Arguing with Ghosts
Spring cleaning left me with much more than a clean house: sure, I got a satisfying sense of accomplishment, a clean kitchen, and momentarily dust-free bookshelves. But I also got a good dose of “damn this pisses me off.” Because I found photos of my younger self. And they made me angry and sad.
I was fucking gorgeous. Here’s what I mean:
And nobody but Mike ever told me. The first two pictures were from when I was in college. The last three are from after I met Mike. When he first saw me in that pale lavender, solid color dress, waiting outside for him to bring the car around, he told me that he thought, “damn, who’s that babe?” and then realized it was me!
I can’t remember a time before Mike when every reaction to any image of me, or to me in person, wasn’t along the lines of “such a pretty face…if you could only….” You know the rest. Every family photo, every carefully and meticulously put together outfit, including those I sewed myself, got a conditional response that boiled down to “you’d look great if you could only lose some weight.”
I can’t find the image now, but on one of the many annoying occasions when my Mother insisted that the family dress up and pose for formal photographs, I was wearing an outfit I had made, that involved matching up a border at the hemlines of both the skirt and top. I was really proud of that outfit, and I still have it, although I couldn’t possibly fit into it anymore.
But Mom, as usual, spent that entire morning bitching at me relentlessly.
“That’s what you’re going to wear? And what about your hair? Oh, why didn’t you get it cut before today! You look like a ragamuffin!”
If I ever find that picture, I’ll post it here, and you will see that I looked nothing like a ragamuffin. I looked like a gorgeous young woman.
When I found those photos during my Spring Break frenzy of deep cleaning, I realized that I spend way too much time being pissed off at dead people—arguing with ghosts, specifically my Mom. I’m 65 fucking years old and I still hear her critical voice in my head. I still spend time silently (or sometimes out loud) calling her a bitch, and blaming her for how my life hasn’t been everything I hoped it would be, primarily because I spent way too much of it trying to please her.
But Mom was not please-able. There was absolutely nothing I could have done that would have made her proud of me, or happy about my choices. She seemed to think that her job as a mother was to tear me down at every opportunity, not build me up and support my ambitions.
But let’s face it, it’s my fault. I didn’t have the guts to do what my eldest brother did: he dropped out of college and went on the road with a band and has made his living in the music industry ever since.
I had a year between college and law school. I had time when I quit allowing large Chicago law firms to abuse me as a young associate, took a massive pay cut, and started doing work that mattered to me, supporting and defending libraries from censorship as staff (not as an attorney) for a professional librarian’s association.
That’s when I took up improvisation. But I didn’t fully commit. I was too fond of a regular paycheck and health insurance. And anyone who has made it in show business will tell you that if you have to ask yourself if you should do it, you shouldn’t. You’ll never make it with that kind of doubt. But doubting myself is how my Mother raised me. Thanks, bitch.
OK, enough. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I’ve made my peace with it. What I haven’t made peace with is how I allowed that gorgeous young woman to just disappear into a difficult marriage with a troubled man that I loved but had to financially support, into stressful jobs that made me feel like an imposter, and into repeated professional failures that arose from my misguided idea that it was the work, and not the people, that mattered.
The last job I held prior to my retirement was one I wish I had found years earlier. It didn’t pay well, but I got paid for writing, which comes to me like as easy as water runs downhill. Words are my jam. Words, in many ways, are my people.
So now I need to find a way to use my words to find some scrap of beauty that might remain within me, if not externally. I’m done with diets and measuring my day’s success by how many tenths of a pound less show up on the scale in the morning.
I need to forgive my Mom. I have figured out what drove her to be so critical, and why it was so crucial to her to keep up appearances, and create images of a perfect family. And I feel sorry for her. She wasted a lot of her life hating herself and trying to fit in with people who would never fully accept her as part of the gang. She left a fulfilling career as a head nurse, succumbing to the pressure of the 1950’s to get married, have kids, and be a housewife. And she got fat.
So I’m not spending another second angry about my life, which has been a damn good life, or thinking that any part of it would have been better if I could only have…
I still see a beautiful woman in my magic mirror. I can still sing (although a recent Sunday performance in church wasn’t the greatest: I want to blame the sound system, but nuh-uh, I’ll own it). And I’ve learned that inner peace and forgiveness are more effective for weight control than any form of self-punishment, self-deprecation, or self-deprivation.
I also recently learned how to use an eyebrow pencil without making myself look like Amy Klobuchar in that disastrous TV appearance ten years ago. So there’s that. HA!
Intuitive Eating? Not so much. No, seriously, NOT SO MUCH!
I made it through dry January easily. Mostly because I was so disgusted with what we’ll call, oh, just for the fun of it, “Drunk December.” So I approached January full of resolve to clean up my act and get back to healthy habits, and got ready to watch the pounds just melt away.
All four of them.
And then in February, right when it seemed like I was poised to break through and maybe lose, oh, I don’t know, two pounds a week?, along comes Valentine’s day. Or more accurately, Valentine’s week. A week that began with packing goody bags for the Valentine’s party Angelic Daughter was to attend, which gave me the opportunity to test multiple new flavors of those Lindt LINDOR chocolate balls. Ooh! Strawberry and white chocolate! You know, just to make sure they were good enough to give away. And I tested some of those Ghirardelli chocolate squares, too. You know, just to make sure our goody bags were super high quality.
Can you blame me? January featured the debut of the psychotic clown show in Washington, D.C. (still playing! at least until the majority in Congress tears itself to shreds over the budget–coming soon! stay tuned!) It induced a zombie stupor of inaction in what used to be called, adorably, “the resistance.”
Across the aisle, the clown car rolled over what used to be called, descriptively, “the Republican Party,” which prostrated itself in rapid and total capitulation to the Muskox’s cybertanks, which flattened them into impotent stick figures, all because they’re terrified of losing a primary election. Don’t those spineless eunuchs understand that if their ambition is to get re-elected, they’d better do something before there’s nothing left to get re-elected to?
All this is by way of explaining my current drift into what is euphemistically called “intuitive eating.” I’ve stopped stuffing my face with Valentine’s chocolate. And as far as “emotional eating” goes, there are no empty pints of Ben and Jerry’s, no depleted packages of Oreos, and no crumpled “family sized” bags of chips scattered around my house.
Intuitive eating isn’t about eating your feelings at all. The way it is supposed to work, as I understand it, having done zero research, is by simply listening to your body. “Eat when you’re hungry! Don’t eat when you’re not! Eat what you want when you want it,” says intuitive eating. “Let your body be your guide!” Sounds reasonable, especially now that I’m older and I get full so easily.
But when I listen to my body, it says GIMME SOME MORE FUCKING CHOCOLATE! My body says it wants SOME GODDAMN BUTTER on my organic whole grain sprouted wheat, chia, and pumpkin seed bread! My body wants WAFFLES DRIPPING IN MAPLE SYRUP and EGGS FRIED IN BACON FAT.
And with the ever-expanding menu of daily outrage from ketamine-crazed techno-teenagers, a demented wanna-be king, and a pouty, chipmunk-cheeked lost boy who thinks the Ochre Ogre is his daddy (news flash, J.D. – you ain’t never gonna find your daddy, and the Marmalade Monarch doesn’t doesn’t even like his own sons) spewing forth from Washington via alliance- exploding hissy fits and Putin-pleasing pallaver, my body is now shouting “I want a FUCKING DRINK, GOD DAMMIT!”
So, as you might imagine, February has been pretty much a wash as far as dropping weight goes. But this is nothing new.
Here’s a photo of me my mother took when I was about three years old:
I’m sitting on a pile of concrete that used to be part of a pier at our local beach. The striped pants, Peter-Pan collared blouse, and a little cardigan sweater with the decorative border reflect my Mom’s perpetual concern with what people would think, which is why she forced my brothers and me to dress up to go to the beach and have our pictures taken.
As you can see, I was fat. Beyond pudgy — FAT. My tummy threatens to burst through my pants, my cheeks nearly obliterate my face, and my calves look like thick salamis sticking out of my pants just above my puffy little feet, stuffed into my Keds.
I’ve been yo-yoing up and down the scale my whole life, which pretty much guarantees I’ve knocked a decade or so off my life expectancy, slowed my metabolism, and damaged my heart. Yay.
So I’m turning my focus away from the number on the scale to the fit of my clothes, the strength of my arms and legs, the flexibility of my joints, my ability to haul laundry up and down two flights of stairs, and a reasonable reading on my blood pressure gauge.
And when my body is “intuitively” demanding chocolate, or even a glass of wine or a beer, I’ll give it some. And then I’ll stop.
Because what I got out of dry January and my healthy eating efforts so far this year, finally, was the ability to be satisfied with less–a lot less. The way things are going here on planet Earth, we’re all going to need to develop that ability and use it oh, I don’t know, from now until forever?
So yesterday, when my body said I WANT CHOCOLATE RIGHT NOW!!, I just took a brisk, thirty minute walk. It was a beautiful, sunny, snowy, sky-blue winter day, and what could be more satisfying than that?
Plus, I had already had some bacon for breakfast. And a spinach and Swiss omelette.
But I cooked the omelette in olive oil. Take that, intuitive eating! HA!
Bullshit or Holy Shit?
This is no time to Lighten Up, Frances. The “bullshit weight” I wrote about has become “Holy Shit!” weight, with only four weeks and change until Thanksgiving. What happened?
Sober October lasted 13 days for me. Then I decided there was a reason to celebrate, and boy, did I celebrate–not just by popping a few cold ones after only 13 days, but also by ridiculous self-indulgence on all five of our fall excursions this year.
Angelic Daughter regards Fall Excursions as opportunities consume mass quantities of crackers and chips in the car on the way to and from a trail ride. Don’t judge me for buying them for her until you’ve spent and three hours driving with an anxious autistic person hell bent on alleviating stress by munching on a particular crunchy snack that therapists and teachers had used to calm her when she was an elementary school kid. She remembers everything.
But do judge me for buying a separate package of chips for myself. And for eating those apple cider donuts. And baking apple crisp and serving it with ice cream. And wrapping up the Fall Excursion season with a round of s’mores at the backyard firepit. And sneaking Halloween candy before Halloween. And Octoberfest! Beer, am I right?
I know it’s gotten really bad when I start avoiding the scale in the morning. But the “Holy Shit!” moment came when a MeetUp friend sent a photo of me singing at a “costume Karaoke” event last night.
HOLY SHIT. I’M HUGE.
Turns out it isn’t unusual for people to think they are smaller than they are, based on their past experience of their appearance. It’s a type of body dysmorphia that’s the opposite of anorexia, where very thin people see themselves as fat. I look in the mirror and see myself thirty pounds thinner than I am now.
Until someone sends me a photo.
The friend who sent the photo had very kindly come out to keep me company when it looked like no one else would (one other person did!) and lent me a spectacular witch’s hat when I didn’t realize I had dropped mine in the garage and didn’t find out it was missing until I got to the venue. The costume wouldn’t have worked at all without the hat.
When I saw my friend taking photos of me singing, at least I had the sense to to ask her not to post those pictures online anywhere.
But that didn’t stop her from sending them to me.
Oh. My. God.
This friend happens to teach fitness classes. Was this her way of telling me to get my shit back together? That would be fair. Fair enough.
OK, well, Annie, now what? This is another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into. This isn’t fast- disappearing bullshit weight anymore. This is dammit-this-is-going-to-take-six-months-to-get-this-off weight. This is back to intermittent fasting and no carbs and daily heavy resistance workouts and drinking a gallon of water a day and going to bed hungry and waking up in the middle of the night needing to pee weight.
So same old same old. January to June, lose weight. July through December, gain it back. What gives this time? My birthday was nearly four months ago, so that excuse is long past.
Is it election anxiety? I already voted in person at my local early voting polling place. But doing that hasn’t quelled the nausea I feel when I see yard signs supporting a vulgar, infantile, narcissistic sociopath who is easily manipulated by dictators abroad and arch-conservative zealots at home who are spreading lies and conspiracy theories to help them grab power so they can impose a theocratic, pathologically misogynistic, anti-democratic iron fist on us all, not just the believers who were taken in by it all.
Well, yeah, I could see how that could lead to a powerful bout of depression and anxiety eating.
But since I don’t have any control over election results (although some scary people do — many local election boards in critical counties have been taken over by election deniers) maybe I should make an effort to gain control what I should be able to control–myself.
At least until Thanksgiving.
Now where did I hide that Halloween candy again?
top
Did I Say Sixty? I Must Have Meant Sixty-Five
What year is it, again? Because based on my last entry on this page, it’s been about a year since I shared an update about my struggles with lifestyle changes intended to help me achieve a healthier weight and prolong my ability to walk, talk, think, and do for myself and for Angelic Daughter.
Rereading “Lighten Up, Francis” is deja-vu all over again. Since I posted that, I’ve pretty much repeated all the errors it itemizes, overindulging on all the same occasions, and added to those a nearly month-long observance of a milestone birthday: yep, I have entered official seniorhood, with the Medicare card to prove it. I celebrated that momentous achievement through a combination of maniacal housecleaning, yard maintenance, and entertaining (for the first time ever in this house — well, yard, actually – it was a garden party), having people over who were not family or Angelic Daughter’s companions).
The cleaning and yard maintenance, while very strenuous, couldn’t offset the cake and champagne, and here I am a year later and a year older, having crossed that dreaded line I wrote about a year ago, several pounds further in the wrong direction than I was then.
I seems that turning 65 has intensified the “ah, fuck it” factor. I’m more likely to allow myself to eat delicious, unhealthy things, and drink a cocktail or four too many.
But this morning it feels like I’ve finally gotten that out of my system (she said as she munched half a bag of Terra Chips – hey, they’re made with healthier oils and root veggies!) and I’m ready to reboot on the portion control, the intermittent fasting, and probably most important, a commitment to observing a dry rest of July (with the sole exception of strictly controlled intake in connection with MeetUp events) and beyond. I don’t see another holiday that rises to the level of an excuse to pop a cork until Thanksgiving.
I’m up to 15 lb. dumbbells from 10 pounders for some of the exercises in my resistance workouts, and I’m working on maintaining better sleep hygiene — those four additional seasons of Endeavor will still be there for me to stream tomorrow and the following nights, for heaven’s sake. Get some sleep!
I keep my little home blood pressure monitor on my vanity (127/76 this morning), and I’ve run the gantlet of unpleasant medical screenings that people my age, and women specifically, are supposed to undergo, and came out 99% clean on the “come back in five years” thing and clear on the “do I really have to do this every year when there’s no family history?” thing. So those are out of the way.
But my most recent blood work shows a disturbing rise in cholesterol, which I put down to guzzling too much coconut milk (“but that doctor on the internet says it has those great mid-chain triglycerides! caloric bypass, right?” Yeah, but a boatload of saturated fat, too, dumbass) and the aforementioned cocktail or 4.
So I’ve scheduled my first year “welcome to Medicare” appointment with a new internist who gets very high marks for listening and giving significant time to her patients, for the earliest available appointment before the clock runs out: next Aprilbulls. In the meantime, I hope that coming out of my birthday YOLO phase will mean that I’ll present my new doctor with the picture of health, remarkable numbers in my blood work, and no call whatsoever for any type of geriatric medication.
I can dream, can’t I?
top
Lighten Up, Francis
OK, I screwed up. It’s been way too long since I’ve posted here, and that’s probably because I don’t have any progress to report.
It started on Mother’s Day, which I used as an excuse to overindulge in what I’ll now call a form of aversion therapy. There are things I ate that day that I don’t ever want to eat again. But then came some of the summer MeetUps I scheduled as a MeetUp group organizer, and many of them featured the opportunity to indulge in what W.C. Fields called “a libation” or four, and the days that I could use as excuses got more frequent: Memorial Day weekend, when we plant flowers on both my parents and my husband’s graves, Independence Day, when I actually got invited to a parade watching party (but hey, I rode my bike a little over two miles each way to get there and back!) and an evening or two playing trivia at the Forest Preserve beer garden. These brought me perilously close to crossing a line (i.e. a number on the scale) that I swore I would never, ever, ever exceed again.
Currently I’m one pound away from that scary line, and 13 pounds up from my triumphal 40 pounds down. Never even got started on phase two to take me down the final 40.
Like many fat folks, I can be very hard on myself. When I regain weight and it’s all my fault (who else’s fault would it be, seriously?) I fight the battle between “ah, screw it” and “don’t give up” over and over again.
But this time it feels less fraught, because I have no intention of giving up, but I’ve also accepted that this is going to go very slowly.
There’s a hilarious scene from the movie Stripes where a character named Francis says everyone should call him “Psycho” and if they don’t, the results will be mortal. He then goes down a list of several other transgressions that would earn you a ticket to eternity. His sergeant’s response is legend:
I decided some weeks ago that I’d loosen up a little on the restrictions of my magic metabolism diet (like cooking with olive oil rather than chicken broth) but retain the main principles of it, combined with resistance exercises and intermittent fasting, which is just my normal routine now (although I confess to a few late night snacks of nuts or peanut butter on celery, which just tells me I didn’t eat enough during the day). And as long as I stay under that line in the proverbial sand (or number on the scale, if we must) I’m not going to beat myself up about it.
Because managing weight after 60 is about permanent lifestyle changes, which, for the most part, I am continuing to observe, with occasional lapses that I try to confine to moments enjoyed with Angelic Daughter (who is already looking forward to the Halloween cupcakes and Bouche de Noel) or MeetUp events with people I hope will become friends.
So, inner Psycho, lighten up. Blood pressure is still fine, I’m still working out (although I did click on one more bit of bait only because the pitch included references to scientific research that I had heard about) using an odd new routine that requires long rests between sets of resistance exercises, but whatever–I needed the change-up and the workouts make me feel great – both strong and relaxed.
So when I find my scale is spinning in the wrong direction, I tell myself to lighten up. I snap back to the lifestyle practices that have always worked for me, and give myself a break. As long as I don’t go on a full-on food bender or otherwise engaging in extremely unhealthy behavior, tomorrow will be a better day, and the bullshit weight will come off, eventually.
Losing weight after 60 is about lifestyle, not starting a “diet” that ends when the scale kisses some magic number. There is no end point, until the inevitable one. So changing my lifestyle now is about extending the time until the inevitable happens, but also enjoying myself (within reason) and feeling good just being alive for the time I’ve got left. And only the Creator, the Force, or whatever you choose to call him, her, they, or it, knows the number of our days. So may your days be happy, healthy, meaningful, and fun, which for me is much easier to make happen if I tell my inner Psycho to “lighten up.”
Making Lists
I make lists more as a practical thing, to help me remember, than a goals thing. My New Year’s ‘Revolutions’ usually go at least half unfulfilled, and even my grocery lists often omit a key thing I was supposed to buy.
I prefer to make lists as a mode of entertainment, or a guide through a though process to a conclusion of some sort. That’s what I’ve got for you today over on my 27 Things page. Please pay close attention to item 27 on the list of 27 Things That Are True For Me About Weight Loss (emphasis on the for me and I’ll add the usual disclaimer that I am not a doctor, or a nutritionist, or a weight loss professional. I’m just a not-as-fat-as-I-used-to-be-but-still-fatter-than-I-want-to-be woman over 60 (hey! 60 is the new 40, remember?) who has learned a thing or two over a lifetime of struggling with my weight. You may have learn several things that are the polar opposite of what I’ve learned. Bottom line is each of us is the expert on our own bodies, and what works for us and what doesn’t. So I hope you enjoy my little list, and maybe you’ll be inspired to make one of your own, of three things or nine things or 100 things. Up to you.
Still sitting atop my post-St. Patrick’s Day plateau, I remain,
your oh-whatever-I’ve-got-this-thing-down-no-hurry-keep-the-faith-slow-and-steady-wins-the-race,
Ridiculouswoman
top
That Way Lies Madness, or, Don’t Click That Bait
Your Facebook feed and your Instagram reels are packed with people claiming to be experts, the discoverers of cures, the bearers of truth, and the oracles of insight into everything the mysterious “THEY” won’t tell you. Maybe the before and after pictures make you curious, maybe you think “eh, what the hell, I might as well check this out–it’s only 11:30p.m. and I don’t have to be up until 6 tomorrow.”
That way lies madness, my friends. Don’t click that bait.
If you went ahead and clicked on that link, the one below the video that says, “learn more” you’re already lost. There’s nothing I can do for you now. You should have stuck to the cute toddler videos, and the ones with talking Huskies. But you didn’t, did you. And now your feed will be stuffed to the gills with ads and testimonials touting hair restoration, skin rejuvenation, and, of course, the sure-fire magic elixir for weight loss.
But you clicked, and now, you find yourself in a never-ending loop of promises that this, THIS is the secret that THEY won’t tell you. But the video will REVEAL the secret! The key to a thinner you, a full head of hair, a face that looks 20 years younger, or the only tonic you’ll ever need to guarantee you happiness and the ability to eat anything you want, in any quantity you want, forever.
All you have to do is make it all the way through at least 5, probably more, promises that the SECRET will be REVEALED in JUST A MINUTE, which turns out to be another 20 minutes, and then, when you finally make it to the end of the video, you’ll find you can receive this SECRET for the low, low introductory price of just (fill in a number from $60 to $7500 dollars here). BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! The SECRET won’t really help you as much as it could unless you but the full package, the additional products, and the COMPLETE PROGRAM!
You’re a grown up adult, and you know all this is nonsense, but you can’t tear your eyes away (unless you fall asleep before the end of the video, which you probably will). The rational side of your brain tells you that if someone had truly discovered the magic potion for weight loss, they would have invested the necessary resources to obtain FDA approval, and, well, legitimacy. They would have published research papers in medical journals detailing the results of double- blind clinical trials.
But no, they didn’t do that; because, as these snake oil salesmen explain, the EVIL WEIGHT LOSS INDUSTRY and those GREEDY DOCTORS WANT TO KEEP YOU FAT!!!, so you’ll keep buying ineffective medications and exercise equipment and food delivery programs and medical interventions that don’t work.
Well, as you may have gleaned, I’m not a fan of fat-shaming doctors, but neither am I an easy mark who falls for these wild claims online. (OK well, maybe I did fall for one of those hair oils – but it came in a plain box with no instructions. I threw it away without opening it. Bye-by, 39.95 plus shipping). I also admit to watching some of these videos, just long enough to figure out their angle. The thyroid guys? They seem focused on reducing inflammation. The weight loss programs? They think it’s all about your hormone type, or levels.
Buried deep behind these self-proclaimed “expert’s” assurances that they’ll tell you their secret right after they tell you something else for 20 minutes, are kernels of common sense that you don’t need their videos to understand. But in the meantime, their goal in life is to get you to click, get you to watch, get you hooked, and get their spindly (or well muscled, depending on the person in the video), fingers into your pocketbook, and never let go.
What seems obvious to me is that even if their miracle remedies, secrets, potions, lotions, powders, supplements, and essential oils work to do what they say they’ll do, do you really want to keep buying them, swallowing them, applying them, or mixing them forever? But that’s what you’ll have to do, because the minute you quit, you’ll find you haven’t changed your habits permanently, and you’ll gain the weight right back again. The hair products even admit that if you stop using them, your hair will, at best, stop growing, and at worst, fall out again.
So where are you now, bunky? Stuck in a rabbit hole you dug with a one-finger click.
If being mostly fat and briefly thin for over 60 years, ranging from 127 (expensive weight loss program) to 290 (years of beer followed by sober pregnancy), has taught me anything, it’s that without a permanent change in your habits, you’ll always gain it back.
But don’t despair. When I hit the wall and decided it was time to pull myself out of a six year widow’s funk and try to live as long as possible for Angelic Daughter (who hovers over me like an anxious Auntie, asking me if I’m alright with every sneeze or “dammit!” that comes out of my mouth after I do another stupid thoughtless thing like accidentally closing a door on my fingers or squirting myself with the spray thingee on the kitchen sink), I knew that for once and for all, I had to change, for good.
And now I’m back down the full forty after shedding the holiday flab, and well on my way to hitting “wedding weight,” the number on the scale the morning of my wedding day 30 years and change ago. I’m also in far better physical condition than I was back then. I’ve extended my workouts from 30 minutes to between 45 minutes and an hour 5 evenings a week. I feel great, and if I could just discipline myself to turn off the TV drama I’m currently binging an hour earlier each night, I’d feel even better.
I don’t feel deprived of anything. I feel healthy and energetic. I’ve discovered that I can indulge on special occasions without major damage, as long as I go back to my normal routine the next day. And what’s my routine, you ask? I’ll tell you in just a minute.…
Until then, I remain,
You’re feeling-like-things-are-finally-looking-up-and-getting-stuff-done-I’ve-been-meaning-to-do-for-a-long-time,
Ridiculouswoman
top
Farewell Festive Flab
I watched the scale carefully throughout the year-end holidays. I made and ate cookies. I ate lunch out with Angelic Daughter. I drank champagne, wine, and even beer–for the first time in 8 months.
I had a number in mind I didn’t want to go above.
Yeah, so OK, that was an unrealistic number. I overshot by 11 pounds. I regained 12 pounds in 11 days. But did I panic? Did I throw up my hands and give up? Did I double down and snarf down a second bouche de noel slathered in chocolate buttercream frosting?
No. No I did not.
Because I knew in my bones that this was “bullshit weight” and it would come off nearly as fast as it went on. I went back on my regime for the three work days during the last week of December. I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s Eve anyway, so I didn’t find much reason to overindulge in anything other than some bubbly and a nice new year’s meal with what was quite possibly the best gravy (gravy!!) I’ve made in several years.
Back to work on January 3, and back to my eating discipline and my workout routine.
I lost 4 pounds overnight.
And that’s what I mean by bullshit weight. My slow burning gastric processes were just trying to catch up with my holiday indulgences. Lost another 3 by this morning, and now I’m back to plateau land, but we know how to handle that, don’t we? Just keep on keepin’ on.
My point here is that if I think of weight loss as “going on a diet,” and that “diet” has a beginning and an end, I am doomed to failure. I’ll lose weight, but I’ll gain it back and then some when my “diet” is “over,” guaranteed.
Because weight loss requires that I change what I eat (and drink), when I eat, how much I eat, and how I exercise, permanently.
Which means that if I put on a few pounds over a holiday, so what? I “go back to normal,” where “normal” is healthy eating in rational portions and regular exercise. When the party’s over, the weight will come off again. It may take a while, but so what? I’m just living my life.
But if I “crash diet” or starve myself in advance of a special event, a holiday season, opening day at the beach, or whatever, my body will run screaming back to the cave, where it will zealously guard every precious calorie, because it thinks drought has killed all the game and shriveled all the berries I could hunt and gather, and I am genuinely starving. Congratulations! I’ve got the kind of body that, when the great famine comes, will be the last one standing.
But I’ve learned that in the meantime, if I want to be healthy, happy, and whole, I must find a rational way of eating whole, real food in sensible portions. Rid my pantry and my life of highly processed foods. If I can’t tell what’s in the box, I don’t eat it. In fact if it comes in a box or a can, I probably shouldn’t eat it at all. And I certainly don’t eat it if I have to have a Ph.D. in chemistry to understand the ingredients. I’ll save the booze and sugar for special occasions. After a few months of healthy eating, I didn’t really want them anyway. Well, the Christmas sugar I wanted, and the champagne, but they were easy to give up again when I went back to (my new) normal.
I’ll have more to say when I get back down to that 40 off, and have made some headway on the final 40. I’m cutting portions again because I just can’t eat as much as I used to, and I’m keeping my very early, and very small, dinners, hoping that the final forty won’t take as long to drop as the first did. But I’m also not going to focus on reaching a specific goal within a specific time. I’ll just be living my life!
As I do, I’m wishing you a happy, healthy “new normal” of your own that doesn’t involve a “diet,” but a positive lifestyle change, and I remain,
your holiday heftier but working on it,
Ridiculouswoman
top
Powering Through a Plateau
First of all, I obviously didn’t succeed in providing weekly updates. Let’s change that to “I’ll update when there’s something to say.”
I set some goals for the number on the scale I wanted to reach before Thanksgiving, and again before Christmas. I knew I was going to loosen up a little over the holidays, and I was determined not to waste all the hard work I had put into losing weight by gaining a lot of it back.
I made my goal before Thanksgiving. I used a strategy of portion control plus intermittent fasting (if you can call it that–I just don’t eat anything after 6 p.m. until breakfast the next day–that’s why the morning meal is called “break fast,” like break your fast, isn’t it?) and it got me through a five day holiday weekend. I came out with a net gain of only three pounds.
Then came December. I love baking Christmas cookies and enjoying holiday treats, from hot cocoa to peppermint bark, but again, I was determined not to let the holidays knock me completely off my “program” and set me back so much that I lost my motivation. So I set another reasonable goal, to get rid of those extra Thanksgiving pounds, plus four, to give me a cushion for some holiday relaxation.
And then nothing happened.
For what seemed like forever.
Plateaus happen, but this one came at exactly the wrong moment. I’d been following my plan since April, and I was really looking forward to some holiday traditions–the downtown excursion, cookies, eggnog, cocoa, and the log cake I make once a year.
For eight months, the weight loss was slow, but steady. And suddenly, nothing.
When I was younger, I’d let a plateau frustrate me so much that I’d give up. I thought, “this damn body. No matter what I do, it isn’t going to work. Hell with it. Gimme a beer and some chips.”
But I’m older now, and I hope I can claim I’m wiser, too.
Even though I work out four or five times a week, I have come to accept that at my age, my body’s processes go more slowly. So it can take days after eating a good meal for my body to process that food. Which is as discreet a way as I can think of to say that, at my age, even I eat a lot of fiber, the gut cleansing effects won’t be felt, or produced, or whatever, in the bathroom, for several days.
Mike and I used to refer to that production as a “morning event.” Starting around age 50, that “morning event” can be the highlight of your day. Seriously. Just sayin’.
So weight loss after 60 takes not only determination and a positive attitude, but a lot of patience. I had three weeks until the day I was to take Angelic Daughter on our annual Christmas excursion downtown, followed by clam chowder (with potatoes! and cornbread!) on Christmas Eve, eating Santa’s leftover cookies on Christmas Day, wine with Christmas feast, and a few slices of bouche de noel.
And the scale hadn’t budged.
I didn’t panic. I didn’t stop eating entirely or suddenly try some crazy magic tonic someone is selling on Facebook or Instagram. I just reduced my portions a little, and stopped eating at 4 or 5 instead of 6 p.m. I kept up my workouts. I “front loaded” my days, eating a larger and satisfying breakfast, a snack, and a small lunch, composed of what I otherwise might have eaten for dinner. Then I’d have my afternoon snack, and stop eating for the day. I didn’t get hungry. Just switched to water and tea, used my ten pound, rather than 8 or 5 pound, dumbbells when I did my workout, and tried to practice better “sleep hygiene” by getting to bed earlier.
And the plateau broke, just in time for Christmas. The scale kissed a number that represented my 40th pound lost.
Good job, Annie. Go ahead and have a mimosa and a cookie. Or five.
Round Not Pound: Weight Loss After 60
My blog isn’t about weight loss–it’s about human loss, grief, and learning from it to try to live a better, kinder life filled with love and laughter.
But since the weight loss folks seem so interested (let’s face it, superficially interested–I accused them of “liking” and “following” just to get me to reciprocate, and even after I did that, they just kept liking and following) I thought I’d corral any talk of losing weight over here on a new page. I must just throw in a listicle on my “27 Things” page every once in a while, too.
“Round not pound” was something my late husband Mike wrote in one of his journals as he was dying, referring to my physical roundness–my ears, my face, my butt–which was something he loved about me. He knew there was a risk of me taking his writing about my physical self as some kind of criticism, so he threw in “not pound.” He wrote that at a time when just staying awake was a struggle for him, when he knew his mind and memory were going and his life was slipping away. To me that was an heroic gesture of love and kindness, that he used some of the last bits of his strength to remind me that he loved all of me (our wedding dance song, by the way) and to encourage me not to go on thinking of myself in terms of a number on a scale.
I’ve been fat all my life, and like everyone who grew up fat in America, have endured ridicule and embarrassment, loneliness, self-loathing, and decades of failed attempts to force my God-given body to become something other than it is.
Fat folks develop defenses: being the funny one, the smart one, the incredibly talented one, etc. As a fat woman, however, I often felt resented for my intelligence and my talents. It’s as if the thin world thought that if I had to be fat (which must be my fault, somehow) I could at least be stupid, and if I wasn’t stupid, I could at least have the decency to be silent.
Nope.
But my brains and talent didn’t stop me from trying desperately to conform to an idea of acceptable physical size. Like so many others, I tried an absurd variety of diets. My earliest memory of dieting was when, after an afternoon bawling my eyes out about being fat when I was 6 or 7 years old, my Mom took me to a nutritionist at the local hospital, who put me on a complicated plan of counting “exchanges” that spelled out how much of this or that kind of food I could eat in a day.
My Mom kept two kinds of milk in the fridge: “fat” milk (whole or 2%) for my brothers (the elder of whom was pudgy himself) and “skinny” (skim) milk for me. She recoiled if I ever put butter on anything, and bought low fat and fat free, highly processed foods for most of my life while I still lived at home. Sorry, Mom, but everything you thought you knew about weight loss was wrong.
As a young adult, I paid for and lost weight on programs called Diet Center, NutriSystem, Atkins (the first one) and Atkins 2 (the later version.) I’ve been lectured at about Keto, Primal, Paleo, vegan, and vegetarian eating. I found a diet which I think was called the Palm Springs (Beach?) Metabolism diet back in the late ’80s that helped me lose 18 pounds before I was to be the maid of honor at a friend’s wedding, the one and only time I’ve ever been asked to perform that service.
All told, during my adult life, my weight has ranged from 127 to 255 pounds. I think I might have gone higher during my pregnancy, but I can’t remember. All that yo-yo-ing can screw a body up for good, and for decades, I just gave up.
When Mike was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer, I panicked. You can read about a lot of it on the main page of this blog, starting with “The Bulgarian,” which recounts how I temporarily lost my mind at the thought of losing my husband, on through the subsequent years of my widowhood. I panicked about how I would take care of Angelic Daughter without Mike, who had been a stay-at-home-Dad. I panicked about keeping my job so I could keep our health insurance. And I panicked about Mike dying without ever having seen what this house we lived in could have been.
But something else happened in the middle of all that panic: my job at the time involved being on my feet in a warehouse eight hours a day, in constant motion, lifting, pulling, and pushing large, heavy loads of books and running around a lot helping and guiding groups of volunteers. Between that and caring for Mike and Angelic daughter, going to a laundromat every weekend because the basement was all torn up in my crazy remodeling project, and running out to pick up prescriptions or choose knobs for new kitchen cabinets or whatever, or to buy food from out because our kitchen was all ripped up, I didn’t have much time to eat. I started to lose weight, and I tried to help it along by eliminating carbs. I lost 50 pounds.
I kept it off until about a year after Mike died, and then it started to creep back. Valentine’s Day, Easter Candy, drowning my sorrows. Really, really drowning them. I realized that becoming a widow wasn’t going change my life by itself. I wasn’t going to suddenly meet a new man and fall in love again. I was going to be here, with Angelic Daughter, trying to keep her going while I was falling apart.
I gained back 40 pounds. There are so many moments when I thought, “Ah, why bother? I’m over 60, I have no friends, and there’s never going to be another man. Fuck it. Get me some chocolate and a bottle of wine.”
Then about a year into the pandemic, I started to have heart palpitations. My blood pressure was spiking up to frightening levels. My doctor, a naturally thin person who has obviously never lived in a body like mine, was useless: all she could say was, “it must be that you’re not getting enough exercise” at a time when I was working out, hard, at least 4 times per week. When the blood pressure went up to those scary levels, all she did was prescribe blood pressure medication.
Ten seconds on Google told me more than my doctor had told me in ten years about what was probably going on. I picked up the blood pressure meds, but I didn’t take them. Instead, I took some common sense measures that I knew I needed to take anyway, and in three weeks my blood pressure was pretty much back down to normal.
I did it because I need to stick around for Angelic Daughter, and make sure everything is in order for the inevitable: but for her sake, I want to delay the inevitable for as long as I can.
On April 11, 2022, I started a new regimen that recognizes that bodies like mine, which have endured endless rounds of loss and gain, need a metabolic reset. I’m not plugging anything (at least not until I get paid to do it, HA!) but I chose this path because, based on 55 years of dieting experience, I knew it would work for me, and I was ready to stick to it.
I’ve lost 32 pounds in 5 months, and I plan to stick with it for another 50 pounds, with minor allowances for holiday celebrations in November and December. I’ve started to feel good, and I think I’ve started to look good, again too, in that round way that Mike loved.
I’ll be back with weekly updates, and more details on what has been working for me. Until then, I remain,
Your not-quite-as-fat-as-she-used-to-be, feeling pretty good, fully vaxxed, boosted, boosted, and boosted again,
Ridiculouswoman
top