care should be able to get the information we need. Supermarkets offer it on their packaging, why not restaurants? Have you ever asked for the nutritional information pamphlets in McDonald’s, Denny’s, or even Subway? Most of the employees just give you a blank look. Unless you have unlimited wi-fi access and carry your laptop everywhere, you can’t get on-the-spot nutritional info. It’s annoying.

I mean, after all… how many of us can afford to shop in high-end boutiques where no pricetags are allowed? Very few of us. Even those of us who can’t afford to will sometimes buy without looking carefully at the price. How many of us have gotten to the register at Target and gulped when the final total appeared? The average person still purchases without shopping around, will neglect to balance their checkbooks, and often makes poor financial decisions. But, at least basic pricing information is available to us before we buy, if we want it.

I hope this will spur a few of our favorite offenders to provide some kind of nutritional information to the public. Yes, California Pizza Kitchen, I’m looking at you.

1. The practicality of this legislation sure makes Chicago’s ban on foie gras sound like a bunch of useless bellyaching, in spite of what the PETA people would have you think. Sorry, Boyfriend! [↩]

Starting weight: 335.8
Last week: 315.6
This week: 313.7
Change this week: -1.9
Overall change: -22.1
Next milestone: 25 pounds gone

We’ve officially transferred over to the new weigh-in procedures: Sunday posts with reported changes in the week’s average weight.

March 7th is the last day I’m allowed to go to a Weight Watchers meeting, due to a very unceremonious cancelation of my monthly fee. I thought I might go one more time for old time’s sake but now I’m thinking, “Maybe not so much.”

A “cold snap”¹ this week made us hanker for comfort food and I had been craving homemade tomato soup for a while. Craving satisfied. See above.

Nights like last night make me wish I were independently wealthy. Maybe I wouldn’t hire a personal chef after all, since I got so much satisfaction out of making the hearty soup (recipe from Diet Pr0n). I paired it with a delicious salad of homemade dressing (balsamic/orange juice/herbs), orange segments, and strawberries. The pieces de resistance, however, were the homemade crackers. Yup. Homemade.

I nicked the recipe from the latest Cooking Light Magazine in its celebration of St. Patrick’s Day food. Well, I dunno about that, but I’ve always heard that you could make your own crackers, and this recipe did not disappoint. On the contrary. They were totally delicious and added a lot to the homemade food fest.

Click over to the magazine’s website for the Farmhouse Crackers recipe, at 139 calories² per serving.³ I found that I needed to add a little more water than was called for, and be sure not to over-mix the dough or they get a tiny little bit tough. You want to go for crisp and flaky, like pie crust.

I’ve already tried variations with cracked pepper and poppies, sesame seeds, and rosemary with parmesan⁴ and crushed salt. HELLO GOODNESS.

1. I put it in quotes because what I mean is “cold snap LA style” — dipping into the 40’s and 50’s with little mists of rain. [↩]
2. 4g fat, 2.3 grams fiber = 4 points, but I used half-and-half instead of whole cream and it reduced to 2.5 points [↩]
3. One serving is 2 generously-sized crackers, as seen above. My crackers ended up being about 3.5″ x 2.5″ but, of course, your mileage may vary depending on how heavy- handed you are with a rolling pin and what pan you use. [↩]
4. I thought the parm made the dough crunchy instead of crispy and took forever to cook, which led to a feeling of over-cooked-ed-ness, but… if you’re into that sort of thing… [↩]

Friday has been my traditional weigh-in day, so I thought today was as good a day as any to describe my new weighing procedures. In the long and slow process of breaking up with Weight Watchers, I’ve had to re-think my need for accountability and come up with some alternative-yet-sane way to measure my goals.

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What sort of amazes me is how much time and energy it takes to eat well and be mindful about things. For me, even after I had pretty well gotten the bingeing under control, I still had a problem with fast food and not, of course, because it tastes so much better than its opposite. (Whole food? Slow food? Speed-impaired food?) Fast food is just easier. It’s quicker to satisfy. It doesn’t involve washing dishes or storing leftovers in little plastic bowls which you then, also, at some point in the future, end up having to wash. Again.

Sure, I watched Super Size Me and was appropriately — even righteously — disgusted. I read Fast Food Nation and nodded my head along the whole way. I still wince when I think of my granny — an old farm girl and my favorite republican hippie — and the whole fresh foods that she insisted on eating and preparing for herself and for us. I know all about trans-fats and about french fries whose first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup and about the whole unfortunate Mystery Meat situation. Cheese substitutes. Formed patties of mincemeat resembling, on some alien planet, a chicken breast or a pork rib or a “nugget.”

It’s not that I don’t understand why fast food is bad for me. It’s just that I work 13-to-14-hour days and I get tired. It’s that I want to spend the weekend with my boyfriend, cuddled up and watching Buffy. It’s that, when you get right down to it, I sometimes lack the mental and physical energy it takes to plan ahead, have ingredients on hand, scrub, pluck, bake, scrape, and scour my way to healthy living.

PastaQueen talks about this very phenonemon in her new year post, stating that:

It will take time: I don’t just mean this in the sense that it will take a year to lose 50 pounds, though it will assuming you lose a pound a week, a safe and attainable rate. I mean you have to take time out of your day to exercise and prepare food.

Fast food is fast for a reason. It is fast in every way. It is quick to deliver what precious few nutrients it contains, then burn out and become lethargy. Become insulin overload. Become fat. It is quick to digest, due to the absence of fiber and natural ingredients. It is first in and first out, in a way. It is fast.

But, I’m trying to eat slower now. Slower in every sense. I’m trying to eat foods that digest slowly, that release their nutrients and energy slowly, that last longer, that require more work. I want to eat this slower food, well, more slowly. To savor and enjoy it. I am not, unfortunately made of money. I cannot hire a personal chef to prepare this food for me, and a maid to clean up the dishes afterward. So, in the service of slow food, here are some things that have helped me on those days when I’m in Danger of Drive Thru.

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My mother, of course, owned a bathroom scale when I was growing up.

It was a bubblegum-pink monstrosity of a thing, skinned with a textured vinyl sheet. The scale lived between the toilet and the sink and delivered The Truth through its square little window. That dial face registered weights up to 200 pounds, but was not sophisticated enough to “double back” on itself the way scales did in the 1980’s and 1990’s — borrowing from the 20-pound hashmark to read, say, “230.”¹

By the time scales could “double back” and read weights higher than 200 pounds, my mother was well on her way through 10 pregnancies and had already waved the white flag of surrender against the tide of obesity. So, it was more for the novelty that Mom bought another scale when they went digital, then left it conspicuously in the bathroom on the main floor of our house — a bathroom she never used.

There it sat, inviting us to step on and Know The Truth. Unfortunately, whether for batteries that routinely died, for brothers that used the scale as a trampoline, or for the early-90’s technology that never met snuff, the scale was maddeningly inconsistent. In one session (step on, step off, step on, step off, step on) it would yield 4 or 5 different weights. The digital numbers blinked red as if sputtering their frustration. “247. 259. 233. Oh hell if I know.”

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1. Who weighs 20 pounds, anyway? [↩]

Starting weight: 335.8
Last week: 315.6
This week: 315.6
Change this week: 0
Overall change: -20.2
Milestone reached: 20 pounds gone
Next milestone: 25 pounds gone

Between Thursday night’s extreme Valentine’s Day celebrations (with additional bonus 6-month Anniversary footage and a director’s commentary) and Friday morning’s early work call (even though Fridays are technically supposed to be my day off), I missed my antepenultimate Weight Watchers weigh-in. That’s okay, though, because I need to transition over to my post-break-up weigh-in reporting. The careful observer will note that last week’s weigh-in occurred on Friday and was 315.2 pounds, not 315.6 pounds as noted above.

Well, that was my Weight Watchers weigh-in, and I’m not going to be doing that any more. I’ll explain my all-new, super top-secret, alien superscience weigh-in procedures in a future post, but for now here’s the headline:

I maintained my weight this week. And, I think I’ll get my period today. All in all, everything makes sense. I promise it’ll be explained as soon as I get a chance.

Maybe it’s a strange thing to talk about on a fitness blog (but, I am a therapist after all), and maybe it’s even stranger to lump one’s anxieties into a category designed to celebrate signs of weight-loss progress, but that’s what you get when you come to the Chronicles. WE LIKE TO KEEP YOU GUESSING.

The thing is, I always knew that my binge eating and general lack of regulation was probably masking an underlying depression. It made perfect sense — major depression runs on both sides of my family. I’ve suffered some form of low-grade depression, on and off, since I can remember. (Of course, I’ve also suffered from morbid obesidy since I can remember, so YOU DO THE MATH) But, as it turns out, the less I use food to cope, the less bingeing and mindless eating I do, the more utterly unremarkable my food habits become, the more anxious I am. Not depressed. I guess the depression was just what wormed its way to the surface. The fears and anxieties remained hidden, their voices muffled under a mountain of food.

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First things first. I had my hair cut yesterday to celebrate passing the 20-pound milestone, and I think I lost an extra pound. Awesome. Plus cute curliness. Please do take a moment, however, to appreciate the truth of my upper arms. Hello upper arms. How ’bout you hang around a while?

OK. So. I bought this belt in Jerusalem when I lived there in 1995. It didn’t really fit, even then (hmm… scanning the past few entries makes this “buying clothes that don’t really fit” scenario seem more like a habit than a mistake) but it was being made and sold by an adorable vendor in the Old City and this was the longest strip of leather he had.

Once or twice in the past 10 years, I have tried the belt on with no luck. Now that my jeans are getting too big, though, and I don’t fancy buying new ones until I have gone down a size or three, I dug it out to see if I could do anything with it.

It’s closer to fitting now than it has maybe ever been. If I suck in really hard (and don’t mind it digging into me when I sit in a place as radical as, say, a chair), I can almost buckle into the first hole. It’s my new clothing goal, though, to be able to wear it comfortably. Will update you with progress.