I Lost a Person

I lost 20lbs since the beginning of December. Since Christmas Eve, I gained back 8. If I net out even or better, I’ll be happy.

Weight: 237

Had to go back and read the last post, to see what what going on in my life back then.  It was one week before my surgery.  So here I am, three months and a bit later.  I’ve lost my job and an looking for a new one.  The job hunt is a little harder then usual for me this time around.  Usually, I’m like “I want a new job. Here are a few jobs. This one’s great, I’ll take it.”  And that process usually takes two weeks (or less). Sure, there are a lot of jobs out there right now, but nothing making me want to climb aboard.  Well, I did see one, but I’m not sure I’m totally qualified – have to take the plunge and just apply.  Will do that on Monday, see if I can get a LinkedIn referral first.  Finally got around to asking for LinkedIn recommendations and am so glad I did; requested about 30 from various people I’ve worked with over the years, and have already gotten four back today.  If I get a total of ten, I’ll be happy.   

On another note, interestingly (to me anyway), I’m the same exact weight I was the last time I posted to this blog.  

Being laid up for two months and then laid off, well, it’s a bit depressing.  But, I’m glad to see that at least I haven’t gained any weight.  Dave and I started South Beach yet again this morning.  Went out in style yesterday, well for dinner anyway.  Had a burrito (on whole wheat) and half a quesadilla.  Yum.  No more of that for a while.

Food diary for today so far: 

Breakfast – two egg omelette with onions, mushrooms and american cheese, 1.5 slices of turkey bacon, water, coffee, vitamins.  Have been on the vitamins for a whole week as of today.  Can’t say that I feel any better! But Dave mentioned that he does feel a little less pain in his joints, which is great.  

Morning snack – cheese stick (never get tired of these).

Seeing as it’s now after 2pm, I should probably make lunch.  I’m cold, so I don’t really want a salad – but I have a bag of salad that was “sell by 12/2″ on it’s last leg, so I’ll finish that up with some tuna.  

It’s great actually to have time to cook dinner and have it ready when Dave gets home.  I like the routine of it, I like cooking – I really enjoyed cooking for the Thanksgiving holiday.  And the pierogie-a-thon is only weeks away, that’s always fun (a challenge – but fun!).

Off to do the dishes from this morning, and then stop procrastinating and call the COBRA people and find out when my health insurance is being turned back on!

After a LONG hiatus, and many failed attempts at staying on track to eat healthy, Dave and I are going to just do it.  No other way.  Just jump in.  I quit smoking cold turkey.  I can’t think of changing my eating habits the same way.  It’s not like I can’t ever have a bagel+cream cheese or a slice of pizza or a burrito ever again.  Just not for the next two weeks. 

Weight this morning: 237 or 234.4, depending on which foot I step on the scale first with.  It’s really annoying.  I tried four times per foot, and got the same result each time.  So which is it?  I guess it’s just a sign that I shouldn’t be so focused on the numbers, anyway.  I have to remember to ask Dave to try this out tomorrow morning, and see if that happens to him, too.

Today’s food diary, so far:

Breakfast: scrambled eggs with shredded cheddar, two slices of bacon, cucumber, tomatoes, Teas’ Tea pure green tea.
Morning snack: kraft 2% cheddar stick
Lunch: salad of iceberg lettuce, steak, cucumbers, celery, grape tomatoes, provolone cheese, chimichurri vinaigrette (almost no flavor, won’t do that again)
Afternoon snack: 1.5oz dry roasted almonds
Exciting news: in addition to the green tea this morning, drank 34oz of water, total of 51oz of liquid.  not too shabby, for me anyway.

Made a doctor’s appointment for pre-op blood tests.  Getting scared now.  Surgery is next week.

Have worked out with the trainer 6 times already.  Very exciting.  But since we got back from London, I haven’t  made any trainer appointments, keep making excuses.  Need to text trainer, set them up.  Can only go after work, which means really late dinner.  But it’s either that, or not working with the trainer at all.  would have to meet her at 7:30am (leave house at 6am?) if I wanted to go in the morning before work, and she doesn’t train that early. 

What am I going to do about exercise while I’m recovering from surgery?  Mo (my trainer) says to ask the physical therapist.  But I won’t even start seeing the therapist until 6 weeks after the surgery.  Will have to be majorly vigilant with the eating/drinking. 

Glad to be back on the blog.

Since high school, I have gained and lost and gained and lost alot of weight. Keeping track of weight loss is beginning to seem a bit meaningless to me, because you have to pick some arbitrary point in time and go from there. Sure I can say, “Today, I’m starting a new diet and my new goal is ‘x’.” There’s always something in me that keeps thinking about other times I was trying to lose weight, other goals, other failures, other successes.

I use phrases like “my all-time heaviest” or “my old skinniest.” Sure, at one point, I used to weigh 352lbs., but that was a couple of years ago. Can that still “count” toward what I’m doing? If so, then the fact that I dieted my way down to 250lbs. should still “count” against me — especially since I was 250 more recently than I was 352. Chasing the numbers makes me tired.

I finally realized it all doesn’t matter. The only things that does matter is where I am right now. Having lost weight before is helpful only in that it reassures me I can do it again. Having gained wieght back doesn’t hurt me, but it does serve as a good reminder that if make the wrong choices, I’ll be moving in the wrong direction.

But, how to track my progress?

I needed a point in the past, before all the gains and losses, where my weight was a known fixed point. This way, my weight loss could be continually tracked with an absolute measure. Then it hit me — just go all the way back to the beginning. How much did I weigh when I was born. A quick check of my birth records showed 7lbs. 7oz. Perfect!

I like this new system because it accomplishes a few things:

• It focuses on where I am now, not where I’ve been. The only relevant information there is my current weight, and it’s the only information that I really need.
• It reminds me that the whole notion of tracking weight loss from some arbitrary point, that chasing the numbers, is kind of absurd.
• It helps make all the ups and downs a total wash. I can focus on what to do now, instead of being bogged down by what I did before.

Clean states are good.

226.4

Thursday – so, after last night, didn’t want to get on the scale this morning.  was not happy with how many times I had strayed from the path of eating healthy over the past week.  But, to be honest, although I didn’t make the right choices 100% of the time, I did at least 50% of the time if not more (I’m really not interested in calculating this, although if I had time I think it would be fun to do it). 

On the Today show this morning, there was a woman on who was talking about something, what was it?  She had a British accent and a lisp which I found endearing, she wrote a book…I guess it doesn’t matter but she said the basic elements of being able to achieve whatever it is the book she wrote was teaching you to achieve – these basic elements were:

Sleep
Excercise
Eating Healthy
Drinking Water

Well, well – I think you need these four basics to be successful at anything.  And currently, I’m working on ONE of them, but it got me thinking, I can’t really take a singular approach to being a healthier person.  A happier person.  I have to incorporate all of these things.  I don’t drink any water, at all.  I don’t exercise, at all.  I rarely sleep more than 6 hours per night, if I even get 6.  So here’s something else I’m going to tally each week for the next few weeks:

Sleep 8 hours at least two nights per week
Drink at least 1 glass of water every day
Exercise at least two times per week, not counting walking 20 minutes each way to work

After a few weeks, I’ll increase the sleep, water and exercise, but I want to start with something manageable, or else I know I’ll get discouraged. 

Wednesday – another early meeting.  Missed breakfast with Dave again L  Had omelette with turkey sausage and large skim latte.  So sad to miss out on such a beautiful day, but didn’t have time to even walk anywhere to get lunch.  Went downstairs, got a chicken Caesar and came right back up.  Got stuck late at office, and wanted comfort food.  Got whole wheat mac n cheese from Supermac.  It took them over an hour to get it here, and it wasn’t even hot, but it was yummy!

Tuesday – had an early morning meeting, had to be at the office at 8:30.  Missed breakfast with Dave.  Had cheese omelette and turkey sausage with large skim latte.  Went to lunch with Alice, who sits next to me at work – it’s her last week   We went to the Italian place across the street, Salute.  She never knew they had a take out area down the block (bad signage).  We both goth enormous foccaccia sandwiches, with mozzarella, roasted vegetables, and a small salad with a little olive oil/balsamic in a cup.  We went onto the patio to eat, it was such a beautiful day! I don’t even like foccaccia, so I put it aside, cut up the cheese/veggies and mixed it into the salad.  It was awesome.  Made garlic chicken and broccoli for dinner, yummy!!!  Vanilla pudding for dessert (fat-free, sugar-free, pudding look-alike).

Monday – Had sore tummy all night and most of the morning from food combo yesterday.  Eggs for breakfast, lunch, salad. stayed on the plan though, to try to feel better after Sunday.   La Pastaria for dinner – mussels, stuffed pepper, broccoli.  Saw the the pepper was stuffed not with meat but with breading.  ate most of it anyway.  Either from the guilt of the mussels, was naseous all night.  Dave got me tums, and airborne (only plop-fizz in the house).  Felt a little better after that.

May 4 – Day 4

So Dave and I woke up at a reasonable hour, had breakfast, and headed down to south Jersey for our nephew Joey’s communion.  My first.  We tried to listen to a station that we saw at a booth at the Summit arts & crafts festival, 101.9 – the day of the festival, they were playing great music.  I knew almost every song, and liked all of them.  But for some reason on Sunday, they kept playing songs we didn’t want to hear.  Thank g-d for Sirius!  We tried the coffee house but it was too mellow to get us going for the day, so ended up trading between Hair Nation and the 90s alternative stations.  We love Hair Nation

We got to the church, and it was a bright, sunny day – absolutely gorgeous.  The church had very high ceilings, timber with lots of light streaming through windows.  We found Dave’s mom and sister Katie, with a bunch of nephews and Joey’s sister Liz.  It was the first time we’d seen them since our wedding, and the kids looked so cute and were all bubbly and fun.  We sat down with them and then the service started.  

Katie said to me, after the kids who were going to be receiving their first communion walked in, that she loves the way they all look – they look so holy.  Watching them all dressed up in their suits and dresses, girls with veils, hands in prayer – they did look very holy, but I didn’t feel it the way Katy was, in her heart and soul.  I know that I well up inside sometimes when I’m in temple, so I totally understood where she was coming from, what she was feeling. 

After the mass and kids took pictures, we headed back to Dave’s sister Ava’s (Joey’s mom) to set up for the party.  There wasn’t much for me to do – I put out some snacks in bowls, put the cushions on the patio furniture – and got a chance to relax and talk with Ava and Katie and Dave’s mom.  It was a gorgeous day.  

Tally:

Breakfast – cheese omelette, turkey bacon, crystal light, coffee
Morning snack – cheese stick
Afternoon snack – doritoes, spinach dip / rye bread cubes, cheese curls
Linner (Dunch?) – uh oh…
Chicken finger, mac n cheese, sausage / cheese / tomato sauce on roll, more mac n cheese, broccoli
Dessert – rice krispie treat (with fun blue sprinkles which made them have blue spots!) 

The idea for this blog came up a couple of years ago. Stephanie and I were on the South Beach Diet, and doing really well. I started out at 352lbs. and had reached a big milestone. I was down to 252lbs. I had lost 100lbs.! My friend Matt said, “Wow, that’s more than my daughter weighs. You lost a person!” “Yeah,” I thought, “I lost a person.”

I was trying to get down to 199lbs., and that goal was finally in sight. I had lost one person of weight. Maybe it was a small person, but it was still fun to think of “a person” as a unit of measurement. But “I Lost a Person” worked on a different level for me. I thought I had left behind all of the baggage that went along with being overweight. I had new clothes. People at work noticed the change. I was getting compliments all the time. I lost a person – the fat person that I used to be.

I thought I had it all figured out. Not only had I lost so much weight, I did it without exercising. I went to the gym twice, overdid it both times to the point where I couldn’t lift my arms without wincing in pain, and decided to chuck the whole idea of exercise for a while. So, my weight loss was all diet — all me — pure will power.

People were constantly asking me for advice. They wanted to know my secret. They couldn’t believe that I had lost 100 lbs without doing any exercise. I bragged about all of the foods I had given up that other people could never live without (white bread, pasta, potatoes, beer, you name it). I felt great about myself and thought I had all the answers. I would start a blog and call it “I Lost a Person” and I would pass my wisdom on to the world.

And I would never be fat again.

When you’re overweight, being thin can seem monumental, life-changing, all-important and all-consuming. It can seem like a state of perfection that is a final destination. “One day, I will be thin,” we pledge to ourselves. But, we rarely think about what kind of person we’re going to be the day after that “one day.”

So, I’m writing this to say there is no destination. There is no state of perfection. Getting thin is just a series of thousands of little decisions, one after another. We have to make dozens of these decisions a day. The thing that I have come to realize is that I own all of the consequences of my decisions.

I can’t reconcile, “I want to eat a cheeseburger with fries” with “I want to lose weight.” If I decide to eat the cheeseburger and fries, I’m also deciding that I want to gain weight. If I decide that I want to lose weight, then I’m also deciding that I don’t want to eat the cheeseburger and fries. That’s it. It’s that simple. The decisions we must make are neverending.

So, after having gained back over half of that 100lbs. back, I have lost something as well. I no longer think of food as “bad” or “good”, or of myself as either for having eaten it (or not). Now, I think about the direction that I want to be going in, and whether the next step I take (which is the only thing I can control right now) is going in that direction.

I lost the unrealistic notion of reaching perfection. I lost the smug feeling that I know it all. I lost the idea that I was a “fat person” that was becoming a “thin person.”

This insight has changed who I am, and once again, I lost a person.