Small Victories

April 23, 2010 @ 01:45 pm

It's been over two weeks since I last binged at night. Before kicking myself in the butt on April 7th about nutrition, I was frequently snacking like a madman. I'd have a "few" chips or crackers, "some" cheese, just "a little" ice cream, "a glass" of wine. It all added up - and in reality I was gorging myself. That all stopped ... and I feel just fine. In fact I feel better. I have one glass of wine a night to wind down with, and that's it. Occasionally some popcorn. But no more binge eating, no more emotional eating.

Last night I was having another rough evening. This whole week I've been off-and-on feeling a little down or frustrated about my looks, my weight, whatever. It's all silly and baseless, of course, it's just a resurgence of depression. But I recognize it and do my best to dismiss it. But last night was a particularly good victory.

Normally, when I'm having a depressy evening and I'm by myself (as I was last night with The Beau out on the town with a friend), I'm prone to eating. And eating. And eating. And drinking. And eating some more. And watching television mindlessly while mindlessly eating.

Well last night ... I didn't. I had one thought of it - I thought to go eat the extra food I had from dinner, or pig out on cookies and ice cream. In actuality I only had that thought after I realized I wasn't emotionally eating on an otherwise emotional evening. Then my brain said, oh - I should want to gorge myself! But really, no. And I moved on. I had had my dinner, I had watched some television, and then I turned it off and read my book the rest of the evening while sipping my singular glass of wine.

Yay for small victories.

1 comment | Topics: depression, food and eating, progress

Because I Don't Want to Abandon Ship Anymore

January 22, 2010 @ 11:46 am

"Gee, so and so has let themselves go..."

No one's ever said that about me because I was never ... well what's the opposite of letting go? Holding tight? I was never holding tight? That doesn't really work. Anyway, not the point. But for a great part of my life I did let myself go in a lot of ways beyond my weight because I just didn't care. I didn't like myself, I wasn't happy, I didn't enjoy day to day life. So why bother trying?

At my worst, my self-esteem and self-respect was so low that I didn't care about anything in my life. Not my hygiene, not the cleanliness of my house or my clothes. I didn't care about my health (obviously). I let problems persist until they were simply too big to be ignored any longer. I didn't care to shower every day, or even brush my teeth. The kitchen was a wreck, the fridge stank of spoiled food, a year's worth of mail piled up on the counter, dust bunnies ruled the wild west. Laundry was for emergencies, only. And ironing was a fool's errand.

Is it any wonder that when you watch the TLC "World's Fattest So-and-So" shows you see people living in squalor? The lack of self-respect that both fuels obesity and is caused by obesity extends beyond the body and into the daily "life" of those of us who lose control. One could explain away the filth by saying obesity makes it harder to keep things in order - but you know what? I was just lazy. I just. didn't. care.  My obesity isn't so grand that I can't function or move, I'm actually pretty active when I want to be. I just didn't want to be.

I didn't want to experience life. I didn't think I had the right to. I didn't respect myself enough to lose weight so why should I respect myself or my life or my home in any other way?

Obesity makes me lazy. It makes me filthy. And people see that; even if they can't point to it they can sense when someone just doesn't care about themselves. And so we move through a day without anyone caring - because if we don't care about ourselves we're not apt to inspire anyone to care about us on our behalf.  So I'm committed to this journey so that I can gain the energy and encouragement to respect myself in all ways beyond weight.

0 comments | Topics: depression, laziness, obesity, self-respect

I Don't Feel Good

January 15, 2010 @ 07:38 am

Oh I'm fine physically. Had a head cold last week but it was short-lived. No, I feel well; I don't feel good. Actually I've been feeling pretty darn bad and that's been the impetus to get my act together and blog / work out / eat right, again. And I know that in time - and probably not a very long time - the endorphins will kick in and I'll start feeling good again. But for this post, I'm going to whine and moan, because it's my blog and I can. Go get your own (and then send me the link).

I struggle with loneliness and depression, and I think it's a direct result of life-long unfitness. Thing is, I'm a happy person, generally. I enjoy my life, I enjoy my work, I enjoy my partner. I'm reasonably successful for a 26 year old. I live in one of the greatest cities in the world. And I'm pretty good at intellectually beating back my depression because I choose not to be depressed about life. Depression just leads me to eating, to lethargy, to not getting off the couch. I even avoid Debbie Downer types because I choose not to live life in the doldrums.

But I've never been able to beat back the loneliness. The Beau (new blog name for my partner) makes friends easily. He's gregarious, happy, friendly, flirty - people flock to him. They have crushes on him. They don't see me. Literally. Ironic since I'm twice his size.

Read the rest of this post

0 comments | Topics: The Beau, depression, friends, loneliness

The Lost Year

January 13, 2010 @ 07:24 am

I knew it had been a while since I'd blogged about my weight loss; but I was shocked when I came back to blog again and saw that it had been over a year since my last post in September of 2008. What in the world happened to 2009? Had I really done so little for losing weight for a whole year? I looked to my old gym journal and found the same thing - all written record of my journey between 9/2008 and now just ... isn't. Never was.

Here's what's been happening:

• In October of 2008 I lost my job for redundancy.  The firm (which was making me ill anyway and I hated it there) acquired a new company to do what I was doing, so we parted ways. To make up for it, I decided to finally branch out on my own and started my own business.  That's what I've been doing ever since - which takes a lot of time away from blogging - and alas, from fitness as well.
• I did not give up on fitness entirely. It was just in drastic fits and spurts. Even though I stopped recording it all, I still went to the gym and tried to eat okay ... some of the time.
• We moved from our super-fine apartment and the great fitness center in the building to a better apartment in the city. It's cheaper, has a home office, and we like it a lot more. No downstairs gym, though. I still kinda miss it.
• We joined New York Sports Clubs.  Long ago I was a member of Equinox and part of me really enjoys going to a gym. I got into going for a while, though of course I allowed my life to get unbalanced and stopped going for weeks at a time, and ultimately my winter project took all my time. 
• We started a second business this past fall, which culminated in a two-month pop-up store here in NYC. It was a great experience (I'm still kind of decompressing), but it literally took all my time and energy. For the first two weeks I was dead on my feet every day. My shoes were crap. I didn't have time for gumption for the gym but I did have to walk over a mile and a half almost every day - sometimes a lot more. I wasn't eating so well, but I was definitely burning those calories working. 

The one thing from the last year that disappoints me most is that I failed to lose any weight by the second annual family vacation. In 2008, my extended family went on vacation together for the first time and had fun, but it was marred at the very last moment by some rather cruel offhanded thoughtless comments from my Grandfather. That moment sent me reeling and inspiring a hard push at the end of that year, which fizzled with the pressures of life. And though I'd resolved to lose significant weight by 2009's vacation, I didn't. I was just as fat.

Oh and the vacation was to the shore. Awesome! 315+ lbs on the beach. Beached whale more like it. Le sigh.

Here's where I'm at now:

307 lbs.  Which basically means no net change in weight. I know I've definitely gone higher than than and when we were opening our pop-up store I'm pretty sure I went under that, but for whatever reason my body pretty much holds steady at just over 300 pounds. 

My house is clean, my life is more or less back in order and I'm re-establishing a routine.  That will be good for getting fit. I can cook again, I can get to the gym again, I don't have to worry about the phone ringing. I need to get back in the groove of many more healthy behavours, but I'm getting there.

I'm working on instituting better work behaviours. Frankly, life was insane for a long time. I was checking email constantly - literally every minute. I was on-call, overworked, over-scheduled. I've since turned off the email auto-checks so that I only check it a few times a day. I'm trying to focus on one thing at a time and not overworking myself.  Right now I have a lot of my plate but I'm sorting through it.

I'm not following any one particular plan or diet.  I dropped Weight Watchers - only because I wasn't using its tools. But the principles are all very useful. I've picked up on the Gabriel Method, but I'm no groupie or die-hard fan. There are certain universal principles to weight loss and every plan highlights different aspects of them - so I find myself learning from many different sources. I'll talk more about my current plans later.

And frankly, I'm not feeling so well emotionally. My relationship with my partner is fantastic - no qualms there and we're actually stronger than we've ever been. But over the last couple weeks I've been rather down about things because of my weight and obesity. I'll blog through those soon.

I'm returning to blogging.  And twittering! This is cathartic for me. It gives me an outlet. And I want to connect with others along the journey.  I'm really shy and ashamed and so I'm keeping this anonymous (for now), but I still want to record this and stay accountable at least to myself by putting it all out there. And with a sexy new look for the blog and some drastically improved technology to power it I'm hoping the whole process of managing this will be easier to maintain.

And so here go again. 

307 pounds and counting.

2 comments | Topics: depression, gym, shame, vacation, work