Ounces of prevention

There are times when the weight maintenance or loss process seems simple and straightforward. To borrow a phrase, you 'just do it' and everything else falls into place. At other times it seems like a complex problem beyond all normal understanding. Kind of like when I was taking calculus back in college and failing, even though I had gotten an A in pre-calculus the year before. When you're in that latter place where you feel frustrated and clueless, it can be hard to (re-)discover the 'click' that worked in the past. And it can become correspondingly easy to simply throw up one's hands and say 'I give up. I don't get it.' When I reached my weight goal in 2002, I was hoping that I'd be in the just do it category forever and ever because I had learned so much, and experienced so much. It seemed reasonable to think that the more I practiced good health habits, the more all of this would just become routine. I know what works, I know what doesn't, ergo maintenance. What I think I'm learning is that I'm probably never going to run on auto-pilot. So the first lesson is that I will always have to be open to new ideas or behaviors that keep me motivated and on course. The second lesson is that I will veer off from time to time, even when I've been doing everything that I thought was good and right. Which leads me to the last lesson: even when I've strayed from my plan and gained weight and then subsequently returned to goal, I have not immunized myself from overeating somewhere down the road. It seems a little unfair, but there you have it. I imagine this might be the root of that 'why bother' syndrome that causes us to throw in the towel and jump into the choco-vat. The only thing I can say is, a week ago I was deeply mired in the this-is-too-damn-hard mindset, until I finally took a couple of steps (meditation CDs, re-upping my welbutrin meds, attending a support meeting) which got me up and running. I dusted off an old journalling method and the next thing I knew, things were running on a fairly even keel. Sure, there's no guarantee that this will last very long, but at least the effort that it took to turn me around was do-able (and repeatable). If its sad that there is no 'cure' for any of this, its heartening to know that the disease need not be fatal.

When Duty Calls, Listen!

I'm happy to report that I'm on jury duty this week and I finally got placed on a trial! (Okay, so part of my motivation is that I wanted to get out of giving a powerpoint presentation to my team today that I haven't exactly finished yet ...). Like most people I know, I've been summoned more than once, but never actually got seated on a real jury. From prior experience, I knew that most people dread doing it, and that many people who were summoned would say or do things to explicitly get them released. For me, however, the timing is perfect. There's the aforementioned work thing, but there's also the fact that the court is across the street from my office (which is to say, within easy 7 - 10 minutes bike ride from home). So there's no extra commute and I can still go home for lunch. Since I'm a state employee, I'll receive full pay and benefits for the two days of trial, and won't have to use vacation leave. Its interesting how timing is everything. When I looked around the courtroom at that sea of glum faces this morning, there was a look of 'anywhere else but here, anytime other than now'about the place. How well I can relate to that feeling of being trapped. In the realm of weight loss, the food log can generate that feeling. Maybe its a special event, or maybe you just feel like its too constraining or you just can't deal with calorie control right now. But writing things down becomes an overwhelming burden, a bummer, a dead-end. I've seen that look of angry desparation from time to time (and I've experienced it as well). Its a natural human response, I think, to the sense of losing one's freedom. How long am I stuck here? What will I have to do? When will I be allowed to just do and say what I want? And let me tell you, if your weight management efforts lead you to that point, it can be very disheartening. Especially because we DO tend to have access to food at all times, even when we feel as if we're being hostage. The judge today even said 'We need to recess because the jurors look hungry!' So food becomes the one thing we can control, but only by EATING it. What to do? Well, increasingly my experience is that there are at least two good options, which can work either separately or in tandem. The first is to give yourself a break. You can stop the food journal for a few days (or weeks) if that gives you the freedom to relax. Losing weight isn't a race. There's no ribbons for first place. The second thing is to figure out what you CAN control (in a healthy way). If the journal's too onerous right now, then maybe you can promise yourself to exercise a little more often for a while. Or focus on drinking enough water, getting enough sleep, or spending some time quietly every day to relax. Just make it simple and realistic -- something that won't contribute to the sense of being told what to do. Of the hundred or so people that showed up in the jury room this morning, only 14 of us were actually kept. Everyone else was 'released.' So the odds are pretty much in your favor. And I'd say its the same with food logging. It might not take all that long of a break from the practice of writing it down before you'll be ready to go back. And if you do get 'stuck' take a deep breath and relax. You'll get through it. Oh, and today I took my laptop to the court and nearly finished my presentation during the break periods.

Doin' What Comes Naturally

Last year I bought a fancy new alarm clock that allows you to set different alerts for different days at different times with either music or a buzzer or a chime. But a couple of months ago I shut it off, and instead just set my cell phone to beep me every morning at the same time. I figure, its healthier to get up at the same time every day. That way I never have to dread getting up early. And since the time I wake up IS so early, I almost always go running. Its gotten to be a natural rythym for me. Today at lunchtime I was walking down a basement-level corridor with a colleague and as we approached a large (and very aesthetically appealing) staircase to the ground floor, I headed straight forward. My co-worker looked at me, smiled, and hesitated. I shot back a puzzled look until she said 'oh well, why not walk up the stairs, it'll be good for us.' Funny thing. I never even considered using the elevator, and I've gone up and down that staircase dozens of times. With me its Pavlovian, if I need to change floors in a building, my first instinct is to find a staircase. Then tonight after work, when I was headed out the door to my second job, I suddenly realized that I had ridden my bike to work today. I had completely forgotten about it. Usually on Wednesdays I walk to the office in the morning and then I hop on the subway in the evening to get downtown. But this time I thought, oh what the heck, I need my bike tomorrow morning, so I might as well ride it now. Now, as a kid I was always the 'fat' son. My brothers were the athletes, playing track and field - real jocks. I took music lessons and had an after-school job. It seems like my entire life I wore an internal ID badge that said 'lazy unathletic slacker.' It wasn't until I was in my 30s that I finally took exercise for real (joining a gym, taking cardio classes, etc.). Even then, since my eating was out of control, I gained and gained and gained. So as I think about it, I'm actually amazed to be sitting here, in my mid-40s, as someone who runs, walks, bikes, and has a gym membership to boot. And all of it seems so normal and natural. Not a bad way to hit mid-life. And so much cheaper than a red sports car.

Obesit-ism

People often assume --incorrectly-- that because I've lost 50 pounds, I blog about maintenance and I work to help people lose weight, that I have a prejudiced attitude towards overweight people. My friends often share 'fat' jokes or talk about how 'sad' it is that someone they know, or love, or are related to has 'let themselves go.' One of my all time 'favorite' comments in that regard was the co-worker of mine who, upon learning of my 50 pound loss asked me if I didn't feel better now that I'm not 'such a sow.' As if you didn't already know, there's a lot of bias against obesity in our society. A recent study from Yale which purports to warn us against this prejudice, actually kind of pissed me off. Their very research methodology was so unscientific that it begs the question of what they were thinnking. 'Would you rather be overweight or lose your job?' 'Overweight or get divorced?' 'Overweight or blind?' And then they surmised that people had bias against fat because of their answers. But this is crazy. Being overweight is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Our weight is just one element of many things that determine who and what we are. They might as well have asked questions like 'Would you rather be shorter or lose all your hair?' or 'Would you rather default on your mortgage or get cancer?' 'Would you rather be run over by a car or a bus?' Ridiculous. Its not an either-or, all-or-nothing choice. Does forcing people to pick the 'or' really explain why or how people learn to discriminate? Do these questions offer any insight? Of course, I should be clear that I admire greatly those who have reached a healthy weight and I applaud them for the achievement. Losing weight and maintaining at a healthy goal is one of the hardest things anyone could ever do. But it doesn't mean that by not being thin someone would lose all my respect. I like to think of it this way. My friends Donna and Danielle are both marathon runners. The challenges over which they have triumphed to reach this phase in their very different lives are remarkable. Every day they inspire me with their wisdom and tenacity. But it doesn't mean that I think anything less of my friend Rosa Lee, who was laid up for months on end with a bum knee and didn't exercise at all. We live the circumstances of our lives and make choices constantly, but our weight neither brands us as angels nor sinners. We don't make food choices because we're either good or bad, either smart or stupid, either tireless or lazy. In fact, its only the ability to neutralize those judgements and get past that bias that helps with the long-run weight management journey. Its great that scientists and sociologists are thinking about the prejudice against overweight that many people experience. But what would help me is to understand the roots of their fear, and whether internalized self-loathing itself is a contributory factor. At any rate, my own feeling is that one's weight is such a highly personal thing, that I have neither the grounds nor the inclination to pass a value judgement. Sure, I'm thin. Now. But give me a choice 'Would you rather lose your entire life savings or never have another maple oat scone?' and the answer's clear. Pass me the pastry.

Blip

The past couple of days I have been so 'perfect' ... drinking enough water, getting in plenty of exercise, focusing on healthy eating, staying within my target caloric range, you name it! So how did I feel when I got on my home scale and found that I was at my highest weight in months? Mad. Disappointed. Frustrated. So I spent the morning storming around and stomping my feet in that resentful, three-year-old way that we do. C'mon, you know what I'm talking about! Its hard to explain away a nearly three pound overnight gain. And then my friend Carolyn came into the picture. She's one of my friend/advisor/companions-on-the-journey, and she helped me out by asking me the simplest of all questions: 'Do you still trust the program?' And naturally, the answer is 'yes.' I do know that it works and I do know (as Carolyn reminded me) that what the scale says today rarely has anything to do with how we ate and exercised yesterday. Its a process, and its long-term. Tonight a guy came to me full of despair and discouragement (and so mad!). He felt as though his food journals were imprisoning him, forcing him to confront foods he felt bad about eating, and making him feel like a failure (sheesh, a mind-reader!). I didn't really know how best to respond, so I asked him if perhaps he could think about leaving the journal aside for a week and trying a more gentle approach. 'Can you focus on finding something other than eating to relieve the stress you've mentioned?' His response? 'I don't trust myself.' Alas, been there, done that. All I can say is, the only way to lose weight is to do something (anything!) differently than before, that helps to cause a healthier calorie-in/calorie-out balance. When we're in the grip of emotional eating, that can seem like a daunting task. But the beauty of being human is not only that we are imperfect, but that we have an amazing capacity to change and adapt. So get some perspective, surround yourself with people who care, and ... yes ... trust that it will work.

That Was Then, This Is Now

The upside of having a somewhat compulsive personality is that I have 167 weeks of food journals from when I first joined Weight Watchers. Yesterday, for the first time in ages, I dug up the file and gave it a look-see (I stopped using it over a year ago). Its given me a lot to think over. Back in the beginning, I started with a simple excel spreadsheet that I created with my own non-technical skills. I made a column for recording food, a column for recording water, and a column recording the emotions I was feeling at each meal. There was no method to how I chose that list, but the notes I have read: calm determined full happy joyful neutral relaxed anxious depressed hungry hurried stressed tired unhappy weak worried Not surprisingly, I abandoned the 'emotions' column on Week 12. It was just a lot of extra work to try and figure out how I was feeling every single time I put something in my mouth, especially if I was journalling after the fact. On Week 48 I abandoned tracking my water intake, as by that time I had begun to crave water so much that it was no longer a concern of mine to 'try' for two liters a day. Its kind of interesting that I chose to make that change after returning from spending Thanksgiving in Paris. I remember that trip as being very cold, and I was definitely stressed out about my eating choices. Doesn't seem like there was a correlation there, but who knows? In that first year or so, as I scanned the pages, I noticed that my caloric intake was significantly higher than it is now. As I recall from that era, after I lost my last ten pounds and slowly began adding calories back, there was a long period of time in which I could eat more and not see any effect at the scale (ah, youth!). Year Two, however, the honeymoon was over and I had to go back to portions that were comparable to my weight loss days. Week 65 saw a complete re-formatting of the spreadsheet. It has Devin's handiwork written all over it -- he's a whiz at Excel -- as the columns are neater, the fonts more appealing, and there is a color scheme. A few weeks after that I made some modifications which reflected a changing strategy -- no longer did I bank calories throughout the week to enjoy on special occasions, but instead I just held aside a balance of extra calories to be used at any time. And it continued like that for another 100 weeks or so -- two years! What's remarkable is not just that I was so dedicated (neurotic?) but that this method kept me going for so long in terms of holding my weight steady. Throughout much of that time I weighed daily, and up until my Father's death two years ago, that number was remarkably stable. So many thoughts, ideas, and emotions have passed through my mind as I've gone through those pages and pages. For one thing, I'm certain that I was too stringent with myself, and set up an ideal that was increasingly hard to follow. Still, considering how often Devin wanted to eat out for dinner, I was pretty good about keeping it reasonable. For another, its clear to me that I go through long phases of liking particular foods to the point of addiction, and then suddenly a shift will come along and there will be a new food or set of foods that take its place. My comfort foods have been kind of silly -- there was a whole-wheat pancake that I had for breakfast for months on end; there were months and months when I had a Kashi bar every single afternoon; for quite some time I made huge mounds of stir-fried vegetables each night after work. The most telling observation, however, has got to be that my eating day always ended with dinner. No dessert. No post-dinner snacking. For YEARS on end! Amazing. Somehow I have fallen off of that particular wagon, and often graze through the kitchen for hours and hours in the evenings. But back then, I somehow was able to stop. Wow. So. That was then, this is now. What have I learned? First, it takes very, very little time to keep a food log. Second, the food log is much, much more than a record of calories consumed -- its a window into life, its an archive of great resources, and a measure of long-term success. Third, when the food log itself became my obsession, its dry, automated calculations set a standard of 'objective progress' that was probably a little too rigorous. After all, my body is not a mechanical device, its a living, breathing, emotional being. Yesterday, I tweaked that spreadsheet a little and I've decided to start using it again. No telling what will come of it, but I have high hopes. Believe it or not, I didn't snack last night!