Wanted: A Healthy Lifestyle. No Diets Need Apply.

In 1983, at the age of 17, I started my first 'official' diet. I joined Nutri-System and ate their prepackaged food and drinks. I went from 162 lbs down to 140. To think that I thought I was 'fat' at 162!

That diet started me on the long and tortuous road of yo-yo dieting: lose 20lbs and gain back 30. That was par for the course.

I've been to Weight Watchers so many times in both the US and Ireland I think I should get some kind of medal. I belonged before there were points. However, I must admit that I was delighted with the points system. The more I weighed, the more points I was allowed and the more food I could eat. It was a perverse bonus.

In 1988 and 2005, I tried the Medifast diet. A doctor supervised liquid fast where you only drank fortified shakes. I lasted one month. It was deprivation on a grand scale.

1987 found my friend Georgette and I in some doctor's office on Niagara St. on the west side of Buffalo. I jumped on the scale and he barely looked at me as he wrote out a prescription for amphetamines. That lasted for a few days until I passed out one morning in the bathroom.

In 1992, I joined WW again for the umpteenth time and lost 75lbs in 6 months. It boomeranged back over the following years.

In the summer of 2000, I read a book, The Carbohydrate Addict's Book and loved it. A precursor to the low carb diets, I lost 35 lbs on that one. The premise was to eat no/low carb all day except for one hour and then you could add a small amount of good carbs. But only in that hour. You can see how easily that one spiralled out of control. I went from adding a roll at dinner to 'Oh my God! I've only got 5 minutes left to eat this chocolate cake, bag of Doritos...." That weight plus more came back on, too.

The idea of 'Fruit til Five' came from my Dad and my brother. It had worked for them so I figured how hard could it be? You were only supposed to eat fruit all day and then have your regular dinner at 5pm. That soon deteriorated to fruit til five and 3 meals and 3 snacks from 5pm-11pm.

The cabbage soup diet was interesting. A better name would have been 'colon blow.'

There was the 3 day diet of peanut butter, grapefruit, eggs, hot dogs and bananas.

Clearly, diets don't work for me. My bookshelves are sagging from the weight of all the diet books. I've read them all, but there are too many choices. My head spins at all the options out there and which one might be best for me.

In 1985, at 181 lbs., I bought a Huffy stationery bike from Twin Fair. I rode it regularly and got my weight down to 158. No diet. I watched what I ate but I didn't deprive myself. That went well until the chain fell off the bike and Twin Fair was closed by this time.

Again in the fall of 1994, living with my parents, I brushed the dust off my Dad's Nordic Track and lost 20 lbs. over 3 months. Again no diet, but I was careful of what I ate. Nordic Track is now out of business.

A revelation occurs to me as I write this. Obviously, diets don't work for me. But the exercise sure does. It's a shame that the equipment doesn't last.

But as my sister, Jen, says: baby steps. It's certainly not going to be fixed overnight. I'm not interested in any diet out there. I'm interested in a permanent lifestyle change. So, I've cut out the 2-3 family size Galaxy bars that I used to eat daily. I've stopped eating in between meals. It's hard, but then anything worth having is worth fighting for.



We only do well the things we like doing

Colette

No Place to Hide

As much as I want to, there is no place to hide when you're a fat woman in a thin world. Unless I become a recluse -and there's always hope as my great aunt Dolly was-there is always someplace to go.

There'll be a family wedding where I have to turn myself into a contortionist just to wrestle on a pair of pantyhose. If I go to a party, I get palpitations if I see folding, wooden chairs. I'm only asking for trouble there. I'm never fashionably late, I'm always unreasonably early as I want to get the best seat. And by that I mean something very sturdy where I can safely camp out. Every venture into public is an anxiety inducing affair as I have to be diligent about where my body is in relation to my surrounding environment.

Unlike other addictions, mine is there for the whole world to see. A stranger, at a passing glance, knows that I have a dysfunctional relationship with food. Food has been my constant companion for the last thirty years, through good times and bad. One bite is a whisper urging me on to have more.

It has crept insidiously into my life and affected every aspect of my life to the point that I know longer recognize myself. The person that I want to be and the person that I currently am are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

When I read these words that I've written, it makes me angry- for it is no way to live.

Today was a good day. I made healthy choices. But it wasn't easy. The temptation to comfort myself is always there and it is strong. I can't take it one day at a time for the day stretches out too long before me. It's easier to take it one meal at a time.

Every evening, I used to have for my 10pm snack a rock scone, a family sized Galaxy bar and a large cup of tea. Then I'd wash it down with some Gaviscon. Tonight, I juiced some fruit (I do love my juicer) and then I heated it up, because I do like a hot drink. And I love mulled wine. It was lovely and I bet I won't have to swig Gaviscon tonight.

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Happy Thanksgiving

Well, it's official. I've entered the world of blogging.

As the end of 2009 draws near (thank God), I've taken a deep breath and decided to shed the biggest thing  in my life that are definitely holding me back.

My weight.


There is just no way around the fact that I need to do something about my weight, as evidenced by the following:

-I hang my underwear on the clothesline and it causes a solar eclipse
-I'm in one room of the house and my a** is another
-the 95 year old woman that I look after says things like this: "I hope that I go before you do."

I own my weight problem.

I'll put a disclaimer out right now: I, and only I, am responsible for my current predicament which has taken many forms and sizes, but mostly big and round. I didn't have a miserable childhood. It's not in my genes. No one held a gun to my head and forced me to eat all those Galaxy bars. This leads me to Disclaimer #1, subsection A: I am not responsible for plummeting stock prices of the Mars candy company from this day forward.

'Nuff said.

So, I'm going to do something that absolutely mortifies me. I'm going to blog about my efforts to get fit and thin. I'm going to make myself accountable and put my weight out there into the very public domain of the Internet. I think they call this aversion therapy. I'll write the actual number in pounds, stone and kilograms or atomic mass if need be. This number has been more closely guarded than the third Fatima secret.

It's either go public or have the gastric bypass surgery, which involves sipping my meals through a straw for the first month post op.

So here it is:

315 pounds
22.5 stone
142.8 kg

Yes, those numbers are correct.
Terrible, I know. What happened to me that I let it get that out of control?

As of right now, I'm going to fix this. This interferes too much with my current life and the life that I dream of leading. This is going to be my number one priority: my health.

Today is the 26th. On the 26th of every month, I'll post my weight.

Quote of the day:

One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. If she tells that, she'll tell anything.

Oscar Wilde

Oh, by the way, I'm 43.