NBD, Just On a Classic Blogger Weight Gaincation

Hi. How does this usually work? Do I explain that I’ve been just so busy with my super duper busy life, gained between three and forty-three pounds, but now I’m back on day three of “The New You Diet”TM and totesOMG ready to do this again this time it will stick I’m so motivated?

The truth is, I’m not even sure what happened. I ate like it was going out of style through July and most of August. It wasn’t like freshman year of college, when I got to 200 pounds by eating unhealthy foods at mealtimes and just refusing to think how many calories I was consuming or how my clothes weren’t fitting. It was more like, “What have I eaten today that’s at least 90% empty calories? A cookie? That’s not enough, I need half a pizza!”

On June 25, the last time I posted here, I weighed just under 170 pounds. That was already a couple of pounds gained. In general, I was frustrated and struggling to eat well.

On July 20, I weighed 172.2. A couple of pounds up from June, but not too terrible. But on August 20th I weighed 182.6. I gained ten pounds in a month. The “in one month” scares me a lot more than the “ten pounds” part. It terrifies me. To have gained that much weight in a month, I would have had to eat an extra 1100 calories per day. That’s scary. And impressive in a horrible kind of way.

On the other hand, it was actually pretty easy. A piece of cake and a muffin together have about 1000 calories. So do two slices of pizza, or a proper burrito. A couple of calorie-bomb snacks or a couple extra slices turns an okay maintenance day into a ⅓ pound gain. It’s so, so easy to gain weight. Lesson for maintenance. 

 I keep thinking about the few people I know, or know of, who’ve lost weight and kept it off for at least a few years. There’s a girl I went to camp with, who lost something like 75 pounds when she was 22. She maintains her weight by only eating carbohydrates or sugar on her birthday, having a healthy living focused job about which she constantly updates on all available forms of social media, and by posting at least three weight/food related articles per week on facebook. I’m assuming that last part is required by her diet, but who knows. There’s my old college roommate, who averaged a pound or two lost per month… for all four years of school. He graduated two years ago, and still looks great. There’s my sister, who lost about 20-25 pounds a few years ago and has since been paranoid about gaining it back, watching her food intake with a diligence I thought was reserved for middle-aged Hollywood actresses trying to stay fuckable. (Please watch Amy Schumer’s amazing sketch on this.) 

And as much as I’m mocking some of them them, the truth is that I’m jealous. Jealous that they’ve gotten to a place that seems impossible for me. I’m also wondering if it’s possible to maintain weight loss without being crazy diligent or restrictive forever. Can I ever have a normal relationship with food? I know, technically, it’s not impossible. My body can go down in fat just like anybody elses. And it HAS. I have. Lately though, I’ve felt doomed to the same shitty pattern. It’s not good for my body, my heart, or my health. Maybe I’m finally starting to face what every weight loser, dietician, and lose-now-book-of-the-month laments: You need to fix your relationship with food, how you see it and how you relate to it, in order to make any real or lasting changes. I think - I hope - I can do that.

I feel like I should mention, in the end of a post whining about how eating less is hard, that my grandfather died on July 30. My father’s father, my genius, stubborn, witty, generous, insisting on buying peanuts for the squirrels, showing me the mint that grew by their house, WWII veteran Grandpa, who worked at his business until the age of 81 (ten years ago), and only stopped because he had a stroke. He and my grandmother were part of every Memorial Day, Labor Day, July Fourth, Thanksgiving, graduation, and Jewish holiday. My family is tiny - I don’t actually have any first cousins or aunts - and his death has left a shitty void where an awesome, sarcastic old man used to be.

I don’t know if this belongs here, and I draw the line at these paragraphs because, in the end, this is a weight loss blog and I prefer to mourn with the people who knew him. However, I miss him so tremendously and it feels wrong to not mention him when writing anything about the last couple of months.

I’m in a much better place than I was a few weeks ago, which is good. This time I’m turning it around at 180 pounds. Last year I had to get to 190 before I woke up. I’ll come back soon with what I’m doing to undo this damage, but for now I wanted to check in and say hi. 

My Biggest Secret

My biggest secret is that I weigh too much. It’s not really a secret, of course – anyone who sees me would be aware of it. But the reasons behind my weight are certainly more personal, like my struggles with food, self-esteem, stress, and depression.

I’m wearing a cellulite sign around my neck that everyone can read: “I probably eat too much, and there might also be deeper psychological issues here.” And I really forget that it's there.

Not fair, right? My weight, and any issues I have that may have to do with it, are my own personal business, to be shared only with close friends and strangers on the Internet as I choose to reveal them. Not to be immediately obvious to anyone who sees me.

It's like how you're mildly surprised when you hear yourself on a recording. Not because you sound bad or because it's so interesting, but because the voice coming out of the machine seems so foreign compared to what you hear when speaking. And then you realize, so that's how I sound to other people all the time?

It's the same way with my body. Like most people, I forget about how I look. This isn’t an issue, because I would not want to be focusing on my weight or appearance. Nobody should constantly be reminded of their appearance, good or bad. I feel bad for very tall people who hear, "Wow, you sure are tall!" all the time.

So I forget how I look. But then something happens, like I see a photo of myself, or someone asks me if I'm going to the gym because I want to lose weight, and I think, is that what I look like? All the time? To everyone? I'm reminded that nobody has forgotten my biggest secret. Hopefully they're not focusing on it, just like I'm not focusing on how other people look. But it's still out there.

Still though, it sucks sometimes. The people who've seen me periodically over the years know that I lost a lot of weight, and then gained a lot of it back. They don't know why, but it's clear that it happened. I sometimes wonder how much nicer it would be if being overweight could be a thing that I choose to mention or not mention to someone, like other personal details.

Mmm, so you like to hydrate by bathing.

Anyone else feel this way?

No Lightbulb Moments, Final Part: How I Gained Most of it Back

Part one here, part two in the post just before this or here.

So, what happened?

I was this close to hitting the official fifty-pound mark when everything in my life changed over the course of a few months - I got married, moved into a new apartment, and started at my first post-grad, full-time job. They were wonderful, inevitable changes, but they still knocked me on my suddenly growing ass.

I should have seen it coming, having planned the wedding and applied for the jobs, but somehow I didn't realize that even the most wonderful changes take some adjusting. I didn't realize how much I had relied on having such a free schedule, so when I no longer had all the time in the world, I didn't bother to make the time to exercise or eat right. 

There was also the normal amount of stress that comes from setting up a new household and learning how to perform at a new job. I let those things take over my energy so much that focusing on losing weight seemed like a laughable goal on top of everything else. And because I have no middle ground when it comes to food, over those eight or so months, I gained about 35 of the 50 back. 

That is where I'm starting from now. 

I realize there are so many similarities between the two times I gained a large amount of weight - the first time I reached 200 pounds, and last year when I let normal but busy life take over. It was really the denial that got me there, the denial that I was slipping, letting old habits creep back and eating for no other reason than I was bored, stressed, or that the food was in front of me. I think that's the single biggest factor in my weight gain - I couldn't acknowledge that I was gaining weight again, let alone how much.

I'm just having a muffin. Wait, did I also have one this morning?

Sometimes it's hard not to get angry at myself for having gained so much weight back. It sucks in practical ways, like having to buy new, bigger clothing after I gleefully gave away everything that had gotten too big, certain that I would never need it again. I don't exactly love when I see old friends or acquaintances and realize how much healthier I was last time we met. But mostly it sucks because I let myself down, and all that hard work is now gone. I'm back to where I started. 

However, just like I won't feel guilty over the food I eat, there is really nothing good that can come of being angry at myself. Guilt is not a motivator. I just have to do what I'm doing, which is to keep going,  and lose the weight (again). 

No Lightbulb Moments, Part Two: How I Lost Fifty Pounds

Part one here, or go back a bit. 

After finally facing the fact that at 200 pounds, I had reached the highest weight of my life, I started watching my calories. I lost 20 pounds during the fall of my sophomore year. At 180 pounds, I had a long way to go, but I was happy just to have started to tackle this issue, and to have made some progress. I was also thrilled at how easily those first pounds had come off, and felt like fifty more was totally doable. 

Not surprisingly, it didn't quite work out that easily. For next few years, my overall weight had a downward trend, but it moved very slowly. I mostly maintained the loss during the rest of sophomore year, then slowly lost ten pounds or so during the fall abroad semester of my junior year, for a total of 30 pounds. But when I got back to the U.S. and realized that reverse culture shock wasn't just a weird fad, I didn't deal with it well and ended up gaining back some of the weight. That summer I was even less careful, and gained even more.

At the beginning of senior year, I was ready to try again. I joined Weight Watchers at 185 pounds and loved it. I counted points, measured portions, and worked out at the University gym across the street from my dorm. I also went to weekly Weight Watchers meetings, led by an enthusiastic, entertaining man who had lost 60 pounds, and attended by a group of loyal, fun participants.

 I graduated college at 160 pounds, my lowest weight since high school and forty pounds down total. I felt like I was finally on my way, for real.

College graduation, 2012

College, at least for me, was an ideal environment in which to lose weight. I was lucky: a very flexible part-time job, a reasonable class/exam schedule, and a kitchen in my suite (with three roommates who rarely cooked).

 I could leisurely grocery shop at two in the afternoon, I could spend an hour preparing lunch at noon after class, I could go to the gym that was right across the street after class ended at eleven a.m. There were no major stressors in my life and I could focus most of my time on "project lose weight." My schedule was my own with which to be selfish. 

There were a lot of naps.

After graduation, I lived at home for a few months while I tried to find a job. Though I spent extensive time sending my resume into the black hole where most applications go to die, there was still plenty of downtime. I was lucky that I did not have to work at a minimum wage job while trying to become gainfully employed, and could still focus on weight loss. I started personal training at the nearby gym where my parents were members, and learned a bit about lifting weights. 

 I was in control of the food, instead of the other way around. I could eat something, or choose not to, either one was okay. I wasn't perfect, but my good attitude allowed me to quickly move on from slip-ups and focus on the long term.

During this time after college and before I started my job - about six months - I only lost 5-10 pounds, but there was a huge difference in my body and I'm sure that I had gained some muscle in addition to losing fat. I felt stronger and leaner, and clothes were so much easier to find. 

I was almost at the fifty-pound-loss mark and so fucking confident. I felt so accomplished, I had done the impossible. I had done this thing that so many people struggle with. If I could do this, I could do anything! I wasn't holding myself back any longer.

I wondered if I could put weight loss on a resume - hey hiring manager, how's this for dedication!

Video resume?

This new confidence made me realize just how much I had allowed my weight to hinder me in the past, how little confidence or self-esteem I'd had. I let it stop me from joining things I would probably have loved in college, like the improv group or school paper. 

While the main reward of losing weight was how fantastic I felt, there were other perks. I wore sleeveless tops and felt comfortable with it for the first time in my life. I wore clothes that hadn't fit since high school, and got compliments from people who didn't even know I was trying to lose weight. I daydreamed about going to my high school reunion, as the only person to come back looking better than when they had left and sexily flipping off my former bullies (who would of course have potbellies and be wearing atrocious toupees). I got a thrill being hit on occasionally, a new experience.

I didn't tell anyone about my weight loss who didn't ask me about it first, but I walked around and lived life with this new faith in myself. 

Then, of course, I gained almost all of it back which I where I started from a few months ago.

I will post How I Gained it All Back: Food and Laziness, tonight or tomorrow as I'm still editing it. I know, the suspense is killing me too. 

No Lightbulb Moments: How I Gained, Lost, and Gained Almost 50 pounds

My high school weight pattern was pretty straightforward.  I'd maintain or slowly creep up for a while, then start some diet or health plan (usually the latest fad) with tremendous motivation and lose 10-15 pounds. Within a couple of months, I would get sick of dieting and slowly regress back to old habits. I'd start gaining slowly again, sometimes as little as a pound a month. During high school I tried Atkins, South Beach, and calorie counting, all with some degree of success.

 Because of this gain-lose-gain cycle, I usually stayed somewhere around 160, so about 30 pounds overweight. What's funny looking back is that I hated my figure so much as a teenager and was always trying to lose weight, but 30 extra pounds doesn't seem like too much right now. I guess it's all about perspective.

I never got to a healthy weight, but I also never got to an extremely unhealthy weight. I just wandered somewhere in the middle, too large to even consider feeling good in a bikini or buying single-digit sizes, but not big enough for any plus-sized clothing or major interventions.

After high school graduation, my unintentional pattern stopped - so I just started gaining and gaining. I took a gap year abroad before starting college, and while I had an amazing experience, I struggled to eat well and didn’t really exercise. I was also having too much fun to realize that I was gaining weight.

However, it was freshman year of college that took me to my highest weight ever. During this time, I was trying to figure out how to manage a schedule, and generally stressing out at the progression of life. My university was not one to stray from societal demands, so we students had easy access to lots of (often free) junk food all over campus.

I made some good friends and spent time with them, went to class, and studied, but there was still way too much time left for ... nothing. I treated my boredom with food, as well as my desire to have something to do with my hands while I watched every episode of Friends. There were no binges or secret donut boxes under my bed; I gained weight by eating "normal" but oversized (for my height and gender) portions at meals, and 400-calorie muffins or the endless supply of free college candy as desserts.

xkcd.com

By the beginning of sophomore year, I had hit my highest ever weight of 200 pounds. But that wasn't a wake-up call. When I saw that number flashing up at me from the scale, my thoughts went something like, Hmm, that is a new number. Okay. Better not gain any more weight now, I think 200 is as high as I should go.

It’s obvious now, but I managed to be blissfully unaware. In some vague part of my mind, I knew that this was bad, I knew that my size 16s were getting snug and in reality I could probably fit into 18s, but I just didn’t want to face dealing with it. I was passively avoiding it and delicately skirting around things that might make me face it, like shopping or trying an athletic class. It's the easiest trap to fall into. My parents weren't saying anything, my friends weren't expressing their concerns about my size, I didn't get comments from passing cars - it was pretty easy to live in my little world where there was no need to consider my growing size.

It wasn’t that I didn’t care at all about the extra weight, I just had no idea where to start and was in denial of how unhealthy I’d become. I got pains in my calves from walking around too much, and somehow never connected that to the extra weight. Thirty pounds was one thing, I was used to it, but I could not expect to be seventy pounds overweight without consequences.

Giant hipster glasses or Minnie Mouse lingerie?

Finally, my parents sat me down one weekend during sophomore year when I was home for a holiday, and told me that they were scared for my health and for my life. That they had waited, hoping I would take some action to lose weight, but after six months it was clear that I was not dealing with this problem. So now they were talking to me because they were terrified. They, very kindly, told me that they would not let me go abroad for a semester if I didn't lose some weight. 

So I started, just like that. Maybe I was waiting for someone to call me out on my bullshit, or a threat I could understand, or a good kick in my oversized ass. There was no revelation, I just started keeping track.

This was during a "eat small meals throughout the day" fad, so I carefully consumed six 200-250 calories snacks/meals each day. It was a pretty good time - I didn't feel hungry or deprived, and I lost 20 pounds that semester without exercising. The calf pain disappeared, and I finally connected that the pain had had to do with my weight. 


Part Two: How I Lost Fifty Pounds, and then Gained Most of it Back will be coming soon.