Why I Eat...Usually Isn't Hunger!

Yesterday I had a doctor's appointment - just my annual pap smear, no big deal. I also had a couple other issues to discuss with her, though, and oh yeah - I turned 40, so it turned out she had a couple of surprises in store for me, too.

We talked about a lot of things, and I was examined in various ways, and she asked me lots of questions about how my health has been, and about my family health history (I swear she was shocked by how much my mom had wrong with her - the woman had everything, just about). She told me I need to start exercising, to help avoid both heart disease (mom had it) and diabetes (mom had it). I knew both of those things, and I swear, I really will start exercising, once my arms are feeling better (long story short, I pulled or pinched or tore something in my right elbow in December when picking up a box, and it's still bothering me - the doctor said I probably had a pinched nerve, and I need to ice it and take Ibuprofen to reduce swelling; as for my left arm, my shoulder and neck have been very tight and sore, but I'm exercising them and doing what I can to loosen it back up). Then she asked me how often I go to the dentist, and I had to admit it had been a couple of years (I've been putting off going because I need crowns and can't afford them). Then she asked me if I flossed, and I said no.

Did you know gum disease can lead to heart disease somehow? You do now. I swear I'm going to start flossing, too.

So I got poked and prodded and have to go get my very first mammogram on Friday and have to go back next Thursday morning to have fasting bloodwork taken, and she'll talk to me about the results of the bloodwork when I see her in February for my cyst removal. Here's hoping the numbers aren't bad.

And here's where my day fell apart, food wise. I left this very thorough exam feeling rather...violated...I guess. (I had a rectal exam, people, AND a pap smear and breast exam - this woman had contact with every personal, private area I possess!) So what did I do when I left the doctor's office? I drove straight to McDonald's and got a cheeseburger (ketchup only) and small fry for lunch. Then, because I hadn't used my lunch money that work gives me for lunch, I used it to buy two diet sodas for this weekend, and TWO CANDY BARS. Then I came back to work and proceeded to eat both of them.

And that wasn't the end of it, oh no. I went home and ate my barbecued chicken breast and rice for dinner, with a glass of 2% lactose free milk (the one good thing I ate all afternoon). And I followed it up with a 100 calorie pack of yogurt covered pretzels, a small box of yogurt covered raisins and two pieces of cheese, eaten with crackers.

Oh yes, I did manage to go about 1,000 calories over my daily limit, simply because I was feeling "violated" and like I needed some comfort.

And that makes this next part all the more necessary and fitting. I had a book waiting at the library for me, and I went in last night and picked it up, and started reading it. What book was it?

"Breaking Free from Emotional Eating," by Geneen Roth.

I read a little bit last night, and so far I've agreed with everything I've read. For instance, when was the last time you ate because you were actually hungry? For me, it had been a while. I eat out of habit - it's 10:00, must be time for a mid-morning snack! It's 11:30, must be time for lunch! Am I hungry? Who knows, but I have to eat!

Well, she tells you to stop and think about it. She talks about a sliding scale of hunger - 1 to 10, with one being you're about to eat someone's arm you're so hungry, and 10 being you're stuffed. She encourages you to stop eating and wait to see how long it takes you to get hungry.

For the record, I waited this morning. I wasn't hungry at all when I got here at 8:00 - by the time I went to lunch my hunger level was at about a four, I'd say. I was very hungry, and very happy to go to lunch, but I wasn't starving to death.

So now I'm trying to think about why I'm eating (such as, habit, or because of some want or emotion I don't know how to take care of without food). And I'm looking forward to reading more of this book.

Oh, and another neat result of this doctor's visit! Jim had been telling me he thought the bathroom scale (a doctor's scale that my mom bought in the 80s) was weighing heavy, so yesterday I tested it out. I weighed myself when I was all dressed and ready to go to work, minus my shoes. I weighed 217.25 (three pounds more than I weighed naked). When I got to the doctor's office, I stepped on the scale wearing the same thing, with a full bladder (I knew I was going to have to pee in a cup, so I didn't go before I left work to head to the doctor's office), and I weighed 214.24. So apparently our scale DOES weigh a bit heavy!

Which is a good thing, because now I weigh less than I thought! Yay! But we need to adjust the scale so that it's right again. I'm not sure what this is going to do to my monthly weight figures. I think I'll just use the numbers it's giving me right now, and when we get the scale adjusted, I'll make a note and adjust them. (Adjusting the scale seems pretty easy. I'm going to see if Jim will bring a few of his weights up from the basement, so we can put them on the scale knowing how much they weigh (say, 200 pounds or maybe 150), and adjust the little screw on the scale until it reads what it should read.)

Okay, novel of an entry written. Bye all!

Weigh-In

Today is weigh-in day! I'm going to talk about last night first, though.

So, I was alone again last night - Jim was at work. I wanted to snack so bad! I had my salmon for dinner, but I didn't feel like making the potatoes (which is truly a sign of my laziness about cooking when Jim isn't home, because they're instant potatoes - making them really couldn't be much easier), so I had a glass of milk, a small box of yogurt raisins, a 100 calorie pack of Cheese Nips and a granola bar for dinner. Weird, yes? :D Oh well, it worked.

When I was done with all of that, I of course wasn't hungry, and yet I wanted to snack! I was home alone, snacking is what I've always done in that situation. I eventually gave in a little, but only by eating five strawberry Mini Wheats, so it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. I haven't done the math, but that's not many calories over my upper limit. And then I stopped and just watched TV and relaxed until bedtime, snacking jones gone. Thankfully.

And then this morning I got up and weighed in, and the scale told me I had lost 2.5 pounds since I started trying again on the 5th! Woo! I am now 215.5. I was very happy to see a loss.

I'm shooting for losing two pounds a week, so here's hoping 213.5 shows on that scale a week from today. :)

1550 Calories in My Wednesday

I told you I do better on nights when Jim is home with me. Last night when I got home I made some eggs and toast for dinner, and had 150 calories left when I was done, so later on I had a 100 calorie pack and 3/4 of a piece of cheese, and ended up at exactly 1550. Now obviously, I didn't really need to make sure I hit the upper limit of my range, but I was hungry, so I did. But then I stopped eating, so woo! Go me!

Jim is going to be at work tonight, so here's hoping I can build on that one good day by being good tonight when I'm alone with the dogs. I took a salmon filet out of the freezer this morning, which I'll have with some potatoes, so dinner is set. We don't have much snacky stuff in the house, so I should be okay. I'll let you know. :)

One Day at a Time

I was thinking this morning about the various things I inherited from my mother (I have no idea now why I was thinking this). I got her hands and feet. I got her youthful appearance - people are usually shocked when they hear my age, and when Mom died at 62, she would have passed for 10 years younger than that, easily. And of course I inherited her tendency to be overweight - although I got a different body shape than she did. She gained in her upper body (mostly belly) and had nice, thin legs. I gain in my lower body first, and only gain in my upper body when the lower half is at maximum capacity. But however the weight is distributed, it's there, and since my dad was very thin, I have to think that the weight came from her.

Of course, even if genes are a factor, the fact that I actually gained the weight I'm genetically predispositioned for is my own damn fault. I'm the one who decided that food was the best way to deal with my emotions - good or bad. I'm the one who decided that when I was too insecure and broken to deal with a relationship, that the best way to avoid being in one was to get too fat for any guy to want me. I'm the one who developed a love of sweet things.

I wasn't always this way. I was a normal weight child - I even have picture proof of that right here on my hard drive! See, here I am somewhere around the age of 10:





An old friend scanned those in and sent them to me on Facebook not too long ago. But see what they show? An average sized kid, one you'd never call fat. So what happened?

I started gaining weight in high school, but not much - I still wore a size 7 all the way through, which I wouldn't really call heavy now. I thought I was huge, though. When I started working, more weight came on. When I got to 165 pounds, I joined Nutri System and lost 40 pounds. I eventually gained back a bit of that, but I stayed between 140 and 150 for a few years.

Then I went back to school, and Mom had her first stroke. My weight crept up. Mom got sicker, I was seriously stressed - the weight crept up even further. I finished school and got an office job. Mom got sicker. The weight crept up. Mom died. My weight went up over 200 pounds for the first time in my life.

And really, what it all amounts to, is that I've struggled with my weight my whole life. I've been on a diet or thinking about going on a diet ever since I was a teenager - and I'm now 40! Why can't food just be something I eat to live? Why does it have to be my go to way of dealing with everything in my life?

Of course I have no answers to these questions. It's just the way it is. And here I am, 218 pounds as of Monday, January 5th, and struggling once again to make myself behave and start dropping the weight again.

I have to take this struggle one day at a time. I haven't been doing very well on my eating for the last week and a half. I've been PMSing and sad and lonely, and eating to cope, even though I know the food won't really help me. But today is a new day. I've had my peanut butter toast for breakfast. I'm drinking my water. J will be home tonight, so hopefully we'll have a healthy dinner and I won't snack afterwards.

And tomorrow I'll get back up, and I'll face another day. I'll try to get through without eating too much, and without going completely overboard if I do eat something I shouldn't. And I'll do that the next day, and the next, and the next. I've just started, and it'll be a long journey, but I want desperately to get to my goal, so I'm going to keep plodding along. One day at a time.

Not Going To Fail!

I didn't weigh in yesterday - what was I thinking, promising to weigh in on Mondays? That's never going to happen. Mondays are the worst possible days to weigh in, for various reasons. I've changed it to Fridays.

I hope I'll have some positive news to report on Friday, but if I don't get my act together, it's not going to happen. I went over my calorie limit almost every day last week. Not by a lot - I'd go over 200 or 300 calories and figure it was still way better than I had been doing, so it was okay. But there is one problem with that attitude - those extra calories add up day to day! And they result in the scale not really going down so much as sitting still.

Yesterday I was determined that I was going to do much better, and in fact I did! Until after I got home, anyway. I ate well at work, and had enough food planned for my time at home alone (J was at work) that I thought I should be okay. But no, I went rather crazy and ended up probably a good 1,000 calories over. D'oh! I blame hormones for some of that (women will know what I mean), but mostly I'm just weak as hell and can't have any tempting food in the house AT ALL. Sigh.

Today was going to be different. I was going to have the same game plan for the workday, and then I was going to be good at home, if only because the food that tempted me yesterday is now gone (Hershey's chocolate Santas, for the record). And then I went to lunch, and they were having a food show at work, so people could sample different foods and rate them - to help my work decide what foods to order and put on the regular menu. I had my plain turkey sandwich like I had planned, and then I had a cheese stick, a mini burger, a fried dough stick and bites of pizza and egg rolls (neither of which was very good, so I stopped at a bite). I am now at almost 1,000 calories - and I only get 1250-1550 for the entire day.

What are the odds of me staying in my limit today? Sigh.

No, I can do it. I can! I'll have cereal for dinner, and a glass of milk, and that will be that. I'll chew gum all night if I have to, to keep my mouth busy.

I WILL get this eating thing back under control. 2010 is still my year! I won't give up.

Challenges

I had a two day conference for work yesterday and today. It was being held locally, so I didn't have to travel, which was great - I'd much rather be home with J and the critters instead of on the road and in a hotel room alone at night. Yesterday was the day I had to be there from 8:00 - 4:00, with two meal periods thrown in - breakfast and lunch. I had no idea what was going to be served, so I knew going in that the day was going to be a challenge.

And I did great! I let myself have one cookie and one small brownie with lunch, but since lunch consisted of a bunch of food I either couldn't eat (lactose intolerant) or didn't want to eat, I had plenty of calories to spare for that meal period - I ended up having half of a turkey sandwich (which was disgusting - I can't stand that cheap turkey lunch meat that doesn't even really resemble turkey, ick).

As for breakfast, I would have loved to have a bowl of cereal - they had the single serving boxes out for people to take - but of course, I can't have regular milk, so I had to skip that. I went for some scrambled eggs, instead (a small helping - I counted it as two eggs), with one extremely crispy piece of bacon and a small glass of orange juice.

It's true that I ate some fattening things, but I didn't eat much overall, and when I came home and logged it all into sparkpeople, I found out that I had plenty of calories left over for the evening! Woo! And since I had a Lean Cuisine pizza for dinner, I even got to end the day with some small snacks.

Yay! I felt like I really did well. Go me!

New Year, New Me?

I was cleaning out the storage (junk) room in my house last week, and came across two things that really made me think. First, I found an old journal (diary) that I had written in 1996 and 1997. I read through a few entries, and found the same goals and hopes that I have now - to drop weight, to feel better, to look the way I know I can look.

Fourteen years later and I'm still aiming for the same, never reached, goal? Really? Fourteen years? And really, it's longer than that, of course, the journal I found just happened to go back 14 years.

And then I found two photo album pages that my Mom had put together. It was her own little progress album, in her weight loss journey - it made me realize that if she had been born in the computer age, she probably would have had a weight loss journal of her own, actually, and given her personality, she would probably be one of those super popular bloggers who everyone reads.

Anyway, the pictures reminded me that I'm not the only one going through this constant struggle for a goal that may never be reached. My mother had weight as one of the huge issues of her life too, and so do many other people out there.

So how do I end this cycle of dieting for myself? How do I go from hoping to achieve a goal to finally getting there and staying there? I've gotten to my goal once - I was down to 125 pounds in 1993 when my step-father died, but a year later I had put 15 pounds back on and then I added 10 more, and then over time I've ballooned to the weight I'm at now.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying and failing to lose weight. I don't want to keep thinking about what I could be and hating what I am. So, even though it sounds an awful lot like the words I read in that journal from 14 years ago, I'm going to come out and say it, because I know I have the tools to make it happen this time.

2010 is going to be the year I finally reach my weight goal, and I'm going to stay there once I get there.

I really do have the tools to succeed, too. I have sparkpeople to help me make sure I don't eat too much. I have a treadmill, an exercise bike, exercise videos on Netflix to help me get exercise. And most of all, I have support, in the form of my fantastic fiance, J. He's starting his own weight loss struggle today, too. He'll help me stop eating when I'm at my calorie limit for the day. He'll tell me he can see the weight coming off, and that I'm looking great. He'll love me no matter what. (And I'll do the same for him, of course.)

So here we are. A new year, a new start, and this is going to be the year I make it! I'll list my starting figures in the left column over there, so you can see where I'm at right now. In the future I plan on recording my weight here once a week - I'm starting on Monday, so let's say I'll give my new weight every Monday. I also took my measurements today - they'll be in the left column, too. I'm only going to update those once a month, though - look for them on the last day of every month.

Are you starting a new diet this month, too? We can do this! This is our year. :)