Weight Update and Why I Reject New Year's Resolutions

First, weight update: On Tuesday I lost the pound gained last week, plus a tiny bit extra! Total is 7.4 pounds down since November 17. Since we’re getting into two months on my Weight Watchers adventure, here is a table of my progress. Sorry for the weird formatting.

January 5th 187.0lbs

December 29th

188.2lbs

December 15th	188.0lbs
December 8th	189.0lbs
Tuesday, December 1st	190.4lbs

Tuesday, November 24th	193.2lbs
Tuesday, November 17th	194.4lbs

Holy crap, do I want to be out of the 180s. The funny (or sad?) thing is that I really could be doing much better. Every week it’s a huge struggle to stay within my daily and weekly points, and I don’t even think I’ve managed to do it once. So if I can lose a pound a week going over, how much better could I do if I really really stuck to it?

Maybe this week can be that week.

Now, onto a super fun topic: New Year’s Resolutions. 

Frankly I think New Year’s resolutions are, more often than not, pointless. Almost by default, they’re designed to be fleeting as you lose momentum, and by March it’s hard to remember what the resolution was. Art classes? Learn to ski? Finally hire that hit man for your horrible boss?

Maybe the trap is that we think a new year will somehow automatically change us.I mean, it’s a new year, we think. It has to, right? But that’s not it.

Change comes from hard fucking work that’s constant effort, and it happens throughout the year. January 1st is not some permission to decide to change something, some unique opening that must be taken advantage of. I joined Weight Watchers the week before Thanksgiving, and I’m so glad I did.

People can and do change themselves, the date is irrelevant. New Year’s resolutions are the punchlines in sitcoms, gyms and weight loss centers prepare for an influx of people, 95% of whom won’t be there in a few months. It’s a nice idea, a new year and a new you, but it’s lost all meaning.

I am trying to make changes, the least of which is weight loss. If people want to learn the guitar, take Spanish lessons, go to the gym, awesome! But I hope they don’t do it for New Year’s, but rather just because they want to, and it happens to be New Year’s.

So if someone here stumbled across this blog because they made a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, I hope you know I’m seriously rooting for you. You absolutely rock for trying to get healthier and tackle your weight, and it’s totally possible. But, you know, just do it. Not because it’s January, but because it’s time.

Sometimes I Think About What Happens After Goal Weight

The other day I was reading an interview with a transgender woman about her transition, and something in it struck a particular chord with me. Nora lives in the Netherlands, where the state will pay for everything, but there are a tremendous amount of meetings, counseling, therapy, waiting periods, etc, involved in the transition process. Much of these meetings focused on what Nora wanted to do with her life after becoming a woman - everything from hobbies to career goals, to love and friendships. What were her plans, what was her support system?

She explained, “You spend your youth wishing you could live your life as a woman, but once you accomplish that goal, you then have to actually go out and live your life as a woman. That's not the end of a story -- it's the beginning of one.”

Obviously my situation is very different from Nora’s, but what she said there really struck me, and I think there can be some interesting parallels. Really, her words can apply to any big accomplishment or event - finishing a game of Risk, getting married, taking that trip, whatever.

How often does something like this happen? You plan and you work and you try for months or years, and then you finally do it. You’re married, you’re living as your preferred gender, you’ve gotten to your goal weight. Then what?

How much time and energy have I spent on my weight? Planning diets, reading tips, staring at the scale, even blogging here? How many of my waking hours are spent thinking about the type and amount of food that will enter my mouth? (Ha, you didn’t think I’d say ‘mouth!)

That’s something to remember. After I lose all this weight, there will probably be some new clothes and an enormous amount of celebrating and creating before/after jpg that I not-so-secretly hope will go viral. But then eventually life will go on at this new weight. At some point, I might have more people in my life who have only even known me at 140 pounds or whatever than people who remember my 190-pound existence. Isn’t that weird?

There are already people who’ve never known the me that was looking for a post-grad job forever, or the me that was really depressed, or the me that had [opinion] on [controversial topic] that’s now done a 180.

We all keep creating different versions of ourselves, and with each new person that we meet in life, there’s one more person who has no idea who we were before they met us. I found out that a girl I was friendly with was a semi-famous violinist. I’d hung out and talked to her at least 20 times, but had no idea. She had this huge skill, these amazing accomplishments that she’d earned, and I had no clue.

So I need to remember that maybe someday there will even be people who think I don’t understand what it’s like to be bullied for my weight, because they’ve only even known me as a the supermodel I became later. I guess the older you get, the more that happens. Most of the people in my parents’ lives have only ever known them with kids. Hell, I’VE only ever known my parents as parents, not the clean-shaven law student or the reporter living in a cool apartment. (However, I’m positive that my dad has always made dad jokes.)

Weight loss will hopefully just be a part of my past someday, just like the months I thought crunchy gelled hair = extreme attractiveness. And it should be. I might always have to think about food a little to maintain, but it won't be like now, where weight loss is high on the priority list. 140-pound Leah will be the new Leah.

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. 

Making Weight Loss Less "Don't" and More "Do"

I usually think of diet and exercise as two completely different but complimentary things. With losing weight, diet is the thing that matters because I can’t out-exercise a crappy diet. Believe me, I’ve tried.  I've realized lately why exercise can be such a good mental health compliment to dieting.

Losing weight is so, so passive. Most of it consists of NOT eating. The cupcakes at the office, the cookies at a friend's house, whatever. There are also so many evenings after dinner, when we’re just hanging out in the apartment, and I realize the only thing I need to do, or can do, in order to have a good weight loss day is to not eat. That’s a hard way of thinking sometimes - the best way to accomplish your goal at the moment is to NOT do something.

For a five hour evening, I could not eat for four hours and fifty-six minutes, and then somewhere in those last four minutes, eat three candy bars or a handful of chocolate chips. Five hour evening, and those four minutes of overeating completely calorically overwhelm the other four hours, fifty-six minutes. In another scenario, I could sit for an hour at a table with a cake on it after dinner with friends. I don’t pick at the cake for fifty-seven minutes, but then those last three... 200 calories in a single swipe of frosting and those first fifty-seven minutes kind of don’t matter.

That’s why, at least for me, working out is so good for the weight loss mentality. I see it essentially as a separate component of health. Working out makes me feel strong. It makes me feel like I’m actively doing something for my health. My favorite instructor likes to tell us how we're changing our bodies as we struggle through leg lifts. It’s not about the calories (though those are a huge perk that definitely get me to push myself), it’s about being fit. It’s about being that 90-year-old pole dancing instructor who spins circles around her 24-year-old students. She's my role model.