Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

Celebrating: 25 pounds gone

Grateful for: making it through 2 weeks of family visits plus a holiday and still moving in the right direction.

Starting weight: 354.6 pounds
Last week: 328.0
This week: 327.4
Change this week: -0.6
Total change: -27.2
Next milestone: 30 pounds gone

This week’s mantra: Steady as she goes.

When I decided to go back to Weight Watchers, I committed to myself that I would “shop around” for a meeting leader who wouldn’t make me want to gouge out my eyes with a bookmark and choke myself with a Points Finder ™. Since the WW “plan” is more of a guideline for me and not law, what I really am looking for in a meeting is:

1. Consistent, outward evidence of my commitment to health.
2. Accountability and support.
3. TOOLS TO CHANGE MY THINKING.

I’ve lived through more WW leaders than I care to admit. There was the matronly, blue-haired figure who played to the grandmothers in the crowd. She liked to read cheesy quotes from old, leather-bound books and share “funny jokes” that were forwarded “through the email” by her grandson away at college. Also, she cackled.

Beverly Hills soccer mom chugged fat-free, sugar-free iced lattes through a straw at every meeting. Her voice just grated on me and she laughed at all her own jokes. She had frosted hair and fake fingernails and liked to talk about shopping. I mean, she liked to talk about shopping a lot.

Then there was blue collar type, with what appeared to be a stage-two mullet. Actually, I liked her. She was ultra-real. But, she could get a little lost sometimes, and had a hard time keeping the group on focus. Also, her trademark was that she would hand out (terrible, awful) recipes each week. No, thanks.

Fortunately, the leader who runs the Saturday morning group near me seems to be a much better fit. Here are the things I like about her so far:

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I know from experience that it takes around 30-35 pounds before people start to notice that I’ve lost weight. So, it shouldn’t surprise me that several people have commented to me in the past week or so that I look like I have, well, en-small-ened myself a bit. No, it shouldn’t surprise me, but it does.

I guess, in part, it surprises me because the majority of this weight was lost without me even really noticing it. I don’t know how heavy I was at my highest — only that my black pants wouldn’t button, my bras dug where they should not dig, and my joints were as whiney as a 13-year-old brat with a trust fund.

I think it’s safe to estimate that my weight peaked around Christmas, which was the last time my family members saw me. I didn’t work out how to get on a scale that registered anything other than shame until around February. By that time, I was up to 161.2 kilos (yes, I weighed myself in the dialysis unit because it was the only monster scale I could find at the children’s hospital where I work) but now I’m beginning to think that I weighed even more in December.

Since it usually takes 30-35 pounds before people notice a change, I think we can safely assume that I had unwittingly ballooned up to well over 360 pounds. I’m still counting 354 pounds (yeah, 161 kilos) as my “high” but I do think I was higher.

The evidence:

• 2 weeks ago, half of my family came for a visit to Disneyland and, by association, me. My mother (uncharacteristically) noticed that I look “smaller.” Also, I notice that I can comfortably wear my denim jacket again.
  
• My boyfriend, on stumbling across my overall weight loss numbers last week, said, “Well, I had noticed you lost weight but I didn’t want to say anything.” There’s a history as to why I would try to lose weight without sharing so with my significant other… but while I was silently eschewing white bread, white rice, mashed potatoes, and pasta, he silently continued to be the person most intimately acquainted with me and my 161.2+ kilos.
  
• My older sister — blessed with the family’s best metabolism and smallest frame, a head and a half shorter and 200 pounds lighter than I — is visiting this weekend. She, too, commented that I look “thinner.” This means something, coming from my former rival, the only woman I personally know who wore a size-zero wedding dress, and the queen of the restricted compliment.

In fact, I don’t know that any of these people were complimenting — merely registering data: I have not just lost weight. I have lost a noticeable amount of weight.

Celebrating: 25 pounds gone

Starting weight: 354.6 pounds
Last week: 334.0
This week: 328.0
Change this week: -6.0
Total change: -26.6
Next milestone: 30 pounds gone

This week’s mantra: These are just numbers, in the grand scheme of things. These are not tools with which to beat myself up ten months down the line after my weight loss has slowed.

I went grocery shopping last weekend to stock the house with things other than take-out wrappers and chocolate chip cookies. In doing so, my goal was to have healthy meal options that were easy to prepare after a long day of work (oh, convenience, you are my downfall). I packed my shopping cart full of frozen, single-serve protein sources — many of which were vegetarian alternatives that I’ve never tried before but looked delicious.

Then, for the first few evenings, I took my hunger by the scruff, led him into the interrogation room and strapped him to a chair. I made myself dinner of a large vegetable serving and a portion of protein and ate it one bite at a time. Then I turned on the big spotlight, bent intimidatingly over that Hunger Monster, slanted my eyes and barked, “How big are you now!?” I did this with each bite until I was finished — until the Hunger Monster sang like a noir canary. It took a few tries to affirm that this large vegetable and single-serve portion of protein was enough to put the Hunger Monster to bed for the night. I felt good. I was listening to my body and attuning to my needs and I stopped when I was done.

Quick. Easy. Proteiny. Painless. I eat, and then I go about my evening. Novel.

Apparently, I should have read more carefully when I picked up the delicious (but not meat-substituting) Vegetable Masala Burger from Trader Joe’s. I mean, a potato-based patty with grill marks? I didn’t see that one coming.

Indeed, the masala burger contains no meat, soy, or other protein to speak of and the idea of grilling it seems to make as much sense as stringing a beaded necklace from of a bowl of mashed potatoes, but darn it if that masala burger wasn’t absolutely delicious. Flaky, potato-ey, packed with flavor and spices, and according to my good-cop/bad-cop act, just the right quantity of food to satisfy.

Or so I thought.

Apparently, processed/mashed potatoes are to my hunger what canned spinach is to Popeye. Just when I expected the Hunger Monster to be huddled in the corner of the interrogation room, crying himself to sleep, he roared to life and tripled in size. Hunger Hulk’s head hit the ceiling as he bellowed, “MOOOOORE POTAAAAATOOOOOO.”

In the projection room of my mind — the one where I envision my actions before they happen — I saw myself not only eating the other three so-called burgers in the next 20 minutes, but also I saw myself rationalizing it. The words, “oh, they’re only 120 calories” and “they’re vegetarian, or whatever” and “it’d take four of those patties to get as much protein as one actual burger” flickered on the screen. I was suddenly ravenous, not sated as I had been the previous nights. It was as though I had shoved that potato patty into a syringe and mainlined it to the vein in my arm. I HAD TO HAVE MORE.

I made it through the evening without taking another bite. I was okay with that, too, since I wasn’t actually hungry. My body just had such a reaction to the potato that… holy crap. I think I have to avoid them for a while.

14″ for Locks of Love.

If you feel like you’ve been treated poorly because of your weight, you’re probably not wrong. When my local morning news reported that two studies on weight discrimination had been recently published, I did a little quick googling.

One of the studies reported a dramatic increase in workplace weight discrimination in the past decade alone (a 66% increase, actually). The other suggested that weight discrimination is as high as either gender or race discrimination. At least one of the studies seems to have come from Yale. (More here, here and here.)

I’ve been extremely lucky, and have experienced a high level of success in my life in spite of my morbidly obese frame. In fact, I’d say that the only social domain where I have really felt the sting of size discrimination is in the dating scene. (YOU try searching on match.com for an average, 30-something-year-old male who is willing to date a “full-figured” woman.)

A little clicking around led me to a Harvard research tool called the Implicit Association Test. You can scroll down to the “Weight IAT” and then decide if it accurately reflects your implicit beliefs or not. I mean, being a Harvard tool doesn’t necessarily make it reliable, but it’s certainly not being hosted on MySpace.

If you take the test, please let me know how you feel about your results.

More information on weight discrimination at:

• NAAFA (of course)
  
• Tolerance.org (God bless ‘em)
  
• Council on Size and Weight Discrimination (hate to use a David and Goliath metaphor but…)
  
• Largesse.net (if you’re in the mood to get sue-y)
  
• National Organization for Women (love ‘em or hate ‘em)
  

As I’ve bumped health issues back to the forefront of my mind, I have also been trolling around through some of the old websites that I used to haunt. Some of our fellow bloggers have predictably fallen away, leaving only dead links and deleted sites. Others are still going strong, blogging day after day about what kind of sandwich they had for lunch. (I salute you!) Then there are those (obnoxious third-person voice alert) who have yo-yo’ed back and forth, made grand goals and statements at irregular intervals, and yet keep coming back to fight the good the fight.

If I can’t be a part of the second group, at least I’m not a part of the first!

I know it’s hypocritical, but as I troll through health-blogs old and new, the first thing I look for are progress pictures. Maybe it’s the artist in me, but I respond better to the visual than the mathematical or the verbal. I need to see how it looks, since I’ve never felt how it feels.

Perception. One woman proudly, smilingly, exuberantly posts her 250-pound progress photo. After 6 months of hard work, she is radiant with accomplishment. Another woman posts her 250-pound “before” photo, looking dour and depressed. Some, who are documenting a lifelong journey with shifting shape, may post both types of photos at the same weight.

Our perception defines reality.

Yesterday, as I browsed blogs during my sensible lunch, I clicked over to an infrequent poster whose blog I used to follow. She began her journey weighing about 100 pounds more than I and I was shocked to find a progress photo posted after she had lost over 200 pounds. The change is indeed dramatic. She still has pounds to go before her so-called goal weight, but I felt a twinge of envy. I admired her persistence and her lifestyle overhaul. Although her current weight is in “nightmare” territory for many of the women in America, and her BMI is still 5 points over “normal,” she truly looks great.

Scroll down a few entries, though, and the worry sets in.

She alludes to health problems, and cryptically attributes them to “this diet that I’m on.” I search back in my memory banks and remember that she was restricting her diet to approximately 1,000 calories a day. I’m no expert, but this is certainly lower than I can ever see myself going. Also, I remember that she was not incorporating any exercise into her regime. In fact, she stated that she felt weak and sluggish all the time.

I guess I just sort of riffed on this idea that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. It took her almost a year to get down to my current weight. And, I’m certainly not in despair over my current “numbers” (must be at a good point in my cycle, but I’m fairly content with my life all told) but I do want to get healthier.

The goal for me, though, is to achieve both health and weight loss at the same time: to have one without sacrificing the other.

The first person to ever mention weight-loss surgery to me was an endocrinologist. She was a lovely Jewish woman from New York and there we sat, staring at each other over my naked body, discussing my diagnosis of PCOS. 25 minutes earlier, instead of perusing the sticky gossip magazines, I had mentally calculated her age from the certificates and awards hanging in the waiting room. It was 1999 and she was easily in her 70’s. I remember thinking, “As a woman, in her time, she probably really had to fight for her education, training, and successes.” I admired it. Here was a woman who knew what she wanted and knew how to work toward it.

Maybe that’s why I found her words so jarring.

I was 24 years old and weighed 350-something pounds. I was a mountain of a person and, probably, an ideal candidate for the procedure. Yet, I knew nothing of the surgery, except that it felt like the Ugly But Easy Way Out. The shock of her words drove me to my first significant attempt at weight loss and I vowed that I would never — never — take such a dramatic step for what felt like sheer vanity.

I can’t explain, really, why so few people mentioned the surgery to me in the ensuing years. It wasn’t that I weighed any less — but I had become so hypersensitive about any mention of my weight that doctors and loved-ones alike simply tiptoed around the subject. From time to time, a general practitioner would say something about “drastic measures” or about needing a “major change” but that was it, until about 3 months ago.

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I may have mentioned this before, but in August of 2007, my therapist of 4+ years moved to a different state. She generously gave me several months of warning, and we spent those months dealing with my childish tantrums about her “leaving me.” Even though I’m a therapist, I do recognize that not everyone requires 4 years of therapy. But when I started therapy, I was more than just a “fixer-upper.” I was a bonafide disaster area. Her departure was untimely for me, yes, but I’m finally getting over the loss and can be genuinely happy that she has moved on to bigger and better things.

For my part, I’ve become a bigger and better thing. After she left, I was forced to face my roadblocks and challenges on my own — an exercise which left me stronger and more capable than ever — but I also quietly ate my way back up to over 350 pounds. In fact, I ate my way to almost 360 pounds, which is a new all-time high weight for me.

This morning, when I rejoined Weight Watchers, my “official” weight was 336 with a “naked” weight of 334. What this means is that I had quietly dropped the 20-or-so pounds that I used to fill up the therapist void, and had done so simply by trying a little harder. I ate smaller pieces of pie, and opted out of the white rice and pasta for a while. I took the stairs and parked at the end of the parking lot.

The end result is that my body has returned to its “stasis” weight. Years ago, I realized that without dramatic intervention — without major changes in diet or expenditure — my body rests comfortably around 335. I’ve frequently approached 300 (though never crossed it) and yet, when my steam runs out, my body bounces right back up to 335.

Still, having lost 20 pounds on my own, I feel an odd sense of momentum — in spite of being at my stasis spot.