Ack I cheated, oh never mind it was just a dream

I had a dream that I had cheated.  The cheat was not very caloric, but it wasn't product, and I was sitting there after finishing it thinking how am I going to tell J that I cheated after everything I have said about cheating and straying from the program.

I was riddled with guilt, and all I had eaten was a cube of bread - you know the kind that you use for fondue (I had to look up that word, I couldn't remember it for the life of me).  One tiny little piece of bread.  I ate it.  I ate a tiny piece of bread that I didn't really want anyway, and I broke my streak of never cheating on this diet.

In the dream I thought I just won't tell anyone.  I won't blog it, it won't have any effect on my diet, it was only a piece of bread.  But I couldn't do that.  I had to announce to the world that I had finally failed.  I did not stay on the program.  Failure.

And that there is the fear.  Not the fear that I will go off the diet, but the fear when I go off the diet.  How will I handle eating that little cube of bread.    What if I get back on the merry-go-round?

I remember while I was gaining the weight again I had visions of my old self, and worried if I would be able to stop before it got to far.  I was wondering how far I was going to let the weight gain continue before reigning in, and wondering if I would be able to stop and do something about it before I got to the point that I thought it would be useless to try.

I almost went there again.  I almost had that piece of bread.  This time I want to get it right.  This time I don't want to wonder how far I will go before I reign myself in.  This time I must do it from day one until day 1,825.  Then maybe I can ease up just a tad.  

Tap Tap Tap Part 2

I know everyone is waiting with bated breath to  find out how the tap class went.  Well...lets just say I am a spazz and leave it at that.  On a positive note I only almost fell on my butt twice.

The two I went with seemed to be catching on much quicker then I was.  By the end they were in perfect unison tapping around the hall.  Me I got lots of special attention, until the instructor threw up her hands in frustration.

I do have to say J almost slugged me in the face a couple of times.  I think I might have been turning the wrong way, maybe.  The clap clap was definitely hard to coordinate with me.

But seriously, it was very fun, and I did come home, bought a dvd and a book and hopefully will be able to learn the steps they learned yesterday in the coming week.

I am waiting for my great athletic ability to rear its' head, but instead it is like I have two left feet.  My trainer told me I picked up his exercises quickly, so why do I have such problems with dance steps.

Oh well we will see next week - stay tuned

Clothes

One of the things I always hear is even if you don't see the scale going down you should be able to tell with your clothes.  For me that just doesn't happen.

I wear stretch pants and large tops.  I am so uncomfortable with being heavy I don't want to be uncomfortable in my clothes as well.  Both mentally and physically.  So I wear clothes that I can wear at any weight.  Eventually I will start to swim more in the clothes, but it doesn't happen right away.  I don't think I started to wear more fitted clothes until I was closer to goal weight.  And even then I was surprised that I couldn't get into smaller sizes.  At goal weight I fit into a size 14, and maybe a vanity size 12.  And sometimes a 14 wouldn't fit, and I refused to go to a 16, so I wouldn't buy it.

Even my bike clothes were a large (and they were tight to boot).  The shirts are even worse.  I had an extra large shirt and it was still too tight.  I had to go XXL, and then I had to wear a jacket over it all to hide my rolls.  Bicyclist don't think there are any large bicyclist, they have vanity sizes in reverse.

I remember K asking me why as some get older they start dressing frumpy.  It is all about Comfort baby.  I have caught sight of myself in mirrors and I am surprised to be staring back at one of the frumpiest people alive.  Long live frumpy.

But seriously, when a heavy person wears tight clothes people think, no no no she/he shouldn't be wearing that.  I do this, I think what were they thinking.  It has become a national joke, just look at "pictures of walmart shoppers."  They pick the largest person who lets it all hang out, and then the ridiculing begins.  I don't find the pictures amusing, and I think of the person who is plastered over the internet and how they must be feeling and I just want to ring peoples necks.  I don't know why they wear those clothes, I don't know if they just don't care anymore, or they don't realize that they do not flatter them, or make them sexy, or they are drugged out and they don't know they are dressed like they are.  I don't know.  But I do know none of them want to be the butt of everyone's joke.

Lets stop trying to shame fat people.

New Facilitator

We had a sub facilitator on Thursday, and I actually really liked her.

She said things that rang true with me.  Things I think and do.  On one hand it made me realize that I am not unique and that other people have the same issues as I have, and then on the other hand I realize that I am not unique.

There is a certain "me against the world feel", and it is always nice to know that other people have the same struggles as I do, but sometimes we don't want to admit that other people feel the way we do.  My husband calls it something like one upmanship,  or beat that tragedy.  You think you have it bad you should have seen what I had to go through.

So I guess one of the universal things that she spoke of was that failure of diets is impatiences.  Truer words could not be spoken.  When anyone starts a diet, there is a rapid weight loss in the beginning, usually water, and then it slows down.  But what I do, and I guess she does to, is take that initial weight loss and extrapolate it to my goal weight.  I loss four pounds in the first week, in ten weeks I will be 40 pounds down, and so on.  So the next week I am down three, and the next two and the next 1 -2, and I am thinking I should be down 16 pounds and I am down 8.  And the one or two pounds are hard and you are hungry and you are upset that you haven't gotten to the point you were suppose to be and then it just isn't worth it.

This is important because when I decide to change I want immediate change, I want to see a difference, feel a difference, be different.  Weight loss is not instant gratification, in fact the gratification comes long after the dieting.  There is no gratification while dieting except looking at the scale, and when the scale isn't moving you have nothing.  And food is nothing but gratification.  So the dilemma.

A**holes

I had a wonderful day on Friday only to be back handed when I got to my car.  I was parked on a busy street a couple blocks from bart and as I was walking up to my car I saw a cop car sitting behind it.  I was thinking did I park illegally or something?  Were they giving me a ticket, but as I got closer they pulled away, so I was like okay they were drinking coffee, I don't know.  But when I got to my car my back side window had been smashed.

TH had just detailed my car, so all that was in it was my backpack with my Optifast food that I had forgotten to take out when I got home that night.  I knew it was there, but I didn't think I would have to worry about it since it was a highly traveled road, with a market 15 steps away.  I had even stopped to think maybe I should take it home, but I thought it would be safe enough.  It was only my food.

In the front seat I had a garmin and a wireless for my phone, a few dollars in change and a swiss army knife, all left untouched.  It was a typical smash and grab.  Only that grab was going to be like 20 pounds.

For all it is going to cost me to fix the window and get replacement food, I wanted to see their face when they saw that they got diet food.  I hope that they are really skinny and I hope they try it and I hope they gag on it.

It isn't the first time my car has been broken into.  When I was in Seattle I parked on the street by a hospital and my car was always broken into.  I ended up leaving it unlocked so they would stop breaking my window.  I figured at that time they wouldn't try to steal the car since I was really right by a hospital and they must have some compassion, - and it was never stolen, but it was periodically riffled through.  So I learned early don't leave anything in your car.

I am always amazed by people who go for walks and leave their car in a parking lot and leave their purse in the car.  I understand that they don't want to carry the purse, but if you are walking then don't carry your purse in the first place.  So I guess I just did the same thing, I will not leave anything in my car when I am parked on the street.  But I am not sure I would leave it unlocked now either.

Tap Tap Tap

Next Tuesday I am going to try tap.  That is Tap dance.  I was informed that tap dance does require arms.  Hmm.

Swimming, tap, and my personal trainer next week.  Another hmm.  I have cut back on the personal trainer since starting this program.  I was doing an hour, I am lucky now to do 30 minutes.  So how the heck am I going to do tap?  I am going to be absolutely dead on my feet after 10 minutes.  And I know that J will not let me hide behind her.  And even if I tried I would stick out.  I guess we will make it somehow.

Even knowing that I am spastic and probably uncoordinated, I am looking forward to it.  I love making noise especially on purpose.  There must be something primal about the tap tap tap of the shoes.  Like a beat of a drum.

But one thing I can guarantee, there will be no flowing rain, or roses slowly opening up, or the water god trying to drown me.

So I am pretty sure that J is going to make me walk up 6 flights of steps tonight, all in preparation of the tap class.  The first time we did it, I think we were on equal footing, but last time we did it J went flying up saying don't touch the railing.  I thought quietly to myself what she can't see...but she turned around and said off.

While climbing those 6 flights of stairs we encountered someone who was a tad bit faster then we were, or maybe they were going down, I don't remember my brain didn't have enough oxygen to fully comprehend what was going on, and the person we passed said keep trying.  J looked at her and said, we are not trying, we are doing it.   She must have told us to keep trying three times, J just shook her head and gave up on explaining that if we are walking up the stairs, no matter what the speed, we are actively doing it, not attempting it.

That is the thing no matter how ugly it is when you are exercising there is no "try".  I don't go swimming and "try" to swim.  How do you "try" with exercise and diets?  I am going to try to diet.

Okay here is one, I am going to try to run a marathon.  I will let you know when I get started.

CHCHCHANGES

How easy it is to make small changes.  I used to love my lattes in the morning.  It was really my favorite food of the day.  I would wake up and the first thing I would think about is my latte.  Just the complete relaxation of that cup while I read the internet or played games.

Sometimes it was just so good I had to have two.  And my beloved husband would make the second one and stick it in the fridge until I was ready for it.  It was heaven.  Lattes, delicious and relaxing.  Can't get any better than that.

Now all I think about in the morning is my tea.  I can't wait it is the first thing I think of when I wake up.  I sometimes even have two cups.  I love sitting at my desk drinking my tea.

Tea/coffee in the morning - same thing, except tea 0 calories, latte 250 calories.  That is almost two products.  Two of those babies is 500 calories on a 1200 calorie diet that is about 40% of my allowable calories.

I am thinking not drinking lattes again.  I miss my lattes, and tea, well I look forward to it, it just isn't the same, but I don't think at least for a few years I can afford to have 250 calorie drink and then eat food on top of that.  And just having a latte doesn't quite fill me up.  It is the first change of many I am thinking.

Battling the World

There is so much internal battling that one does trying to lose weight, but sometimes the hardest part is dealing with the world while being overweight.

I have said this over and over, but the discrimination of obese people is rampant, not silent, not hidden.  There is no compunction to not tell a fat person that they are fat, and fat people will eventually start beating people to the punch by telling you they are fat.  It keeps that conversation short.

But I have had friends who have invited me on trips, and say you won't be able to do such and such because you are too heavy, but you could do this...  I will smile and say the trip sounds grand and yes I could do...But I will never go with them on a trip.  I won't now or even if I lose the weight because they hurt my feelings.  Those throw away comments or pointed comments about weight are hurtful.

The truth will set you free.  Do people who comment on peoples weight and then say well it is the truth,  doesn't realize that overweight people know that they are overweight?   You don't have to tell someone that they need to lose weight because they will feel so much better.  You don't need to lecture someone on the dangers of obesity.  We know.  We have heard a thousand times.  We know with our bodies.  We know obesity is bad.  You don't have to tell us.

But at times when we want to talk candidly about our weight and the issues we have around it, most people comment cuts the conversation short with "it just takes will power."  So in essence fat people are weak.  We have no self control and no ability to stop eating.  And that is what people think.  Truly.
And that particular weakness allows people to think we are less intelligent than the average bear, and in some cases, just kind of less of a human being.

Before I lost the weight I would walk my dog everyday.  I passed people and no one ever gave me eye contact, I was never acknowledge.  I grew accustom to this, and even I kept my eyes averted in hopes that acknowledgement wouldn't occur, because if it did it wouldn't be pleasant.  I remember once I was walking down a street and some guy told me I shouldn't be on the sidewalk.    I felt my face flush, and as I walked by he kept talking about my weight, but I couldn't hear him anymore because of the pounding in my head.

Everyone does the best they can, some flaws are more visible then others, and weight is one flaw that all the world sees and judges.  The only thing we can do is stay away from the most judgmental and go on with our lives.

Battling yourself

It is true that one does not choose to be obese, but in equal measure one does choose what to eat.  And for those of us who are fighting the weight we don't choose wisely.

I have used a few excuses.  Here are a few.

I have a thyroid condition.  I do have a thyroid condition.  The literature states that hypothyroidism can increase your weight by 10 pounds.  That is not going to make you morbidly obese.

I have a low metabolic rate - yea?  So what?  You can't eat as much as other people?  You don't need to if you have a low metabolic rate.

I come from a family who are all obese.  So you have been taught bad habits from a very young age.   RESIST.

I eat when I am depressed/sad/happy/bored/(insert emotion) This is not really true.  I eat when there is food available, and food is available through all my moods.

I hardly eat anything there is generally something physically wrong with me.  Of course you eat.  You are kidding yourself.  In a normal day if you are eating as you normally do you eat and forget what all you ate.  Until you go to the cupboard and see remnants of your snack.  Oh yea I had some crackers and cheese.  I forgot, but how many calories could that be?

Truth.  The truth is I like food.  I eat because I like food.  I don't have a sophisticated palate, but my taste buds and smell work well in harmony which makes food extremely pleasurable.  And it isn't just taste and smell, I like looking at food as well.  We are using three of our senses and gaining pleasure from it, and that is why dieting is so very hard.

Yes when you are feeling down eating will bring up your mood, but so will many other things, it is just a habit that you chose food.  It is positive reinforcement for the moment, and the negative doesn't show up immediately.  It is like scolding your dog three days after they had an accident in the house, it just doesn't have the impact.

I don't choose to be heavy, I don't want to be heavy, I want to be normal, eat normal, but it will take a lot of hard work.  It will take changing my habits.  It is habits ingrained from a very young age, but it can be broken.  I plan to break it, I just have to figure out how.

Battling the weight

Being overweight is not easy, and it really isn't a choice.  You don't wake up one morning and say I think I am going to become morbidly obese.  It happens, slowly and over time.  It creeps up on you, first you are fat, then you are obese, and then you are morbidly obese.  And all the whil you don't stop to think this is a choice.

People look at you and they think it is.  You chose to overeat, you chose those donuts, you made a conscious decision of what went into your mouth.  And yes that is all true.  But you did not choose to be obese.

It happens, and you don't like that it happens, but once it happens you are like a deer in the headlights.  You are blinded, stuck, lost.  And the idea of losing 100, 200 and even 300 pounds seems unattainable.  You look at people who say that they are trying to lose 10/20 pounds and you are saying to yourself "if only".

You try to diet, at a loss what to eat, how to feed your ever growing hunger.  The body screams no I need more I can't survive on a mere 1200 calories, so you up it to 1500-2000, and find you are not losing weight.  But maybe you are not eating 1500-2000 calories, maybe you are eating more.  You don't know.  You look up the calories, but the calories are for a single serving, are you having a single serving.  Probably not.  So maybe that 1200 calories was really 1500-2000 and the 1500-2000 is really 2500-3000.

You realize that this might be the problem, so you weigh your food, you carefully portion out exactly how much you can eat and you follow the plan for a week, month, couple of months. You are constantly hungry, angry, feel it isn't fair and you lose 5/10 pounds in those two months.  Everyone tells you those 5/10 pounds are great, but you calculate in your head how long it will take you to lose the weight at losing 1 to 2 pounds a week.  For someone who needs to lose 200 pounds it is going to take over two years.  And all the while you are thinking when I am done dieting...

Then you think, I just don't give a damn, I don't care that I am fat, I am fine with the way I am, I just won't go out in the world and then I won't have to worry about it.  This works until you have sated yourself and then you think what have I done?  How could I do this?  I was doing so good.  I failed, and the cycle starts anew.

No it isn't a choice it is a battle, and it is a battle usually lost.

Walking in my sleep

I woke up this morning and checked my Fitbit and found I had walked 4172 steps while I slept.  Now I can assure you I did not sleep walk so where did that number come from?  In fact I slept like a log.

And now I don't trust my Fitbit.  Saturday I walked (slowly) around lake Merced, and at the end of the day it said 15k.  Now is that true?  Logically it would come out to that for the day, so I guess I will take it.  But all these excercise watches are not very accurate.  And the calories burned are overstated as well.  For my weight I burn about 250 calories a mile, so my walk would be 1000 calories, but the Fitbit says 1200.  Not a big difference, but two hundred calories is a meal for me now.

So today my Fitbit along with giving me extra steps gave me extra exercise points, on the side of 5000.  Wouldn't that be nice?

I am wondering how many calories I will burn tapping?  I am excited about trying something new, I am hoping  tap dance doesn't make me do hand and feet together, my shoes are on the way, soon people will be calling me ginger.

Oh well if I did do the 5000 calories I would definitely lose the two pounds I gained.

ACK weight gain

How can this be?  Usually I am down about half a pound the day after the weigh in, but today when I got up and weighed myself I was actually two pounds up.  This can not be possible.  I am so religious about weighing myself in the morning, and I have certain expectations when I get on the scale. Surprisingly, I had expected a weight gain when I got up, but I didn't believe it until I got on the scale.  Yup two pounds up.

Unbelieving the scale, I must of gotten on it and off at least a dozen times.  I tried re-positioning my feet, my body, I even tried re-calibrating the scale.  All for naught it did not change.  Finally I leaned against the wall and I got a weight loss, but I don't think that counts.

I don't know why I thought I would be up.  I did not eat off program, I swam my normal swim, I drove to and from San Jose, so why did I think I was up in weight, and why am I up in weight?  All sorts of things start to go through my head.  Maybe I have some sort of cancer that makes you gain weight.  Maybe my metabolism is so shorted out that I would have to eat 200 calories to lose weight. Maybe I am doomed to weigh this for the rest of my life, and I can only eat 800 calories to maintain this weight, no matter how much I exercise.

My worse nightmare come to light.

I don't know what I am going to do about this depressing phenomena, but I do know that I will stay on the program.  A blip?  I had just finished writing about fake weight gain?  I can't soothe myself with this being a fake weight gain, because I have disproved that theory, so  for whatever reason I gained two pounds.    Now I have to lose two pounds, which is about all I am losing in a week, to get back to where I was on Thursday night.  Sometimes things just are not fair. 

What to eat what to eat?

Now half way through the accelerated weight loss, I am spending more and more time trying to figure out what I can eat once we start transitioning and then forward.  The last time I did this I got a food delivery that worked for about 6-8 months, but the quality of the food diminished and finally they went bankrupt.  But even still, I got tired of dry overcooked food.  But it worked, I continued to lose weight to my goal with the meal delivery.

So now I am thinking the meal delivery worked, but it is not a long term solution.  Do I do the meal delivery again, and ween myself off it as I get closer to goal weight, or do I try to do it half and half, start with 3/4 days a week and try and cook the other 3/4 days?

I hate cooking.  And I don't know if I will change.  I could grab a bunch of frozen low cal dinners from the grocery, but we all know the sodium in those meals are through the roof.  Not the healthiest choice to make, but they are low cal.  And some of them are tasty.  But I can't live the rest of my life off of them.

But without planned meals I am doomed.  Freedom to choose my meals during the day is not really an option, because I do not choose wisely.  And I am sure I don't count the calories correctly either.  I will need to have planned meals and I will need to follow those meals like I follow this part of the diet.  I don't think I could plan meals a week in advance, but I can do it at the beginning of the day.

At group someone mentioned taking pictures of what they ate before the consumed it, that might be a working option.  I suppose it is the same as writing it down, but if you have a visual of it you might not have a tendency to "under report" the food.  It is a good thing I have lots of memory on my phone.

I don't know what I am going to do, but hopefully by the time I am on my way to Europe I will have a general idea of what I will do.

It is not a real weight gain

A few weeks before I started the program I gave up on watching what I ate.  I plagiarized the phrase a goodbye  to food party, and ate everything I had been denying myself and stopped worrying about how much I ate.

I enjoyed everything from ice cream to steak.  I never once during that period tried to figure out the calories I was eating, and when I got on the scale I thought that it isn't a real weight gain.   I mean you can't gain 15 pounds in a few weeks.  It just isn't possible.  So I had expectations that the first couple of weeks I would drop those 15 pounds and then some and be where I was before I had my farewell to food took place.

Well guess what?  It didn't happen.  Those 15 pounds was a real weight gain and I had to lose it all over again.  

And the truth is I didn't really enjoy the food.  It didn't taste as good as I had hoped, and I felt sick all the time.  My stomach was in constant agony, and I was ready to stop eating.  The good and the bad I guess.

So I have lost the 15 pounds and heading for another 10, but I can't help thinking where I would have been if I hadn't done the pig out.  If I had not thought that I may never eat this food again, that this was my last chance to eat it.  What if?

But that is what weight gain is.  A little is good a lot is better, than you are sick.  You get caught up in I couldn't possible gain 5 pounds in two days, so I am not going to worry about it.  It must be fake weight gain.  It will go away tomorrow.  Then it is well 5 pounds isn't so bad, and so on and so on.  You accept the weight you are, and when you gain you don't believe it and then you accept it.  And the next thing you know it is like how did this happen?

As I said before, the diet in not the reason I am writing this blog, it is what comes after the diet.  I need to be accountable in many ways, and I am hoping that by chronicling my days that I will be able to catch the fake weight before it becomes real weight and I can learn to eat satisfying and healthy food.  Because the truth be told it has to be satisfying,  I will not/can not spend the rest of my life eating tasteless boring food.  It isn't going to happen.

But for now I will continue to eat this boring food because there is an expiration date and that date is May 4.

This is hard

The last few days has been hard, and I have been grumpy.  I spent the last two days cleaning the garage and hardly made a dent.  I am tired of the food, I worry that I am tired of the food.  I am worried about my attitude.  I am worried that all I think about is when I can eat again.  I worry that this is all I think about.

Mindful eating.  I want real food, to savor the flavor, I love eating, how is this going to keep me from reverting to form.  For a minute there I thought well I will just go on the program every two years, so I don't really have to worry about the gains.

Argh.  While cleaning the garage I came across the before and after pictures.  So the first set I don't see too much of a difference, though I know that at the time they took the picture I was 80 pounds down.  The second picture the start picture didn't look much different then my ending picture, but again, I was 51 pounds lighter.  However the final picture I could tell the difference.

So people don't really notice the weight loss until that thresh-hold.  But they certainly notice weight gain.  Odd.

But back to my complaining.  I want food.  I want lots of it and I want it now.    I am going to bed.

3 to 3

We got up this morning at 2:45 to catch a 6:35 plane.  When we arrived we were told the airport would crowded and it would take us hours to get through securities.  T2 didn't quite believe them, but after the close call on the way out we agreed to catch the 3:15 shuttle.  It was pretty uneventful, we got down to the lobby at 3:03, and the shuttle showed up at 3:03.  I was left wondering if they would have waited 15 minutes for us?

We got to the airport and of course the security wasn't open.  When it did open at 4:00 we were through by 4:05 and had two hours to kill for our flight.  Even the coffee shops weren't open yet, but T2 was in line at the coffee shop precisely at 4:30 when it opened.  She lovingly bought me a chai tea, that I could smell the sugar before even taking a sip.  No tea for me, but she said it was really good, tasted like apple cider.  I will have to try that next time I am in New Orleans.

Having slept a whole 3 hours before getting up, I was pretty sleepy and couldn't wait to board the plane.  I fell asleep the minute I sat down and missed the yummy muffin they tried to push on me, but T2 kept them away, so I did not wake up to the yummy muffin smell.

The next flight was just as uneventful, I slept for half that flight as well, so now I am about up to the normal amount of sleep.  I hope I can sleep tonight.  Ah Well

So getting home is always nice, but when I walked in the downstairs door I was assailed by the smell of skunk.  Still going strong still burning my eyes.  Confused why it still stunk I went and greeted the little dog only to find that she was still coated in skunk spray.  And she has had the run of the house.  Needless to say we and our clothes and our linen are very skunky smelling.  Unfortunately, the poor dear is going to be regulated to the garage until I get skunk cleaner.

And today at 3 pm I was at Ocean Beach playing ball with my beloved Shepherd.  I was grumpy, but I knew she needed some exercise, so I screamed and yelled at her while she pretended I didn't exist.   For a bit she thought life is grand.

But it is strange in a 12 hour period  travel 2,000 miles and be home to take your dog for a walk.  The world is becoming a much smaller place indeed.