The Desert of My Dreams

When you’ve lost about a third of your body weight, people seem to notice it and make comments about it. Living my whole life in a fat body, I always thought that I’d really like it when people noticed that I’d lost weight. My weight has yo-yoed throughout the years and I may have gone on diets and lost 10 or 15 pounds but I’ve never really lost weight the way that I’ve been losing weight the last few years. When I was living at home and dieting, my family would always tell me that I looked slimmer - even if it was only 5 or 10 pounds. At the time, I found it really nice that somebody was noticing all my hard work and that even a few pounds might be making a difference. Now that I’m a bit older, my gut feeling is that they were probably just being nice or encouraging me to keep going (or maybe they really did think I looked slimmer just because they knew I was trying to lose weight). During those times in my life, I always dreamed about what it would be like to lose X number of pounds, what I’d look like, and what people’s reactions would be. I wanted people to notice my weight loss and I wanted to be validated for it. When you’ve spent so much of your life getting picked on as a kid or ignored as an adult due to your body, you really want other people to validate your body.

The weird thing is that when people say certain things about my weight loss, I actually feel a little violated and the same emotions that I felt when I was picked on as a kid come back. Don’t get me wrong - some people know exactly what to say (and how to say it) to complement me. Telling me that I look great is a really nice way to complement me and ALWAYS makes my day. Asking me what I’ve been doing and really listening to my long-winded answer is also nice (yes, it is a complicated process and I don’t have a simple solution to magically melt the fat off). Announcing, “YOU’VE LOST SO MUCH WEIGHT,” to a room full of people, some of whom I just met is not so nice (this actually happened to me about a year ago). When a not-so-close friend made that remark, it really felt like a back-handed complement. It was almost like she was saying to everyone in the room, “LIKE OH MY GOD SHE USED TO BE SO FUCKING HUGE.”

I don’t mind if people tell me that I’ve lost weight - as long as I’m not being made into a spectacle. A co-worker once pulled me aside in the cafeteria and whispered to me that I’ve lost so much weight and that I looked great. That was nice. She figured out that my body is just that - mine and that I probably wouldn’t want everyone in the cafeteria to know that I used to be LIKE SO OH MY GOD huge.

I spent most of today traveling to Dallas for a work project. When I handed over my driver’s license to the TSA agent at SFO, he looked back and forth between my picture and my face and then said, “Congratulations! Diet worked!” My first thought was, “Wow, have I really lost that much weight that even the TSA guy can tell a difference between my driver’s license head shot and my current sleep-deprived self at 7 AM in the morning?” But then I had that sinking feeling like I had just been picked on. I really don’t want random strangers (and the TSA no less) making remarks about my body. Maybe the TSA guy was just being friendly but it felt pretty intrusive.

I think part of the issue is that even after losing 70+ pounds, I’m still fat so open discussions about my weight are still a little dicey. I might be able to buy cuter clothes and from normal people stores but when I need a new pair of jeans, it is still way easier for me to head to Lane Bryant (where I’m a “2″) than try to rummage through a pile of jeans at Banana Republic, only to realize that I’d have to order a 16 online.

There are lots of foods (Michael Pollan would argue that they’re food-like substances but anyway) that I consider bingeable, stuff that I have a hard time not devouring all in one sitting. My list of bingeables is long but it includes anything from ice cream, chocolate, fresh-baked bread, Wheat Thins, cashews, Clif Bars, to those mini brownie bite things from Trader Joe’s. I’ve come to learn that if I bring home any of these items there is a pretty good chance that it won’t last a day. Regardless of what I may tell myself at the grocery store - that I’ll only have one serving, that I’ll throw out the rest if I feel out of control, that I’ll put away the rest in the freezer (I’ve come to learn that some things actually taste better frozen) - I know that I struggle with certain foods so I’ve found it best to just avoid them or only purchase single servings of said items. The weird thing is that for the past month or so I’m finding that my appetite has been slowly changing and I’m not as drawn to the bingeables. In general, I don’t seem to be as hungry as I used to be and I seem to be getting full with less food. It feels so bizarre for me to leave food on my dinner plate or come home from work with leftovers from the lunch and snacks that I had packed for the day. I’m not totally sure what is causing this shift because there have been too many changes in the past few weeks to really narrow it down to one thing - I’m running again which always puts me in a great mood, I’ve been eating even more fruits and veggies and have cut back on almost all processed “healthy” food, I’m more aware of how I’m feeling and how that drives what I’m craving, and I’m at yet another lowest-weight-as-an-adult point.

The strangest thing happened on Saturday night. I’ve had a tradition for the past couple of years where I allow myself to have dessert on Saturday or Sunday night. I may now have an appreciation for Brussels sprouts and asparagus but I’m not perfect. I’ve also found that having dessert once a week (and it has to be the real thing - not some weird fat-free/low-cal version) curbs my cravings and makes me feel like a normal person who isn’t being punished for the rest of her life. My dessert is usually a combination of ice cream and chocolate cake and I always make sure to only get a single serving of each so that my weekly dessert doesn’t turn into a disaster. Usually when I get my 1/2 cup of ice cream and slice of cake, I eat the entire thing because it is just so good. And it is Saturday night. And I’ve worked hard all week so I deserve a break. But this Saturday was different. I only ate half of the slice of chocolate decadence cake that I had picked up from Whole Foods. Even though it was the most amazing rich flour-less chocolate cake ever, the other half just sat there. I was full and I knew eating any more would have made me feel physically miserable. So it sat there for an hour or two while I watched a movie and then I threw it out. This may not seem like a big deal to a normal person but it is a pretty big deal to me. I didn’t finish a piece of chocolate cake? Who is this person?

I’m not sure if these changes in my appetite are flukes or if they’re signs that my mind and body are evolving but for now I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the latter.

I can’t sleep so I’m going to blog in the hopes that I’ll get tired enough to fall back asleep! Last night, I finished reading Half-Assed by Jennette Fulda. It is a weight loss memoir that I stumbled upon last weekend at Borders (apparently there is a whole genre of weight loss memoirs). Fulda lost about 200 pounds (!!) through diet and exercise and the book talks about her life as an obese young woman and then what she learned about herself as she was losing weight. The book is very honest but is is also a fun, fast read. Her story felt very authentic — I could identify with a lot of what she talks about in the book. I think I found her story especially inspiring because she lost an incredible amount of weight and did it the hard way. I do my fair share of complaining but I don’t have 200 pounds to lose. A couple of years ago, I read a few books by Geneen Roth but then just wanted to toss them across the room when I found out that she was never really all that heavy to begin with. I have a hard time taking advice from somebody who’s never really struggled with their weight. She may have had issues with her body, but so do anorexics and that’s just not the same thing. And I think that’s why I really appreciated Fulda’s story. She did something that most people would assume you could only do through surgery but she did it the natural way anyway.

Highly recommended, even if you’re not trying to lose weight (because it is funny and smart and you won’t want to put it down).

As I was working out this evening, my iPod played Silence, one of my favorite Sarah McLachlan songs and one that I haven’t listened to in a while. I’ve listened to that song countless times but I don’t remember really listening to the lyrics or thinking much about them:

Heaven holds a sense of wonder
and I wanted to believe
that I’d get caught up
when the rage in me subsides

One of the reasons why I adore Sarah and her music is that she always seems to come up with lyrics that just summarize so much of my life experiences - my truths. And even when I’ve listened to a song a million times, I can come back to it and find something new like I did tonight.

I’ve been having a weird past few weeks - I seem to bounce back and forth between extreme optimism and extreme pessimism. I’m getting close to turning 30, which is making me wonder about what I have and haven’t accomplished in the past decade and what I really want out of my life in the next decade. As tough as the last decade has been, it has been the best ten years of my life. I may think I didn’t get enough done but I have to remind myself of where I started.

Shortly after I turned ten, my family ended up in the US and my parents lost everything they had ever worked for in Kuwait. Nothing makes a decade suckier than going through puberty, all while trying to forge a new life in a new country, learning a new language, and oh yeah your parents are now suddenly broke. SURPRISE! I can’t think of a situation more suited for building rage in a kid. My teens may have been the worst years of my life but things started turning around in my twenties - I became a citizen, voted for the first time, graduated from college without any student loan debt, went to grad school and met some amazing people, graduated from grad school with a hefty student loan debt :), moved to the Bay Area, got the sort of job that I didn’t think somebody of my background could ever attain, and lost a bunch of weight. Not bad for the girl who had to figure out on her own how and when to study for the SATs and how to go to college for free.

I don’t have everything figured out yet and the rage in me hasn’t totally subsided but I do think I’m getting there. Once I stop beating myself up about what I haven’t accomplished before my 30th birthday, I’ve got a pretty good feeling about this new decade. I think (well at least hope) that this will be the decade where I finally reach my goal weight. And I’m hoping this will be the decade where I finally meet some new people out here (it seems hard to believe that I’ve lived here for three and a half years and am still about as lonely as when I first got here) and manage to find that guy whom I’m going to share the rest of my life with. Mulder & Scully are great for cuddles but they’re not so great for intelligent conversations. I want the next ten years to be the time when I grow my career, feel fulfilled in my work, and secure my financial future - pay off my student loans and buy a cute little condo. And I want to get more serious about all the creative things that make me me - my art, photography, and writing.

So far, 2010 has been promising. I think I might finally be back on track for losing weight (as opposed to maintaining my weight or gaining and losing the same five pounds). I’m back to running 2 - 3 times a week for 3 to 4.5 miles and my leg doesn’t seem to be bothering me as much. And I’m really really looking forward to Maui in March. :)

I’m a bit astonished that it has been over two months since my last post but it really should be no surprise to me since I’ve had little to say about my leg injury or my weight loss (and that’s really all that’s consumed my personal life the past few months). It feels like I haven’t had much progress in either area. I’ve been feeling very much like a little hamster on a hamster wheel but sometimes that in itself is progress.

I finished physical therapy earlier this month. Even though I was still having the same symptoms in my left leg (and sometimes in my right leg), my PT didn’t think there was much more that they could do for me in terms of physical therapy. He felt that the best thing to do right now would be to continue doing my stretches and PT exercises at home. He gave me the OK to get back to doing whatever I want exercise-wise and to start running again. He also watched me run and felt some adjustments to my gait might help with the pain. I have a tendency to push off and land on my toes and ideally I should be landing on my heel.

I’ve been running the past couple of weeks, trying hard to adjust my gait and to stick to soft surfaces. I also picked up some orthotics that a a podiatrist recommended. For now, I’m going to try to limit my running to 2 - 3 times a week and only for about an hour. I still have a sharp tight pain in my left thigh but it seems worst during the first mile/mile and a half of a run. After that, the pain subsides and it just feels a bit sore. I’ve been making sure to stretch my legs pretty well before and after runs, along with icing my leg after a run and massaging my leg with a foam roller everyday. Doing all of those things has certainly helped with the pain when I’m not exercising but it does not seem to be preventing the pain when I’m running. My gut feeling right now is that my back wasn’t the cause of my symptoms but that a tight IT band might be the real culprit. I haven’t had any back pain since I started running and it seems like the only time I had severe back pain was usually after some sort of medical appointment (usually after something a doctor, chiro, or PT would make me do).

It has been really amazing to get back to running. Nothing else makes me feel so physically empowered and capable. I’ve really missed that feeling most of this past year.

Despite my excitement about running, I can’t help but feel angry and disappointed that I’ve been so unsuccessful in getting my leg treated. I feel like much of the past year has been wasted. Wasted seeing specialists. Wasted getting my hopes up. Wasted being frustrated. Wasted trying this or that treatment. Wasted going to physical therapy. Wasted not getting a real solution. Wasted not losing weight.

Given how much time and effort I’ve spent in 2009 trying to get this issue resolved, I’ve decided to give up on it for now and learn to live with it. Trying to get this injury treated really slowed down my weight loss - I didn’t have as much time to exercise or prepare food, was limited in the exercises that I could do, and felt pretty bad about the whole situation. I really could use a break right now from medical treatments (especially unsuccessful ones) and I think not having to worry about all of that will help kickstart my weight loss once again. I also feel that I haven’t had very much luck getting my injury treated simply because I’m fat and don’t look athletic. I think most doctors and specialists I saw didn’t take me very seriously and didn’t understand how important it was for me to get back to running as soon as possible. I’m hoping that my leg will heal itself eventually but that if it doesn’t that I will be thin enough at some point to get proper medical attention.

When it comes to my weight, I’ve been maintaining it at around the 68 - 70 pound mark. I was really hoping that I’d get to 80 pounds by the end of the year but that just didn’t happen. As I feared when I joined Weight Watchers a few months ago, I really couldn’t stick to it. Their program (which is a diet, regardless of what they say) was just too restrictive. I know people can lose weight doing Weight Watchers and I really envy those people who can stick to a plan and steadily lose a pound or two every week. But for whatever reason, I’m not wired that way and I seem to take a lot of missteps before I eventually move forward.

I’m now back to writing down my food in a paper food journal, monitoring my appetite, and trying to only eat when I’m truly hungry. I was really hoping that I could get to 90 or 100 pounds by the time I turned 30. Right now, I think I’d be happy with 75 or 80.

And that’s why losing weight (naturally) is so fucking incredibly hard. It takes a lot of time and energy. It takes months of losing and gaining the same five pounds. It takes a lot of readjusting and shifting. What worked for me three years ago, may not work for me today. I wish it was faster, mostly because I’m tired of having worked so hard and come so far and yet not being there yet. Even though I do sometimes feel like a little hamster on her little hamster wheel, I have to remind me myself that just being on the wheel is better than not being on it. I’ve managed to maintain my weight loss for three years. I exercise several times a week. I eat mostly healthy food. I’ve managed to lose and maintain an amount of weight that most people can’t lose or maintain. I’m down 4 - 5 sizes. I’m the lowest weight I’ve ever been as an adult.

And for now that’s something to be proud of.

As of this morning, I’ve lost seventy pounds (70.4 to be exact) since January 2007. I’m excited and proud of myself but I have to say that I’m more relieved than anything else. It sounds kind of crazy but I just realized that it has taken me nine months to get from 60 to 70 pounds. NINE MONTHS! During the past few months I’ve been stuck at the 66 - 64 pound range and it just felt like nothing I did was making it budge. For a long time, it felt like I was never going to get to 70 pounds. This year, I’ve been the thinnest I’ve ever been as an adult so I was starting to wonder if maybe my body just wasn’t capable of losing any more weight.

During the past couple of years, I’ve been mostly losing weight by following the idea of intuitive eating and exercising pretty intensely. I’ve focused on eating fairly healthy food, drinking plenty of water, writing down what I ate, and only eating when I was truly hungry. It is a slow approach but it did work for me, especially coupled with the heavy exercise. But without the exercise, I seemed to only be maintaining my weight.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I should try something more structured than what I’ve been doing. I thought about using one of the free food diary sites and counting calories but for whatever reason, that didn’t seem too appealing to me. I decided I wanted to try the online version of Weight Watchers. I did Weight Watchers when I was 22 and sort of developed a chip on my shoulder about their program. At the time, I only managed to lose about 15 pounds and then ended up gaining it all back and then some. I always found those meetings really pointless and I hated being weighed in front of other people (what am I cattle?). And regardless of what they say, it is a diet. But they do emphasize healthy eating and it isn’t too different from what I was eating before, just the portions are a lot smaller. Even though they encourage exercise, they don’t seem to count it into your plan. And that’s been really helpful for me since even though I still workout 5 - 6 times a week, it just isn’t at the same level as when I was running every other day.

I don’t know that I’m at a point where I can unequivocally recommend Weight Watchers. I’m sort of at a different level than most people starting it. I will say that you can lose weight doing it. The main issue is can you stick with it and keep it off - and I think you can only do that if you figure out why you had a weight problem in the first place. It is much deeper than eating the right food and getting some exercise.

But in any case, it has been really exciting to finally break my plateau and to think about hitting my next major milestones - 75 and 80 pounds. It’s also exciting to know that I’m closer than I’ve ever been to my goal weight and that I’m halfway there. I’m hoping I can lose another ten pounds by the end of the year and hopefully get to the 90 pound milestone by the time I turn 30 in March.

Yesterday afternoon, I went and saw a doctor at PAMF to get a second opinion on my back/leg injury and a referral for a PAMF physiatrist (since at PAMF you have to see a GP first before you see a specialist). I have no idea if the physiatrists at PAMF are any good but I’ve had pretty good luck with specialists there so I figured it was worth a shot.

The GP whom I saw felt that all the necessary steps have been taken in my treatment so far. Given my age, she said that conservative treatments (e.g. rest, Advil, chiro, PT) would be employed first. She also said that back injuries do tend to take a long time to heal so my current progress isn’t atypical. She did confirm that the results of my MRI are not bad, there is no serious damage to my spinal cord/nerves so it seems pretty mild. She felt that looking at the MRI report she couldn’t see me needing surgery (yay). She did prescribe an anti-inflammatory medication (from my understanding, something similar to Advil but stronger) in hopes that taking that on a daily basis for a month will reduce the inflammation in my sciatic nerves (and so reduce the pain/tingling in my legs). I’m hoping that the new medication plus another month of PT will resolve the issue. She also did give me a referral for a physiatrist and I scheduled an appointment for early October.

So after that experience, I have some renewed optimism (and renewed faith in my primary GP’s course of treatment, although not so much in her referrals :)) about the problem, although I can’t say that I have any more patience (but I’m really trying to be).

Earlier this month, I saw a physiatrist about my back/leg injury. I can’t say that I was too impressed with him since I found him dismissive and rushed. And he told me to exercise - somehow the “I noticed this sharp pain in my leg when I was RUNNING” and “I try to workout everyday” didn’t register with him. He did order an MRI of my lumbar spine, which revealed that three of my discs are mildly herniated. My L5 disc (the one at the bottom of my spine and the one most people injure) is off to the left side, which is pinching my sciatic nerve (hence the sharp pain in my left leg when I run and the constant tingling in my left leg). I’m not sure if the other two discs are of much concern (perhaps I would know had he spent longer than 5 minutes reviewing my MRI with me) and I’m not sure that they’re causing any of the off and on throbbing pain in my lower back (apparently you could have bulging discs in your back and not even have any symptoms). He prescribed physical therapy for a couple of months and did manage to refer me to an awesome physical therapy place.

The physical therapy is pretty time consuming, which has been stressful. The PT appointments range from 1.5 to 2.5 hours, twice a week (and the only reason they’ve been 1.5 hours is because I’ve had to rush them because I needed to get back to work!). I also have to do some stretching and strengthening exercises at home and those tend to take me about one to two hours to do. The PT place is really nice, down the street from my office, and seems to have a very sports medicine approach (which I especially appreciate). They’re a million times better than the first PT I had tried way back in June. They did a very thorough evaluation of my condition during the first visit and seem to always work with how I’m feeling that day. There have been a few times during the past couple of weeks where things we did in PT flared up my back or leg and when that’s happened, we’ve adjusted my exercises. When that happened with the last PT, she seemed to always blame me instead of actually taking responsibility for her treatment (one time she was convinced that I had been crossing my legs at work hence causing more tingling in my leg, which is funny because I NEVER cross my legs). Given the time commitment, I’m really hoping that the PT will work but it is hard to say since I’ve yet to see any improvement.

Aside from the amount of time I’m spending on physical therapy, I’ve also been pretty frustrated with the limitations that have been put on my exercise. I can’t run. I can’t ride a bike. I can’t do spinning or kick boxing. I can’t go on a strenuous hike (I can go hiking as long as the trail is pretty flat, which sort of defeats the purpose of hiking). I can do the elliptical, stairmaster (although I can’t seem to do it for longer than 15 minutes since the sharp pain in my leg starts after about 20 minutes), stationary bike, swim, and walk (I’m not so sure about the walking since it does seem to cause the same type of pain as running). I haven’t been doing any resistance training since I don’t really have the time to do it anymore and it also seems to flare up the pain in my back.

As I’ve mentioned before, this injury has been really hard on me. I can’t do the activities that I really enjoy and I can’t seem to lose any more weight without those strenuous activities. I came to the conclusion last week that I may just have to focus on maintaining the 65 pounds I’ve lost so far and healing my back/leg. Even though I know maintaining my weight loss during an injury is a pretty big deal, it is still pretty hard for me to accept that that may be as much as I can do right now.

I’ve been spending some time this summer (and by time I mean a few nights in June and a total hiatus in July) writing some reflective essays. I’ve always dreamed of writing a book and I’m hoping to eventually compile the essays into a manuscript. I have no idea if my work is good enough to be published (or if anyone would be remotely interested in reading my writing- given the popularity of this blog, I’m not holding my breath for a bestseller), but I think I would be satisfied with even just making something and getting it made into a book using a site like Lulu or Blurb. As I was writing tonight, I was thinking that it may be fun (and productive) to share some of my work and get some constructive criticism on it. Of course I’m not ready to share any of it with the entire world. When the right time comes, I may post a few snippets here as private posts. If you think you might be interested in reading these snippets, feel free to leave a comment on this post and I’ll eventually email you a password.

As much as I like the chiropractor I’ve been seeing the past few weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that chiropractic care does not seem to be healing my leg injury. The chiropractor’s adjustments have been very helpful in temporarily healing my back, although it seems that any wrong move brings back the back pain (e.g. a resistance training workout on Sunday meant that my lower back was throbbing most of yesterday). This has led me to believe that there is some underlying issue that is not being solved. I have no idea if my back issues are related to my leg but it does appear to be a possibility.

I have an appointment tomorrow morning with a physiatrist. I’ve never heard of the field so I really have no idea what to expect - this is just the next step that my doctor outlined (if seeing a chiropractor didn’t help).

So this new specialist will be medical person #4 that I’ve seen to try to solve this problem (first my doctor, then the physical therapist, then the chiropractor). I’m really really really hoping that this guy knows what he’s doing, takes my issue seriously, accurately diagnoses it, comes up with a concrete treatment plan, gives me a solid time line for recovery, and finally heals my pesky leg! But given my track record so far, I’m trying not to get my hopes up. If he ends up being a jerk (an unfortunate reality in my experiences with doctors - likely due to my weight and their preconceived notions about what that means about me) or doesn’t figure out how to heal my injury, I’m giving up on my doctor’s plan for healing this injury. I’m now thinking my next steps after this guy will be to see somebody in sports medicine at PAMF or Stanford. I’ll probably try PAMF first since my old doctor used to be there and I’ve seen specialists there (and I really have no idea how easy/hard it would be to see somebody at Stanford and if I’d need a referral).

In so many ways, this experience has led me to objectively question my doctor’s judgment, whom I only started seeing last fall (after an awful experience with the doctor I had for a couple of years at PAMF). I really don’t want to switch doctors yet again but I’m having a hard time justifying seeing a doctor who is out of network (meaning I pay some out of pocket costs and have to file all the messy insurance paperwork myself) when she can’t help me quickly and efficiently heal an injury. It sucks because I really liked her - she seemed very thorough, personable, smart, patient, caring, and encouraging. But none of that really matters right now - I just want somebody to help me get back to my normal active self. Aside from the physical pain, this has been an emotionally devastating experience for me. I really miss hiking and running. And I miss feeling so great about myself. :( I wish I can find a specialist who really gets how important this is for me.