Diet day 189

[darkemeralds]

The only wardrobe items I haven't had to replace after losing almost fifty pounds (almost...it's sooooo close) are two pairs of black leggings, which, though they just barely stay up now, serve as baggy trousers for a Sunday morning.

Otherwise, everything I launder and hang out to dry these days is either new or unearthed from a very deep layer of my closet. And here's a totally unanticipated benefit: I can fit approximately 25% more of my clothes on my clothesline!

I felt so exposed, somehow, when I had wide clothes to hang out.

A related benefit is feeling fairly complacent when catching my reflection in a full-length mirror.

These are little, almost meaningless, advantages of weight loss when placed beside the improvements to my health and mobility, but they represent a freeing up of the emotional energy I have wasted for years in trying to avoid cameras and mirrors and other visual reflections of my size. Better uses for that energy are almost certainly coming.

Stronger people than I am might say that I could have freed up that energy at any time through simple self-acceptance, but it turns out that for me, losing half a hundred pounds was actually the easier road.

The path down from my highest weight has grown gradually less steep, as I knew it would, but I continue to roll along at a satisfying pace. On advice, I've tweaked a few elements of my eating--lowered the carbs, upped the protein and fat--which is improving my stamina, my mood, and my sleep quality, while having a remarkable cancelling effect on my sweet tooth.

Still, my object hasn't changed: I want to eat now as I plan to eat forever, and I can't be doing with strange, unsociable food restrictions. Bring on the cheese tray!

Comments

[executrix]

1. Hurrah! Congratulations!
2. The law of shopping your closet: be nice to the clothes you wear on the way up, you'll be seeing them again on the way down.

[darkemeralds]

Perhaps superstitiously, I am getting rid of clothes I wore before the way down began, and doing so with alacrity, because I don't want the constant reminder that it might be okay to regain this weight.

Also, they were terrible clothes.

I seem to have returned to the size at which I can fit into better quality clothes AND want to be seen in them. I'm not actually sure how much farther I'll go, but I'm thinking at least another 20-25 lbs.

[cookiemom6067]

Stronger people than I am might say that I could have freed up that energy at any time through simple self-acceptance, but it turns out that for me, losing half a hundred pounds was actually the easier road.

Wow - that's really probably a lot more profound than you think. It sort of hit me like a ton of bricks.

I'm pretty sure that, for me at least, "simple self acceptance" is an oxymoron

[tehomet]

Yes, that line struck me too.

[runningwater]

Oxymoron is right. *sigh*

Long comment is long

[darkemeralds]

All the awareness in the world--that fat is a feminist issue, and self-acceptance is psychologically healthy, and the Hollywood standard of appearance for women is a form of slavery; that my appearance shouldn't matter, and my merit should not be dependent on my weight, and prejudice against overweight people is unjust and illogical--could not undo my early conditioning about the importance of being slim. And let me tell you, years of the most advanced kinds of therapy have taught me some tricks for altering early conditioning.

I tried all those tricks. They didn't work. I delved deeply into Fat Acceptance. It didn't work. I resolved every fucking childhood issue and trauma I could uncover. It didn't work. I could not get to self-acceptance.

Everything I tried, however, took another brick out of the wall of my resistance to simply losing the damn weight.

It was a big wall. There were a lot of bricks. I learned that fatness, big appetite, and high-calorie cravings are not character flaws or psychological issues. I spent quite a bit of time in the "blame corporate food" camp (still a valid position, in my view--for me, MSG and other additives actively promote irresistible cravings, and ridding myself of them completely was an important step).

I came to understand, at last, that in a world of abundant food, the human animal quite naturally grows fat. The fact that we got to that abundance via cheap, denatured carbohydrates and fats in no way alters the fact that we seem to be wired to chow down whenever food is plentiful, in order to avoid dying when it's not. I stayed fat--and in fact, got quite a bit fatter--on a healthy, natural diet of food prepared at home with fresh ingredients from Whole Foods. There are, after all, as many calories in a tablespoon of organic cold-pressed virgin olive oil as in a tablespoon of hydrogenated trans-fat.

It's not terribly "natural" to buck that instinctive survival strategy. People who never got fat in the first place don't provide any sort of model for the rest of us. They're "naturally thin" now, and likely would have been "naturally dead of starvation" in an earlier era of human history.

I finally accepted that getting thinner, like correcting my bad eyesight, or going more than four miles from home in a day, or keeping a wide circle of friends I've never met in person (or reading books, or talking to my brother in California, or washing my clothes in a machine, or microwaving my lunch, or almost anything else I do all the time), would be a matter of technology.

Technology (a bathroom scale, a kitchen scale, calorie tracking at Livestrong, the data tools of The Hacker's Diet--complete with an Android app for my phone, the information at The National Weight Control Registry, the sweeping wave of information which is creating a reversal of the obesity trend [have you noticed?]) is everything in my weight loss effort. It's not "natural" by any measure of instinctive preference, and maintaining the loss will be a matter of never reverting to instinctive preference again.

And that is still easier than saying, "I accept myself as a fat person". I just couldn't get there without at least trying long-term technical dieting, because in the back of my mind I knew that that was the one thing I'd never done. It would have been like accepting a treatable disease condition just because I had unexamined objections to the available methods of treatment. I examined my objections, and the methods, and decided to set out.

And here I am, 190 days later, a million miles closer to self-acceptance than I've ever been since early childhood.

[pinesandmaples]

I felt so exposed, somehow, when I had wide clothes to hang out.

Yes.

[darkemeralds]

I'm sorry to say that shame has long ruled my life. It's better now, and I really am pleased to have less wide shirts and trousers to hang on the line, but I confess: I still don't hang my underwear outside! Isn't that silly?

[pinesandmaples]

I don't either, but I live in an apartment building. My laundry is not available for my neighbor's pervy-fancy.

[darkemeralds]

You know, pervy fancies never even crossed my mind! LOL.

[harmanhay.livejournal.com]

Congratulations, that must feel incredible!

You talked about years... what would you say to the you who avoided this work for so long? I know someone who admits she hates the weight and wants to lose it, but she just won't begin. She won't try, she presumably thinks she's stuck there for ever, and I want to help her find that courage. Having had different challenges in my own life, it's tough to get into her head and understand how to inspire her. On the one hand she must learn that she's valuable and worthy whatever she looks like; at another, she needs to change her behaviour for the sake of her health and happiness. Any advice?

[darkemeralds]

I've been thinking a lot about this question, and a couple of things have come to mind and stayed there, so let me see if I can articulate them.

First, my super-sized response to cookiemom6067 above covers the essentials of my own thought process and any "advice" I might ever care to give to someone else on the subject. I'll probably make it a separate post, but you're welcome to share the comment with anyone you like.

More importantly, however, I didn't "avoid this work." There was never a day in my life, from the age of 13 onward, when it wasn't a pressing concern. Those years were not filled with nothing but cake and potatoes. They were filled with therapy, with self-flagellation, with treatments, and programs, and attempts, and diet after diet. They included drugs both prescription and illegal, all sorts of exercise regimens, and a constant battle against food cravings. They included reading and research, study and self-development, spiritual practices, and endless seeking, all because I was fat and couldn't accept myself that way.

I don't think my experience is at all unusual.

I've lost weight before--half a dozen times, probably, to various degrees. This time has quantifiable and qualitative differences from all previous attempts. I attribute those differences to

• Menopause and a relief of terrible hormonal imbalances that caused mood disorders and exacerbated my overeating
• Long-term dietary change, during which I've eliminated what were toxic and craving-inducing substances for me
• Technology--the easy availability of information, tools, and communication to support this change

All previous efforts contributed to my success in that second point. Almost none of it seems to have been wasted.

But for all I know, it's just time. Time, in human history, for people collectively to overcome the obesity epidemic. Maybe the epidemic has run its course. Maybe my ability to do at age 55 what eluded me for the previous 40-plus years is the result of a mass movement in consciousness, and not the result of any meritorious effort on my part at all.

In any case, if your friend is typical, she's "tried everything" and has been utterly defeated by futility, so though she may not be trying anymore, I can't imagine that she's never tried.

I'm convinced, moreover, that the issue is not "psychological" at all, and is not susceptible of treatment by psychological means. If the encouragement, admonitions, cheerleading, guilt, fears, browbeating, well-wishing, hopes, or rejection of other people had any effect on the problem, nobody would have the problem, because God knows there's an endless supply of those things.

I can tell you this much: that while I'm proud of my weight loss and satisfied with the improvements to my appearance and health, I've been very grateful to close friends and family members for remaining silent on the point. For my skinny family members to say anything about the matter to me would just remind me of my difference, of the shame of being The Fat Sister, and I count their silence as a kindness--a form of courtesy.

All of which is a long way of saying that I don't think you can get into your friend's head, and I'd go so far as to say that you shouldn't try. I'm writing these blog posts in case my experience is of any value to anyone else, and your friend is certainly welcome to read them. I'm just not sure how I'd feel if a naturally slim friend of mine referred me to information of this kind, unless I had specifically asked.

Perhaps, however, having it in your mind will turn out to be valuable in some way.