The last few days, I have spent the whole day planning what I was going to say. Then, over the course of the day, I feel like I need to take the post in a different direction.
Today is weigh-in day. This used to be a day I would dread. I have been at this for a long time. This particular leg of my journey started six weeks ago. Most people probably wouldn't publish their actual, real live weight on a blog post.
I, of course, am not most people.
I was in Lane Bryant today (exchanging a bra I bought three weeks ago for a smaller size, no big deal). They have done an amazing job of embracing and advancing the idea of beauty at all sizes. The models they have on display are stunning, even if they don't have the typical model physique.
For me, aiming to be smaller is not about rejecting the person I am or the way I look. I think I am more beautiful now than I was at 20. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I am more at peace with myself now than I was then.
But the fact of the matter is, weighing 278 pounds puts a tremendous strain on my body, both inside and out. It makes my heart and other organs have to work harder. My knees start to object whenever I try strenuous activity. I am winded easily. I am hot all the time. I feel hungry all the time. I am tired after I eat.
I navigated to the BMI calculator on the nih.gov website. My current weight is 248.2 (that's a whopping 30.8 pounds gone after 6 weeks). That means my current BMI is 39, which puts me in the obese range. For fun, I entered a weight of 160 and at that weight, my BMI would be 24.3, which would put me in the normal weight category, albeit at the high end.
Now, I know some of you are screaming and railing against the use of BMI as a calculation for a healthy weight. I am not saying that it's a perfect measure, but again, it's a number. It doesn't define me or negate any accomplishments I've had. It doesn't mean that once I arrive at that weight (and set up camp, I might add) that all of my problems will melt away. That's just not how life works. I accept that. I'm just trying to use a standard measurement so that I know where to aim.
I didn't do as well today as I would've liked. I ate too much at dinner. I feel slightly uncomfortable sitting here writing. It's not the worst I've ever done. In fact, the amount I ate tonight that was too much wouldn't have bothered me six weeks ago. Now, however, I feel overinflated. It is a tough feeling, to fail. I'm not saying I failed at everything, but let's be honest. I am an all-or-nothing kind of gal and so it's easy to say I should just give up.
I am grateful, though, for a fairly functional brain that tells me not to throw in the towel. It tells me I need to work the model on what happened. And I know what happened. I have developed the awful habit of eating in front of the TV. I will admit that by dinnertime, I am just done. I don't want to talk to anyone, I'm done hearing fart and knock knock jokes, I don't care about Minecraft and I don't want to be peppered with inane questions. I just want to sit in front of the TV with my plate of food, my bottle of water and not think too much.
Tonight, it was all of that compounded by a hectic evening. Bekah's dance company has a gala tomorrow. They had dress rehearsal tonight. I didn't plan well and had to run to a nearby dance store to buy her a pair of tan jazz shoes. I was disappointed because I tried Payless and the closest location that had them was in Bloomingdale, which is far away from Crystal Lake. I am not asking for sympathy, I'm just laying out the facts. I didn't plan well and paid dearly for it.
The gala is being held at the SanFilippo estate in nearby Barrington. I had never been there before, on top of the fact that navigation is not my strong suit. There were a lot of country roads with very little streetlights. Once I got onto the estate, I had no idea where I was going. I couldn't find a parking spot. You get the idea--what I thought was going to be a cut and dry thing turned into a whole production.
So by the time I got home, it was almost 8, which is my cutoff time for dinner. Again, I didn't write a specific protocol for this week. Had I sat down and planned, I could have planned to take something with me, or pushed dinner time out to 8:30, just for this one night. The protocol is as much about deciding ahead of time what I'll eat as it is about when I will eat. That way, I am making decisions about what to put in my body long before I start to feel hungry.
Upon arriving at home, I started heating up my meal. Brian had gone to take Brooklyn to bed. The boys were roughhousing with each other. I tried to keep them quiet, to no avail. I was on the edge of hangry and wasn't managing my emotions very well. (And honestly, I probably wasn't on the edge of hangry so much as I was on the edge of bedtime, a time of day that could short even Mother Theresa's fuse.) So instead of heating up my meal, assembling it all on a plate, heading over to the dining room table, taking a deep breath and starting to eat, I stood at the counter, taking bites in between trying to pick Brooklyn up (she wasn't ready to go to sleep) and/or try to stop her from grabbing food off of my plate.
For. Real. It was like I was in a hidden camera show called "How Not to Eat," specifically, the before segment. I managed to drink a lot of water, but rather than skipping the couscous (I was eating a sweet potato), I ate my half of a sweet potato and the couscous. Again, not a heinous amount of extra food, but enough to put me past the point of satiety. Because I've been aiming to stop eating just as I'm starting to feel full, it felt uncomfortable.
However, I didn't just throw up my hands, say "eff it" and dive into a bowl of popcorn. I took Brooklyn to her room and rocked and nursed her to sleep. I've decided I am actually quite happy that lunch is so far away. It will give my body a chance to finish digesting what I've eaten tonight.
I am not going to let myself be derailed because of one bad meal. I have a long way to go, that is for sure. My short-term goal is to be able to wear my wedding ring by the time Christmas rolls around. It might be a bit of a stretch, but I feel up to the challenge.
Speaking of Christmas, I have spent the past couple of days researching recipes for the holidays. I plan to do a test run on a couple of them to see if the family objects. I know if I show up with untested dishes or dishes with too many exotic ingredients, everyone will balk. I already know I do not want to eat foods that don't serve me, even on a holiday.
I feel like I have spent a lot of my life using food to celebrate things. It's part of our culture, right? Jim Gaffigan, one of my all-time favorite comedians, riffs on this idea. He asks, "how should we celebrate our independence day? Well, by eating a brat and a burger. And then some pie." Right? I mean, it's the way we do it, but it doesn't seem to be serving us well as a country.
So I have decided not to do pumpkin pie or pecan pie or Christmas cookies or really, December cookies, because who just bakes and eats Christmas cookies only on Christmas? (Similar to my idea that Halloween candy purchased and/or eaten before Halloween is just single serve candy in a fancy package.)
I am stepping out of the stream of thought that it's okay "just this once" or "hey, you gotta live a little." For me, the new way I'm doing things is serving me really well. I feel amazing. I have energy. I have clarity of mind. I am not in a constant brain fog, or constantly tired, or running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I am able to sleep well and wake up ready to hit the ground running. My skin looks amazing, my hair is shiny, my head doesn't hurt all the time.
In short, I have worked very hard over the past six weeks to heal my body. I have spent time considering what I will eat and drink (water--lots and lots and lots of water), when and how often I will exercise, how much I will sleep, etc. It may seem like a chore, or that I'm not having any fun, but really the opposite is true. I don't spend hours thinking about food. I already know what I'm going to eat for the day, so there's no need to spend time thinking about it. It's already written down. I've already decided when I'm going to have my one serving of dark chocolate, and what's more, if I feel like it won't serve me well, I decide not to have it and I don't feel bummed at all.
Why, then, would I choose to go back? I have nothing to gain back where I was. The only option, then, is to pick myself up, take stock of what went wrong, and aspire to make better choices in the future.
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