Weighty Matters

Sloshed

by Mary Stella

When I say that I’m sloshed, I’m not using slang for being drunk. I’m sloshed as in, I’m pretty sure I’ve had enough water that I can hear it sloshing from side to side inside my stomach. My belly rises and falls several inches like the tide, controlled by the gravitational pull of the moon.

I realized, thanks to reading an email from a friend a while back, that I’ve slacked off in the amount of fluid I should drink each day. This could be part of the reason that my weight loss isn’t proceeding as quickly as I want and why other aspects of my system have also slowed. So, this week I’m focused on my hydration.

My caffeine kick in the morning comes from hot black tea. I drink it after whatever I consume for breakfast, which is usually a fruit smoothie or a protein shake. That means that I start off with the equivalent of about four cups of fluid in my stomach. Unfortunately, while I’m sure those things contribute to hydration, they aren’t the most hydrating substance. Let’s face it. The best, purest fluid for keeping our systems hydrated is plain, simple H20.

The trick is for me to get in enough water but to time it right so that I don’t fill up my stomach to the point where I can’t eat the nutritional foods I bring for my snacks and lunch. I practically need to set up a schedule. Barring that, I need to fall back on sip-sip-sipping so that I have a steady intake. This is not easy to do when I need both hands to work on my keyboard. I get caught up in work and can easily forget to drink, so I need to keep after myself to stay on track.

Would you ever have imagined that it could be a challenge to get in the right amount of water on a daily basis? To help, I’m at least doing my best to track my intake in the myfitnesspal app on my phone. While I don’t always hit my goal, keeping track lets me know if I’m close. To be honest, I’d like to get to the point where I consistently take in 80 ounces of water a day. However, I’m happy right now if I get to 64 ounces of water plus a couple of cups of tea, either hot or iced.

I know that I do better when I keep my drinking glass full at my desk. While writing this I realized that I should have filled up a glass and kept it with me here by the computer. There’s definitely room for improvement.

Even so, three days into this more focused hydration effort, I see some progress. I also feel better. Let’s see if a sustained effort leads to even more improved results.

Body Matters General Musings

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Mid-Life Eating Disorders

by Mary Stella

I don’t how many of you who come here are age 50 or older, but if you are, there’s an interesting article in the latest AARP Magazine about eating disorders and how they affect a significant number of women over 50. It offers fairly basic information, or maybe it just seems basic to me because I’ve lived with one for so long, but there are a lot more things in it that make it a useful read for women of any age whether we know a little or a lot about eating disorders. One thing that I never thought of is that some women who didn’t have eating disorders when they were younger can develop eating disorders when they’re older.

There’s also been a study done that found that 13 percent of American women age 50 or older experience symptoms of an eating disorder. 60 percent of the women in the study reported that concerns about their weight and shape negatively affect their lives. 70 percent were currently trying to lose weight. There also might be a connection between menopause and the development of new eating disorders or the reemergence of old ones.

The article poses five questions and says that if you answer yes to two or more, you should speak with your doctor to see if you might have an eating disorder. Given that there are a number of different eating disorders, it must have been hard to identify five questions that could indicate signs. Here they are:

Do you make yourself vomit because you feel uncomfortably full?
Do you worry you have lost control over how much you eat?
Have you lost more than 14 pounds in a three-month period?
Do you believe yourself to be fat when others think you are too thin?
Would you say that thinking about food dominates your life?

For the record, if I’d been asked these questions 25 or so years ago, I would have answered yes to 2, 3 and 5. I think 3 indicates a sign of possible anorexia. I was never anorexic, but because I would crash diet, losing 14 pounds in two months wasn’t out of the question.

Overall, I’m really glad that this article appeared. I think there are probably a lot more women who have some degree of an eating disorder but don’t realize it. Reading this article and processing the information may provide some light bulb moments. Understanding and exploring an eating disorder can relieve a lot of shame, embarrassment, self-loathing, and general all around crappy self-esteem. For me, discovering that I had an eating disorder meant that I really wasn’t just a weak-willed, gorging pig with no self-control. Emotional balance is vitally important in order to achieve any long term success.

General Musings

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Always Have a Backup Plan

by Mary Stella

I’ve said before that I do best with my eating when I plan ahead. Most days I prepare and bring lunch and my morning and mid-day snacks to work. This way I don’t have to make a food decision when there are things around to tempt me or when I’m rushed or busy. It’s all too easy at those times to run to the lunch truck and order up something that really isn’t in my best interests as I work toward knocking off these last 50 pounds.

Today I brought what I call my yogurt parfait (Non-fat Greek yogurt, handful of blueberries and some oat meal), a can of “Soup to Go” and some other fruit. I decided that I haven’t been taking in enough fluids, so I’m really pushing myself on water and other drinks. I had my mid-morning bite. Lunch time rolled around and I thoroughly enjoyed my yogurt mixture. Mid-afternoon approached and I took my soup to the kitchen to heat.

I don’t know what happened but for some reason, the perfectly fine can inexplicably tilted over in the microwave and almost everything spilled out. Not only did this create a large, annoying mess in the microwave that I had to clean, but it also left me without my mid-afternoon snack. General crankiness ensued. Then I remembered that I had a backup! I’d stashed a few individual serving size containers of almond milk in my desk drawer. Last week, I’d brought a scoop of protein powder in to, just in case I hit a circumstance like today. Presto! A protein shake. This met my nutritional needs, calmed any food craving, and resolved my crankiness.

It is important to have a backup plan. It’s helpful to keep small servings of appropriate foods around that don’t need refrigeration. I honestly don’t do well if I don’t eat a small something every two-and-a-half to three hours. Lately, I’ve fallen out of the habit of keeping around some cheese wedges or healthy nuts. I must get back into that routine. Without the almond milk and protein powder, I would have needed to find something else to eat to stave off a headache, hunger pangs, and other undesirable symptoms. That something else could have been a food I’d prefer not to eat while still focused on losing weight.

I’m stopping at the grocery store on my way home. I’ve added non-perishable snacks for my backup plan to my list.

General Musings

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Body Comfort and Comparisons

by Mary Stella

We were blessed with another weekend of excellent weather. I invited four friends to go out on the boat. We headed out to a reef sanctuary area, hoping to snorkel, but a lot of other people had the same idea. By the time we arrived, the only mooring buoys open were on the outer border in 50 plus feet of water. That would have been fine if we were scuba diving and could swim down closer to the bottom. For snorkeling at the surface, it was too deep to see anything.

No worries, however, The water was warm. A light breeze blew and there were enough clouds to keep the sun from baking us. We snagged a buoy, and basically had a floating party. Lots of conversation on the boat and in the water. Periodically, we’d climb up for a snack or another bottle of water. It was just relaxing and grand.

After a couple of hours, we packed up and then went to the sandbar to meet up with more friends. This is a popular weekend activity, as you can imagine. Dozens of boats anchored up along the shoreline. With the tide out, the expanse of shallow water and beach spread out wide and long. More conversation, snacking, and cool drinks took place, and we played with my friends three dogs too.

I live in a place where bathing suits, tank tops and shorts are the most common attire. It was always secretly uncomfortable for me with a body so much bigger than most people I was okay wearing shorts, but I would absolutely not wear a tank top with my huge upper arms. My one piece bathing suits always had either a skirt to cover most of my upper thighs, or I had girly swim pants that I could pull up. In public I’d wear a t-shirt or sunguard shirt with uva and uvb protection. Not a bad idea to protect my skin, but it also helped me be a little less self-conscious.

So, now I’m thinner but I’m still self-conscious. Most of the 50 pounds I still need to lose are positioned from my abdomen to my knees. My arms are definitely thinner and more toned, but there are still flabby pouches and saggy skin hanging down.

Here’s the thing. Today, with the exception of one friend who eats nothing unhealthy and is a yoga instructor, none of the women I was around today has a perfect body. Even the friend who is a Zumba instructor with an awesome, toned, cut physique has some ripples and dimples. A couple of the other women are closer to my weight than that of the yoga instructor, but they all seemed so much more comfortable. One was in a bathing suit without a skirt and walked and swam around without a shirt covering her arms. Another even had on a two piece suit!

I was pretty much wowed by their comfort level. I watched the small groups of people standing in the shallow water chatting, just observing for a little while. I realized that nobody cared because well, nobody cared whether anyone’s arms were too fat, or the guy in the chair has a beer belly, or if someone had some cellulite on her upper thigh.

I thought and thought about it for a big longer and decided to see how it would feel to reveal a little more of myself. I took off my rash shirt and rejoined the group. I’m sure it’s no surprise that nobody recoiled in horror. I was surprised to find that, after a minute, I no longer cared either. Am I completely over being self-conscious? No. Am I ready to stock up on tank tops for the hot August days? No.

Did I learn that in the right situation, I don’t have to cover myself up quite as much? Yes. I have more body comfort to do so.

Body Matters My Progress

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Weird Dream Fear

by Mary Stella

On October 28th, I will mark the 27th anniversary of the day I quit smoking. I haven’t lit up a cigarette since that day, except sometimes in my dreams. Every once in awhile, I have a dream in which I’m smoking that’s so vivid I can taste, feel, and smell everything as if I was wide awake and actually smoking.

When I wake up from those dreams I experience a very real fear that they aren’t dreams at all, but that I’ve started smoking again and all of the years of abstinence were for naught. To understand the grip and awfulness, you have to understand how much I hate cigarettes and the habit. I enrolled in a hospital-run program to help me quit. One of the things it taught us was to develop an aversion to smoking and cigarettes. This was extremely useful. Now I can’t stand to sit downwind of a lit cigarette. I’m repulsed by the smell of them on clothing, or on someone’s breath or skin.

I loathe the habit with my mind and emotions too. My mother suffered lung cancer that metastasized to her brain and, during the same time period, had a couple of strokes, clogged carotid arteries — all caused by cigarettes. To my mind, she died because of her 50 year addiction to cigarettes.

Given this information, can you see why dreaming that I’ve started smoking again can cause such a strong, negative reaction?

Last night, I dreamed that I was super obese again. It wasn’t a flashback sort of dream to my past. I think I could have lived with the memory and used it as a good reminder. Now, in this dream I was very much aware that I’d once lost the weight because of the weight loss surgery and commitment to healthy eating and physical exercise. However, for reason or reasons undisclosed, I’d gained it all back and all of the wonderful benefits were gone. Can I just say that it was a sucky way to wake up this morning?

For the most part I was able to shake it off fairly quickly, but periodically throughout the day, a “what if” thought drifted across my mind. You know how you’re sometimes tempted to stick your fingers in your ears and chant “lalalalalalalalalalalalalala” to block the sound of a particularly obnoxious song or keep from hearing something you really don’t want to? That was me today, internally repeating, “nonononononononononono” at the mere thought that I would ever torpedo my successful effort and backslide back to obesity.

I also employed some positive reinforcement. At Tai Chi class I thought about how much more flexible and strong I’ve become because of the weight loss and the regular practice. Silly as it sounds, I marked in my head the ease with which I get in and out of my low slung car, and how automatic it is for me to be able to strap my seat belt around and buckle it.

I walked the dogs earlier and paid attention to not only the fluid movements of my arms and legs, but also the healthy beat of my heart and my ability to generate a quick pace without gasping for air.

I focused on my food choices and allowed myself to feel pleased and happy that I willingly eat healthier and on my plan.

All of my life, I’ve believed in the power of our dreams and how with determination and perseverance, we can convert our dreams to reality. In this case, I need to be specific. I don’t want last night’s dream to ever become the least bit real. I simply refuse to screw this up and go back to where I was before.

The dream of good health, fitness, and happiness with my self; the reality of finally getting to goal weight in coming months — those are the dreams I want to make come true.

*****************************************

I can scarcely believe that this is the 400th post here at Weighty Matters. Heartfelt thanks to all of you keeping me company on this journey!

General Musings

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Labels, Quantities, New Directions

by Mary Stella

Do you read food labels? I rarely did so in the past. Most of the time, I only looked at the ingredients to see if a soup, stew or some other prepared food secretly included something I don’ t like, such as mushrooms. These days I tend to with greater regularity.

I’m not a fanatic about it, but there are certain things I try to avoid, or at least minimize. For example, in bottled dressings, I look for ones where sugar or some form of it isn’t named in the top five ingredients. Although I really got into making my own soups this past year, I still like to stock convenient, but yummy, varieties in cans or cartons. For those, I want to see the sodium level.

In all things, the calories matter, as do the carb counts and fat. One thing I’ll admit that I never paid much attention to was fiber. Now, a higher number of grams catches my interest. All of the ingredients with their nutritional breakdowns add up to whether I’m eating as healthfully and appropriately as possible.

I’m a little perplexed this week. After a couple of weeks where the weight loss was once more moving at a decent rate, I stalled again this week. I don’t know why. I’ve logged my food and activity in myfitnesspal every day. I haven’t been wildly eating off plan. It’s mystery and very frustrating.

Rather than get myself upset, I’m maintaining an even, thoughtful approach. That’s why I’m noticing labels so much, because I’m looking for less obvious factors that could have slowed my weight loss — like sodium, sugar, and carbs. I’ve noticed some, ahem, internal system slowdown, so I want to make sure that I get adequate amounts of fiber. I’m also pushing fluids more, particularly simple water.

Months ago I blogged about how much I always resisted weighing and measuring my food. I still don’t love doing it, but I’m incorporating the practice more in my daily food prep. It’s possible that, as months go by, my stomach regains some of its capacity and my quantities could creep up. Measuring my intake with more vigilance will protect me from overeating. Granted, my concept of overeating is a whole lot less than it used to be, but I still need to keep things relative.

Instead of guessing that I’d scooped out the proper amounts this morning when preparing the “yogurt parfait” that I wanted to take to work for lunch, I measured. (I used non fat vanilla Greek yogurt, fresh strawberries and blueberries, and steel cut oatmeal.) Tonight, after reading labels and choosing an organic, vegan, low-fat split pea soup, I made sure that I measured out half of a cup exactly and that’s all that I ate.

It’s really not difficult or time consuming to take these measures. I’m not sure why I was always so resistant. The only explanation that makes sense is that I was simply terminally resentful and pissed off that I was told this is what I should do; what I needed to do for long term success. (Imagine my aggrieved sigh.)

Sometimes I just need to get over myself, quit bitching and do it. So, that’s what I’m working on. Label reading. Measured quantities. Hopefully these new directions will help me get over the stall and step up my progress.

General Musings My Progress

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Nothing to See Here

by Mary Stella

It’s been such a busy couple of days, that I haven’t had a lot of time to notice what’s going on in my own recovery — other than that I haven’t had any issues. I’m not eating compulsively. I’m keeping up with my exercise. I feel great. I’m good. That sounds kind of boring, but to be honest, it’s a really cool blessing.

White knuckling one’s way through recovery is exhausting. There are times when you really feel like you’re holding onto abstinence with everything you have — but that amounts to trying to maintain a grip using only the tips of your fingers. I’ve come to appreciate the many days when this whole eating right thing isn’t a struggle. I experience this more days than not. Again, it’s a blessing.

So, right now I’m going to simply enjoy it and the way that it feels. Hopefully, I’ll be able to stack another day on top of it tomorrow.

General Musings

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Red Alert – Cupcake Craving

by Mary Stella

I really want a cupcake. Not any run of the mill baked good, but one from the specialty cupcake bakery up the road. One with chocolate cake, a chocolate ganache filling and a thick, fudgy swirl of chocolate buttercream frosting. Peanut butter and chocolate would be good too.

I thought about stopping in to buy one on my way home from work but I resisted, mostly because I was in a time crunch. I had to get to the sheriff’s office before five to turn over my drugs.

Ha! Made you think, didn’t I? 😀 Our Sheriff’s Department provides a collection service for prescription meds that are left over. I had pill bottles with meds from as far back as 2007. I’m not big on taking pain meds one pill longer than necessary so I never used up all that were prescribed after my gall bladder surgery, my carpal tunnel surgery, or my painful dental procedures. I also had leftovers of the meds that I used to have to take to control my cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar. Clearly my medicine cabinet lacked for space, but this morning I bagged everything up and dropped it off tonight.

Back to the cupcakes. I don’t know why I intensely long for one tonight. There’s been some stress in the day, but nothing mind-shattering. I’m busy, but no more than my normal rate of hectic work load. Maybe it’s hormonal. Maybe I just want a freaking sugar and carb-laden cupcake for no discernible reason other than I. Want. One.

I’ve made a bargain with myself. As soon as I hit “Publish” on this post, I’m heading out for a Zumba class. When I’m done dancing off 800-900 calories, if I still want the damned cupcake so much, I will give myself permission to go to the bakery and buy one. Honestly, even if I eat dinner, with the Zumba workout, I will still be well beneath my daily allotment of calories. I won’t be able to eat an entire cupcake, so I still won’t have overeaten.

However, I am willing to bet, or at least hope, that after putting out the effort to Zumba, I’ll decide the cupcake just isn’t worth it.

I will report back in a couple of hours.

Body Matters General Musings

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Eating Buddies – Losing Buddies

by Mary Stella

I just looked at the post count. This is number 396. Holy wow. We’re closing in on 400!

I went out to lunch with friends today. We don’t often get to do that because our days at work are pretty tightly scheduled, so the fact that we spontaneously thought of it and could fit it in was a great treat.

I started thinking again about how incredibly fortunate I am to have such terrific, unending support from family and friends. Even when a couple expressed fear that I’d elected to have major, life-changing surgery, they still clearly wanted the best for me. If I ever make a list of the things someone needs when heading into this kind of effort, a strongly supportive circle would be at the top.

Asking for help and support is not something that easily comes to me. Don’t laugh, particularly since I just stated that I’ve been running at the mouth, and at my typing fingertips, about my weight issues, the surgery, my recovery, my compulsive overeating/binge eating disorder and everything else for 395 (and a half, now) posts, but talking about my weight and my issues was never that easy.

It was easier when I was in the anonymous rooms of OA or when I was around friends who also needed to lose weight. The difference is that when I regularly attended OA meetings, I was focused on remaining abstinent from the disease of binge eating. When I was around my overweight friends, if it was a time when I wasn’t in program, we might talk about our weight, etc., but we kept right on eating.

Being around friends who can also be eating buddies often makes for a food free-for-all. An Eating Buddy friend is hardly going to judge your Big Mac, Supersized fries and chocolate shake when they’re ordering the same big amounts of food.

The dynamic can shift, and suddenly so, when one of the buddies decides to go on a diet or do something else, to put forth a seriously committed effort to losing weight. There are some who feel threatened when their eating buddy chooses a different path. Some have even been known to sabotage the weight loss effort.

It is much healthier to have losing buddies, a network of family and friends who will listen to you, hug you, spent some quality time with you and support you in your effort. It’s these friends who might offer you a bite of their rich, decadent dessert and understand if you only want a bite or might pass up the cake at all. It’s those who don’t push food at you as if they need you to overeat or eat off of your food plan so that they ultimately feel better about what they’re eating.

It’s good to have losing buddies now — whether the friend or two who are also working on weight loss, or those who aren’t but who care so much about me that they’re rooting on every step of progress. It’s good to have those of you who come here, read and comment. It all reinforces the effort.

My goal for this week is to be aware of, and acknowledge, the support I receive on a daily basis. My secondary goal is to always be supportive of a friend who is going through a difficult challenge. To borrow a phrase from OA, together we can do what we could never do alone.

General Musings My Progress

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Progress on the Promise List

by Mary Stella

Those of you who have been with the blog for awhile have heard me share about one of the “lines in the sand” for me that pushed me over the edge so that I decided to have weight loss surgery. Bear with me, please.

I love the ocean. There are only a handful of years in my entire life when I have not lived within a mile of the Atlantic Ocean. Honestly, for most of my life I’ve lived within steps of the beach. As you know, my home is on a harbor in the Florida Keys, on the ocean side. From the time I was a baby, I’ve gone on boats. Fishing was a popular family activity up home on the Jersey Shore. That’s why my folks bought this little house as a vacation home here in the Keys. These islands meant they could fish in the winter too.

I love boats. I love being on and in the water. Four years ago, I bought a boat of my own, a sweet, stable 22 footer. My dream was that I would be able to take friends out fishing and to some of the snorkeling spots located not far from my house. I also like taking out the boat and meeting friends at a local sandbar for an afternoon of cool, wet, socializing.

Two years ago, when I was at my hugest, I still went out on my boat, even though it was often awkward and not all that easy for me to gracefully move around. Emotionally at that time, I’d given up on myself and had pretty much resigned myself to never losing my excess weight. i knew that within the next five to ten years, I’d be even further on the way to being disabled if I wasn’t dead from a heart attack or some other obesity-related condition.

One day I’d joined up with others at the sandbar. We’d arrived at low tide and by the time we were ready to leave, the water had come up. I went to my ladder and realized that I couldn’t easily get my foot up on the lowest rung. I tried to maneuver my knee on it and was almost successful, but my body was just too big. I couldn’t help myself either because I didn’t have the arm strength or upper body strength to haul myself up out of the water.

Thankfully, we could let out some additional anchor line and I walked the boat back to where it was still somewhat shallow and I managed to get on board.

This, my friends, was a defining moment. It’s a damn good thing that I’d found this out when I could still touch bottom. I could just as easily have jumped off of my boat while snorkeling and not been able to get back on without assistance. The dismay, horror and sadness stayed with me for days. Honestly, I could have sunk completely into despair and totally crashed and burned. Fortunately, I went the other way and decided not to give up on myself. I became determined to change my life around, and go to any lengths to lose weight and get healthy — even though it meant having weight loss surgery. Less than a month later, I’d gotten the name of a surgeon from my primary care physician and attended the free information seminar. From there, everything moved steadily forward.

As you know, I have an ongoing Promise List of experiences and activities I’ve promised myself I will do as I lose weight. On that list I put, “Take friends on my boat and go snorkeling”.

Last year at this time, I still had not lost enough weight or built up my physical condition enough to risk doing the snorkeling trip. In the last 12 months however, I’ve lost many more pounds and invested a lot of time, energy and effort into physical exercise and conditioning. The hard work has paid off in so many ways. It’s what enabled me to zip line, snorkel, and hike the crater in Hawaii. it makes every day just easier and less exhausting over all.

Today was just one more example. Move another item from the “want to do” column on my Promise List over to the “I’ve done it!” side. Today we were blessed with absolutely perfect weather — bright sunshine with a light kiss of breeze and calm waters. I’d made plans with friends for a boating excursion. First stop – Coffin’s Patch, a popular spot for snorkeling in a sanctuary area. After putting on my fins and mask, I walked down my boat ladder into the warm, clear-as-glass water. I wish I had an underwater camera so I could show you the beautiful, lacy purple sea fans, big brain coral and all of the colorful fish that I swam around. It was just glorious! We must have stayed there, swimming around and looking at everything before I swam back to my boat.

Moment of truth time! In all honestly, my ladder really could use an extra rung, but the lack didn’t stop me. I maneuvered my knee onto the bottom run, pulled myself up until I could get my foot on it, and then boosted myself the rest of the way up. I did it! Mission – and Promise List item – accomplished.

I’d shared the history with my friends and when I was back on board, they cheered for me. It was a truly fine moment to share and I’m sure my grin was bright, happy and, probably, a little cheesy. It was great!

From there we cruised a couple of miles over to the sandbar and ate the lunch we’d brought. One of my friends also mixed up an excellent, tasty sangria. I’m a responsible boat captain so I limited myself to half a glass at the very beginning, but it was enough to use to toast the day and celebrate.

Here are a couple of photos to show you the beauty, at least above the water’s surface. I really must look into underwater cameras soon. I know for a fact that I plan to go snorkeling a lot more often!