The Desert of My Dreams

One of the things I’ve been doing to commemorate losing 80 pounds is collecting 80 pounds of food to donate to Second Harvest. For the past few weeks, every time I’d go to the grocery store, I’d also pick up a bunch of stuff from Second Harvest’s most needed foods list and their child-friendly foods list. This exercise has been really fun but also introspective in a number of ways. As I was shopping for the child-friendly food, it took me back to being a 10 year old kid and those first few years when my family first arrived in the US. Things were pretty tough and even though I knew that – I think a part of me had forgotten a little bit what that was like. Buying that food started feeling a lot more personal – not just this distant abstract act of giving. It was like coming full circle. Knowing that I now can help somebody else is pretty awesome and amazing.

As the food started to accumulate in my spare bedroom, it really started to hit me just how much weight I’ve lost. I’ve always wished there was a physical way that I could see the weight coming off of me. Yes, I can look through old photos or know that my clothes are getting bigger but it was all just so abstract. I’ve mentioned in the past that I wished I could just wake up every morning and see blobs of fat detached from my body. In some ways, this food kind of represents that. It is heavy, physical, and even kind of represents a body. It even got more crazy when I bagged it all. I guess it just makes me realize just how far I’ve come and that I’ve accomplished something pretty incredible.

I’m planning on donating it tomorrow morning – it will be interesting to see how the physical task of loading and unloading that amount of food will make me feel.

I’ve got a perfect body, but sometimes I forget
I’ve got a perfect body, ’cause my eyelashes catch my sweat
- Regina Spektor – Folding Chair

I haven’t hit the 80 pound mark yet but I’m getting very close. I won’t say how close I am because I don’t really want to jinx myself. I’ve even been debating this post the last week or so because I’m worried that by blogging about it, it won’t actually happen. Silly, I know.

In any case, I’m really hoping that I get to 80 pounds sometime this week or next. It feels like I’m inching towards the 80 pound mark but I’m feeling more excited than frustrated (sort of like that feeling when you’re looking forward to something exciting like a vacation). Part of the excitement is that I’ve broken through to a set of numbers on the scale that I haven’t seen in a long time. If my memory is correct, I’m now back to what I weighed as a freshman in high school. It is exciting to think about what that really means for me as an adult, not a 15 year old kid. Sometimes I look back to when I had reached my highest weight at 25 or 26 years old. Even though I wanted more than anything to be normal, I don’t know that I really believed that it was possible to get to where I am right now. I’m proud of what I’ve done but I do get frustrated thinking about how much more I’ve got to go. I *hate* that even with all the weight I’ve lost I’m still viewed as just another fat person. I keep thinking that I’ve lost all this weight and I’m still in the same category. I just wish that it was apparent to other people that I’m now this really healthy active person.

I have to remind myself that when I was 26, I probably would have given anything to be where I am right now. In fact, I think I used to get annoyed by people who are at my current weight and whined about being fat. The 26 year old version of me would have smacked the 30 year old version of me and told her to shut up and stop whining. And it is funny to think that I was miserable in this body at 15 and here I am fifteen years later and just so thrilled to have this same body back. I can look at myself in the mirror and be amazed by little things (like how my neck and shoulders look) and just feel so blessed that I somehow made it happen.

Perspective is a funny thing (my HCI education is compelling me to make a reference of looking at things through a different “lens”).

But despite all the mixed feelings that this number is bringing up, I really am looking forward to getting to 80 – mostly because I really want to do the following things:

• Donate 80 pounds of food. I’ve been thinking for a while that I wanted to do this once I reached my goal weight but since my goal weight is still far off, I want to do it now! I actually want to try to do this for every ten pounds that I lose until my goal weight. So once I get to 90 pounds, I want to donate another 90 pounds of food. Now some of you may remind me that food pantries would be better off with me making a donation rather than buying the food myself from the grocery store but WHAT FUN WOULD THAT BE?!? There is an emotional component here – I need to see what 80 pounds of food looks like. I need to collect it, weigh it, and carry it in.
• Get a 90 minute hot stone massage. I’ve never had a hot stone massage before so I really want to try it.
• Buy an 8th water bottle. I’ve been collecting SIGG water bottles to represent my weight loss – one for each 10 pounds. Since I drink a lot of water, it is a fun little collection.
• Buy new running shoes. My running shoes could probably go for another month or two (I bought my current pair right before my injury so I don’t have a good sense of how much mileage I’ve put on them) but I figured that would be a nice (and pretty useful) treat.

Remember my post in February about how I was feeling like I was progressing again and feeling really positive about my weight loss?

Yeah, umm, that was nice for like a few weeks. If only losing weight was always so consistent and great all the time.

Most of February was actually a real good month for me – I managed to get to 76 pounds and it was starting to feel a bit effortless. And when you’re consistently losing weight, it really does keep you going emotionally and mentally. I was really getting excited about getting to 80 pounds. I was only four pounds away – that’s like two to four weeks. It was awesome to feel like I was actually going to reach the next milestone.

But then I went to Dallas for a week. And ran 12 two-hour in-home interviews in 5 days.

For the non user researchers in the room, that means a lot of time spent in the car driving from one session to the next and trying to squeeze in meals between sessions. And as much as I *love* in-home interviews, they’re more complicated than other methods – you’re carrying a lot of equipment, you’ve got a ton of paperwork with you (and you’ve got to keep that organized), you’re visiting people you’ve never met before and in their homes, and did I mention that you’re driving around a city you don’t know and trying to get to people’s homes on time? And you’re hoping none of them turn out to be ax murders?!? And you’re taking pictures, running a video camera, taking notes, following your interview script, and making sure you probe and follow-up as necessary and get all the data you’re there to get. And oh yeah, when you get back to your hotel at 9 PM, you should check your email because there might be something super important you need to respond to.

These studies really can get stressful and I’m usually mentally and physically exhausted by the end of the day (but it is still my favorite method). I usually don’t do that well weight-wise when I run these even when I’m in the Bay Area.

I really wanted to minimize the damage that week – my goal was to maintain my weight. I even took my scale with me, hoping that weighing myself everyday would keep me on track. Unfortunately that didn’t work. What keeps me on track at home isn’t having my scale available to me everyday – it is having a routine, a kitchen, and time to prepare and plan my meals. I was actually doing pretty well the first couple of days – I went to a grocery store and got some healthy snacks and I made fairly good choices when I was eating out. But then mid-week, it all went downhill when I started running three sessions per day – that meant leaving the hotel around 9 or 10 AM and coming back around 9 PM. Even though I managed to exercise everyday that week, it didn’t make a difference. I was super stressed, tired, and didn’t have as much time as usual to think about what I was going to eat. I ended up gaining four pounds. Back to 72 pounds.

I was back home for a week and managed to lose two pounds. Back to 74 pounds.

Then I went to Maui for ten days and I went into vacation mode. It wasn’t like it was an all out binge – I did make lots of good choices but I also wanted to eat ice cream everyday. And despite being super super active, I ended up gaining 2 pounds. Back to 72 pounds.

Four extra pounds isn’t really that hard to lose but for whatever reason, I’ve been struggling with it ever since I got back from Maui. I keep going back and forth – lose a pound, gain a half pound, etc. It is really really frustrating. And I get even more disappointed when I think that I got to 70 pounds in October – so my net weight loss in the past six months is just two pounds.

UGGGGHHHHH.

And I have more travel next week since I get to go to CHI this year. I’m really excited about CHI since its my favorite conference – I get to catch up with people I went to school with, see some cool demos, and get inspired by some amazing research. As much as I love CHI, I’m worried that I’m not going to be able to maintain my weight next week. I do feel like I’m a bit more prepared right now than I was for Dallas or Maui so I’m trying to stay optimistic. I’m not taking my scale with me but I’m planning on taking my cereal, almonds, raisins, and Cliff Bars with me. At least that way, my breakfast will be almost identical to what I eat at home. My breakfast protein source is usually peanut butter not almonds but apparently the TSA thinks that’s a gel or paste or something. And even though I prefer fresh fruits to raisins or Cliff Bars, I can’t really pack the produce aisle with me.

I’m also hoping my new visual food journal project will help keep me on track. I got the idea after reading this article in the New York Times about the food photography trend. I’m going to commit to posting a picture of everything I eat (not counting water or diet soda) for the next year. My hypothesis is that if I have to post a photo of everything I eat in a public forum, I’m more likely to eat healthier. I think the act of taking a picture will probably cause me to pause a bit and think about what I’m eating. And then there’s the whole social judgment thing.

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.

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.