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.

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.