Testing some code

Where am I now?

I am at The Book of Why is Lost at Sea, where I plan to hunker down and get back to writing on a regular basis. If you found me here, I'd love for you to come over there and take a look at what I'm doing.

Also, you can follow me on Twitter as NoelleCDavis. The more, the merrier.

~Noelle

Where I was

Last year (May/June 2008) I had a book idea: "How Not to Lose Weight on a Diet." The idea was that it would be a humorous look at the many, many diets I had been on unsuccessfully. I shared this idea with my good friend, C., and we tried to blog it, to get feedback and ideas. This is my first post, where I share a little personal history and ask for help. Keep in mind, this is 5 months before I found FA. What's crazy is that I *know* diets don't work, but still ask for help trying to find a good one. *palmforehead* (Note: I do not know much about ED, but I suspect this history may be triggering. Please take care.)

Here's where the idea for this project came from: I have been dieting for 19 years, since two months before my first wedding at age 20, and I have doubled in size across about two decades. How is this possible? How can a person attempt to lose weight, a lot of times and in a lot of different ways, and yet manage to turn into the equivalent of two of herself? Let me be mostly truthful here: I weigh (about) 300 pounds. Since I am 5'5'' this means that I am at least twice what the height-weight charts and the BMI charts say I should be.

I don't have a graph for you – I'll make one if you really want – but the trend is my weight stair-stepping up across the years. The first year I was married, I gained about 40 pounds. Then I went on a high cost, we-feed-you plan and lost 50 pounds in a year. Then I got into a lousy job situation and gained back 60 in the next year. Then I stayed the same for a long time, probably six years, even while working in a restaurant. Then I got pregnant, gained 60 pounds, had the kid, lost 25 pounds, got pregnant again, gained another 60, had the second kid and never really lost any more. I stayed at the new higher weight for about eight years, went on a low carb diet, lost 35 pounds in 6 months and gained it back in 3 months, all while doing the hardest workouts of my life in the martial arts. I got divorced, gained 65 pounds due to: lack of exercise, getting a full time job for the first time since having kids, going out to eat with the new boyfriend, and acquiring sleep apnea. Last year, I tried a liquid diet, lost 30 pounds, stressed out and ate real food, and gained the 30 back.

I only hit the highlights, but in the midst of the big weight loss attempts, probably once every other month, I try a new plan and generally fizzle out. And every time I think, "Okay, my body has to stop here, this is really the most I can be," but I often manage to add some more weight. Holy cow!

And feel free to laugh, because I do. We've got to laugh at the crazy things we do to lost weight and the seeming futility of most of the plans we all have tried. C. and I – and you if you'll share – would like to tell our stories of trying to fight the weight loss battle and (usually) losing. We'd like to commiserate about what doesn't work, so maybe we can all laugh a little and try not to worry so much about our slip-ups as we keep trying to get to our magic number, be it pounds or pants size.

I know there are people who have actually succeeded at losing weight and maintaining it. I'm sure you have advice for us. The advice probably has to do with portion control and overcoming emotional eating, right? Okay, share that advice. Let's have a discussion about what's worked for you and what hasn't, because the first diet is not the one that works. Nor is the second, third, or fourth, if I had to speculate, but maybe you finally got to your magic number and can stay there. Let us hear from you, too, because with weight loss, hope springs eternal.

Reading, reading, reading

I haven't posted (or written much of anything lately) because I've been so busy *reading* everything I can find in the Fat O'Sphere and linked feminist blogs. I find it amazing that there is all this discussion out there and I just had NO IDEA. I thought I came to this "dieting is a bad idea and I should stop" revelation all on my own, but it turns out that other people had invented the wheel before me!

I've also gotten my copy of Health At Every Size and I've been reading it, and reading parts of it aloud to my SO, for the past few days. I need to finish it so I can comment.

Link to Harriet Brown: "Feed Me!: Obesity problems--true and faux"

I was lying in bed last night thinking through how I wanted to discuss fat acceptance with my ex-husband the next time he mentions that my beautiful, average-sized-for-her-age, 10-year-old daughter "might be getting fat." Luckily for me, Harriet Brown wrote it down and now I can get to it when I need it.

Feed Me!: Obesity problems--true and faux

I hurt, therefore I rest

I've had a slow-moving, unmotivated sort of day today and I've finally (at eight o'clock at night) worked out why. I went to the pool on Tuesday, like I usually do. However, this week, instead of walking underwater half the time and swimming the other half I ended up walking about a third of the time and swimming the rest, because I had to leave the instructional pool and go over to the lap pool. So, I overdid it swimming, I think. Plus, I got on the stupid Wii fit twice this week with the kids and I think the pain in my shoulder, possibly begun at the pool, was exacerbated by the sort of reaching and stretching and wiggly sort of body movements required by the Wii fit games.

All this to say that my shoulder has been hurting for a few days and, naturally, I am not interested in doing a lot of non-essential physical activites at home, e.g., replacing doorknobs, taking down holiday decorations, etc. Please note that I did a bunch of "essential" tasks like making dinner, cleaning up, etc., even in pain, but that's as far as I could go this week.

Why am I talking about this on my fat acceptance blog? Because prior to this, I would be castigating myself for being fat and lazy and making elaborate plans to get in skinny and in shape (a shape that is not fat, of course) and therefore be full of energy. In fact, what happened is that, in my current physical condition and at my current level of conditioning, I overdid it physically and I need to let my shoulder recover.

This is not a fat issue, it's a "I did too much too fast" issue. When I was 100 pounds lighter doing taekwondo, this used to happen all the time. I didn't blame my weight then (even though I was officially overweight), I acknowledged that I had pushed myself too hard at a physical activity and needed to chill out for a while and that is what I need to do. When the shoulder feels better, I'll get back to using it.

The cost of dieting

One of the things that I used to find painful about dieting was the grocery bills. Every new diet, even the ones that let you eat "real food," required new grocery shopping. Every diet had something special that I needed, like certain vegetables or fruits or brown rice, that we didn't have in the pantry already. Or, the stuff we had was not quite right because it was not low-fat or high fiber or low-carb or sugar-free. And often, my new diets happened right after I'd alrady been to the store, so I had a pantry and refrigerator full of inappropriate food - most of which I'd bought for consolation after the previous diet had failed.

This was a vicious cycle that just added to my lousy feelings about myself. Commit to new diet, buy everything on the "shopping list" provided (except raw tomatoes, I just cannot eat those), stay on the new diet for three days, give up and decide to eat intuitively, buy the foods I really want, eat happy for a few days or a few weeks, feel fat again, go on new diet, start over from beginning.

When I felt very fat (in a bad way!), I would go on the more extreme diets that don't really let you eat food at all. Optifast was quite expensive every week, in addition to tasting blech and keeping me in starvation mode. And I still had to buy food for the other people in my house, so I wasn't getting the food "savings" that they use as part of their pitch. Jenny Craig was pricey, too, plus I seem to remember that I had to buy salad stuff and milk.

I found a note I wrote to myself in one of the many journals I have laying about that, among the things I think I've learned at least once is: spending big chunks of money is not sufficient motivation to me to make significant behavior changes. Not $3000 for Optifast, not $250 for the pool, not $40 a month for Jazzercise. Got that? The act of spending money does not motivate by itself, but it can certainly add to the guilt later.