Update

Posting here has been pretty sparse, for a few different reasons. First of all I've just been engaged in living real life -- life that doesn't just happen on the internet. It is so nice to have friends here to engage with; I am so grateful. Second, things have just been crazy here -- and not the good kind of crazy either.

My mental health has been tenuous at best for awhile. Depression is something I deal with, and when I am depressed I still often want to turn to food to help deal with the emotion and sadness. I fight very hard against this, but sometimes I give up on the food side of things. Now by giving up, I don't necessarily mean "I am going to eat this whole carton of (insert binge food of choice) and I don't give a shit!" (though I have done that a couple times in the last few weeks). I do, however, mean "Dealing with the food and tracking it and obsessing about it is too much to handle right now so I will try to make mostly responsible choices on my own." Well, apparently I either let the leash get too loose, or lost my sense of what was a responsible choice is or SOMETHING, because I was up about 12 lbs in the span of about 5 weeks. This week I tracked 6 days and lost 4 lbs, so that was a victory. Today started out rough, though, signaling that something in my brain/consciousness is not quite to where it needs to be yet. I will get there though, one day and decision at a time.

I have made the decision to get back into therapy. I really fought this idea hard, but I am absolutely convinced I need to be in therapy for now. The first session really sucked, but, again, I think I need to be there for now. I am optimistic that I will be able to fix my destructive negative self-talk and being so hard on myself. I am also convinced, though, that it will be difficult and is likely to cut into some very deep and painful places that I don't really want to go. But, for the sake of my mental health and long-term well-being, I will go there.

One of the things my therapist told me I needed to do was to identify a support mechanism for healthy living (I hate to just term this life transformation I'm on as "weight loss", as the weight is but a symptom of the underlying problem of disordered thoughts and behaviors about food).

I have written before about how I've considered joining Overeaters Anonymous. I finally decided this week to go -- and I was very surprised (in a good way) at what I found. I will have to write a separate post to sum up my experience. However, I will say that that the meeting I attended was great, and that I identified with pretty much everything everyone said. It was cool/odd/great to feel understood in a way that I never really have with respect to my disordered eating. I think that at least for now it is exactly where I need to be -- I will definitely keep going!

Community and Friends

I have written posts lamenting my lack of friends and posting what a hard time I had transitioning to life in Arkansas and as a real adult. I am pleased to announce that I finally have friends here! Real, genuine, we actually have a lot in common, I'll be there for you and you'll be there for me friends! What a blessing.

It is funny, I had myself convinced there for awhile that I "didn't need friends" and that I "was independent and liked to do stuff without having to please others" and that being alone "allowed me freedom that I didn't want to give up". And, while there are shreds of truth in the last two statements at least, they're mostly lies and coping mechanisms that helped me to feel better. I can assure you that having friends is so much better than not having them.

I think people were designed to be in community. My therapist has even told me that I am someone who functions better in relationships than out of them (not the romantic variety, just relationships in general). He is right. I need friends and am so glad that I have some now.

I am grateful for friends who accept me for who I am -- an emotional overeater, someone who is caring and thoughtful, someone who deals with depression, a professor, someone who can be compulsive, someone who is successful and intellegent, someone who is passionate, someone who is pretty liberal and has a gay brother. They take the good with the bad, and don't try to "fix" me or judge me or convince me that I'm wrong if they disagree. I think I do the same for them -- 'cause that's what friends do. I am so grateful to have them in my lives, adding to and enhancing my existing network of friends who I don't live near anymore. I felt I owed you guys an update on that since I shared the bad with you on that one, and now I have good news to share :)

What's the real issue here?

This week -- especially the first part of the week -- has been one of the roughest I can remember. Today I mostly just feel numb. I got almost nothing done this morning! Very frustrating, especially since productivity is largely at the crux of the issue.

I did so well tracking, packing my lunches for the first part of the week. Last night, I just felt tired so I ordered a pizza. Was I craving pizza? Yes. Was it a conscious decision to order it? Yes. Now I don't believe any food is inherently "bad" or to be avoided completely, but was it right to eat the whole thing? No. Was it right to mix sugar with cream cheese and vanilla and eat it out of the bowl after I ate a whole medium pizza? Double no.

Then this morning, I felt really guilty about it. Ugh. But here's the thing -- for me, it's not about the food. It's about the hopelessness and exhaustion I feel sometimes. It's about feeling like I have "earned" less healthy food in copious amounts, and using food as a reward. That is unhealthy, and although I do it WAY less often than I did at almost 300 lbs, it is something that I still struggle with. I just realized in writing this post, though, that instead of focusing on controlling what I eat, I need to recognize that I really need to deal with the anxiety and stress and sadness that cause me to overeat. It is so much easier to slay the emotional eating monster when one is level-headed.

It is not about the foods, it's about about the feelings. I need to remember and focus on that. This mental health thing -- so easy to describe, so hard to handle sometimes. The good thing is that it is getting easier to recognize what is me vs. what is mental illness or depression. This week on Tuesday, for example, I thought I was really going to just collapse from the weight of all that is bearing down on me in a particular issue that's been going on. I wanted to stay home. I wanted to cry and eat all day. I wanted to be completely reclusive and avoid seeing anyone after work. Instead I went to work and bowling with friends afterwards (even though I didn't actually even bowl since my back was hurting; another reaction to stress). Going out and being social wasn't what I wanted, but it was probably what I needed. I recognized that it was the seeds of depression that made me want to do counterproductive things, and so I stepped in and seized control. I am able to do that more and more (hence, the ability to lose weight), but it is still not reflexive and is sometimes quite difficult. Like today, for example.

I am a work in progress and am not giving up. And I'm about to go get a healthy option for lunch, so take that emotional overeating!

Not Much to Say

I feel like I am going in fits and starts lately, and I do not like it. Things at work have been insane. That means things in the rest of my life have been insane too. Thankfully, one of the big reasons for the insanity is (mostly) over.

We are interviewing people for a position where I work. I remember when I was in the shoes of the candidates. Here is how it works for an academic interview: they wine and dine you. I remember going to super-swanky restaurants each night I interviewed. I mean we're talking the $25-40/plate type restaurants -- and that's before the appetizers and desserts which inevitably are ordered. Plus, about 50% of the time people order booze too. Being on the search committee, you go to dinner with each of the candidates. You do the math.

Last week we also had lots of other abnormal work-engagements -- most of which came with free lunch. Also there were tons of cookies around during the interviews. And let's not forget that the Girl Scout cookies I ordered came in.

Can one make good choices at these events and surrounded by cookies? Absolutely. Remember, I reached a new low during a week with four Christmas parties. Can one make good choices in this environment while feeling physically and emotionally drained? Maybe, but I will just admit that I didn't.

I feel stuck. I feel drained. I feel frustrated. I reached a new low and am now back up to 235 -- this past weekend I was even up to 238! I have been giving WW a half-hearted attempt AT BEST, but really I am just trying not to lose ground. I feel mentally off a little bit and am paying extra attention to my mental health these days.

While I don't think that feeling off is a license to go all out and chuck healthy eating out the window, I think that for me for now keeping mentally healthy is more important than focusing on WL. The two are actually very fundamentally linked for me. You may remember that this summer my blahness about WL actually caused me to seek help from a therapist where I was diagnosed with a raging case of depression.

I need to find a healthy balance of keeping my nose to the grindstone so I can make progress for work, but not grinding my nose off to spite my face. Balance is so tricky, you know?

So that is where I have been -- I don't want to be one of those "I am going to do so awesome because today is DAY ONE!" "Oh, I really messed up again yesterday guys -- oops -- so I'm turning over a new leaf. Today is DAY ONE!!!" bloggers, so I just took a bye on updating my blog for awhile. Not to mention, life is crazy busy. Thanks to my mom for checking in on me. There are unexpected bumps in the road for this healthiness blogger. I will stay the course though, even if I have to wear a helmet and take this healthy living train offroad for awhile. I WILL NOT GIVE UP.

Good Riddance Snow!

(L) My car buried in about 2.5 ft of snow after a historic snowfall. The snow was almost up to the top of the doors of my Honda Civic.

(R) After 1 hr, I freed my car with the help of 2 guys, 2 girls, 1 cookie sheet, 2 brooms, windwhield de-icer, a snow shovel, a Nissan XTerra, a tow strap, and a Chevy Silverado. Success!

I am over this snow. It was nice to have a bit of a break from school (we have had 6 or 7 days of school cancelled which is insane a) for Arkansas b) for a university), but I am so over this. SO. OVER. IT!

Today it was 70 so I was able to go for a bit of a bike ride. It was so nice, and for an Ohio girl quite odd to have a day of biking just a couple days after having 24" of snow dumped on us this week. Arkansas is just not equipped to handle this kind of weather and neither am I after having lived here for a few years. But I digress...the biking weather this weekend was lovely.

Having missed so much school and being stuck in my house for days on end has severely messed with my routine. That is, there hasn't been one. I also noticed today that it has messed with my body too. Because I have not been able to go to the gym that much and have not been disciplined about doing exercise at home, I think I have lost a slight bit of definition in my arms. I also realized today that I don't do much explicitly to workout my lower body these days -- I think the closest thing is the spin class I do on Tuesdays (when I'm not stuck in my house due to snow...). I really need to pick up my strength training/toning game because it helps me to feel better about myself and stronger. Also I am sure there is some truth to the metabolic benefits of being more muscly than fatty.

This week as I re-establish some sort of routine (no chance of snow this week -- thank goodness), I am going to be intentional about getting a well-rounded workout schedule. I want to incorporate a couple days of cardio, some good strength training/toning, and it is critical for my back that I am intentional about stretching and yoga.

What do you guys do to workout? (i.e., how much strength training vs. cardio? what types of exercise do you do) Any suggestions for me? I'm willing to spend an hour a day, 6x/week and I want to make sure I get a total body workout over the course of a week.

Brilliant Quote and Realization

I am not sure how exactly it fits into this healthiness journey, but I know it does. I heard it today in an interview with Elle, who is a healthiness blogger too as she talked about life as a single lady. The quote is:

I choose not to be defined by what I don't have.

That's deep, right?!

Maybe this is the way it relates to getting healthy. I'm not to goal yet. I am not able to make wise decisions in 100% of situations yet. I'm not perfect. But yet, I shouldn't choose to be defined by that. I make good decisions much of the time. I have lost about 70 lbs. I am WORLDS healthier than I was when I started. I won't choose to be defined by what I'm not, I will choose to be defined by what I am and who I am becoming. Thanks for the realization Elle!

Snow 2.0

OMG it snowed almost 2 feet here yesterday. This is certainly not what I had in mind when I moved from Michigan to Arkansas! School has been cancelled for the last two days, which means I have been stuck inside. AGAIN. We all know how that went last week.

On the one hand, I was/am kind of annoyed to have to face such a hard challenge again. As I reflect on it, though, this is a second chance to make up for what I did wrong last time. I can prove to myself that I CAN do this. I am stronger than food.

My goal for the time I was stuck inside was to track my food. Even if it was bad, I would track it as a way to be accountable for my decisions.

So how have I done? Pretty well overall. I did not meet my goal of tracking -- I stopped on the first day. However, I have done really well on my water intake, I have not made any sweets, and have eaten really healthfully and mindfully. I've probably eaten more than I would on a "normal" day, but I realized something from last time's experience. A lot of times for me those "I want (unhealthy food of choice...)" thoughts are actually hunger that my body is manifesting in an odd way. Instead of satisfying that hunger with (unhealthy food of choice...), it can often be met another related, more healthy way. For example, instead of making cookies I can eat a sweet piece of fruit. If the craving is more high in fat/salt content, I can have cottage cheese or reduced fat cheese. I usually feel satisfied and the craving goes away -- because my hunger has been satisfied. Also I find it so much easier to stop eating fruit when I am satisfied than I usually do with (unhealthy food of choice...) -- mostly because I rarely keep unhealthy choices around so I feel like they are going to disappear on me and I gobble them up like a possessed mad woman. Odd/dysfunctional thinking, but something deeply engrained and that I am working to change.

As a result of this realization -- that cravings are really hunger in disguise -- I have been vigilant about making sure I stay satisfied and not very hungry which helps me avoid strong cravings and, as a result, binges. I am pleased with this strategy, and we will see how it works out for me at this week's weigh in. Regardless, it is so good for my psyche to have made it through this snowstorm without a binge or monumentally unhealthy choices.

Small Veins

On Monday I went to go donate blood. We have been slammed with snow (well at least for our area) and so the area is very low on blood donations since a lot of the blood drives that were scheduled have had to be cancelled due to weather.

I have only donated blood once in my life and it was a horrible experience. Every time I squeezed the little ball, it jutted into my vein and I swore I would never donate blood again. I have kept my word since this awful experience in 1997.

The blood shortage, however, made me reconsider. After all, giving blood is the right thing to do. I sucked it up and decided to do it.

An aside -- I've been big pretty much all my life. I was 8 lb. 10 oz. when born. I have always had big boobs (I used to be an H cup - did you even know those existed?). Even when I was relatively skinny, I was considered "big boned" -- and I weighed 195 and looked very height/weight proportional. The other day at the eye doctor, I was even told I had big pupils (? - apparently, this is a sign of "youth and beauty" per the eye doctor after I was like "oh great, one more thing to be self conscious about!"). I wear size 11 shoes. I have always been big. Virtually everything about me. I don't consider it a bad thing necessarily, but there is little denying that it is true: I'm big.

Back to the story - the nurse who was taking the donation poked around my right arm with her finger and said "Hmm, let's try the other arm". After feeling around on my left arm, she's like "Let's go with the first one". Now, I was about to go crazy and jump out of my skin realizing that this was going to make it hard and perhaps painful to get a good stick but I kept thinking -- "You are strong! You can do this!" and was not going to give up. People need blood, and I believe I am one of the types that is badly needed in the area (A-).

It ended up not being terrible (it wasn't great either, but it was nowhere near as bad as the first time), but it was so funny that after the donation was going the nurse made a point to tell me what small veins I have. For someone who doesn't have small anything, it is ironic that I have small veins.

Pareto Principle

Do you know what the Pareto Principle is? This is something very fundamental that we teach students in my field. Basically, it says that 80% of your problems are caused by 20% of your situations (or more generally, k% of your problems are caused by 100-k% of your situations). I am finding that this is so true on the WL/life change front.

This week we had a very not great weather week. School was cancelled 3 of the 5 days, and the roads were impassable. Friday I decided to work from home as the roads were still not good and nothing I needed to do required me to be at the office. Hence, I was stuck in the house almost all week.

During this time, I gained 8 lbs. EIGHT FREAKING POUNDS!!

It is funny. Sometimes I really think I've got the whole healthy living thing down. It feels easy and natural. I can go to a party, have lots of unhealthy choices, and have thought about how I am going to handle it, and make the choices I am comfortable with -- either a calculated splurge, or making the best choices available to me. I feel like a rock star.

Other times, such as this snowstorm and Christmas break, not so much. These uncommon (and/or unplanned) situations fall into the 20%(or less) of situations which cause me 80% of the damage on my WL/healthiness journey. I wonder "Why?"

Well, four days of not leaving the house will leave a girl with plenty of time to ponder such questions. Here are the things I can think of.

1. Feeling trapped and cold makes me crave comfort food. I tell you, I really don't even keep anything unhealthy or trigger-food-ish in my house. However, during the break I found a way to eat unhealthy stuff. I made pecan sandies and pumpkin cookies with cream cheese frosting. Sure enough, I ate the whole freaking batch each time I made something. This was no small task, actually. Finding stuff to make required me to spend a significant amount of time browsing allrecipes for something that was simultaneously delicious (and unhealthy) sounding, and that I had all of the ingredients for which was quite tough given my very limited supply of unhealthy stuff (I think sugar and butter are probably the "worst" thing around). Sigh. I guess we can call that a "premeditated binge" and a case of "old habits die so hard".
2. The idle mind is the devil's playground. Without the usual routine and distractions, it left me plenty of time to do what I wanted -- and to think about what I wanted. More often than not, that was food. Sigh.
3. Willpower can only carry you so far. I find that when I talk myself up for something, I can usually last 24-48 hours. I was good on tracking and drinking water for the first day of the snowstorm. After that, it was significantly downhill. I find the same thing on vacation. After the expiration of the 24 hour willpower window, I basically do what I want. Sometimes that is the "right" thing. Sometimes, it's not (see bullet one).

Yes, the Pareto principle. While I am so proud of myself and convinced to maintain the changes and healthy decisions I typically make in day to day life, I find that I want to continue to change my life and move to the 90-10% or 95-5% rule. I am glad that many of my routines involve making the right choices, but if I want to truly be tranformed I need to find a better way to manage the atypical situations and circumstances that are still tough for me.

It is great that, per the title of my blog, I'm realizing that food doesn't define me about 80% of the time. The truth is, though, that I don't want food to define me, ever. I want to define me and not be captive to food. I'm not there yet.

Now Entering VFT

The end of last week was not great. The day of the big snowstorm I went crazy with my eating (to the tune of four grilled cheese sandwiches; oops) in the morning and then got it all together for the afternoon. However, I didn't track for WW the rest of the week. I ended up losing the 1.8 lbs from the week before, but not really making any huge progress.

This week I am back firmly on plan, and I am happy to report that I am not only back to my lowest weight as an adult for the first time since before Christmas, as of this morning I am entering VFT. I forgot where I read this (it was some blog), but that stands for virgin fat territory -- uncharted ground that I haven't been at since I passed it (once) on the way up. This morning I was at 228.4. I can barely believe it. Time to keep the momentum going!

Struggling

School is cancelled because the weather sucks. I am stuck in the house. I want to eat eat eat -- something warm and cozy. I will fight this thought and try to do something else to take my mind off of food!!!

Enjoying Food and Spaghetti Squash recipe

Today I realized that I enjoy food so much more now than when I weighed 300 lbs and ate a ton more of it. It is very counterintuitive.

I now enjoy cooking and trying new things. I did not do this as often when I was bigger -- I had the old standbys, and I valued quantity and the escapist value of food far more than savoring the food I was eating and the creativity and health benefits of enjoying the food I was eating.

Today I made a new dish and got to try spaghetti squash for the first time. It was amazing. I don't have photos and they wouldn't look that great even if I did -- but trust me, this recipe is really good.

Ingredients

Spaghetti squash

A couple cloves of garlic

Onion, tomato, red peppers -- whatever veggies you have on hand, really

Bit of olive oil to sauté veggies

1-2 oz fresh parmesan cheese

Handful of basil

2 T capers

2 lemons

Cut the spaghetti squash in half and clean out the seeds. Place the spaghetti squash rind side up on a greased cookie sheet and bake it at 375 F. You should cook it until a sharp knife can easily pierce the skin. The time will vary, but for me it took about 40-45 min. While the squash is baking, cut up the veggies and mince the garlic. Sauté the garlic and sauté-able veggies (onions, peppers, etc). If you use tomatoes, toss them in toward the end so they can just get warm and barely cooked and not turn saucy. Set the vegetables aside. In a separate bowl, combine the capers, finely chopped basil, and the two lemons you have juiced. You can also shred the parmesan into the mixture, but you may choose to wait on this.

Once the spaghetti squash is finished cooking, take it out of the oven and let it cool until you can easily pick it up. Once you can pick it up, scoop the "guts" out with a spoon. The meat of the squash is fine little cylinders like angel hair pasta (hence the name). Add the cooked veggies and lemon/caper/basil mixture and stir well. You can either scoop into a bowl and then grate the parmesan on top or mix the parmesan in (but it will blend in and kind of melt if all of the veggies and the squash is too hot, which you may want to avoid for aesthetic reasons). Then enjoy it!

It tastes so good, but is so low in calories that you will likely need a big serving to stay full. I ate about 1/3 of the recipe that I made with 2c milk, a grapefruit, and a banana and was starving by 2 PM. I had a string cheese but couldn't shake the hunger and had to finally eat dinner at 3:30. I enjoyed this lunch immensely but in the future will probably find a way to eat more protein to stay fuller so I am not famished so quickly after eating it.

Disappointing Weigh In

This was the first week I can remember thinking "Man, this weigh in is crap!" about a weigh in in light of my performance. There have been plenty of weeks where I haven't lost or have gained, but I usually think they're justified in light of what I've eaten or how much I have exercised. This week, I don't feel like that. I tracked everything. I exercised 4 times this week (fewer than usual, but still not bad). And, I gained 1.8 lbs this week.

Although I am miffed (and confused), I press on. Not sure what is going on with my body, but this is exactly why I don't do time-based weight goals. I can only control my behavior, not the scale so I will continue to focus on what's in my control and hope that my body follows.

Perhaps this is related to the "free" fruit, which I eat liberally. Anyone know whether there are really functional limits to how many of those one should eat?

Addiction

I have written before about how I consider myself a food addict. My behavior over Christmas break -- how easily I returned to binge eating and how oddly cathartic (yet disgusting) it felt -- seems to add credence to the mountain of evidence that I am a food addict.

While I usually feel in control over my behavior, sometimes I really don't. Sometimes it is as though I have no control over my decisions and I am just executing some primal, instinctual desire to eat that I have no control over. And for those of you who haven't experienced it? It is a mix of comforting, terrifying, and is without a doubt shameful to feel like you're a robot executing lines of code demanding that you eat everything within sight.

For this reason, I have looked into joining Overeaters Anonymous. Their #1 tenet is "We admitted that we were powerless over food and that our lives had become unmanageable."

Back in the day, I would have believed this. I absolutely felt powerless and hopeless about food. My life WAS unmanageable. Now that I've been in "recovery" for awhile, I no longer feel this way. I still make mistakes. I still have missteps. I'm by no means perfect.

But I am also not a victim. I do not feel powerless, or believe that I am. I am stronger than food.

However, I am aware that with the history that I have and the deeply-engrained (unhealthy) relationship with food that I have worked to change, that I cannot get too cocky and that I'm not above regaining all of the weight back. I want to form some sort of support structure to help support me when I slip and fall. I am not sure what this would look like. I had considered OA because this is what I thought they could help me to do. Since I disagree with their fundamental premise, however, I am not sure that I could join their group.

For you losers/maintainers out there, what are your thoughts and how do you find support? Has anyone tried OA?

Please Allow me to Vent for a Hot Second...

In light of the new year and resolutions and all, much of the world seems to be in a tizzy about losing weight. On the one hand, it is nice to feel some momentum as a result of the increased WW commercials, supermarket endcaps featuring more healthy items, etc. On the other hand, it makes me sad to see how much of WL is grounded in lies and gimmicks -- things I don't think are healthy and/or sustainable. For example, the thought of the Special K diet makes me cringe and I don't think you can convince me it's healthy (or for most of us realistic) to lose 41 lbs in a week, even if you're surrounded by a team of doctors on the Biggest Loser.

More fundamentally, it bothers me when the focus is on WL not health. Admittedly, it is not healthy to be morbidly obese or 230 lbs at 5'8"; however, I think there are unhealthy people who fall into the "normal" weight category too. I am working very hard to focus on my health, and to view weight as a small piece of what it means to be healthy.

Do I have a number I'd like to see on the scale at "goal"? Kind of. I know I would like to be less than 200, probably around 160-180. I don't have a magic number, and I'm not under the illusion that once I get to some number that life will be butterflies and rainbows.

More important than any number to me is that I am healthy. Being healthy means that I want to be able to manage/prevent my back pain (which almost certainly will continue to improve as I lose weight and do yoga regularly). Being healthy means I don't want to have to takeblood pressure medicine anymore (have been off it for a few months, and doing fine). Being healthy means being able to do most any physical activity without dying (exception: running, deadlifts and other things that hurt my back -- but I want to be able to walk up a mountain or several flights of stairs without getting too winded).

Another critical piece to me is mental health -- keeping aware of how I'm feeling. This is especially a challenge with respect to how I view food, as I feel that many who are successful at WL replace an obsession for compulsive eating with an obsession over counting calories, eating healthily, etc. I do not want to obsess over food OR eating healthily: I want to relegate food to the background while placing relationships and experiences at the forefront of life. This is what motivates the title of my blog; food has been front and center for almost 20 years of my 31 years on the earth -- that MUST stop (and, to a large degree, is).

Losing weight is one step in my getting healthy. Admittedly, it is one that people focus on because it is measurable and comes with many aesthetic benefits. However, I am focusing on getting healthy and viewing weight as a small piece of that. While it is not trivial, it is one of the easier pieces of health for me to control. The mind games, at least for me, are so much harder and more important -- after all, they are what help to dictate to what degree I am successful at controlling what I eat.