It’s felt like a slippery slope lately.  One bite of chocolate chip cookie here.  Two tastes of bacon there.  I see how easily I could just slip right back into bad eating habits, no matter how much soul-searching I’ve done over the past few months.  Old, lifelong habits die hard.

I know 2 things now:  1) I will always have to think about my eating and keep it under control because I love food and am addicted to food (so there really is no finish line in this race) and 2) it will probably never get easier. 

 It helps to know that. 

 It also helps to stress, once again, to myself that there is no room in this battle for black-and-white thinking or acting. So, no matter how I might slip up and eat a chocolate sundae one night, that will never again be an excuse to blow everything I’ve worked so hard for over the past seven months.  And, also, just because I might give into temptation, it doesn’t mean I’m a failure at the whole program.  It just means I have to “reset” my thinking, as they say in the program, get back on track, have a shake for dinner, exercise for 30 minutes more.

Before I go on, I just have to do a “Before” and “After” of me in my office. 

So, to answer one specific request, here is what I’m eating now: 

Breakfast:  1/2 cup of Greek yoghurt (low-fat) with 6 almonds, a cut-up medium-sized apple, and 1/4 cup of Fiber One or, every now and then, an omelette made of 1 egg and 2 egg whites and veggies and low-fat cheese

9:30 a.m.:  one high-protein, low-calorie Optifast bar

(8 glasses of water throughout the day)

Lunch:  6 oz of fish or chicken on a salad of lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, onions, etc.

2:30-3:00 p.m.:  1 piece of fruit and 2 low-fat Mozarella cheesesticks

Dinner (as early as possible):  4-6 oz of fish/chicken/other lean meat  and lots of vegetables or salad (1/2 of the plate) with a teaspoon of dressing, so I make sure I have a little fat

That’s it.  It’s simple.  So, when I go out to dinner or lunch, I have to choose the meal that is closest to this regimen.  No fried fish.  No mashed potatoes and gravy.  Just whatever delicious vegetables they are offering, with whatever delicious broiled fish or chicken they happen to have.  And, when I can’t stand it and need more variety, then I have some red meat or some pork–and just adjust the rest of my day accordingly.  I’m working up to carbs.  When I add them back in, it will be 1/4 cup or brown rice.

First of all, it’s a lot harder to stay on track when you don’t have someone laying out exactly what you get to eat and when–and you have to make your own choices.  Secondly, it’s also a lot easier, in some ways, than I feared.  I’m not, for example, real eager to give up the past four months of work in favor of a chocolate sundae, so temptation is not the problem. What’s hard is the amount of careful planning that is required in order to stay on program. 

Thirdly, I feel as if, at 70 pounds down, I am gradually emerging from a cocoon that I’ve had around me for the past several years–a protective layer of fat that I didn’t even know I had.  A friend said she noticed that even my hand gestures are different now–that I’m more openly expressive.  I don’t know how true that is–or if I was just strutting my stuff in front of her because she hadn’t seen me since the beginning of the program–but I do know that I was shy in certain circumstances before, such as trying on clothes, being in a bathing suit, wearing pants–where I’m less shy now. 

I’ve had a lot of positive reinforcement lately, and that’s wonderful–but also disconcerting, since I feel like the same old me inside this 50- something body, just with a different presentation to the outside world.

 All this has made me realize how much people notice our outside appearance, on the one hand, but also, on the other, how little they really notice it.  What I have found, even if I didn’t really need confirmation, is that the people who truly love you, love you through thick and thin (literally).  It’s good to know that.  It sure does help to keep me from putting the weight back on! Why would you when there is nothing to prove and no one to rebel against?  That’s a good feeling.

Jane

This has been my last week on only liquids, and I have to admit I’m scared of adding food back into my life.  I’m scared of losing the simplicity, the order, and the no-thinking-about-food state I’ve been living in. I’m going to have to actually put all this good knowledge, and therapy into practice and see if  I can stay strong.  People have told me they could never stick to a liquids-only diet, but it’s easy compared to living in foodland!  Not having to make choices about what to eat was blissful.  I’ll take my box of envelopes of protein drink and my little portable shaker any day!  Now I have to start thinking again about things like portion control, calorie allotment, nutrition, etc.   Oh yeah – and it’s the pyramid.

Scariest of all:  my fear of slipping back into binge eating?!  I can’t let that happen again. In my program, we talked this week about body image–and where our own images come from: from fellow nervous adolescents in our teenage years, from our parents, from the media.  It’s interesting to ponder how we see ourselves and why.  We also talked about the purposes weight can serve for people or the things that it says for us, such as “Stay away from me” or “I’m afraid to be myself” or “I have to do everything,  “I’m mad” or “You can’t control me.”  I know, in my case, at least part of it started out as a control game with my mother, who always liked to encourage us to diet with her, but things got more complicated along the way. I’m sure part of it was also feeling out of control with life, overwhelmed, so my weight was saying, “I give up.  I’m powerless.”  Worth pondering.

But what about this guy?  I guess his weight says the opposite:  “I’m powerful!”

I’m feeling powerful this week, since my BMI is down from 37 to 30, so I’m moving out of the “obese” category and into “overweight.”   My goals for the next 6 weeks, while in “transition” back to a normal life are to 1) get on a more regular exercise program 2) remember that this has been a life change and not a diet and 3) to stay strong and mindful.

Wish me luck!

Jane

I realized today that I am halfway through the liquid portion of this program, so I’m feeling pretty amazed and proud of myself.  I made my first goal of 10% of my initial weight, so now I start working on the second 10%.  (The program guarantees that you’ll lose at least 20% of your initial weight during the 12 weeks of liquid, or “active weight loss.”  What you do after that depends on how well you stick to the “transition” program.) 

Our topic this past week was “Appropriate and Inappropriate Eating.”  We learned the 5 P’s of Appropriate Eating, i.e. Planned, Portion Controlled, Proportionate, Proper Place and Peaceful (apparently they’re not English majors concerned about parallel structure!).  A critical thing in being a successful “weight manager” is always to plan out, ahead of time, what, where and how you’re going to eat.  So, instead of going out to dinner and deciding to eat whatever happens to strike your fancy, in whatever portion happens to come on the plate, you would decide that you are going to make sure you get the different food groups, in the portions you need.  If the plate has huge portions, you will immediately ask for a doggy bag, reduce your servings to the size that fit your caloric needs, and take the abundance home with you for another meal–or, if all else fails, send food back to the kitchen.   

This all makes so much sense to me that I find it startling that I’ve gone through so much of my life being an unaware, almost unconscious eater.  I’ve been led by my eyes, nose, even my imagination, to overeat, over and over again–simply because my plate had too much food on it–or the wrong kind of food–never realizing that I could be in so much better control of what goes onto my fork and into my mouth.  I have confused planning and thoughtful eating with being a “picky” or “overly fussy” eater. 

That touches on the first 3 P’s, but I’d like to talk also about the last two:  Proper Place and Peaceful.  Proper Place means you don’t eat in front of the tv set or, worst of all, standing up in the kitchen, ”grazing,” or at your desk, in front of your computer.  You are supposed to make rules about where you eat, preferably one specified place, and then stick to those rules.  I get pangs of guilt when I think of the meals my children have eaten in the car on the way to a soccer game, band concert, whatever.  The final one, “peaceful,” is one that also comes hard to me at times.  Meals in our house are often rushed, with people wolfing down food before running out the door.   An important quote from this week’s material:  “it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to get the message you have eaten and turn off your food seeking drive.”  You are supposed to sit and enjoy your food, savoring each bite.  It’s hard, but I’m working on it!   They have an exercise for this one:  make yourself put down your fork in between bites!  Try it!  It’s hard!

It’s no surprise, given all of this, that the Five G’s of Inappropriate Eating are Grazing (eating all day, whenever you walk by food), Grabbing and Going, Gulping, Gorging, and Goodies.   They’re pretty self-evident!

The last part of the class was identifying our own eating styles:  emotional eaters, social eaters, restrained eaters (who always think about limiting their food, so they tend to swing back and forth between overeating and limiting themselves), and, my type, unskilled eaters, i.e. eaters who eat too fast, who nibble while cooking and cleaning up, who always go back for seconds and take oversized portions, and (less true for me) who eat in inappropriate places.  The main clues that this is my type were these two descriptive statements: “I tend to clear my entire plate, even when I’m full” and “When eating with others, I’m the first to finish my meal.”  I can tell you that these are hard, hard habits to break.  I”m always the fastest eater at the table, and when I don’t clear my plate, I worry about being wasteful.  That’s why I love the doggy bag trick!  It’s going to take some re-training to get me to change, but I have hope that being conscious is one of the first steps toward improvement.

The more I hear and learn, the more I realize that it all boils down to being more conscious, more responsible for our own actions.  Isn’t it funny how so much in life seems to boil down to that same thing?  Onward and upward! Wish me luck with Thanksgiving dinner!  My plan is to allow myself two servings of soup that day and serve it in a fancy dish!

Jane

I don’t have much to report this week, other than that I am steadily losing weight and feeling better and better about my body, my life, my appearance, and my health.  The low point of this week was taking a big gulp of what I thought was going to be a vanilla shake with a hint of Starbucks coffee flavor and discovering instead that it was cold chicken soup, flavored with coffee!  Needless to say, I wasn’t wild about the cold lumps!

 The high point of the week was this weekend.  The program tells us to come up with non-food rewards for progress made, so I decided to do something I’ve always wanted to do but never had the nerve to try:  fake nails!  I didn’t realize they would take so long, but after 2 hours in the chair, I walked out of the salon feeling totally glamorous and beautiful and, oh, so feminine.  I highly recommend them.  My sister, Katie, has always told me they were wonderful, and now I get it.  I’m typing with them right now and feeling like I’m back to being about 8 years old, loving my glue-on nails–but these don’t fall off!  I have to watch out because lately I’m spending a lot of time just thinking up new ways to point a gorgeous red-tipped finger at something.  Here’s a picture:

Other than that, there’s not much to report.  The session last week was about the importance of serving food on small plates, so that we don’t over-feed ourselves–and about drawing an imaginary line across our plate, dividing our plate into top and bottom.  The top half should always be filled with vegetables, the bottom fourth with protein and the other fourth with starch, with a tiny bit of fat.  We are supposed to keep that plate model in our heads, when we go back to eating, especially when eating out!  It simplifies the whole deal of counting calories or figuring out portions. The other thing that happened this week is we got started on regular exercise.  My goal is 150-200 minutes of aerobic exercise a week–and I have to keep a daily  log.  I’m proud to say I made it to the YWCA one morning, and I walked 4 times this week, plus one long walk and a hike on the weekend.  We’re also supposed to do simple things to get ourselves moving all the time, such as parking farther away from work, taking the stairs, or, in my case, running in place in the bathroom, just for the extra oomph!  Onward and upward!

Jane

Okay, so I made it through the first hard week and lost some more weight and felt very proud of myself, and then I started into Week Two.  There were a few rough spots, such as when I watched my daughter eat a Bojangles biscuit for breakfast or when I smelled pizza in our house, but they never got as rough as I feared they might.  It helped to have my program bracelet around, which reads, “My Life, My Choice.”  Whenever I consider eating something that is off program, I think about that.  I made the choice to be here.  I’m paying the money.  I’m not going to mess it up, no matter how many cajun chicken filet biscuits my daughter consumes!  I even started exercising a little bit–considerably more than I’ve done for about a hundred years but not enough to qualify me for my sister’s favorite show,  ”The Biggest Loser.”  That’s coming next!

What I learned this week:  1) that I’m especially crazy about the chicken soup when it has lots of undissolved lumps of powder in it because it makes me feel like I’m eating pieces of chicken (if I use my imagination, a la Pollyanna) 2) that people have different triggers that make them overeat 3) that Optifast mixed with lukewarm water really doesn’t cut it (it’s got to be cold).  Kim is responsible for our knowing this last thing, since she tried mixing up her shake at the clinic, right before class, using water from the sink in the bathroom, and almost gagged right there, in front of the woman knitting her weight away into a blanket.  Kim also is responsible for the brilliant idea of adding extracts to the shakes.  So, now we have the option of a vanilla shake with raspberry extract or a chocolate shake with banana extract!  Kim tells me the banana extract even gets rid of the aftertaste from the shake (which has been a problem for me, forcing me to brush my teeth more than they’ve ever been brushed.)  We’re both very excited about the extracts.  We figure their novelty alone will carry us through the week that everyone says is the hardest to get through, i.e. Week Three on Liquids, when apparently boredom can become a problem.  I knew I could count on Kim, since she’s one of the best cooks in the world, to make this program do-able.

Optifast Shake in One Hand, Water in the Other

The group session on food triggers was very interesting.  I know that one of my triggers used to be just walking into my mother’s house.  My mother was a phenomenal cook, and there was always tons of wonderful, Southern food to eat at her house, such as smothered chicken, broccoli with hollandaise sauce, watermelon rind pickle, roast leg of lamb with onions and mint jelly, etc. etc.  (Sorry! I’m clearly getting too hungry here.  Time to take a shake break.)

That’s better!

Visits to her house always centered around meals, as did our lives when we were children.  So that helps to explain it.  But there seems to be more to it than that–because I didn’t just eat when meals were served.  I  ate compulsively, from the minute I walked in the door, and I didn’t stop until I left and got back into my own life.  I would sneak into the kitchen and pull out a Haagen Daz chocolate-covered ice cream bar or some Pepperidge Farm chessman cookies–even if dinner was on the way soon.  Or I would eat a bowl of cereal with heavy cream, right before bed. There was just something about being there, in that house, that made me overeat.  I sometimes still feel that same urge when I’m around my sisters, if we are all 4 together in a group.  It doesn’t seem to happen as much when I’m with one of them, individually.  But when I’m with all of them, I start to eat differently than I do at home.  It’s the weirdest thing.

In any case, it helped me to think about triggers.  It’s frustrating that some of my other triggers are sadness, boredom, happiness, joy, and anger.  It’s somewhat limiting to have that many triggers.  I know it’s good to stare them in the face, but it’s also frustrating to see how many of them there are.  It helps me understand better why I’ve had an easy time putting weight on and a hard time taking it off all these years!  If food has always been your main reward/comfort/therapy for every human experience, you’re in trouble!  The goal of the program is to help us  1) recognize our triggers and 2) learn to find ways to calm those triggers down and even find things to replace those triggers with!  It’s exciting to think that just the process of being more conscious about eating can make a difference.  Wish me luck!

  Appointment #1:

So, I had to be there at the clinic by 8:15 in the morning, to get all my labwork done:  the obligatory urine sample, followed by bloodwork.  Then, I had to take off my shoes to get weighed and find out my BMI, that lovely measure of how much fat is riding heavily on my bones.   I was hoping they would let me leave my shoes on for the weigh-in, so that losing the first few pounds would be as easy as switching to sandals next time, but  these people are old hands at this! My body mass index was frightening–as was my weight, both of which I’ll leave off this blog, thank you.  I was particularly fond of getting my waist and hips measured.  Then, the EKG–to make sure I was in good enough shape to go on the program.

The next step is the meeting with a nurse to discuss all the risks.  She’s a great person, so this went quickly and smoothly–except for the point where she casually mentioned some of the possible side effects, including dizziness, bad breath, temperature changes and “sudden death.”  I have to say that it took me a minute to get past that last one.  I asked  if they had ever experienced this particular side effect with any of their patients and was very relieved to hear her say, emphatically, “no.”  Since I don’t want to be the first instance , I’ve decided that I will actually follow the program to the letter instead of trying to be the fastest weight loser in history (which, due to my competitive nature, could be a risk for me).

My friend, Kim, who is going through this program with me (bless her wonderful self) said she particularly liked the moment when they asked us to sign a statement saying that we  agreed never to sell the liquid diet protein drink to our friends.  She had a great picture in her head of our friends lining up to try to buy the product from us in a dark alley!

Appointment #2:

This was actually two appointments.  I spent an hour with a nutritionist, designing an eating  program for “Week O,” the week where you do a combination of the Optifast liquid drink and food, so that you can transition into the total liquid diet without your body going into shock.  She offered me limited choices from foiur food groups. They do this on purpose.  For one thing, they don’t want you to have to think about food as much as you’d have to if you had tons and tons of choices for meals–and, for another, they want you to start thinking of food as nutrition instead of all the other things that roll around our brains and get us in trouble, such as food as comfort, food as fun, food as joy, food as reward, etc. etc.  So, I chose my 3 fruits, my 4 vegetables, my 2 starches, and my 4 proteins, and then she walked me through how I would come up with, for instance, a typical dinner.  I could have 3 ounces of salmon, with 1 cup of cooked acorn squash, 1 cup of cooked tomatoes or onions, and, for dessert, 1 cup of Greek yoghurt with 1 cup of frozen blueberries!  I was thrilled.  I had feared a much stricter regimen for the first week.  Each day, I start out with the liquid diet, then, after 2 hours, have another liquid diet drink plus a fruit from my list, then, 2 hours later, lunch (consisting of 3 oz of protein, 1 cup of raw vegetables from my list), then, 2 hours later, the liquid diet, then, 2 hours later, my dinner, and, finally, before going to bed, a snack of a string cheese or 1/2 cup of cottage cheese!  That’s the routine for this week, coupled with 64 ounces of water each day and 2 vitamins (1 in morning, 1 in evening). 

After the nutritionist, I had my first visit with the doctor, who turned out to be not the old hag with the wagging finger that I had feared but a young  (very knowledgeable) woman who looks like she’s still in her thirties–and with a wonderful sense of humor!  She gave me a check-up, and then we spent an hour going over my weight gain/loss history, from birth, trying to figure out what went wrong each time.  It appears that my main problem is not losing weight–it’s gaining it back.  So, we’re going to focus on that in my program.  We also talked a lot about balance–and the need for it.  Why does this not surprise me?  It seems like everything I’m doing this year comes back to trying to find more balance in my life.  Oh, and we talked about stress management.  Another big surprise!  Funny how sometimes the things you need to know are right in front of your face.

She warned me that I have to “surrender myself to the program.”  In other words, there is no point in walking around, looking like a victim in front of my children or feeling sorry for myself.  And, at the other end of things, there is no point in trying to beat the program and lose weight faster than anybody else.  I just have to take this on as something I’m doing now to help myself–something important that could change my life forever, for the better.   I walked out of her office, with my liquid diet products in hand, ready to take on the world.

Day One:  I chould have chosen a better day to start the program–other than the one where I was signed up to chaperone my 8th grader’s field trip to the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee.  It was interesting, trying to get in my 64 ounces of water, while dealing with the joys of Port-A-Johns.  It was also interesting, sitting there eating my cottage cheese and carrots while my daughter and her friends wolfed down curly fries and funnel cake.  The most interesting thing, however, was that it wasn’t hard–the way I had thought it would be.  I had a program.  I had a schedule.  I knew just what I had to do.  I also knew that Kim would kill me if I didn’t get off to a good start.  So, I sipped my water, drank my liquid diet (in the convenient little throw-away container) and came home to my unbelievably delicious, nutritious salmon dinner.  Life is good.

These two, totally unrelated topics just happen to be on my mind at the moment, and, since this is a blog, with no rules, I’m going to write about both of them.  First of all, I’d like to explore my decision to join the weight management program at our local hospital.

 Well, I’m too fat. That’s the main motivator.  Secondly, even though (and because) I have had no motivation to do anything except eat for the past year or so, I’m now at a point where my body is telling me to stop.  My ankles are hurting.  My back is hurting.  I’m tired of toting this weight around.  So, when I heard about this program and saw the wonderful results on a dear friend of mine, I started thinking about doing it.  Then, another wonderful friend of mine called me up and said she wanted to do it and would I go to the information session with her.  It all seemed like fate.  Finally, my mother, God rest her soul, always wanted me to go to one of these programs, and I resisted and resisted when she was alive, so, in a way, it’s a kind of tribute to her that I’m going now.  I’ve signed up to do a program that, among other horrors, involves twelve weeks of liquid diet.  It sounds pretty daunting, but I’m determined.  I’m trying to silence the voices in my head that are saying, “But you might have a heart attack from the stress or, at the very least, give yourself a migraine!” by concentrating on the fact that there will be doctors checking on me every step of the way.  I’m also trying to avoid the “last supper” routine of eating so much before the program starts that they’ll have to wheel me in there on a gurney.  Best of all, I’m excited about the program and eager to get started.  The program promises that I’ll lose at least 10% of  my original weight, plus another 10% of my remaining weight after that first weight loss.  So, I’m fired up and ready to go.

 I’m going to blog about it for two reasons:  1) there just might be someone else out there who is considering the program, and my blogging might help them to see what it’s all about and decide if it’s right or wrong for them and 2) I’m figuring if I have to tell the world how I’m doing, I might actually stick to the program!

So, for the foreseeable future, part of my blog each week is going to be about the program and my progress!  Wish me luck!

 On another topic:  let me take just a minute to talk about how wonderful it is when children grow up and turn into mature human beings with their own thoughts, opinions, attitudes, etc.  I’m seeing this process in my teenagers every day, and I’m floored by it.  Seems like just last week they were making stupid choices and getting themselves in one fix or another, and now, here they are, acting grown up and sane and loving and smart and capable, and I just need to put out there to the world how wonderful that is!  Just to give you an example:  my 19-year-old son called me last night to tell me about a Russian novel he’s reading for his college literature course, and I could sense the excitement in his voice.  Or another one:  my 22-year-old is making her way through a very difficult year, but she’s managing not to sink down into the drama of the campus life around her.  Instead, she’s focusing on doing her work and letting the drama roll on past!

 Mothers of new teenagers who are presently going through hell:  take it from me, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s glorious!

That’s it for now.  More next week!