AIM: What’s different this time?

Our first AIM (Adventures in Maintenance) question of the month is: what was different this time? Between the ages of 13 and 30, there were a number of times I lost fairly large amounts of weight. Each time, I not only gained the weight back, but I added on a few extra pounds. If statistics are right, this is the experience of 95% of people who lose weight. Its heartbreaking, really.

SO WHAT WAS DIFFERENT THIS TIME?

Honestly, it was a bloomin’ miracle. The end.

What? You think there was more to it than that?

Well, here are the three factors that I think have had the biggest impact on my weight loss and maintenance:

1. One of the things I told myself right from the start was “What you’re doing now isn’t working. You must do something different.” This proved to be valuable advice to myself.
2. Another factor was that I knew it had to be a lifelong change. I actually knew that for twenty years before I had the gumption to act on it. 
3. Maybe it was being humble enough to accept that I needed some help. (see #1–it wasn’t working to try to do it all on my own. I needed to do something different.)

So, let’s see. How did these three factors play out in my finally having a successful long term weight loss?

“You’ve got to do something different.” I finally gave in and went to Weight Watchers with a friend. It required me to be humble enough to admit that I could not do it on my own. Over the years the “something different” has applied to a number of things: the types of foods I choose to eat, the amount of food I choose to eat, when I choose to eat, and of course, the amount and type of exercise that I do. I have had to learn to be flexible. The body is a complex and ever-changing thing, and I must learn to adapt to its needs as time goes on. (That’s a whole ‘nother post about aging and weight loss!)

I needed some help. Along the way I sought help from a number of friends and experts. I was very skeptical of any information provided by Weight Watchers. So I did a lot of reading and research on my own (who knew–the vast majority of the information provided by Weight Watchers was true!) And when Weight Watchers was no longer working for me (and doing it all on my own was not working either,) I started working with a personal trainer. I had already changed my entire way of eating, but I learned even more from her about eating truly healthy nourishing foods, and I changed the way I was eating again. And of course, the whole blog world has brought me new friends and support, and has been a great resource for new recipes and foods to try.

It had to be a lifetime change. Like I said, I had known this for a long time. That’s why I WOULDN’T try to lose weight for a long time. I didn’t think I could give up the foods I loved so much. I really loved all those foods. But funny thing is, I loved the new foods that I tried along the way. And even now, when I have pared my foods down once again, I still love the foods I am choosing to eat. My mom and sister and I were talking about this recently. My mom made the statement about me “and she really knows good food!” And my sister said somewhat wistfully, “But somewhere along the way, your tastes change.” I knew exactly what she meant. That was the fear that kept me from trying to lose weight for so long. I didn’t WANT to stop enjoying those lovely foods. But here’s the rub: so what if your tastes change? If you still enjoy these new healthier lower calorie foods just as much as the old foods, is that such a bad thing?

In a nutshell, I think those are the things that have helped me to stay on this lifetime of  ”adventures in maintenance!”

To read more about “what was different this time?” be sure to check out my friends and maintaining experts:

Lynn @ Lynn’s Weigh

Lori @ Finding Radiance

Shelley @ My Journey to Fit

Cammy @ The Tippy Toe Diet

AIM: Adventures in Maintenance is Lynn, Lori, Debby, Shelley, and Cammy, former weight-loss bloggers who now write about life in maintenance. We formed AIM to work together to turn up the volume on the issues facing people in weight maintenance. We publish a post on the same topic on the first Monday of each month. Let us know if there is a topic you’d like us to address!

 

Maintaining and Weight Loss

Well that covers it all doesn’t it? I can hardly believe that its been eight years since I started this last journey of weight loss. And it doesn’t seem like its coming to an end anytime soon.

When I am in Haiti or Nairobi, it seems absolutely ludicrous that I or anyone else would spend a minute of time thinking about food. What’s the best food to eat, and at which time? Should certain foods be eliminated and which ones should you eat for the fastest weight loss? I’m telling you, it seems ludicrous. And yet, here I am, home for a week, and this topic looms large in my mind. I can’t help it.

So. I wanted to be sure to share a brilliant quote by my friend Lori. I swear, some of the best stuff is found in the comments on blogs, and I am always afraid it will not be seen by enough people. On Lynn’s blog entry about “The Mental Price of Skinny,” Lori commented,

“real maintenance is not clutching to weight with white knuckles, but learning to live with the ups and downs that come with it.”

And that seems to be what I am doing right now. I have done the clutching and the white knuckle thing. I have been embarrassed that as a “successful maintainer” I have been not so successful at maintaining the 100 pounds I lost. I have tried to lose some of that weight, and only succeeded in gaining a little bit more. I have eliminated certain food groups, and I have eaten mindfully. I have refined and changed my diet over the years so that now I eat mostly unprocessed food (that’s a good change!) And all that time I observed myself, and made note of what worked for me and what didn’t, sometimes IN SPITE of what the ‘experts’ said.

This Me Diet thing seems to be working. If it stops working, I will try not to panic and white knuckle it, but will try to roll with the ups and downs, maybe tweaking this or that, and continuing on this never-ending journey that we call maintenance.

Lori also posted a link to a very interesting podcast. A couple of experts were talking about recent findings in weight loss. Of course I found it very interesting, because their findings seemed to validate my self-observations.

Paraphrasing, they said:

• Calorie for calorie, fat does not relieve hunger that well.
• Protein is the best calorie buy for hunger relief.
• For the satiation factor, a low fat/higher volume of food works well.

I am definitely paraphrasing here, so check out the podcast for yourself. But these were points that I had observed in myself and so tried to incorporate them into this new diet plan.

I originally lost weight on Weight Watchers. Whether that was their goal or not, what I learned was that I could eat a bigger volume if I would eat a very low fat, high fiber diet. After I left W.W., I was encouraged to try adding in some healthy fats. There is no doubt about it, fat just makes food taste good! But I tend to get carried away with fat.  (Some of you might recall my love affair with walnuts.)

I knew the information about protein, but I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. Adding the two mid-day meals with 20 grams of protein in 170 calories has made it easy to NOT think about food so much during the day. Its important to me that these are foods that I truly enjoy.

And finally, when I thought about my breakfast choices, I made some changes. I LOVE breakfast. I had quite a variety of nutritious breakfasts that I enjoyed, and most of them came in around 300-350 calories. Nothing wrong with that. Except that I noticed I was often over-full after eating them. So I started cutting some of them back, and developing a new breakfast menu that was lower in fat, but still high in volume. Most of them come in at less than 200 calories. And this seems to be working perfectly for me.

So I guess what I started out to say is that sometimes weight loss is PART of maintaining. That’s just life.

Layer upon Layer, A Body of Knowledge is Built

How long have I been doing this?  In January 2013, it will be 9 years since I started this last weight loss journey.  NINE YEARS!!  Nine years of reading and researching how to do it, anything and everything about food and nutrition, various types of diet theories (Weight Watchers, paleo, vegetarian, raw food, intuitive eating, low carb, calories in/calories out, whole grain, you get the picture,) the whole psychological component to weight loss, why some people succeed at maintaining weight loss and what and how they do that, oh, and exercise.  I’m sure I left something out.  But you know.  Its a LOT of information.

And the thing is…all of it is useful.  Even the stuff I have decided is not true for me.

Yes, it is frustrating that there is not more definitive information about obesity, its causes and cures, and weight loss maintenance.  But still, we have an awful lot of knowledge to draw upon.  Layer upon layer, I have added all this to the base of my eating and exercise habits.  When I decided to try The Hunger Game, I did not throw away everything I knew about good nutrition and what works in my favor.  If anything, I am using that information more than ever.

It kind of drives me nuts when people who have been doing this a long time figuratively throw their hands up in the air and act like they do not know anything.  We know a LOT.

Part of what I know is that it is hard work to maintain a lower body weight.  It is hard because as you age, something or other goes on in your body (more efficient?  slower metabolism? hormones?) and your body holds onto weight.  Helen reminded me that you don’t need to eat as much when you get older, and the next day I got an article in the mail saying that women who have gone through menopause need 200 calories LESS a day!  Oh my goodness.

It is hard work to maintain a lower body weight if you have previously been very overweight for an extended part of your life.  That is a theory I believe because of the overwhelming amount of objective information available (evidence gathered by various scientists, and also the testimony of many many people who have lost weight and maintained that loss with varying degrees of success.)

I know a LOT about food and nutrition and how the body processes food.  (Oh, side rant:  I know many of you would be more comfortable believing that the body is a machine–that you can input certain food or exercise and you will receive the same results every time.  I’m sorry, but that is simply not true.  The body is closer to a work of art than it is to a machine. Period.  end rant.)  So at my best, I am easily able to choose healthy, balanced whole foods that will keep me satiated for 3-4 hours.

I know a lot about exercise, and what part it plays in weight loss (very little) and weight loss maintenance (a lot.)  I know that the body gets accustomed to the same exercise and gets more efficient at how it processes that exercise (not fair!) so that it is good to continue to challenge your body with exercise by increasing the intensity or by changing the type of exercise periodically.  I know that it is good for your heart and your mind.  I know that it keeps me from becoming stiff as a board, so I keep doing it!

It took a while, but I do understand very well the part that the mind plays in food choices and eating.  I learned that for me, anxiety was the single largest factor in why I overate.  Just learning that was a tremendous step forward in changing my relationship with food.

So I know all this stuff.  I did not discard one bit of it when I decided to WAIT UNTIL I WAS HUNGRY to eat.  Honestly, it just makes sense to me.  Just one more piece of the puzzle.

Short and Sweet

I made a new recipe.  Actually its my version of Lori’s One Minute Muffin.  I kept thinking about how I like fruit inside my baked goods, and Lori likes her fruit on top (am I right, Lori?)  Anyway, I decided to try putting blueberries in the one minute muffin, and I’ve changed the recipe a bit (plus, mine take a lot more than one minute LOL,) so I’m going to share my version here.  I’m calling them Blueberry Flax Cakes, and this was DELICIOUS!!  I really like the moistness of this cake.  A different texture than most baked goods, but very satisfying.

Doesn’t that look delicious?  Here’s the recipe.

I also wanted to link to a relatively new blogger.  She is a long-term radical weight loss maintainer, and writes eloquently about the perils and pitfalls of maintenance and living in our food obsessed society (did I describe that right Sandy?)  I heartily recommend her blog to anyone interested in losing and especially maintaining a weight loss.  Check out these two posts to start:  I Have A Dream, and Dazed and Confused.  In fact, Sandy writes so well, I am not feeling the need to write any more tonight.

Here’s an actual moment in time in this doggie household.  Bess was posed so cute on the pillow that I picked up my camera VERY QUIETLY, and turned it on.  The minute it made that little whirring opening noise, Sophie came out of nowhere and positioned herself for the photo shoot!

Silly dogs!

Is this what they call the dog days of summer?  I couldn’t quite get myself motivated to work on any big project today.  So I finally gave all four dogs a bath!

I Went Shopping Today

I had to get some dog food before I leave on my trip, so decided to make a day of it.  First stop Costco, for the dog food, and then ended getting a lot of extra household supply-type stuff.  Basically no food, except goat cheese and laughing cow light, the Chevy’s salsa, which I love, and those little bowls of pre-cooked brown rice.  They are just right for me.

On to Marshall’s and Ross, where I planned to look for some tops for my trip.  I have enough pants, but thought I might be a little short on tops.  I tried on 10 tops at one store and 8 tops at the other.  Only ended up with one that I really liked enough to buy. As I stood in the dressing room trying on top after top, I consciously did not allow myself to engage in ‘negative talk’ about my current weight, the size I was wearing, or the state of my body.  I was not discouraged that I didn’t find more to wear.  I am just very picky about paying retail prices for things that don’t fit that well or aren’t flattering to my particular body type.

When I got home I checked the blogs, and Lynn had posted!  She was recently featured in a segment of 60 Minutes Australia.  It was a very interesting piece, because they started out talking about a study that was done in Melbourne that ‘proves’ that your weight is genetically predetermined and so it is pretty much impossible to lose weight and MAINTAIN that weight loss.  Lynn’s part was showing that it was possible to maintain weight loss long term with “hypervigilance” both in food choices and exercise.  They also featured the doctor who is part of the NWCR study, which of course has 10,000 people who HAVE successfully lost and maintained their weight loss for a number of years.  A big part of the segment was dedicated to a plus-sized woman who won Australia’s Got Talent.  She discussed her journey of trying many different diets, trainers, etc, and finally coming to just “love herself” the way she was (they didn’t mention it, but it sounded like “Health at Every Size.”)

I guess I just want to say that I can see both sides of the equation.  I’ve been at my current weight since before I went to Africa, so that’s been about a year and a half.  Its 20 pounds (plus or minus one or two) up from my lowest weight.  Sometimes part of me feels like a failure still.  That’s when I remember all the evidence about how hard it is to maintain weight loss.  And yet, if I dwell in that camp for too long, it can kind of boomerang on me.  There’s nothing wrong with being hypervigilant about my food choices, and nothing wrong with exercising a lot.  Lori made such a funny, but true comment in response to the 60 Minutes piece.  The doctor from the Melbourne study had made the statement that to exercise that much was “obsessive-compulsive.”  Lori said, “An hour of physical activity is obsessive-compulsive? Why does no one say watching an hour of TV a day obsessive compulsive?”  LOL.  That is so true!

On the other side of things, sometimes it DOES seem weird that I think about healthy food all the time, talk about it endlessly.  Worry about what food to take with me on a trip vs. just  dealing with what I can find when I get there.

And back on THE OTHER SIDE of things, I don’t think the current weight I am maintaining is because of genetics.  I think its because I am indulging too much.  Sometimes when I take a little bowl of walnuts and raisins to bed with me, when I’m not really hungry, I think about that.  I don’t know why I can’t resist it, but I don’t really think its a genetic or hormonal thing.  I don’t even think its an emotional thing.  But since I can’t identify what it is, maybe it is a physical thing?

Ah, so you can see I have as much concrete information about weight loss maintenance for you as most of the experts do.  I’ll just tell you that the best advice I can come up with, and it has been something I have kept in the forefront of my mind for the last 7 or so years, is to look at what the successful people have done and imitate that.  So when they said that most of the people in the NWCR ate breakfast, I learned to enjoy a good breakfast.  When they said that most of the people exercise for an hour a day, I took exercise seriously.  I worked up to over an hour of exercise a day.  Now, I don’t know if I get an hour every day, but it is close.  They said that most people weigh themselves once a week.  I have gone back and forth on this.  Currently I weigh myself twice a week.  And lastly, they said that most people watched less than 10 hours of TV a week.  So I threw my TV out!  LOL, that’s not exactly true.  I don’t actually remember reading that fact before.  I did get rid of my TV for different reasons, and I think because of that I do stay a lot more active.

I also think its not bad to keep the increasing body of evidence regarding the extreme difficulty of weight loss maintenance in the back of your mind.  Sometimes (okay, a lot of times) I think women are striving to get to an unrealistic weight.  By unrealistic I mean that they are not heading towards that weight with the full knowledge of what will be necessary to MAINTAIN that weight.  And in the meantime, they are very unhappy with themselves.  That’s no good, is it?  I recently saw some pictures of me as a little girl. I remembered that time so well.  I was, umm, well endowed at a pretty young age.  I remembered having to get that awful ‘old lady’ yellow swimsuit with the built in bra.  I FELT SOOOOO FAT.  What I saw in that picture was a VERY SLIM little girl.  Oh my goodness.  The mind games we play on ourselves.  Its just no good.

So wherever you are on this journey,  try to look at the truth that is known.  Work that into your life now.  Try to love yourself now.  Find clothes that are flattering for your body type right now.  Don’t wait until you are some imaginary shape or size.  And don’t wear clothes that are too tight to remind yourself of how ‘bad’ you are or how you want to be another size.  That is not loving and kind.

Tidbits from the NWCR

So you know I joined the NWCR last year.  ”Joining” means you fill out pages and pages of questionnaires about food, exercise, psych stuff, etc.  I filled out the follow-up questionnaire earlier this year.  And apparently forgot to fill in one line.  These people are serious about the accuracy of their research.  Because they sent me  back the page and asked me to fill in the blank line:  ”How many days a week do you put chocolate syrup in your milk?”  Um.  NONE.  So I filled in the blank and sent it back.  And they sent me a mimeographed page from their research findings as a thank you.  I think those people have a shoestring budget.  Still, they are serious about their research, and there is no larger data base of weight loss maintainers around, so we need to glean all we can from them.

We know most of the  basics:

To maintain their weight loss, members report engaging in high levels of physical activity (about 1 hour/day,) eating a low-calorie, low-fat diet, eating breakfast regularly, self-monitoring weight, and maintaining a consisten pattern across weekdays and weekends (interesting.)

Most of us have heard that very few people maintain weight loss.  That original perception came from a study done in 1959(!) and a pessimistic editorial was recently published in the  New England Journal of Medicine titled Losing Weight:  An Ill-Fated New Year’s Resolution.

In this paper, on “Long Term Weight Loss Maintenance,” the NWCR presents some data that as many as 20% of people have successfully lost weight and kept it off for one year.  Hmmph.  We all know one year is just the tip of the iceburg, right?  Still, 20% is a lot more hopeful than the 2-5% we usually see quoted.

Participants in the registry have lost an average of 72 pounds, and they have maintained the minimum weight loss of 30 pounds for an average of 5.7 years.  Wow!  But only 13% have maintained this minimum weight loss for 10 years.  Continued vigilance needed!

Remember when I wondered if continuing to try to lose weight was a strategy for maintaining weight loss?  Yep.  I think so.  ”55% of registry members report that they are still trying to lose weight.”  

They say that most members report eating 1381 calories per day.  Then they say that most people underestimate their calories, so that is probably close to 1800 day.  I agree with that.

Registry members report consuming 2.5 meals per week in restaurants and .75 meals per week in fast food establishments.

Really?  This is one factoid from the NWCR that I will NOT be putting into practice LOL.

Nothing new–the members report exercising an hour a day, and most report brisk walking.  This is encouraging.  Even though it is a lot of time, everyone can walk.  And surprisingly, only 20% report weight lifting, and another 20% report cycling.  Really?  Get with the program, people!

Ah.  Interesting.  44% report weighing themselves DAILY, and 31% report weighing themselves weekly.  Okay.  I’ll continue with my twice a week regimen for now.  Gotta stay average.

Okay, here was the one sentence in the whole paper that was most interesting to me.

These findings suggest that successful weight loss maintainers continue to act like recently successful weight losers for many years after their weight loss.  (italics mine)

Bear with me.  There are a few more things worth mentioning, and I don’t want to write two posts on this.

Another predictor of successful weight loss maintenance was a lower level of dietary disinhibition (what???,) which is a measure of periodic loss of control of eating.  (oh.)

So, the less frequently you lose control of your eating, the more likely you are to be successful in maintaining weight loss.  Okay, noted.

Along with this, people were more successful if their eating was the same on weekends and holidays.  Oh brother, this is a hard one, right?  They make the statement that “allowing for flexibility in the diet may increase exposure to high-risk situations, creating more opportunity for loss of control.”

And finally, a bit of depressing (but its reality) news to end this review.  ”Few people (11%) recovered from even minor lapses of 3-5 pounds regained.”  ay-yi-yi.  Don’t we all know it.      It seems like the biggest mystery in the world that someone can lose 100 pounds, and then for two years continue to ‘try’ and yet be unable to lose 5-10 pounds.

Evolution

Tonight I am too full.  I find that very disappointing.  It makes me not want to write on here.  I had a fun subject all composed in my mind, and then I ate too much today.  I could pretend that I hadn’t, and just write what I had been planning.  But that seems dishonest.  And not fun anymore.

To be fair, I was going to say at the end (of what I originally was planning to write) that being overfull was something that still occasionally happens, and that I do not like at all.  So there.  I guess I got it out of the way at the beginning and I can go ahead and write about what I originally planned to write about.

Yesterday I mentioned being amused by the contents of my basket at Costco.  Honestly, in the distant past, it would have contained some kind of baked treat, some candy, and some type of processed frozen food.  Thursday it contained green beans, butternut squash, pears, mangos, and yogurt.  I carefully considered each item–did I need it?  Some of them I bought ‘as a treat, ‘ like I would have done with the three pound bag of candy in the past.

Yesterday I needed to clean out my high shelf (wanted to put that trail mix up high like Lori does to see if that works.)  I took down a bunch of boxes of cereal, a box of crackers that had never been opened, and FIVE boxes of cake mixes.  All of them way out of date.  But all of them bought at some time when I was well on the way of my weight loss journey.  And that’s what made me think of the word “evolution.”  There really has been an evolution in the foods I eat.  But it has been a slow slow process.  The cake mixes really made me think.  What on earth did I need all those cake mixes for?  Well, that was the ‘lo-cal, lo-fat’ treat that I substituted for some of my other regular consumptions, like brownies and chocolate chip cookies.  You could mix those cake mixes with beans or diet 7-up to make some pretty tasty desserts.  I wonder if I would have stayed the course if I had not had those cake mix treats to fill in the gap.  That evolution was a S-L-0-W process.  The cereal and the crackers weren’t necessarily bad.  But in the evolutionary process, they, along with the cake mixes,  went by the wayside when I started working with Vicky, and started eliminating most processed foods.

I think one of the most important things during the WHOLE evolutionary process was educating myself.  Not taking someone else’s word for it.  But reading a lot, comparing research, trying certain things.  Learning what worked for me and what didn’t.  NOT throwing away anything I learned along the way.  Using all that knowledge as a base to make decisions about how/what/when to eat.  How much and what exercise to do.  I’m still learning.  I learned something from Vicky’s lecture the other night.

As this evolutionary process has allowed me to lose a large amount of weight and maintain a good chunk of that weight loss, I am aware that the evolutionary ladder could swing the other direction and I could ‘evolve’ right back into the very overweight woman that I once was.  That is why I am distressed when I am too full.  I really really do not like the feeling itself, and to me it signals that I might be heading in the wrong direction.  So far I seem to self-correct the very next day, thank goodness.

The other thing that I have currently identified, and am working on, is that feeling that I am ‘bad’ when all I have done is THINK about eating something.  I am trying not to identify foods as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’  And to not think of myself as ‘bad’ when I think of those foods.  There is certainly nothing wrong IMO with identifying foods as worthy or unworthy based on their nutritional value.  Man, if we were to eat all of the nutritious foods that are recommended by some experts all day every day, there would be no question of choosing ‘unworthy’ foods.’ We would definitely be too full.  But we are ‘defective,’ as this doctor so cleverly points out.  Check it out.  That is a good article.

A Different Way to Weigh

Okay, here goes.  A disjointed (ooh, good ‘j’ word–I’ve been playing Words with Friends lately,) unprofessional review of a very interesting book.

Health at Every Size was written by Linda Bacon, who started out with a masters degree in psychotherapy, and then went back to school to get her doctorate in physiology with a focus on nutrition and weight regulation.  She struggled for years with her own weight.  ”Bacon’s pain and obsession about her weight fueled her determination to understand everything about weight regulation.”

The main point she tries to make in this book is that most people are not going to lose weight.  Period.  And if they do lose weight, in all probability they will regain that weight.  She spends a lot of time going over extensive research that shows this is true. (that’s the part I skimmed.)  And she points to many studies that show that being overweight is not necessarily detrimental to your health. (also skimmed.) I think she’s trying to say that if you accept your weight and stop judging yourself for it, it is easier to move forward and make changes that are truly healthy IN SPITE OF your weight.

“Self-love may be the most revolutionary act you can engage in.  A person who is content in his or her body–fat or thin–disempowers the industries that prey on us and helps rewrite cultural mores.”

She doesn’t promote “Health at Any and All Food.”  That’s kind of what I thought the “Health at Every Size” movement was about.  Not at all.  She actually promotes eating very healthy whole foods.  And makes a statement that sounds vaguely familiar.  ”Enjoy a variety of real food, primarily plants.” Similar to Michael Pollan’s famous saying, “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.”  Who came first?

This was probably the most outstanding and interesting passage in the book:

Then recognize that you have a choice.  You can choose your own standard of beauty, one that is realistic and respectful, or you can choose society’s hurtful standards.  Just remember:  You only have one body and despite how well you live your life, it may never change.  Can you afford to hate yourself for the rest of your life?

 

Bring this new thinking to how you view your body.  Experts call this vision kinesthesia, which simply means how you sense and feel about your body.  Kinesthesia is a product of your imagination, much more influenced by your self-esteem than by others’ perception of you.  Only you have the power to alter it.

This might be what happened to me when I made that New Year’s Day list:

Most of all I want to live a balanced  healthful life.  WITHOUT ANGST.

I want to be

• Active.
• Creative.
• Spiritual.
• Generous.
• Joyful.

I want to be all of these things.  I want them to be balanced in my life.  I even wrote “If being a little heavier is part of this, so be it.”

Something changed that day.  Well, lets be real.  This whole thing has been a process.  A LONG DRAWN-OUT PROCESS.  I started changing the way I think and the way I viewed myself.  I would no longer be embarrassed that I was ‘too fat’ to go to the gym, and put it off for a week or two until I ‘got the pounds off.’  I went to the gym as a proud overweight woman who wanted to continue to grow stronger.  I looked at myself in the mirror and liked what I saw.  Not compared to anyone else, either fatter or thinner.  I just was pleased with me.  Now don’t get me wrong.  That is in no way a 24 hour a day feeling.  In fact, last night I had to ask myself, so why DO you continue to weigh yourself?  Well the truth is, many times, mostly in the evening when I am sitting, I ‘feel’ very fat.  So I weigh myself to reassure myself that nothing has really changed.

And it has not.  I weigh almost exactly the same every time I get on the scale.  For the last few weeks I’ve taken a break from writing down everything I eat, and have not counted the calories either.  This does not mean that I have thrown out everything I have learned along the way.  Far from it.  Even my most recent foray into eating more protein has come into play.  I still am choosing good foods, balanced meals, basically no processed foods (except the most excellent cake at the missions weekend banquet ) )  I am not engaging in angst over meals out, or wanting a treat now and again.  I am, however, still battling that feeling of ‘being bad’  even when I have only THOUGHT about eating something too rich.  So I’m a work in progress.  Still.  sigh.

Towards the end of the book she makes this statement:

“Failed attempts at losing weight make people feel like failures, and even those who succeed feel a never-ending pressure to retain that success that will always limit their ability to feel comfortable around food and in their bodies.”

This is what I was feeling a wee bit.  Like a ‘successful maintainer’ who was actually always failing.  I am thinking of changing the byline of my blog to something like ‘thoughts on a whole and healthy life.’  That would be more in line with what I write about anyway.  Since I really have nothing left to say about weight LOSS.

One more thought.  For some of us, who are attempting to maintain a weight lower that what our body wants, or perhaps we have mucked with our internal body mechanism by gaining and maintaining extreme amounts of weight, I do believe that if we don’t continue to ‘try’ to lose weight, or at least remain ‘vigilant’ in maintaining our weight, there is the distinct probability that we will regain weight.

This book was quite scientific, especially the first half, where she uses EXTENSIVE research to try to prove her point (that you can be overweight and healthy.)  But it was much more balanced in its approach to life and food and exercise than I expected.  I have written before that I am scared by some of the HAES advocates.  They seem so angry.  I think my life experience is much much different than many persons.  I was ‘morbidly obese’ for many years, but for the most part I was loved, and treated with respect, and had a very full and fulfilling life.  For some people that is not their experience, and thus, their anger and frustration.  Overall, this book had a lot to offer. (plus it was very cheap to download on my kindle.)  I wish so much that people would learn to be content with their bodies and just eat healthy foods and move around a bit.