Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

The unheralded arrival of my period this week, a full 8 days late, and the coinciding drop of 3+ pounds from my daily weight, have reminded me of some questions and thoughts that I’ve had for a long time regarding weight loss and gender.

I mean, I find it kind of amazing that, for 10 (or more, in this case) days of the month, my body is totally and utterly hijacked by a complex biological function. This function is beautiful, miraculous, ancient, mysterious, feminine, tidal, and blah blah blah… but the fact is that for a huge chunk of my life, it doesn’t matter what I eat. It doesn’t matter how much I do (or do not) exercise. No amount of drinking water, counting calories, or eschewing refined flours can budge the scale downward. Rather, I gain weight steadily. Sigh. Step off the scale. Keep on trucking.

Then, at the end of the jolt, the pounds drop off. Equally quickly. Sometimes (depending on how well I have fended off cravings), the scale dips slightly lower than it dipped before my period sent out its advance scouts. Sometimes not. Then, I get about 3 good weeks of eating right, exercising, and seeing some progress before the Hormones attack again.

What I’m trying to say is that the better I get to know my body and what happens to it from day to day, the more aggrivated I get by the traditional “eat less, move more” mythology. I don’t think it works that way for women — it certainly doesn’t seem to for me. I think it is a construct of the male-dominated collective, and the feminist in me snarls back from her dark corner.

As we know, the tradition of Western Medicine was largely founded and perpetuated by Old White Guys. These guys found a formula (and oh, how Old White Guys love formulas!) for weight loss: expend more energy than you consume. What a formula! It is as simple as it is obvious! It’s practically a couplet, and might as well rhyme for how it is memorized by school chlidren and housewives: Eat Less; Move More. For Old White Guys, it works perfectly. Almost every time.

The problem I keep coming back to is this: beyond the obvious accoutrements, men’s and women’s bodies are so different. We have different plumbing, chemicals, hormones, chromosomes. We have different functions, really. Purposes. Roles. People generally accept that, in general, even our brains are built differently, with complementary learning styles and strengths. The expectation that a simple weight loss equation could work so simply for both genders is really kind of ludicrous. To get depressed, disappointed, or to give up because our bodies aren’t responding like good little robots is natural, maybe, but unenlightened.

I’m thinking of examples from my real- and internet-lives that illustrate this well. How about Fred and Robin? I used to read both of their blogs religiously. I became discouraged, however, when it was clear that they were living similar lifestyles, yet Fred was losing weight and Robin wasn’t. Robin was exercising daily, taking 5-plus-mile walks, routinely recording what she ate, trying different programs, etc. They each indulged in one “free day” per week. And yet, Robin’s weight stalled. It soon became painful to read. She’d try new things. She’d increase her exercise. She’d decrease her intake. She’d give up the fight for a while and then she’d come back. She went to the doctor. She got sick, and got well. She tried thyroid meds and merrily bitched along. She continued to live her life, yes, but you couldn’t help but wonder — how hard was it to crawl in bed every night with someone who seemed to just eat less and move more?¹ Now, she is post-op and has lost half her body weight, but without the surgery, no amount of genuinely Eating Less and Moving More worked for her. It worked like a charm for her husband, though.

So, we hobble along. Some of us hobble along better than others, but even our big heroines (I mean, have you ever seen PastaQueen’s chart? Maintain, maintain, maintain, LOSE. Maintain, maintain, maintain, LOSE.) don’t seem to be falling into the “simple math” category. I’m thinking of certain other bloggers (Marla, Debbi, and others…) who are doing everything “right” and their bodies refuse to release weight. Maybe there are examples of men who have the same struggle, but I haven’t seen them.

For me, the math is somewhat more complicated. I have PCOS, and have for over 15 years. My body’s hormones, insulin, and other chemicals are all out of whack and I have to respect that, if I intend to live more healthily and build fitness. I see so many women experience a little hiccup in the system, set goals beyond their control and not reach them, and go through a period of maintenance or even gain. Often, women get frustrated, give up, and blame themselves for not being able to do the simple math. We eat less and move more, and we don’t always lose weight. Something must be fundamentally wrong with us, right?

Generally, we act as though our bodies should function as some sort of calorie bank — we want to make deposits and withdrawals and be able to balance the checkbook at the end of the month. All I’m saying is, maybe it doesn’t always work that way, in spite of what the Old White Guys say.

I, for my part, am going to give in to the wonderful, ancient, mysterious experience of living in a body made up of estrogen and ovaries and sugar and spice. I’m going to just keep nurturing myself and stop expecting my body to have read all of the textbooks. I’m going to fault the system, instead of myself, when my body doesn’t comply with Their rules. I’ve always been a bit of a rebel, why shouldn’t my body, too?

1. Note: I’m sure Robin would be the first to tell you, in her characteristically and wonderfully brash and honest way, that it was just fine and dandy thankyouverymuch… I’m mostly just talking about my own personal thoughts and reactions here. I’d have been pissed. [↩]

Meanwhile, after wishing for some happy medium between the super salty “dry roasted” almonds available for purchase, and the bland-but-meaty raw alternative, I found this recipe in my Eating Well magazine. Over the weekend, I made a version of delicious spiced almonds which is only very loosely based on that recipe. What can I say? A girl doesn’t always have specialty paprika and imported Spanish Almonds on hand. Still, I think they turned out well.

I added lime juice to the egg whites (a coating liquid) and TrueLime crystals to the spices to give the nuts a more citrusy, lime-and-chile flavor. Then I used chile powder, cumin, and a bit of oregano along with my fancy, crushed sea salt. Then I cut out almost all of the brown sugar to make the recipe boyfriend-friendly. Next time, more chile and less cumin, but they were delicious overall, light, and super easy.

It’s funny how suddenly the store-bought version of flavored almonds tastes, well, sorta stale when you make some from scratch.

Starting weight: 335.8
Last week: 313.8
This week: 313.5
Change this week: -0.3
Overall change: -22.3
Next milestone: 25 pounds gone

These past few weeks, I am considering myself lucky with maintaining my weight, give or take a pound, each week. This is not something that I anticipate will go on forever, but it is important to me for now to consider what capital-H Health means, and to be flexible as I go through some health and employment challenges.

Meanwhile, we took a poll and survey says that my period (now one week late) will arrive tomorrow. Clap your hands if you believe in fairies.

My psychiatrist friend is fond of musing, “Mal likes little things, like purses and dogs.”

Well, who can blame me?

I like to counter his wiley, psychological ways by stating that I’m living out an unfulfilled fantasy of being tiny myself. An as yet unfulfilled fantasy. But, I digress.

Last year, when I was getting really serious about packing my lunch for work, I found some websites about bento boxes. Apparently¹ there is a tradition of Japanese mothers carefully packing compact lunches for their children, with cute little touches and flourishes to encourage their healthy eating. Like any good idea, this has been seized on by marketers and now there is a whole industry built up around “cute foods” with accessories and characters and so forth.

Still, a white, adult woman can find some use in the idea, and I bought a few grown-up boxes from J-list (which ships from Japan, so you have to be patient) and a few Ebay stores (most of them ship from the states) and began dutifully packing a small, healthful, interesting lunch every day. I got a lot of inspiration from other websites, bento bloggers² and the flickr.com bento group.

My experience with packing bentos is that it was a really great way to impose portion control, while still being interested in what I was eating. I did not create faces on my food with strips of cheese or use Japanese condiments just because I was using a Japanese tradition (as many bento-ers do, to make their food feel more “cute” in a Hello Kitty way), but I truly enjoyed the time I took each morning to pack lunch, and the challenge of maximizing nutrition, health, and satiety in small packages.

Just like purses and dogs.

This week, I am experiencing a return to bento. My first day, I did so with just plain kitchen containers, so you could see that you don’t have to have a fancy Japanese box to start in on the fun. Believe it or not, I managed to get lunch and THREE snacks into these containers. The larger container is a Ziploc disposable deal that I think is built for packing a sandwich and a few sides. It’s got little compartments, though, so I love it. (Little compartments! So cute!)

Here’s what I did:

1. Tuna salad on a bed of lettuce with sliced grape tomatoes. (Little tomatoes! So cute!) The tuna is one 3-oz can of water-packed tuna, about 3 tbsp of plain yogurt, 1 tbsp of fat-free mayo, and a handful of black beans tossed in for good measure.
2. Here you can see little packets of lemon juice, salt, and pepper that I bought from Minimus.biz when I was really into bento. (Little packets! So cute!) I use these on the tuna salad to make it more juicy and appetizing without wilting the lettuce throughout the day.
3. A Weight Watchers carrot cake. I don’t consider this a dessert, since I don’t find them very enjoyable, but I have some that I want to get rid of.
4. Under the cake, there is a layer of almonds — one ounce worth — which provides yet another snack.
5. A mid-day break of crackers and Laughing Cow cheese (Little cheese!) is perfect when paired with…
6. Grapes. Eating this snack mid-day feels all fancy, like a wine and cheese party (even though I don’t drink wine).
7. Finally, my favorite standby snack these days is a sliced apple with a tablespoon of all-natural style (yes, the kind you have to stir), reduced fat peanut butter. I find that this snack totally fills me up, provides some protein and good fat, and fiber to keep me going.³

I think I’ll be trying to incorporate more bento-ing into my plans, and dig out my old, cute bento boxes and little tiny condiment bottles and colorful muffin cups and… and… and…

Let’s finish off this cute entry about cute things with one more tribute to the ultimate cute.

That will be all. Carry on, soldiers.

1. I am not Japanese, nor do I know anything about Japanese culture, so I am only reporting hearsay and what I have read on the InterWeb. Do with it what you will. [↩]
2. Seems like just about any weird obsession has its own blogger following these days… [↩]
3. Heh. I just realized how you might read that. OH WELL. [↩]

Today I need to focus on the positive — on progress that I’ve made. Something happy. Something good.

Since I bought the awesome Overblown Scale, I have a bit overwhelmed by the ridiculous amount of information that is supposedly provided by the Innerscan™ Technology. Each morning, I dutifully fill in the cells on my fancy spreadsheet to record the data. Then, I walk away and try to forget it.

One of the things that the scale claims to measure is Visceral Body Fat. Whether you believe that this type of thing can be measured by a bathroom scale or not, you have to agree with the nation’s leading cardiologists that visceral body fat is particularly dangerous to your health.

Certain measurements on the Overblown Scale stay pretty much the same from day to day, so I don’t ask too many questions or make too much of a fuss about those. However, somewhere in the past few weeks, I have slowly transitioned from measuring 13 for visceral body fat, to measuring 12.

This morning I looked up what it meant. Here’s what I found:

What is Visceral Fat Rating?
Visceral fat is the fat that is in the internal abdominal cavity, surrounding the vital organs in the trunk (abdominal) area. Research shows that even if your weight and body fat remain constant, as you get older the distribution of fat changes and is more likely to shift to the trunk area… Ensuring you have healthy levels of visceral fat may reduce the risk of certain diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and the onset of type-2 diabetes.

Rating from 0-12
Indicates you have a healthy level of visceral fat. Continue monitoring your rating to ensure that it stays within the healthy range.

Rating from 13-59
Indicates you have an excess level of visceral fat. Consider making changes in your lifestyle, possibly through diet changes or increasing exercise.

Obviously, if the ratings go up to 59 and, for the past 2 months, I have consistently scored 13, I never had a huge problem with visceral fat. But, with all these changes, I have now decreased my score by one point and gone from the low end of the “danger” range to the high end of the “acceptable” range.

Well, it may be small but I’ll take it. It’s good news and I need good news today.

PS: Just for today, I will not eat a sugary dessert. Again.

What could be more boring than reading someone else’s dreams? I mean, I’m a therapist, and I’m pretty good at dream interpretation, but still. Nothing could be more soporific than reading a dream.

Does that mean I won’t bother typing out last night’s imagery? No it does not. It just means that I’ll summarize it into four tidy sentences.

I was shopping at Lane Bryant. (Hiss.) None of the clothes fit right, and I kept telling myself that I should hold off on buying new clothes for a few months because I’d be smaller. Then, in the back corner, I found that they were selling cookies, cakes, brownies, pies, and other treats. Instead of buying clothes, I bought the treats and told the salesclerk that I didn’t care if it meant that I couldn’t buy the new clothes after all.

I guess the message that my brain is trying to send me is that I can’t have it both ways forever. I want to be better to my body, but I also want to be able to soothe it the old fashioned way — something with a rich chocolatey sauce and exotic nuts will usually do the trick, but in the end it will not help me achieve my purpose. I can still have the occasional treat, yes, but the daily treat game should probably cease for now. I’m done throwing my little pity party and I don’t need the chocolate crepes or waffle cones anymore.

Well, that’s one interpretation. It could also be that Lane Bryant will soon begin to sell cookies in order to keep us all shopping there ad infinitum. As marketing ploys go, it’s a bit ham-handed but it essentially serves the purpose. I digress.

Let’s just say that the first interpretation is more true. (If it’s not more true, it is at least more useful.) I know from experience that the longer I go without sugary desserts, the less I want one. This is what I keep telling myself as I slog through Day One: Dessert-less. Just for today, I will not eat dessert.

Starting weight: 335.8
Last week: 312.7
This week: 313.7
Change this week: +1.0
Overall change: -22.1
Next milestone: 25 pounds gone

It’s official. I have posted my first gain of the year. No one will be too surprised by this, though — not only is it the week my period is supposed to start, but I have eaten out a lot. I have also eaten for comfort, as work continues to get more stressful and, per Friday’s sad announcement, there is no easy end in sight.

Nothing spurs me to action like disappointment, though. Don’t you worry about a thing. I have a Plan. The Plan has bullet points and a decimal hierarchy. It includes Three Big Things and is called: How to Reduce my Overall Stress and Live a Better Life Today.

I love this Plan.

Two more buds have bloomed on the late-blooming orchid.

In other news which flies in the face of things I have been trying to think and do recently, my doctor told me this week that he thinks I am losing weight too slowly.

Excuse?

I had scheduled the appointment after reading about Hilly’s diagnosis of Pseudotumor Cerebri, because I experience many matching symptoms and I wanted my doctor to consider the possibility that my near-daily headaches, whooshing tinnitus, vision abnormalities, and vertigo/balance issues may all be related. Plus, it had been a while since he tried to sell me something or push a prescription which neither of us thinks I need so, you know, I was missing him.

First, he dismissed my complaint of “4-6 headaches per week” with a wave of his hand. “That’s not so uncommon,” he mumbled, and then made a mark on my chart. I imagined it to say, Lame fat girl imagines symptoms. Annoying. Without looking up, he said, “It’s probably just your high blood pressure.”

I sighed a little. “I don’t have high blood pressure,” I countered. That’s when he looked up at me, scanned my bulky, obese frame from tip to toe, and said, “You don’t?”

He didn’t say it with surprise or shock. He wasn’t asking a sincere question. He didn’t sound as though I had given him new information — information which, incidentally, he could have obtained through a quick review of the chart in his lap. He said sarcastically, as though he were dealing with a “slow learner” or trying to make a sardonic point.

I kept my cool, though. I didn’t take it personally, start crying, or grow indignant as I have with doctors in the past. Instead, I just held out my right arm as an invitation.

Generally people are surprised at how “good” my blood pressure readings are, given the fact that I am routinely 150 pounds overweight and exercise in spurts. Usually it hovers around 127/88. This week, as the doctor put down his stethoscope and rrrrrrrrripped open the velcro cuff, he hmmphed. “Actually, it’s quite low.” 110/65.

So, I got a referral to a neurologist and an opthamologist and the other thing I anticipated — a lecture about my weight.

He is pleased that my weight is trending down. That it continues to trend down. That it has done nothing but trend down since I first began seeing him last year. In the year before I met him, apparently he lost around 60 pounds. He did this in a very quick and manly way, by exercising 6 days a week and monitoring his ketosis.

“At your weight, you should easily be able to drop 2 pounds a week, if you just hit ketosis and stay there.”

Uh huh.

He continued, “If you do a lot of on-again/off-again dieting, one day on and the other day off, that could also lead to headaches.”

“But,” I countered calmly, “I’m not really doing that. I’m just trying to lose weight in a way that I think I can maintain.”

At this, he looked me up and down again, slowly, with a tiny little smack of disdain.

“Even if it takes you forever?”

Yes. Even if it takes me forever.

This morning, I had a call from the potential new employer with the perfect job. It was not a “Come on in for a second interview” call, as I had hoped, but rather an “Our Training Director has decided to change the requirements for that new job and, because you’re not yet licensed, you no longer fit our requirements and so we can’t offer you a job at this time” call.

I don’t feel so badly, because I know (as with all good breakups) that it wasn’t me, it was them. The director and the other potential supervisor repeatedly expressed sadness, stating over and over again how much they liked me and how well they thought I’d fit into the team. One even said that she was excited after my interview because hiring me (specifically me) would have solved a significant problem that they are currently having.

I know that they aren’t bullshitting me. I know because of the length of their messages, the regret in their voices, and their plea that I keep them in mind for the time, 3 years in the future, when I will qualify for employment under the new requirements. I also know because of the friends I have who already work there and have overheard lunchroom talk about me that they are being genuine. I know that this rejection isn’t about me.

But, it still sort of sucks. I have already had to curb 2 disappointment binges about it. Fortunately, I have curbed them. My period should start tomorrow. I feel that it will give me a clean slate in the weight loss department.

A small orchid garden sits above my kitchen sink, with half-a-dozen potted gifts from clients and friends. After all, who doesn’t love Trader Joe’s floral department for a last-minute present? The collection I’ve assembled is pretty broad in terms of color, size, and species — especially since I got them all for free.

Most of them bloomed last year, and have just been dwelling happily, if dormantly, in their sunny window sill. They accept their weekly watering, and I try to fend off the ant colony invasions as they come. They are quiet. They are not showy. Without flowers, they are a bit of an eyesore with their long scraggly leaves and lumpy, bumpy root systems.

About two months ago, one of the more exotic and strange orchids in my collection sent out a shoot covered in buds. It’d been nearly a year since the countertop garden had sported any flowers, so we were all excited to see the branch come to life. It reached tall — over 2 feet high and straight up in the air — and was soon peppered with 17 buds just ready to burst.

Within two weeks, the buds exploded into a cascade of fairy dresses, and I don’t think it’d be too dramatic to say that it made that corner of the kitchen very magical indeed. I gazed at them as I washed the dishes. I tilted the pot to and fro to get the best view of the blooms from day to day. And then, one by one, within the span of about 10 days, the flowers all…

Well…

They all died. Just like that — they burst into being, and then burned out just as quickly. The stems refused to shake themselves loose. In the end, I had to snip off the glorious stem at the base and put the whole plant back into hibernation until next February.

At the same time, another plant in the back corner of the shelf was quietly sending out its own growth. The nursery on the smaller, squatter plant drew less attention, and it developed slowly. It was so gradual, in fact, that I didn’t notice the new stem until its buds began to form. One morning, while doing the dishes and bemoaning the fate of our last 3 or 4 flashy flowers, I noticed the new branch and pulled the pot toward the sink. The span was much smaller, reaching only 8 or so inches long and thrusting out horizontally. It was much more unassuming than the first.

For its size, the plant appeared overladen with life. I counted carefully — 17 buds. An identical crop to its flashy cousin. Four baby arms branched off from the main stem, extending its growing potential front-to-back and side-to-side. Each of the offshoots birthed 2 or 3 buds as well, compactly spaced to conserve energy and share resources. I watched the new plant, and waited.

And, I waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally, weeks later, the first buds swelled with promise. I mentioned it to people in passing, expecting the same dramatic blooming as the speckled orchid — fast, furious, and fatal. Instead, I waited. And waited.

One day, the largest of the buds opened up its little mouth, as if to murmur an unceremonious “Huh.” The next night, I noticed that a petal — one little hand — was beginning to unfold. Would you believe that it was nearly a week before the entire bloom had opened and could collect sun for its sisters? And so it went, painfully, ploddingly…

…perfectly.

We get a new bloom now once a week or so. Some of the flowers are hidden, packed in tightly as they are, and they contribute more to an overall effect than the first orchid did. That orchid was a chorus of soloists, each vying for attention and straining for the sky. These flowers, though, perform as a choir — a billowy stretch of petals and stamens that harmonizes as a whole. The flowers are hardy, enduring, and strong. They will last up to two or three months, if I tend them well, and when they finally decide that they are done, they will shrivel only a little — like a sigh — and fall asleep.

This is a good reminder to me, as I reach the third month of these lifestyle changes and begin to lose stamina and enthusiasm. Generally, I prefer to take my time and patiently wait for an end product which will be satisfying, if not dramatic. Showy and flashy changes are enticing, but I don’t need to drop 5, 8, or 12 pounds a week. I need to learn to nurture and nourish myself in a healthy, sane way. I need to make changes that will last, not flame out and die within the first few weeks.

Yes, I could cut more calories. I could add in a radical exercise regimen and drink “meal shakes” and subsist on saltine crackers and, yes, that would help me lose weight faster. I might get more attention. I might have all sorts of crises of identity and health as well.

But, as it turns out, the kinds of changes that work for me are small, incremental, gradual, and painfully slow. They may occur without anyone noticing at all. But quietly, surely, they are building a new me. They are incubating new growth. They will be, I believe, more lasting in the end.