Round

Well, my “think it over” phase was longer than I’d wanted and came with a small backslide (up 2 pounds), but has left me full of new ways to approach this weight-loss lifestyle with peace and enjoyment.

Sandra Ahten has a great approach to falling off the wagon - that our goal should not be to avoid those times altogether, but to have them be less frequent, less long and less deep. I think I’ve made progress on all fronts with this 10-day slipup. Other than a few noteworthy sessions with bread and butter or vanilla ice cream, the overeating wasn’t crazy, and the veggies, water and fruit were still present.

I’m not trying to lose for a wedding or specific date, and for me SANITY is much more important than rapid weight loss, so I’m not expecting big losses every week. But no accountability is dangerous too - very easy to gain.

That’s why I think that following my measurements would be a better choice for now. My real ultimate goal is not a number on a scale, it’s a size I want to wear, and sizes = inches, not pounds.

Ok, so here is today’s starting point (I’ve always weighed in on Mondays because it helps me focus over the weekends, so I’ll keep to Monday check-ins).

I’m measuring my belly because that’s my biggest problem area.

I’m measuring in centimeters because I live in France and couldn’t find a measuring tape in Imperial measurements. The added bonus to that is that I have no emotional attachments to numbers in centimeters that I do in inches (that stupid song with “36-24-36″ is popping into my head!). One added bonus - my tape measure is totally portable so it can come with me on vacation (which my scale cannot).

Since my belly is my focus and I know measurement to be inherently tricky to get right I am measuring 3 spots on my belly - my natural waist, the lower bulging part of my belly, and the upper part (biggest part between my natural waist and where my bra sits.

Here’s the starting point :

• Upper belly : 102
• Wasit : 99.5
• Lower belly : 120

After months and months of not exercising,  I have to say it feels really good to be a little sore today.

My legs are stiff, my back hurts a little in all kinds of places, my belly is tender - all of it clearly muscle pain, all of it related to the fact that I have finally broken the inert freeze I’ve been in.

Yesterday I went out for a long walk, exercise-style, and realized after a few minutes that I needed to pick up the pace from my normal one if I was to call it exercise - which I did, and was walking at a considerably faster clip than usual for an hour.

I am needing to get a move on right now to get to the pool this morning before it gets too crowded.  How’s that for a change of pace, usually my Sunday mornings are all about lazing around!

Still, I’m not pushing myself too hard - a little sore is fine and hard to avoid when you start moving, but I don’t want to be worse than this, so I’ll keep my pool time today to 30 minutes again to make sure I don’t overdo it.

Thanks so much for the cheers - I really appreciate them!

Thanks so much for the encouragement to just go to the pool and see what happened.

I went and it was fine. Not wonderful (it was kind of run-down looking) but just fine, and the water was nice. I swam for 30 minutes, did 26 lengths of the pool. I could have gone longer actually, but was starting to get tired and then the decision was taken out of my hands, they told everyone to get out of the water about 20 minutes before closing time (the gyms in Paris do this too). I wasn’t too disappointed, as I think I’ll go back to the pool this weekend.

It was pretty crowded when I got there, and the first person I saw was some teenage girl with a knockout figure in a bikini standing by the edge of the pool flirting with a bunch of well-built young men. Yikes. I had that moment of hesitation and then just said to myself to suck it up and get over it, and from then on it was fine. Me, big, huge, in my full-coverage swimsuit, with my cellulite and puffy body, bad legs and all, walking around not worrying about what anyone thought from the moment I left the changing room until I was fully dressed again about an hour later. In fact, at the pool it’s like it is at the beach - you see ALL KINDS of bodies. There are of course some beautiful ones, but in general that’s not the majority, and at the end of the day those less-than-perfect bodies are all doing something for themselves, and that in itself is a really good thing.

The water was pretty warm, and although it was crowded the lap swimming worked reasonably well (considering we’re talking about unruly French people here). It was less chaotic than I’d expected, although much more so than swimming laps in the US. They had sectioned off the pool into 3 areas - one for horsing around (kids mainly) another for laps, and a third section in the shallow end where they were teaching an aqua-aerobics class. (Bonus! I got to see what one of those was like, since that’s also something that’s been bubbling in the back of my mind).

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I’d been putting off going to the pool for a LONG time. I first looked up the pool and it’s hours on the web last September, and I went by to get the information sheet in January. So how did it stack up versus my expectations?

Well, it was cleaner than I expected, although the tiles etc are clearly old and worn. The unisex changing room turned out to be a non-event, as everyone changes in little changing booths, which have real doors on them. The floor is kinda gross, but I’d anticipated that and brought my flip-flops, so I went directly from shoes to flip flops and my feet never touched the floor. Showers are communal too, but everyone keeps on their suit. Sure, you don’t rub down and wash yourself the same way, but I did rinse off and even washed my hair. What’s provided is pretty minimal, but I had thought ahead and brought my own towel with me and swung by a sporting goods shop on my way to the pool to buy a swim cap (mandatory for both men and women, someone had told me about this, that’s how I knew to do it). I had a 2 euro coin with me for the locker (returned) although I’d also brought a padlock with a key on a safety pin.

I forgot to bring a comb, and if I start swimming regularly I’ll need to find a French equivalent of Ultra-Swim shampoo. And probably the waterproof ear plug things, I tend to get ear infections when I swim…

All in all, I am SUPER PROUD OF MYSELF for going. I enjoyed it and can see myself working swimming into my life from time to time. I’d like to go back over the weekend to get another dose.

I have been full of excuses lately.

Some are legitimate, some are not, but all, in the end, are just excuses.

I have been really sad these past few weeks as the due date for the pregnancy I lost last Fall came and went, with me still not pregnant despite a lot of efforts, and now getting pumped up with hormones that will hopefully turn the situation around. The hormones add bloating, pounds and emotions, along with some stress.

During times of stress I still have the reflex to turn to my dear old friends fat, flour and sugar and whatever other guests they might add to the mix to make it a real rockin’ party. We’ve been partying heavily recently, and I’ve really been stuck in a bad cycle.

I have decided to focus my efforts for the next few weeks on gentle but regular exercise. I’ve been feeling like a big slug for a long time now and with summer here now I want to be able to do things like light hiking, and I feel like I won’t even make it though that.

Years and years ago I liked swimming for exercise - I did it several times a week for several months, but then moved and never again was in a gym w a pool. I have rarely gone to a pool for exercise since that time, but I’d really like to try going back to that. I’m not sure how I’ll like the public pool system here in Paris - will it be dirty and gross? Will the communal showers freak me out too much? Will it be a hassle with the limited hours? Will the logistics work with my life (their limited hours vs my available hours)? I’ve been thinking about swimming for about 10 months now (since last Sept when my doctor gave me the okay for that after back surgery) but all of these questions (plus the lack of motivation!) kept me from going. Well, I won’t have the answers if I don’t try it, so I will go this weekend.

In the meantime, most of my exercise will be concentrated around walking and maybe using my dust collector elliptical machine that I have at home.

Also, due to the hormonally-induced extra bloating (and the very probably weight regain) I’ve decided to NOT track my weight for the next few weeks, but instead to track my waist measurement. I clearly need accountability but am afraid that using the scale right now will be counter-productive. In addition, the only tape measure I could find is in centimeters, which is a meaningless measure to me (meaning - no emotions attached to certain numbers) so I figure it’s a great place to start. I’ll measure every Monday, and post them on the “progress” page. I’m guessing I’ll add the scale back at some point too…

I guess it was the +4 pounds on the scale that did me in.  I’m struggling again, not very motivated, not doing a very good job, not tracking…

I also need to come up with a plan for the summer, and nothing seems right to me.  I don’t know what I’ll do.  I think I’m finally going to get back to exercising, it really made me feel better about myself when I did it, and I feel like a huge slug now NOT doing any.  But need to figure out what and how.

I’m taking this week as a pause week to figure out how to proceed for the next few months - promise I’ll have a plan in place on Monday.

I have some personal circumstances that are complicating things right now, adding stress and probably a few pounds on the scale, so I’m also trying to be gentle with myself and forgiving of the number on the scale.  Keeping it low-stress is a key, but I also need to be able to keep my weight from increasing, and I’d REALLY like to get back down under 200 by the end of the summer at least.

I ran across this quote this morning and it seemed to be just what I needed to hear…

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”

-Carl Bard

This is not good - I’m up FOUR pounds.

I didn’t weigh in last Monday because we were out of town celebrating our anniversary and I didn’t want the pressure of a Monday weigh-in to cut into the pleasure of the weekend.

I then headed into a week that was difficult, with tons of travel and zero meals at home until Friday night (which was planned as a dinner out too, but at the last minute we decided to eat in). I also had none of the healthy staples in the fridge (fruit, veggies, yogurt, etc) and was traveling and running around from meeting to meeting all week. Somewhere later in the week I lost momentum and stopped doing the daily planning and recording sheets, and this weekend ate less-than-ideally.

Still, FOUR POUNDS GAINED? I ate reasonably most of the time and made a LOT of good choices. I knew I hadn’t eaten consistently at diet-level so I was expecting to see a small gain, but FOUR POUNDS is pretty ridiculous.

Well, I’m back at it, nose to the grindstone this week…

Well, I did my weekly wrap-up assessment that usually precedes a weigh-in, and all I can say is YIKES! Last week was hard, and not only did I miss a lot of my goals, most of the solid forward steps I’ve made in recent weeks went AWOL on me.  On the goals check in :    

We had a WONDERFUL anniversary weekend in the Champagne region of France. We went to a champagne tasting at Françoise Bedel et Fils on Saturday which was incredible - we discovered a complexity level in champagne that I didn’t even know existed. (We also heard all about bio-dynamic agriculture which adds new-age stuff to organic farming — it’s pretty out there!).

We had a lot of wonderful meals, most especially at the wonderful Chateau Les Crayères where we came for our wedding night a year ago. Like last year, we were blown away by the excellence of the cuisine (and this year I was really able to appreciate it). I am still re-living the various lobster dishes, the incredible stuffed vegetables from last night, an amazing raspberry dessert, and at least 4 types of champagne, of which the Cristal from Roederer will probably forever sing in my heart. Pure perfection.

Needless to say, it was NOT a diet weekend, not by a longshot. Luckily, the indulgences were all really worth it, and I’m back on track now.

In my experience there are three ways to eat :

• For sustenance only
• With great enjoyment
• On autopilot

Obviously, being overweight is a signal that I am not someone who eats only for sustenance. A few times in my life I have eaten like this however (when sick mainly, but for a few weeks when maniacally dieting) - where eating becomes a task like brushing your teeth - something you have to do that you don’t particularly enjoy. Like I said, this isn’t really my problem (nor is it likely to be yours if you’re reading weight-loss blogs…)

The second category of enjoying my food can claim some wonderful memories and great pleasures, but is probably responsible for very little of my excess weight — because when you are really enjoying something you experience it fully and that pleasure experience is usually not coupled with the need to “fill up” and so you can have smaller portions and be quite satisfied (as almost all gourmet restaurant experiences can attest). Unfortunately, I am much more often eating on autopilot and not really experiencing my food. I know at the end of last year when I was working with Dr Hope I had a lot of homework on this topic and it was really hard but really eye-opening. Incorporating this appreciation of what I eat on a daily basis is one of my long-term goals.

The final category, “eating on autopilot” is without a doubt responsible for 99% of my excess weight. Why do we spend so much time eating on autopilot - munching, slurping, sipping, etc without really paying attention to the tastes, textures and pleasure in our food? Fast food in the car, eating anything in front of the TV or computer, any time we eat and multitask — all signs we aren’t paying attention to what we’re eating. I’ve been known to plow through impressive quantities of food because I’m enjoying the rhythm of eating.

I recently saw a doctor comment on obesity who said “I really don’t think that obese people allow themselves to experience hunger… obese people really don’t get into the taste, texture, and sensations when eating food. Furthermore, they don’t even like the foods that they overeat, and they don’t pay attention to and are not conscious of what they are eating most of the time.”

The comment hit pretty close to home for me…