SDP inThe New York Times Again

A few weeks ago, SDP was contacted for comments about the latest ‘discovery’ of a ‘fat gene’ by Harvard researchers. JuJu asked the NYTIMES writer, Amy Harmon, to talk with me, and here’s the result! It’s out today, and be sure to click on the video link for Genes and Self Image, where you’ll get to see and hear me (and Magnolia Louise!) in the park where we hike just about every morning.

We’ve often discussed the idea of a genetic basis for obesity, but we all know that the only thing that this means is that some of us have more difficult roads to travel. But I think the major take-away message is that effective weight management requires a very personal approach, and one plan does not work for everyone.

The video reporter (Craig Duff) shot more than an hour of video, and it’s been edited down to just a few minutes, so please understand that I said MUCH more than you’ll see.

It was an honor to have been asked. I hope it makes sense.

Weight Watchers meeting

I remember a Weight Watchers meeting from probably fifteen years ago. The leader said that, just for this week, we will live in The Land Without Scales. So, she asked us, how do you measure progress? There were some half-hearted answers - how my clothes fit, how I feel… but nobody really took it seriously! (That includes me - young and goofy thing that I was) I really didn’t think there was any better way to measure success, or the lack of it (which would screw with my head all day), than to step on the scale and put my psychological and spiritual well-being in the “hands” of a machine!

I’m a therapist, and I work with a lot of jasmin live girls, many of whom are obsessed with their weight. They don’t see what miracles of health and gorgeousness they are right now. A big part of my work is to get them to see that they are so much more than a dress size or a number on a scale. In the process, I reinforce that idea for myself.

Here are some alternative measurements of success that I use:

- Can I work out harder/longer than yesterday?

- Can I hold a particular yoga pose longer or get a better stretch?

- How did I sleep last night?

- Did I feel rested this morning?

FWIW, I weigh myself on the first day of the month. Period. There’s just no need to make myself nuts.

I haven’t stepped on my scale in 1+ week and I couldn’t be happier. It just got so mind-numbingly frustrating to let a stupid number dictate how I was going to feel on a given day. Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten to the point that I know I can no longer diet (for the sake of my sanity) and I’m learning to appreciate my body at it’s current size, but it’s so refreshing to go through the day not thinking about that number that, regardless what it was, I’d never really be happy with unless I was first happy with myself. And I don’t plan on stepping on a scale anytime soon :)

The very essence of irrationality is rooted in my bathroom scale

There is absolutely nothing that will make me crazier with such lightening speed than an unfortunate scale experience!

Last Saturday I slept in a little bit. I woke up feeling happy, rested, and ready to start my day. I was eager to get a lot done. I felt supercharged, not just physically, but emotionally. What contributed to my lighter-than-normal heart on this day? Well, I attribute this good mood to the fact that I had been on a fantastic run with my health plans, fulfilling my small, but significant goals—my steps to a healthier body and mind…all week long. And, (drumroll)it was weigh-in day! The moment I had been waiting for all week that would validate all my hard work was so close I could almost feel the pat on my back before I even stepped on the scale.

I mosied out of bed and walked into the bathroom. Nature called, so I answered of course. (I would never dream of weighing myself before answering nature’s call—every ounce matters on weigh-in day, which is also a notion that cuddles up very close to irrationality.)

I strode over to my scale with the confidence of a runway chaturbate model. I stepped on it without a fear in the world. I almost blurted out my victory “Yessssss” before I looked at the numbers. However, my eyes glanced down just as my mouth opened and what came out instead was “Oh my God! No way! That is impossible! It can’t be!”

The fading-fast rational side of me tried to fight off the panic that Juju spoke of as I realized that the scale registered a four-pound gain. I stepped off the scale, got back on, repeating my weigh-in three times. Two pounds, five pounds, and resting again at four pounds gained—instant emotional deflation. I quickly tried to rationalize the fluctuation in numbers to the fact that I weigh nearly 350 pounds and my scale’s maximum capacity is 350 pounds. (My experience with this is that the closer you are to max capacity, the kookier and unstable the numbers.) But in my mind and heart I was worried that my body had betrayed me in the worst way. That despite my best efforts, the weight wasn’t going to come off.

I left the bathroom without the zest-for-life attitude that had previously occupied my thoughts just two minutes prior to this. I slunk to my bed, crawled back in

and pulled the covers back up over me. No more happy thoughts. No more smiles. No more positive anticipation of spending the day getting things done. All I felt like doing was laying in bed and berating myself for being fat and for failing. Nothing rational about it. It was as if the numbers on the scale took away every good thing I had done for myself that week— Erased them from my life as if they had never happened.

Few minutes later, dear husband walks in and says, “Hey Nance, I think the bathroom scale’s battery needs to be changed. I weighed on it yesterday and the numbers were all over the place. Here’s a new battery for it.” “What?” I said, and he had to repeat himself. He changed the battery then left the room whistling, oblivious to the emotional roller coaster I was on.

Strange, but I wasn’t in a hurry to get back on the scale. The rational me started to take back over and I took a few minutes to try to talk some sense back into myself—to try to glean some wisdom from this crazy scale experience.

While I lay in bed, I kept thinking about the awful power the numbers on the scale have over me. So, rationally speaking, if the scale registered a gain, how would that change the devotion and determintion to get healthy I had showed that week? Then I thought that probably more significant was how fragile my belief in myself really is. That I don’t have long-term success with this weight loss stuff and I am just starting to build the faith in myself that I really need to get me through the ups and downs of this journey I’m on.

Deep in my heart, I knew what the truth was. I HAD stuck to my plan like glue on paper. I had done every single thing I said I would—for one whole week! That the scale did not, at this one moment in time, reflect my hard effort with a registered loss, really should not have mattered so much to me. But, it did. And I’m not sure how long it will take me to not care as much.

I have to believe that in time, things in my brain will sort themselves out as I learn more about health and apply it. As I learn to build upon each success and let it speak for itself instead of letting the scale speak for me. It’s going to take time to trust my body again. To let it take care of me as I take care of it. I want to believe in myself and I want to believe in my body, but as I said, My trust in myself is still fragile at best.

I did weigh myself again. With a new battery, the scale said I had lost five pounds. But, my mood stayed a little somber after that as i tried to process the craziness of the scale then purge it from my mind.

I don’t know. I really don’t. I’m rambling now so this jasmine live journal needs to end, but I wanted to thank you Juju, for your honestly. I hadn’t written about this yet and I guess I needed to.

There is logic

And then there is the part of us that wants to ‘quantify success’ - no matter that ‘success’ is intangible to begin with!

Today I weigh the same as I did on April 1st - the last date I made ANY effort to journal or to eat mindfully as we careened into the holy days (church musician here!). Yes, I did get on the scale once or twice in the next sixteen days. Yes, I was appalled as the numbers went right back up to - and a tad BEYOND - my current MGW [max gross weight]. Dagnabbit.

This week, I have been mindful. And my body feels better. It’s also ‘nice’ that the scaleMonster has chosen to gift me with a lower number. BUT… MY BODY FEELS BETTER. So I will strive to relegate the scale to ‘tool’ status, like my measuring cups and food scale and ‘measure success’ with the criteria on my favorite mug: “success is doing what you love…” Oh yeah - with one addendum - “MINDFULLY AND HEALTHILY”.

Continued success to all!

My history is more of scale avoidance than of scale obsession. Whenever I did get on the scale, I could rationalize anything, because after all, there are lots of factors which impact weight at any given time.

This time (the last 2 years, down 57 pounds and at my lowest adult weight, but with lots more to go)things have been different. I’ve been trying to avoid living out that old definition of insanity - doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. So this time I’ve tried all kinds of things I wasn’t willing to before. Most haven’t worked, frankly.

Strangely enough, weighing in daily has been truly freeing. When I graph my weekly weight, I mark in the highest and lowest weights of that week, which gives me a much clearer picture of what happened. So when I balloon up 3-5 pounds after a salty restaurant meal, I don’t get upset at all. I no longer think of myself as weighing a specific weight, but instead a range of about 5 pounds at any given time. It’s only when I see a number outside that range, whether higher or lower, that I figure any meaningful change has happened.

Perhaps I’m atypical, but I’ve found that daily weigh-ins, like daily food and activity logs, free my mind from obsessing and give me good information when I periodically sit down and review to decide whether I need to make more changes.

Afraid of Food?

A former student of my husband’s dropped by last night, in tow his wife of 10 years. We had never met, but quickly found some common ground. She had lost in the neighborhood of 50 pounds several years ago, and has been diligent about keeping it off.

She told me she’s a vegan, and so I pulled down my latest favorite cookbook — Raw, by Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein to share the recipes for nut sauces. And then she said something awfully interesting. She said she was impressed that I could still take such an interest in food. For years she has avoided the kitchen, avoided taking an interest, because food, frankly, scares her.

She’s scared of food. “It almost feels as if it will grab me and take me back,” she said.

Oh I know that fear. I’m still afraid that way.

So many of us who have lost a lot of weight. So are most of the dieters in the world. So are the people who choose never to lose weight for fear of becoming afraid of food.

This is all very sad. There are much sadder things in the world, but really, really, really, we should not be afraid of food.

If we’re afraid of it, that means it’s still in charge. We give food the power. And then we can’t enjoy its company any more. Can’t enjoy all the good traditions and associations that is food’s rightful place. Can’t enjoy it as nourishment, as celebration, as communion. As gift.

Dang. In business/government parlance, that would be a lose-lose, beloveds.

So, today, I’m thinking about that. Not sure how to fix it. If you have ideas, I hope you’ll share them. Journal in your journal, will you? or here? We need ideas.

24 years of sobriety

I have no fear of alcohol, but I don’t wallow in it either. I stay out of slippery places and I don’t drink it in any form. I believe there are certain foods it’s best to treat as poison.

I love to eat, love to cook and I can do both with great joy while still maintaining good health AND -120 pounds even eliminating some foods entirely.

For me it comes down to giving up the fight: When do I finally accept ~ after 49 years of fighting it ~ that some foods simply trigger uncontrollable eating? The struggle eats up my life and ALWAYS results in the same thing: serious binges that wreck my emotions, my health, my self esteem.

I have eliminated beets from my diet entirely. I’ve never eaten a kumquat. I am not safe eating sugar.

I’ve actually never eaten beets or kumquats and will probably die without doing so. So why is it such a big deal to not eat sugar? There are a host of alternatives to sugar for sweetness, so why not just leave it out?

For me it’s not fear, it’s sanity. And free of what surely seems to be a drug for THIS body, I can then eat a full range of foods, enjoy food as it’s meant to be enjoyed, and be fully alive AND healthy and fit and frisky.

Physical prime

Or 19, or whatever age you think was your ‘physical prime.’ For me, that age was 23 or so. I had hit my WW goal, and I must confess that I looked GREAT. Let’s not discuss the state of my mind, however!

In any event, this was the topic of conversation this morning with a wonderful woman who’s lost about 40 pounds, and now has her diabetes under control . She’s determined to keep on plugging away at the last 25 or so, but in the meantime, she’s having serious body perception issues.

To put it bluntly, her belly is bugging her. She wants it to be flat, like it was when she was 17. That’s not gonna happen - she’s had some abdominal surgery that’s left her muscles in a state where they’re not going to provide a whole lot of support.

As we age, things happen. Gravity takes over, for one, and we all know the challenges we face with weight control. But frankly, would YOU want to turn the clock back to that ‘physical prime’ age, especially if you’d have the wisdom and experience that went along with it?

I sure don’t. I’ll happily live with the physical realities of a middle-aged body [even after the impending excess skin removal, I won’t look the way I did at 23], as long as I can keep my current attitude and whatever wisdom I’ve accumulated. I’m much happier now than I was back then, and I don’t want to trade it for the flat stomach.

So what’s left? Developing the balanced lifestyle that we all discuss and strive for. Sounds like sanity to me!

Would I go back? That really is a question that kind of haunts me. In some ways, this IS my physical prime: I’m more fit, and more thin, and certainly better dressed and more confident, than I’ve been for fifteen years. I was probably twenty-five pounds thinner than this when I went to college at 18, but the clothing and confidence bonuses stand. I’d argue that I look better and feel better now, physically at least. And they do say that when people are asked what age they’d like to be for eternity, they tend to point to their present age…WHATEVER it is.

But what makes me waffle on “going back” is the other stuff—the romantic aspirations, the spine-tingling thrill of eighteen-year-old love, the unabashed intensity and earnestness, the hours spent talking to people who became lifelong friends (and some who didn’t), the lack of job pressure and time pressure and guilt pressure and all the rest of it. Sure, there was a lot of needless torment that went along with all that stuff, but that’s what YOUNG means. Sometimes I look at the (relatively) organized and leaderly and i-dotting person I’ve had to become to survive, and I wonder where I went. Sometimes I don’t feel like I know how to be anything but young, and whoever I am now, she’s not so young anymore.

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