You Can Have It All, Kind-of

This week I've been attending the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival. It's a gigantic jazz-lover's party where 10s of thousands attend jazz performances scheduled all around downtown Rochester NY.  It's full of music interwoven with wine, beer, cocktails, and food. I enjoy all of it and that's what this blog is about.

Every evening I run into old acquaintances who haven't seen me since I lost 100 pounds. They ask me how I did it and often tell me their doctor has told them they need to lose weight. They reveal they aren't doing anything because they are unwilling to give up their enjoyment of social occasions. So let me dispel the myth that you can't enjoy your favorite social events, drinks and foods when you are losing weight or maintaining a healthy weight.

You can enjoy social events where food and wine flow but you have to be smart about it and you can't have it all. Here are the strategies I've tried and some of them actually work for me. I had to be much more rigorous when I was losing vs. now that I'm maintaining:
        Eat and drink with wild abandon and then abstain for the following few days/week (you know, salads, lean foods, careful portions -- this often ends up being my approach now that I'm maintaining, although my wild abandon now is different from my wild abandon when I was 100 pounds overweight. If I did this while I was losing, it would mean a week of no weight loss, which was discouraging.).
        Eat modestly that day anticipating how much you will allow yourself that evening, keeping it all in balance. (This is the best plan, but it rarely works for me, hand me that 2nd glass of wine and I'll drink it or pass the tray of snacks and I'll eat them).
        Ask a friend to remind you to think twice about eating that cookie/snack/beer. (I sometimes ask my husband to do this and then I growl at him when he reminds me -- it doesn't work for me.)
         Spend your time chatting with friends or listening to the music and abstain from the food and drink. (This works for me when I'm motivated to lose, I have to make sure I eat well before I go and I stay away from the food table. If I don't start eating I seem to do better than trying to just have a little. I also chew gum and hold a glass of water in my hand).

So here's the end to the story. Seven days ago I returned from Indiana with my usual 3-4 pound gain. I worked modestly all week to drop the pounds. Exercising 5/7 days and planning what I eat. I followed the food plan 5/7 days -- two were not so good! I attended the jazz festival and had 1-2 glasses of wine every evening. I ate festival foods one night. I ate late snacks when I got home one night. I WAS NOT PERFECT. My diet and exercise would not be written up in a journal as role model. Despite this, I lost the 4 pounds I had gained in Indiana. So the big lesson is NIP it in the bud and balance excess with moderation on a daily basis.

Good luck. You will feel better if you do something.

Keep Away!

I just returned from a visit home. Every time I go there I swear I will eat well and exercise but I don't. Old habits return, I'm busy, and temptation surrounds me. I usually return from a 1 week visit with 2 or 3 extra pounds.

My mother watched me eat another handful of chips (or cookies or bowl of ice cream) and wondered how I managed to take off so much weight eating like I do. I said I have a higher metabolism now, more muscle, and I don't eat like this at home. But is that all?


I realized that just because I return to Indiana my willpower doesn't fly out the window. I never had it! At least not enough to resist certain foods. My trainer wrote a blog about how no one has enough willpower to eat perfectly in all circumstances, you have to have strategies.

My successful strategy is 'keep away'. I've come to recognize my own long list of irresistible foods and I just don't bring them into the house. If they do sneak into the house I may eat a few and then I ask my husband to either finish them quickly or hide them. At a party, I avoid being near them.

I'll have to work on better strategies for my visits home, but until then, I just work hard after I return to take off those 2-3 pounds before they decide to stay.

Affirmations

I’ve noticed that it's easier to eat right and exercise when I’m kinder to myself in my head. Or maybe I’m kinder to myself when I eat better and exercise. Either way, thinking positive, self-affirming thoughts does help with weight loss and weight maintenance.

Very early on in my physical reformation, a life coach, Jacqui, (Light-r-u.com) suggested I create a visual representation of my goal and write some affirming statements about the future me.

I browsed the web for a regular-size dressy dress to wear to my son’s wedding in a year. It had all the characteristics of what I hadn’t been able to wear for the past 25 years. Form-fitting, attention-getting red, and sleeveless (I really hated my arms). The model stood tall with good posture. My husband digitally replaced the model’s head with a picture of my own and there I was – a vision of what I hoped to be in a year.

I took it a step further because my motivation wasn’t only to look good I wanted to feel good. I found a picture of a young girl running joyfully through a field and added it to the back of the woman in the dress. This is how I wanted to feel. Young, energetic, joyful, and pain-free.

Along side the pictures I wrote affirming statements about the future me. “I have good posture.” “My arms are firm and strong.” “I wear regular-size clothes.” “I am beautiful.” “I eat right and exercise.” On the back I wrote. “I am energetic.” “I am healthy.” “I can run and play.” “I am joyful.”

This picture moved around the house with me. Taped to the bathroom mirror, on my computer monitor, in my notebook. Over time I began to achieve my goals and I began to believe the statements. 

Sit down and visualize how you will be when you reach your goals. Cut a picture out of a magazine. Glue your face on it. Write your statements. Read them regularly. It does help.

By the way, the dress I wore to my son’s wedding was even better. It showed my knees too. A year earlier I couldn’t even imagine revealing my knees.

School's Out for the Summer! What's the Plan?

School's out for the summer! At least that's the way I feel. I've moved into summer mode, in fact, I've moved for the summer so my routine is disrupted. Dangerous and exciting at the same time.

I've got a lot to say today. Haven't been posting but I've been thinking. First off, I successfully completed another month of weight maintenance. Yay! Two down, approximately 360 more to go if I'm lucky enough to live into my late eighties. That's the intimidating part about lifetime weight maintenance for someone whose natural adult lifestyle was weight gain; the rest of my life could be a long time and there's a lot of room for slip-ups. I'm trying to look at it one day at a time. Here's the REALLY SCARY part, I took June, July, August off of boot camp. A great test of how well I can continue to apply the lessons of the past two years. YIKES!

You might be wondering, what's my plan? Eat and drink with wild abandon while skipping exercise? Tempting and possible, but it's not my plan.  Here's my plan based upon what worked the past two years.
(1) Exercise by 9 am every day -- continue to treat it like my part-time job
(2) Find exercise buddies. Two neighbors regularly exercise at a local college gym.
(3) Find ways to have fun and exercise. Some local trainers at a new gym have a 2x/week boot camp, I'll try it, maybe I"ll meet some new people. My favorite boot camp trainers, Jeremy and Sarah, will have four free boot camps at a park, I might take a drive and join them. And my neighbor wants to try Jeremy's 10 minute exercise routine with me and have us create a mini-bootcamp around it. I'll even put air in my bicycle tires.
(4) Plan and log my menus. This will be hard because as soon as I don't have to turn in my food logs I slack off.
(5) Stop in at the tall trainer a couple of times a month and weigh in. That adds some accountability.

So here's the essence of what works for me: Plan and routine -- these two make it happen; people and variety -- these two make it fun. The motivation is how good I feel having lost the weight and how much I don't want to return to the past. I have to remind myself of that several times a day.

Less Obsessed -- Good news, I think

I haven't been writing as much in my blog because I am feel more comfortable about maintaining my weight loss. It's been two months. I'm not sure that feeling comfortable is good, but it's a better way to live.  I have learned that a two pound weight fluctuation is normal for me. Any time I see two pounds approaching I reduce my calories and become very disciplined about planning and weighing my food. I'm still exercising hard every day and the pounds drop right off.

I've been thinking about the difference between working to lose weight and maintaining the weight loss. Besides the fact I can eat more calories, I think it's that I don't need to be as obsessed about what I eat. When I was losing weight, I had to be obsessed, because I was changing a lifetime of habits. I had to learn what was in foods, what was a well balanced diet, and I had to learn that every little bite counts. In fact, the smallest bites (candy, cake, ice cream) count the most. My digital scale was, and still is, my best weight-loss friend. I still need to plan and weigh food. But, I am a little more relaxed about it. I will go out to dinner to celebrate a major event. I have eaten a regular piece of bread. I doubt I can ever be as relaxed as someone who never had a weight problem. Maybe they aren't relaxed either, which is why they never had a weight problem.

I called this blog equilibrium because I am seeking that balance between obsession/panic and "normal" life. I don't want to become complacent and have the pounds creep back on. But I also don't want to make the central element of my life what I eat or don't eat. Still working on it.

Day 56 and counting.

Bad Girl

Hmmm. I was a bad girl this week. At least as far as eating goes. I ate junk and I didn't consistently log my food (junk does not log well in Vitabot). Just in a bit of a funk, disruption in my routine, and some stresses. I did get up and go to bootcamp every day so that was my salvation.

Times like this I have bad refrains about myself running in my head. "There you go, slipping back into bad habits." "Bad girl. I don't care." I have a very poor opinion of myself. I think I have poor self-discipline, no determination, no willpower. Realistically, I might have it, but it seems to have taken a vacation.

My daughter-in-law recently completed the first draft of her first book. I was so proud of her and I really admired her dedication to completing it. I mentioned to my husband how I wished I had such self-discipline and dedication. He said, "what do you call dieting for two years, losing 100 pounds, and exercising almost every day?"

I guess it's all perspective. Good thing I have loved ones and friends who can see a part of myself I don't see. Weeks like this I really need and appreciate them.

47 days and counting

Ravenous

The other day I missed one of my snacks and dinner was late. I was intensely hungry. So hungry my stomach hurt. I thought “I’m STARVING.” This feeling of intense hunger is a relatively new awareness. Then I remembered a news program where they interviewed children whose parents were laid off and no longer eligible for unemployment.

One 9-year-old boy talked about trying to sleep so he didn’t think about being hungry but he woke up every 5 minutes because his stomach hurt so much. Tears running down her face, another girl talked about her shame pulling food out of the cafeteria trash. These children were HUNGRY. Even though they were ashamed they were telling their stories so that other hungry children in America would know they were not alone. Now when my stomach rumbles I remember those children and realize I don’t know hunger.

Next time you really aren’t hungry but think you are, consider giving to help the 3 million American children who are hungry. 

Day 40 and still counting