Let The Races Begin!

Once I had been working out faithfully for about two years, I checked into a popular foot race, the Bolder Boulder. It is a 10K, (a bit over six miles), and even though I had never actually ran six miles without stopping, I had heard from friends that I wanted to try a race on and not be intimidated by other runners, this was the one to try out. Sure enough, the first Bolder Boulder I participated in was almost ten years ago, and I’ll never forget the instant relief as a couple of my running compares were wearing tutus, while still another fellow next to me had donned a diver’s mask, snorkel and fins! I knew I was going to have a great and even relaxing time! There was a different style of live band playing on mostly every corner, and on other corners, belly dancers, more tutu wearing ballerinas and every sort of runner and walker who were all there just for the experience of it! I was in heaven and so grateful that I didn’t have to be in an elite runner’s shape or that I had to compete against a bunch of serious elite runners or even joggers. We all went at our own pace, and it was the very best opening race experience I could have hoped for!

I’ve run, walked and jogged the Bolder Boulder in the past ten years every year except one, and have always felt so accomplished upon the completion. If you are at the place in your healthy lifestyle make over that you are looking for the next hurdle to jump through, begin asking around at your gym or at the local market, of an easy and fun foot race that you can try on. It is great for me to have a race to “train” for, and each year, I do a little extra cardio a few months prior to the Bolder Boulder just to get in a bit better shape. I’ve also done the Susan B. Komen Race of the Cure each year, almost every year, for the past six or so years. It is a three mile race that I also “train” for a few months prior and have been able to jog the entire race a couple of those times. I know that it may sound pretty lame of me, that I can’t jog the entire three miles, or that I take on the easiest and least competitive race I can find, but that is where I am in my life and I make no apologies for it. I just past my 48th year on this earth, and as I look in the mirror at myself, I do not think, “you really should do more,” or “you need to push yourself to get into even better shape.” Phooey on that notion! I do not have any of those sorts of noises chiming about in my brain. All I look at is how do I feel about myself? How good do I look to myself? Am I able to keep up with my precious two year old Grandson? What does the doc say at my annual checkup? (My last doctor told me I was almost the healthiest patient she had ever seen! So heck yeah, I have nothing to apologize for! I pat myself on the back throw myself an atta girl and keep on keeping on! I am a new creature, and I do not know that old girl!

The Great Wardrobe Giveaway!

When I finally gave myself some grace, and decided that even though I would probably gain ten, maybe even twenty at times, it wasn’t going to be the end of all of my hard work. I have done just that many, many times in the last eighteen years, but I’ve rarely gone higher than twenty pounds over my ideal weight. When you’ve been sixty to one hundred pounds away from your goal weight for more times than you can recall, as I have, twenty pounds away is absolutely no big deal. I can take that kind of weight off in a month or so, and keep it off for a couple of years. I'm 5'10 by the way, so I have a larger frame on my side; the only thing that matters is that I notice the gain, do something about it, and continue living life.

The next biggest change, beyond not weighing up constantly and living and dying by that dreaded number, and a three time a week work out regimen at the gym, was the great wardrobe give away! This probably was the scariest change I made in my life, to get rid of the three separate wardrobes in my closet. Until that time I used to keep several pairs of pants, blouses and skirts that ranged in sizes six to sixteen. It was really, really tough to bag up every stick of clothing that was larger than a size eight and take it to the Good Will, but I did it! I am a bit of a clothes horse, truth be told, but I also am a consignment and thrift store shopper, so my closet still rotates quite a bit, it is with a wide variety of styles, colors and looks. The sizes are no longer ten numbers in difference from the smallest to largest.

It’s Not a Diet, it’s a Lifestyle!

It was the dawn of a new day because I finally gained a confidence in myself; I knew that I knew, in the deepest part of my knower that I would NEVER again gain an incredible amount of weight, EVER!! To maintain a healthy lifestyle the rest of my life, I had to make life changes, ones that I could maintain for the rest of my life. Heard it a thousand times, but for some reason, at 30 I knew it was what I had to do. I began to slowly change my thought pattern as well. Instead of kicking myself from here to next week over a 10, even 20 pound gain, I could stop the gain right there. Stop and get back into control right then...not in two months and 50 pounds later!

Again, to someone reading this who has never known the agony yo-yo dieter lives through, all of the above sounds like the most obvious and "duh" sort of statements, I'm sure! "Of course you should stop at a 10 pound gain, you goof ball!" or "have a little self control you glutton, just stop eating!" I’ve heard it all before from thin folk who have no idea the head trip a yo-yo dieter goes on. If it were just that easy, why in the world do you think everyone is not thin? Why is dieting a multi billion dollar industry in the US alone? If it was so simple, and all you had to do was stop your out of control eating, don't you think that one of the wealthiest, most prominent figures in our recent history would have just done that...years ago? Instead, Oprah Winfrey, the queen of the yo-yo dieters, has spent most her adult life going up one hill and down, and up...you get the idea. If anyone could lose weight once and for all and just be done with this, don't you think Oprah would have been the one to conquer it once and for all? I'm just saying, it ain't that easy. Until you have been that person, and walked a mile in our big pants and fat clothes, before you sit on your skinny throne and judge, you really know not what you think you do!

Let the Weight Training Begin!!

I went out and bought a set of free weights, a bench, and a book on how to weight train and set up my mini gym in the furnace room of our house. It was a tiny room in the basement of our 1946 house; I’m talking tiny, with no window, and seriously just enough room, length wise to fit the bench and myself in it! I have a slight case of claustrophobia, so I would have to go out every time I was finished with a set, just so I wouldn’t begin panicking! I mention the inconvenience and smallness of this room, just in case you have that excuse floating about in your head, (no room to workout); whatever, it is a lame one, make your space work for you!

I then enrolled in a six week weight lifting class at the local gym and I was on my way! After I had lost about thirty or so pounds and felt like I could muster up enough confidence to go to the gym and work out next to the experienced lifters and exercisers. I began working out in the early mornings before the rest of the house was awake. I don't remember how long it took me to lose the sixty or so pounds, longer than the usual time allotted because I was no longer starving myself but trying to eat more, so that I had enough calories to exercise. But I do remember that when I had finally gotten back into the smaller size clothes that I owned, and for the very first time ever, I didn’t feel like I had come to the end of something; it wasn’t the end of my latest diet, my latest starvation mode; yes indeed, my thinking had changed! Another important realization I had arrived at; I no longer needed to be attached to a number on the scales.

As I began to retrain my physical body to get stronger, I also began retraining my mind to find other ways to look at health versus diet, lifestyle versus phases of binging and starving. I was lifting and adding muscle mass to my body, replacing fat with strong, hard muscle, which weighed twice as much as fat. For that reason, I knew that if I attached every feel good feeling to a number on the scales, I’d be forever fighting a number and not how I felt about myself. I began looking at my body in a whole new way. I began noticing that certain parts, my waste, my thighs, my calves, all of those areas began pulling in, getting smaller the more I worked out. At the same time I noticed the number on the scales was climbing a bit; for someone like me, who used to live and die by a number, I realized I had to stop looking for that golden number and begin going by how I looked in my clothes. I came to the conclusion that the only time I would ever again put myself on the scales, (other than regular physical checks by the doc), was if I began to feel like my clothes were getting tight, or if I just felt I was putting on a few extra pounds. That is all I ever use the number for now, just to keep in check so that I don’t begin climbing a hill too high and I can regain control before I get too out of control.

No More Climbing the Big Hills on The Coaster of Gain

I remember it as if it were yesterday, even though it has been more than 18 years. I had just celebrated my 30th birthday. I can recall to this day, waking up shortly after that mile marker of a birthday and coming to an incredibly simplistic but absolute truth; I had to stop dieting! I had to stop starving myself into a size...whatever, because at the end of the starving, sure as shooting, I'd be making my climb right back up to the same size I had just said good bye to a mere few months earlier!
Second realization: I had to stop beating myself up every time I over ate for a day or two; no more punishing myself for gaining a few pounds. It suddenly became crystal clear, my low self esteem and the shadows of all my fat periods were sabotaging my will power. I had become so sure that it was an unstoppable force, this weight gain, and that once that first 10 showed up, I could do nothing to stop the next sixty to one-hundred from quickly adding on. The only thing that I knew for certain was that in a few months, I'd be going on yet another diet to start the cycle once again. I was so, so weary of it all, and had I never felt what it was like to be thin, I would have indeed given up a long time ago, and decided I was destined to be fat. But, for one half of my life, ever since I was 10 years old, when I wasn't knowing the agony of being very overweight I did know the happiness, the lightness, the joy of being thin...and as you've heard many times, thin feels better than anything ever tasted!

I believe that these realizations became very clear to me at this age in particular for several reasons; my little girls were just turning five and I remember them looking at me, with wide eyed wonder at how much mommy could eat at one time! I remember during my heavy times, them trying to hug me around the top of my legs and not being able to wrap their little arms all the way around...my legs, not my waist! I remember as a little girl, my own mom and how much pain I would be in for her when we would take walks and I would hear others snicker or make a rude comment because she was over weight. I was just a kid but I really felt like I could have beaten them senseless; I was so protective of my mom. Both she and my dad were really the main reason that I decided I needed to stop the big climbs once and for ever. For my whole life, both of my parents were overweight. They were always trying to lose the weight, but especially for my dad, his weight never stopped him from living a pretty healthy lifestyle. He played for his company's volleyball team for years, did all sorts of activities with his three kids and basically he lived a very full and complete life.

That is until he was diagnosed with a very rare heart condition a few months before I was married. He had just been put on a very heavy duty heart med and his breathing had become very short and a bit labored. I will never forget the day of my wedding, when my mom's friend began signing the Hawaiian Wedding Song as Chuck and I stood on stage lost in each other's gaze. Suddenly I heard my Dad's beautiful voice singing the harmony to the song! Honestly he had one of the most lovely voices I had ever heard and that gift was, hands down, the best I could have ever imagined!

In the next few years, his heart dictated that he slow his whole way of life down, but he and my mom still were second parents as they watched their five grand daughters over night many, many times and took them on trips all over Colorado and even to other states. They helped raise my girls and my brother's kids as well and their selflessness, even though my dad was literally dying a little bit everyday, made me realize that I needed to be as healthy as I possibly could for my kids. I needed to be alive and healthy for not only my own kids, but I believe a desire to be around as a strong and healthy grandma began in me all those years ago! I wanted to be a role model of health and fitness to not only my kids but, God willing, to their kids as well.

So as I sat perched once again, looking at another sixty or so pounds to lose before I reached a reasonable weight, I knew this ride down was going to be different, because I was positive that it would be the last time I ever climbed the big hills, ever again!

Time Out to Thank Chuck

At this point, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the patience and loving support of my husband. Chuck rode beside me, through every uphill climb on the weight coaster and back down on the other side. He had no idea the pain I lived with, (he comes from a naturally thin family where weight gain was never been an issue for him), and there was only one time in our twenty four years of marriage that he said something to me about my weight. Even though he did it with compassion and wearing kid gloves, I was honestly devastated! To have my true love, who I had married just a couple of years earlier, recognize my weight issue and ask me about it. I know there are so many mean, or more to the point vicious, spouses out there who love nothing more than to belittle and put down their husband or wife because they are over weight. I don't know if I could have survived that sort of a relationship, and would not be surprised if this issue is the beginning of the end for many couples.

Oh, to be loved unconditionally by those closest, without regard to one's outward looks. Trust me, I know that is a rarity and I literally thank God almost everyday of my life, for Chuck and how he has accepted me and loved me no matter what size I grew to be! If you are that significant other in a fat person's life, please please listen to what I am about to say. If you think that harassing and haranguing is your positive contribution to help that person lose the weight, think again! If you think that asking them if they really need that chocolate shake they are about to drink or pulling food away from them, for their own good, is your way of encouraging portion control, you could not be more wrong!!!

The very best things you can do is to listen to them; when they are discouraged about not only not being able to lose, but even to start a diet and stop offering them what you think to be helpful dieting tips or advice. If they don't ask, keep your mouth closed. Instead, go with them for a walk when they are ready, cheer them when they complete a tiny goal, like losing five or ten pounds. Finally, when they've lost it all, or are well on their way, be at the finish line as they complete their first sprint triathlon. Had Chuck given me the room and the time I needed to lose the weight at my pace, I would not have EVER competed in the sprint triathlon. All of the above are great motivators; belittling, punishing remarks and attitudes are all bad motivators, all the time.
So, thank you Chuck for being rock solid, full of encouragement and empathy even if you were scared to death that I was never going to lose all that weight, you have stood by me and always made me feel like that slim and trim bride who you walked down the isle all those years ago!

Please understand, I'm not talking about training a child in the way they should go; portion control, exercising and teaching your children how to live a healthy life style is your job, so take it seriously and do it from the time they are little ones! Take away the remotes, pump the tires up in their (and your) bikes and get outside!

Pregancy+ Out of Contol Eating=Disaster!

Prior to becoming pregnant, I was able to maintain a fairly normal weight for almost two years, the longest amount of time I'd ever gone in adulthood without gaining incredible amounts of weight. Once pregnant, it was like a green light for "go" went off in my head, and I headed for the trough! I lied to myself, thinking that all the food I was inhaling was for the health and welfare of my growing babies. Sure, healthy food was on the menu, followed by drawers of junk food, greasy gobs of goodness and full of fat fabulous food!

It was heaven for me to not only stop being careful with food, but to even be encouraged to eat! On top of the piles of potatoes I was putting away, I somehow came to the conclusion that I should wash all that food down with not only whole milk, but something called whole milk plus,(basically half and half). At three to four gallons a week, along with all the food I shoveled in, the pounds added very quickly. In the first five months of marriage I had put on about thirty pounds and gained another one-hundred with the babies. This is the point in my story when, no matter who I share this story with, EVERYONE tries to make me feel better by saying, "Well sure, but you had twins!" That might make sense, but the total baby weight for both kids was just a wink over 9 pounds. My daughter Keano weighing 6lbs and her sister Charlee topping out at a bit over 3lbs.

Four months after giving birth, I had lost enough to fit into my size 22-24s, at 240 pounds; not the highest I'd ever climbed, but certainly up there.
So another day, another diet; Weight Watchers this time, but I really made little progress this time around and I found it almost impossible to gear up for another weigh down. After all, I reasoned, I was now a happily married, stay home mommy; so what was my motivation? I could see a bit of fear in Chuck's eyes, as he would look at the wedding picture on the wall, seeing his beautiful and trim bride, who less than a year and a half later, stood before him almost ninety pounds heavier! Eating became, as usual, my emotional crutch. I ate when I was happy, sad, mad, glad, any reason was reason enough. I remember hitting a low point when I came up with the brilliant idea that while being the good wifey, I'd bake brownies, sweet rolls, chocolate cakes, a multitude of awesome and baked wonders for Chuck but instead of making just one pan of delights, I'd bake two! Chuck was so impressed that I could make such incredibly tempting delights and yet, with the will power of Wonder Woman, I wouldn't touch a morsel! Little did he know, it was one pan for him, one pan for me; I would devour my share all by myself when he went to bed, or sometimes I'd eat the whole thing before he even got home!

Dark, Heavy Days Ahead

Last I left off, I was almost 240 pounds and graduating from high school. I'll never forget the day our tiny class of eighteen met with the junior class to practice our ceremony. As one of eighteen, I was always the heaviest in the class and ending my senior year at almost one-hundred pounds heavier than a mere nine months earlier, there was no where to hide. I can still see a look of horror as my assigned junior escort took one look at me, turned and walked away. He would have nothing to do with walking the fat girl down the isle. I was beyond humiliated, and just wanted to melt into the floor. I was humiliated and beyond heartbroken, when another junior boy quickly and with a very tender heart, jumped in and offered me his arm! These are the memories that live with a large girl, they are not pretty, they do not bring warm fuzzy feelings.

I cried a lot during those days, and if I think of that girl even to this day, I cry for her still. Although she is not who I am any longer, I lived for many years with deep emotional scars. After graduation, I rode the weight coaster for the next few years, climbing the hill of gain, higher in weight than I had ever been, peaking at almost 260 pounds when I was twenty-two years old. I quit college after one year, (truly due to the fact that I had began gaining weight again in the middle of the school year, and I could not bear to go through the humiliation again). I held a few dead end jobs during this time but there was no doubt that I was on self destruct and it seemed no one could help. I remember taking up needle point at this time, as something to fill my time. I would sit in my bedroom, totally "content" to do my needle point, watch t.v. until my eyes burned and eat whatever I wanted to. I made some really awesome pillows during that time!

A friend of mine from school managed to pull some strings and I was hired at a local bank in the accounting department and the weight, once again, came off. It was about that time, I began dating for the first time in my life. I suddenly found out that there were actually fellows who found me attractive. In fact, from the time I was 23 until I met the man I married at 24, I was asked by no less than four guys to marry them! To come from where I did, having absolutely no one interested in me, EVER, to having that kind of interest...that was a bit mind blowing!

I married my soul mate Chuck in 1986 and exactly 364 days later, I gave birth to our twin daughters five weeks early. From the moment I found out I was pregnant, I took the old expression, "eating for two" to heart. Imagine my joy when I found out I was having twins; not only thrilled to be having twins, but the food train once again pulled in and never left!

OK, I Have Some Strong Feelings...

I just reread my first blog....OK, so I may have been overly sensitive about the whole weight thing. So, you have three to five to lose, that's OK. So you have hundreds to lose, that's OK too. We ALL need help from time to time, and if it's just a tad of help you need, yeah, I guess you can be part of the club too! The audience I was targeting with my initial comments were those who, like me, have an every day up hill fight to keep the weight under control. Those who have been "that" girl, the biggest one in class; "that" teen who others snickered at and made extremely rude comments about; "that" twenty something year old who had no job, no self esteem, no life, and seemingly no future.

In between those rough times I also lost fifty to seventy pounds, and later upwards of one hundred pounds at one time. I'd starve myself down to the picture of thin, which would bring on a happy me, as attention would come my way from the opposite sex, and my self esteem would be restored...life was wonderful! Then, I'd wake up one day and on that day realize, I was going to be getting back on the coaster and once again climbing that hill...and there was seemingly nothing I could do about it. If you've never had this happen to you I'm sure this sounds really strange. If you've ever been so out of control with your weight, and all you could do was to watch it climb, until a few short months later, you climb back on the scales only to see a seventy to one hundred pound gain, then you are "that" person I want to help.

How many times did this happen to me? Let me see, it's been quite a few years, but round figures...six times from my junior year in high school through my early twenties. I remember my senior year with such sadness as I entered in the fall, having just lost thirty to forty pounds, and feeling good at 140lbs. I graduated weighing just under 240lbs. A hundred pound gain in what was supposed to be one of the happiest times of my life. That was one of the toughest years of my young life. You may be thinking right now, "Wow this is one depressing blog! Does she ever gain control? Is she ever going to find a way to be in charge?" Yes indeed!! I found a way!! History is necessary though to make sure that if you are having these same struggles, you understand where I came from, maybe exactly where you are right now!

Dieting is Such an Ugly Word!!!

First Blog of the rest of my life!!!
Hello fellow dieters...I may assume that you are a dieter, or you probably wouldn't have gone to the trouble of reading this blog. As my tile states, this is the first bog I've ever written, although have been meaning to write about this subject for YEARS!!!
The first question I had to ask myself is; do I really have anything of value to say, to write, to provide you, a fellow dieter, that you haven't already been told over and over again? Probably nothing entirely new, to be honest! What I do know is that after almost four decades of dieting, there is absoulutely NO magic pill, no potion, no quick fix to permanently address this issue. Don't stop reading just yet though.
What I may be able to offer is a plan...not a diet, but a plan that you and I can work on together. Perhaps a good place to start would be to provide a bit of my life long history. I think of my life long struggle with weight as if I've been riding the "roller coaster of weight," it is the best analogy to explain how many times I've been up, way up that hill called gain, and ridden it back down on the other side. The fact that it has been, and will always be my lifelong ride, may lend a bit of credibility to what I have to say.

I don't know about you but am I the only one who resents those woman who write books and make a ton of money on their weight "issue," the ones who post a pre-birth picture of themselves and call it their before picture, and use their "after" picture, which is the size they always are when they aren't pregnant, as their after picture. They then feel the have a right to preach "how they did it" to the rest of us. Us, being the life long losers and gainers and losers....and gainers! I am fed up with those ladies who have not done any real "time" on the coaster, who feel that one time up the hill called gain, and back down on the other side, is enough to allow them into "our club." They have no right to even ask to belong..they know not of what we live, every day, year in, year out.
How about that other friend of yours, the one who weighs about five pounds over her ideal weight, who has decided that since she hit 30 something, she had better be working on that itsy bitsy "tire" around her middle so it doesn't get out of hand...whatever! Go on a three day diet, you light weight, (literally), lose that three to five pound weight gain, and stop whining about it!!
You are NOT one of us, you are not welcome to spout off about how you "lost it" either!

There are REAL dieters who have been up and down those hills since childhood, and if we are not careful everyday of our lives, that coaster cart starts climbing ever higher, ever higher.
I was born in the early 60's, a time when nutrition and health and exercise was a part of the weekly Jack LaLanne Show, it wasn't part of my daily life, nor really anyone else that I knew. Oh sure, there was that weird neighbor who I'd see riding his 10 speed bike to and from his house everyday, but again, he was weird! Still and all, I was by far the heaviest kid in my class almost throughout my entire school age years. No one I knew of my skinny friends were ever driven to an after school club, class or activity. We all had no time for mom to drive us places after school, as we were all too busy playing outside, every night until the street lights went on. Is there a correlation? Of course there is!!
More on that next time!