Round

It’s been a LONG time since I’ve looked at fashion magazines.  When I was growing up my mom subscribed to Vogue and Bazaar, and whenever I was sick it was always OJ, chicken soup and mom bringing in armloads of magazines.  When much younger I used to read Glamour and Cosmo (more general than fashion actually) and over the years that stopped and then during hard-core weight loss phases I’d read Shape and Fitness and Self (that one I do like).

I was stuck at the airport this week for a delayed flight and picked up a few magazines in the lounge, including Vogue, Bazaar and French Elle.  You know what?  They totally suck.  It is so focused on extremely expensive clothes on extremely skinny women who seem to have extremely boring lives to devote so much time and thought into their appearance and ‘the latest trends’.  It was really easy to see a direct correlation between reading these kinds of magazines and low self esteem and high credit card debt.  The magazines must be 80% ads.

As a pragmatic girl the fluff and sparkle just bewilders me.  As a fat woman I just cant relate to skinny jeans and most of the “trends”.  In today’s economy the prices just seem revolting.  I make a decent living and frankly I can afford pretty much what I want, but I just don’t see the point in spending 1200$ on a sweater.

I do still have good moments with Self magazine from time to time, and I have sometimes found Cosmo to still make me smile when I’m home sick (confesssions! sex talk!).  In truth my magazine buying these past few years is mainly art stuff or cooking or news (Economist, Time etc).  I don’t even count the professional journals among all this…

Anyway, although I though flipping through these mags might spark more of a desire to lose weight, I just found them from another universe — and strongly capable of making me lose many IQ points (and a lot of self-esteem) if I continued reading…

Well I am not managing to get myself motivated enough to do anything about my weight for more than a few days in a row.  I am still frighteningly heavy (although I’m still down a few from the brush with the SCARY number).

I dont think counting calories is going to work right now (no matter how cool my iphone is).  It’s just too much a reminder of stress for me.  I do, however, think that awareness and pleasure are going to be keys.  Today at lunch I had a hamburger and fries (very infrequent for me) and felt bloated and yucky all afternoon.  I didn’t even enjoy the burger much, it was overcooked, and the fries were too salty (and the restaurant too stingy with the ketchup!).  I had a tomato juice at the airport and enjoyed it tremendously.  I am capable of knowing which foods and tastes are what I want and which are not (and then not just eating because it’s in front of me). 

I’ve eaten much too much starch thsese last days and I’d really like to inhale a bunch of fruits and vegetables (but on the road that’s pretty tough). 

The good news is that I’m really getting fed up with being this fat.  That usually means real action is coming.  I am also aware that I really will need some clothes at this current size to make it through winter, and I hate, HATE, HATE shopping for fat clothes in France.   I really want this to be the last time.  I promise to blog about how awful the experience will be, even though it will be very painful to do so. 

I definitely took a few baby steps last week.  I also took some side steps and a few backwards steps, but overall my steps are more moving towards where I want to go than where I’ve been concerning my weight.

The scale showed some drop vs last week, enough to be encouraging considering the number of indulgences from the weekend with the in-laws.

I haven’t been keeping up with the food diary although in part that’s due to some good habits coming in and a general idea of what I’m doing well vs not well.  Still a lot of room for improvement, but I’ve mainly chosen cereal for breakfast even when faced with much more tempting fare, ditto for coffee breaks at meetings choosing fruit, and generally reasonable lunches.  Dinner could probably use some improvement in the future, especially if I can get out of the munching-on-bread habit.

Oh, and exercise. It would be really nice to be able to get back to even infrequent but regular exercise.  Not sure when I can work that in, but thinking about it is often a first start.

I’m traveling a fair amount right now (currently in Brussels, then away for the weekend).

My sources of stress are sort of working themselves out.

For those who’ve been following me for a while, you might remember a few times I’ve talked about my current job as something I am tolerating but not loving.  I’ve been with this company for a while now (about 15 years) but took a downgrade cross-training job in sales management when I went to a local French contract because my boss and the managing director told me it was a necessary career move.  It was a move that I didn’t really want to make and a job that I knew would be a bad fit to my personality and skill set.  But I sucked it up and I’ve been at it for 18 months.  This year I’ve also had an assignment to a special task force in my company that is much closer to my interests and real skill set, and things these past few months have been tough because the time needs of the task force has been in conflict with my day job.  Well, things finally got to the boiling point this week, and the managing director decided to put me full time on the task force job, so in a few weeks I’ll be out of the sales management position.  It’s a good thing for my resume and good for my head (to be back in a place that I really enjoy and feel I can really contribute my best).  Lifestyle wise it won’t be so easy, as the task force will require a lot of travel for a while, but at least the tug-of-war and need to work around the clock should stop.

The challenge will be in working out a way to keep up with trying for a baby with a job that will require travel.  Not sure how that will sit with my new bosses, but my priorities are crystal clear, so it’s not a question of IF I’ll prioritize that way, just a question of working out HOW that will play in the real world.  DH and I have talked quite a bit, and we’re both okay with me traveling until pregnant, but then I’ll need to push my way back into the local organisation.  Since I don’t know how long it will take to get pregnant, and since the task force needs are really heavy right now and into the next 6 months, I figure it’s a good gamble both for me and for the company.  Other than saying I’ll need some extra non-travel days, I don’t plan on telling anyone what we’re trying for…

This whole job thing has been on my mind more than I’d like to admit these past several months, so it was a big relief Friday to have a clear path forward.  Now I’ll pretty much be back to needing to eat healthy on the road - something I did really successfully in 2002.

This weekend’s eating? Well, dessert three times… But not too bad choices other than that. We’ll let it go, and focus on this week.

I have had a good few days.  I have eaten normally, I kept track of my calories (for the most part).  I am feeling like I’m back in control (or heading there anyway).

I am deeply, severely committed to doing this managing my weight ( or at least stopping the gain at this point) thing in a way that is low stress.  I have enough stress in my life without adding dieting to it, but I think I can start to draw on all these many years of dieting and weight watching (even when not losing) and take some of what works, turn it lower-stress, and throw out the rest.  Well, that’s my hope.

Some of what has worked in the past for me is keeping a food diary because it keeps me more aware of what I’m eating, and just the act of writing it down makes me make better choices.  So right now, I’m doing it zen.  That is, I do keep the diary but I don’t do anything with it, and I won’t keep old data.  Yesterday I didn’t input dinner because it didn’t matter.  I am kind of pushed this way by the software I’m using, which tells me my calorie limit (and can’t be changed by the user). Normally this would stress me out, but since I can’t change it, I’m just rolling with it, since I consider 1000 calories a day to be neither healthy nor desirable for me.  So knowing I’ll be going over every day by at least 500 cals (and probably more) makes me look at it just as a recorder of my day to keep me on track, help me see if I’m low in dairy etc.  It’s working for me, instead of the other way around — cool and liberating.

And then yesterday’s challenge.  That beautiful 3 chocolate cake in the picture? From one of the top bakeries in Paris, Dalloyau.  Brought into a meeting yesterday to celebrate a dear colleague’s birthday.  And I had a peice, with total enjoyment and no guilt. (Thank you Dr Hope!)  No worries about being “off” a diet, not wondering if this will send me into a tailspin, etc.  I took a small peice (and a chess peice, they’re made of high-quality chocolate!) and savored every bite.  Come lunchtime there was a chocolate dessert in the lunch that I took one bite of and quickly realized it was less good than the cake from Dalloyau.  I thought to myself that if I was going to have more sweets I’d have another slice of the good one (most of the people did that, by the way).  But I wanted a clementine first, and by the time I was done with that chocolate was no longer really necessary and I realized I was perfectly satisfied with what I’d already had so I stopped.

I’m feeling optimistic and in control.  Not deprived, not stressed (well, not about my weight anyway). If I can keep having days like this I think I’m on the right path.

Today I made 3 good choices, each one helping nudge me gently on the right track.

First off, I weighed myself.  Self denial can only go so far, and the scale showed me pretty much what I expected (horrors).

Then, for breakfast, instead of leftover bread w butter and jam (last few weeks) I gave myself the limited choice between cereal A or cereal B.  Suddenly breakfast wasn’t a crazy affair.

The third good choice? I downloaded a new software for my iPhone to track calories on the run.  I used something like this years ago on a Palm Pilot (that was easier actually) and I’ve done computer-based or online diet journaling many times.  It’s always better for me to be able to do it on the go, and the phone is always with me (plus fun to play with).  It was actually my second such purchase, but the first software was yucky so I spent more money hoping for something better this time.  It’s time consuming but I’m still figuring it out, hopefully will be easier once favorites are learned & I know what I’m doing.  My goal is not to actively control anything just to keep a diary (which in itself always makes me make better choices).

Those 3 choices early in the day put me on a good path.  I chose healthily at lunch (not much choice actually) and ate leftovers for dinner (although I avoided the bread and butter and cheese and various other things I’ve been eating WAY too much of).

Thanks for the comments, by the way.  I really do appreciate you stopping by and dropping a word in.

I’ve been on the 3FC blogs for a while now, and during that time I’ve seen MANY people stop blogging, and several of the consistent, committed bloggers just stop blogging, often taking down their blog completely.  Other than going off their diet, obviously, I’ve never really understood why.

Now I do, because for a part of me it seems like the best option too.

It’s not what I’m going to do - I like the idea of seeing people struggle through thick and thin and still put up the fight.  For years I’ve listened to a podcast of a guy struggling w his weight where he’s done just that - sometimes doing great and getting to goal, sometimes buried under mountains of cookies, and it’s probably the most inspiring of all the stories of weight loss I’ve followed over the years because he’s (usually) still working at it, and doesn’t have a easy, magical time of it, which I think is more reflective of the real world.

So, what’s happening with me?

• I’m not exercising (although we did join the new gym, but I’ve only been once, tsk tsk)
• I’m working like a dog, which is not my usual workload and is not really preventable, and this is likely to last another month or so.  I’m no slacker at work in the best of times, but this is really a lot, a level I haven’t been willing to do for years.  I’m in a job I dislike which has some hard deadlines these past few weeks and upcoming ones, doubled by a part-time assignment for my company (which I do like) which is a huge visible project and what we need to get done is enormous, we’re a small group working on it, and the deadlines are falling at the same time.  “Working all the time” lately has meant  getting up at 6 to work, being in meetings all day, working for several hours at night, and repeating this cycle all week sleeping around midnight, maybe with 3 hours discretionary time during the week, and another 3 the weekend, where I’ve been also working constantly for 3 weeks now.  Frankly, I’m sick of it, and I’m not screaming and shouting because I know I’ve made the halfway mark now.
• Because of the above I have not had time to be on the internet much, so not reading blogs, not writing them either…
• I switched phones in Sept and got the iPhone, which I thought would help make my blog postings more regular, but in truth it’s been the opposite.  You can’t update the 3FC blog from the iPhone.  I now do read the NYTimes and a few other of my regular sites from the iPhone so my need to go on a “real” computer daily has diminished, reducing the time I spend surfing the net in general.
• I’ve been eating badly and in a cycle of no-exercise, crap-eating, scale-avoiding.  We all know what that means — GAIN.  So I’m mad at myself, disappointed in myself about that.  And of course because of the work situation, regular gym time continues to be impossible I keep putting off doing anything about it, undoubtably compounding the problem.
• I think I fell into a small depression with the ectopic pregnancy.  My body is just now getting back to normal, and the abnormality was really bothering me.  The situation is sad, and I spent several weeks being very sad, crying a lot, etc.  Probably a normal phase of grief, but still, a lot of sadness.  Of course my comfort solution of choice is food… I guess it could be worse, it could be drugs or alcohol.  One of the upsides of my work situation is that it’s forced me out of that pity party, and my daily outlook is much more positive.

So I have lots and lots of excuses, but the bottom line, and the reason I won’t quit the blog is this :

I want to lose weight.

And just doing nothing isn’t working to accomplish that.  I’m not in a rush to do it, I’m not going to be able to get to the gym regularly for another 3-5 weeks, but that doesn’t mean I need to gain weight.  I feel tired and bloated and yucky, and there are some things that won’t take time but could make me feel better.

My clothing situation is getting dangerous again - I only fit in a small set of my wardrobe, and I have clear nightmares of how awful buying my-sized clothes in Paris is.  I’d really REALLY like to avoid going through that again, or at a minimum have it be my last time (not sure if I can really wait on a few items).

Just writing this makes me feel better.

I’m coming out of denial, and that’s going to count as the first step.