I have chosen to customize my Eating Plan. I am looking at a low Glycemic Index foundation of foods, because I was recently diagnosed with Metabolic Syndrome, or Insulin Resistance. This is a sort of pre-diabetic state that you can get into rather easily as you age, particularly if you put on half of another human being's body weight in five years or less. I am taking a diabetic medication called Metformin (Glucophage) to help jump start my body's insulin usage, but the medication will be pretty much useless if I don't combine it with increased exercise and decreased food intake, or at least decreased BAD FOODS intake.
The lower GI foods are compatible with helping to give my body what it needs to regulate the insulin. I am also exploring Detox options. I know that my body is toxic now, and with the thoughts of my father's recent, unexpected death from colon cancer running through my head, I am fiercely determined to turn my unhealthy eating habits around. It is not about the weight loss truly, though I will not be able to measure my success happily unless the weight falls off. (Blood work results will be my concrete measuring stick, but who cares what your cholesterol is, really? what you want to know, what I want to see, are those thin thighs and flat abs of my not so long ago forties. Seriously, I do care what my cholesterol and triglycerides show. They are not good now. I will post them in a later post. When I have summoned up the courage.)
I can eat a wide and brilliantly hued array of fresh veggies. It excites me to think of my options, and depresses me when I remember that I can't cook. I can cook, though, because I can read and I have a library card to check out cookbooks. It is more that I don't want to cook. And that is just one more life change I have to make.
My goals are to stop all Whites: white flour, white pastas, white sugars.
I was in a Fitness Challenge before, in Charleston, SC. (I was, I think, the oldest there and I won the Challenge!) Our trainer was Wendy, a woman in her forties with six pack abs that had men AND women in our group drooling. She loved salty thick pretzels from her native Pennsylvania. She gave them up, along with all Whites. She said the facial puffiness disappeared nearly immediately, and her body became lean and svelte. I have never been svelte. But I have been lean and I liked it. I'm heading back there now.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Three Point Five Down!
I weigh exactly three point five pounds less than I did at last week's weigh-in. Yahoo but not good enough to suit my wild craving to be Thinner Me NOW! Still, it is above the recommended average of two pounds per week, so I suppose I should be a teeny bit proud of myself. And, truly, I am. I am learning how to eat differently than I have my whole life and that is the true success.
As a Formerly Thin Person, I have never had to worry about what I ate, or how much. I grew up with a sweet tooth that knew no end of cravings, and a body metabolism that was remarkably forgiving of my late night Sugar Binges. I remember being a skinny nursing school student at Georgia Baptist in Atlanta. My equally skinny (but with more generous breasts and more voluptuous curves) roommate Lisa S. and I used to go to the snack machine in our nursing school lobby nearly every night. We had discovered that if we pushed Number Nine early in the month, just after the machine vendor filled it to the brim, we could put in a couple of quarters and the entire row of Chocolate Iced Honey Buns would drop goodies for us in the narrow silver bin below. We knew, on a cellular level, that what we were doing was technically stealing, but we rationalized that it wasn't our fault the machine was giving up her whole row of goodies for the price of one bun, and we were pathetically, chronically broke. We were also, for the record, hungry about ninety percent of the time. I gorged on those Honey Buns so much that now, nearly 30 years later, I cannot stomach the thought of one, much less an actual bite of one.
I started eating fast food with a vengeance the minute I left my mother - and her incredible home cooking - behind for college. No one could match my mother's homemade biscuits, soft and warm with hot butter and sticky syrup dripping down their sides. Her fried chicken was the best in the South, as far as I was concerned, and her mashed potatoes sent me into throes of ecstasy. I could eat plate after plate and never gain an ounce. I thought I was into the Holy Grail of Eating. I could eat it all and never show the effects. Because Mama's food was so irreplaceable, and because I never managed to learn to cook at all, much less like her, I decided that fast food was my answer. Cheap, easy, and quick. I never thought about the future, that some day I would pay for all those McDonald hamburgers, fries and shakes...or the greasy-delicious Kentucky Fried Chicken and biscuits.
I sit here today in wonder at my total lack of concern for how my body would look, feel and be once that Holy Grail Metabolism slipped out of my grasp. God help me. Lol. God help us all when people have to look at me in a bathing suit! LOl
For today, my goal is to drink water. Lots of water. And to journal my thoughts in prayer form. Help me, Lord, to love just a tiny part of myself again, and help me to lose more pounds this week.
As a Formerly Thin Person, I have never had to worry about what I ate, or how much. I grew up with a sweet tooth that knew no end of cravings, and a body metabolism that was remarkably forgiving of my late night Sugar Binges. I remember being a skinny nursing school student at Georgia Baptist in Atlanta. My equally skinny (but with more generous breasts and more voluptuous curves) roommate Lisa S. and I used to go to the snack machine in our nursing school lobby nearly every night. We had discovered that if we pushed Number Nine early in the month, just after the machine vendor filled it to the brim, we could put in a couple of quarters and the entire row of Chocolate Iced Honey Buns would drop goodies for us in the narrow silver bin below. We knew, on a cellular level, that what we were doing was technically stealing, but we rationalized that it wasn't our fault the machine was giving up her whole row of goodies for the price of one bun, and we were pathetically, chronically broke. We were also, for the record, hungry about ninety percent of the time. I gorged on those Honey Buns so much that now, nearly 30 years later, I cannot stomach the thought of one, much less an actual bite of one.
I started eating fast food with a vengeance the minute I left my mother - and her incredible home cooking - behind for college. No one could match my mother's homemade biscuits, soft and warm with hot butter and sticky syrup dripping down their sides. Her fried chicken was the best in the South, as far as I was concerned, and her mashed potatoes sent me into throes of ecstasy. I could eat plate after plate and never gain an ounce. I thought I was into the Holy Grail of Eating. I could eat it all and never show the effects. Because Mama's food was so irreplaceable, and because I never managed to learn to cook at all, much less like her, I decided that fast food was my answer. Cheap, easy, and quick. I never thought about the future, that some day I would pay for all those McDonald hamburgers, fries and shakes...or the greasy-delicious Kentucky Fried Chicken and biscuits.
I sit here today in wonder at my total lack of concern for how my body would look, feel and be once that Holy Grail Metabolism slipped out of my grasp. God help me. Lol. God help us all when people have to look at me in a bathing suit! LOl
For today, my goal is to drink water. Lots of water. And to journal my thoughts in prayer form. Help me, Lord, to love just a tiny part of myself again, and help me to lose more pounds this week.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Malnourished Mamacita!
Arrrgh! I am hungry. I am hungry enough to forget the reasons I need to lose these stupid, ridiculous, fat-fat-fat fifty pounds. Isn't it ironic that, fat as I am, I'm still starving?! Starving for more, always, always more. More chocolate. More sleep. More time to write, to read the forty books stacked beside my bed, in the back seat of my car, under my pillow. (Yes. You read right. I have a dog-eared copy of Gift From The Sea under my pillow. Just in case I wake up needing some peace and calm.)
Today I was a very bad Fat Girl. I ate On The Run. That would be the Mickey D's salty ham biscuit. With Coke. I then proceeded to devour a hot, greasy sausage on thick white bread at the library snack bar. To make matters increasingly worse, while I waited in the Car Rider line for Caroline, I sneaked in a Reese's Easter egg.
Now I am bloated and sick, and very irritated with myself. But, looking on the perennial bright side, I am going to keep going, not give up on myself, and cook a healthy delicious dinner tonight. My real Challenge doesn't start till May 1. Now you see why. I'm a Slow Learner. I am Food Dyslexic. I need to give myself plenty of time to get used to the idea of No More Junk Food.
Today I was a very bad Fat Girl. I ate On The Run. That would be the Mickey D's salty ham biscuit. With Coke. I then proceeded to devour a hot, greasy sausage on thick white bread at the library snack bar. To make matters increasingly worse, while I waited in the Car Rider line for Caroline, I sneaked in a Reese's Easter egg.
Now I am bloated and sick, and very irritated with myself. But, looking on the perennial bright side, I am going to keep going, not give up on myself, and cook a healthy delicious dinner tonight. My real Challenge doesn't start till May 1. Now you see why. I'm a Slow Learner. I am Food Dyslexic. I need to give myself plenty of time to get used to the idea of No More Junk Food.
Five Star Alarm!
Last night I asked my daughter to take a "Before" picture of me in a two piece bathing suit. The results were nothing less than terrifying! I am hoping to be disciplined enough to take the Body-for-Life Challenge beginning May 1 2011. This is a twelve week Challenge, incorporating workouts, healthy eating and mindfulness in the pursuit, not of the Almighty Weight Loss, but of a healthy, strong, lean body. Wish me luck and keep me accountable, y'all!
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Baby Steppin' :)
Last night I walked for 45 minutes, one minute over my previous night's walk of 44 minutes. Woo Hoo and all that jazz. Today I walked two miles in 54 minutes. I'm not the fastest kid on the block, but it was a delightful time with Caroline, both of our noses poked in books for part of the walk, and our voices running together as we talked for the rest of the walk. I plan to walk another 30-45 minutes after church tonight.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
I'm not heavy....am I?
Rude wake-up call yesterday....I have finally eaten my way past a line I never thought I would ever cross. I have waddled straight over from Overweight into the squishy neverland of Obesity. This, from a girl who once was hospitalized for Anorexia Nervosa...a woman who survived each day on one Snicker's bar and one orange, both carefully sectioned off to eat at elaborately scheduled times. Unbelievable, and yet true. I stood on the flat ultra-modern scale - it does everything but pat you on the back and tell you everything's gonna be all right - and watched my entire ten cents worth of self-esteem shrivel up before my very eyes. The scale informed me that 96.5 pounds of my body comes from muscle. Not bad, I'm thinking, and then the scale haughtily reminded me that that left about 44.5 pounds of FAT. My cholesterol and triglycerides have sky-rocketed. I am officially an Obese Woman. Go figure.
I think it would be much easier to accept if I had always struggled with my weight but that isn't the case. I was too skinny as a kid, always teased about that, and even into my college and early married years, I was thin as a rail. Too thin, thus my trek into the world of Anorexia. I remember standing on another scale, this one in a private hospital for people like me, with rolls of quarters stuck into the pockets of my robe. Daily Weigh-In: it worked until a savvy counselor caught me and threatened to send me packing to the state facility for people also like me, but people not fortunate enough to have private insurance to cover the tab. "They'll stick an I.V. in you and feed you that way," she warned ominously. I shuddered. Force fed? I couldn't fathom that horror.
Now, two decades later, I am a Fat Person. This both repulses and fascinates me. How did I get to this point? At what time did my once concave belly morph into the bulging belly that now masquerades as a full-term pregnancy belly? I think of last summer, when a possibly well-meaning (but equally possibly catty and mean) person asked if I had done in vitro? "I mean, you are obviously too old to have conceived on your own...and you are obviously quite pregnant...so how did you do it?" I seriously considered pushing her skinny little catty self in the deep end, but I maintained my composure. I smiled beatifically and patted my round little Buddha bump. "Oh, well, I am just one of those fertile Myrtle's, I guess," I murmured before walking casually over to my towel and gingerly easing down onto the orange and tan monkey scampering over my beach chair.
I don't understand how, or why, I got to this point but I realize suddenly I don't need to know either of those things. What I need to know right now is simply this: how to manuever my way back out of FatVille and back into a place I once called Normal: FitVille.
I think it would be much easier to accept if I had always struggled with my weight but that isn't the case. I was too skinny as a kid, always teased about that, and even into my college and early married years, I was thin as a rail. Too thin, thus my trek into the world of Anorexia. I remember standing on another scale, this one in a private hospital for people like me, with rolls of quarters stuck into the pockets of my robe. Daily Weigh-In: it worked until a savvy counselor caught me and threatened to send me packing to the state facility for people also like me, but people not fortunate enough to have private insurance to cover the tab. "They'll stick an I.V. in you and feed you that way," she warned ominously. I shuddered. Force fed? I couldn't fathom that horror.
Now, two decades later, I am a Fat Person. This both repulses and fascinates me. How did I get to this point? At what time did my once concave belly morph into the bulging belly that now masquerades as a full-term pregnancy belly? I think of last summer, when a possibly well-meaning (but equally possibly catty and mean) person asked if I had done in vitro? "I mean, you are obviously too old to have conceived on your own...and you are obviously quite pregnant...so how did you do it?" I seriously considered pushing her skinny little catty self in the deep end, but I maintained my composure. I smiled beatifically and patted my round little Buddha bump. "Oh, well, I am just one of those fertile Myrtle's, I guess," I murmured before walking casually over to my towel and gingerly easing down onto the orange and tan monkey scampering over my beach chair.
I don't understand how, or why, I got to this point but I realize suddenly I don't need to know either of those things. What I need to know right now is simply this: how to manuever my way back out of FatVille and back into a place I once called Normal: FitVille.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Take a deep breath...this is it...I am ready!
Hi all! I turned 50 in June and I am finally ready to get back on track fitness-wise. I lost my father to colon cancer in February of this year, and I know that the way he ate and the way I eat are clear contributors to that particular disease. I want to look good for myself, for my boyfriend and for my daughters, but more importantly, I want to be around for my girls and their children. I have already survived a brain tumor, woooo hooooo, and I don't intend to let unhealthy eating habits derail my plans for a long, happy life with my family and the people that I love.
Okay, boring monologue aside, here's my Game Plan. I worked it out with God the other day when I was busy praying over the sad state of my tummy. Tired of being asked if I am on fertility drugs (since I am obviously long past child bearing years but apparently quite pregnant looking with my little round tummy), I sat down with my journal, a glass of iced tea and my favorite purple pen. I prayed for wisdom, and three words leapt out at me:
Walk. Nourish. Thrive.
Thank You, God! Simple, strong, sure. I need to walk every day, get in my exercise for my body and my mind, use that time to work out the kinks of my everyday little world. I need to nourish my body by putting in healthy, whole foods that will give me strength mentally and physically. And, last but actually most important in my book, I need to thrive in every area of my life by pursuing a strong spiritual connection with my God, my daughters, my boyfriend and my entire family and friends network. I can do this by having a daily quiet time, time to center and draw on the spiritual resources I already have, and time to shore myself up by finding new resources to supplement the ones I currently enjoy. I need to be open and honest in my relationships, and to spend quality, real time with my girls. I need to be with my dogs. I need to pray often, read lots, and rest more.
I weigh....well, that's between God and me! but suffice it to say that my weight loss goal is 50 pounds.
I'd like to lose it by my sister's Christmas party. That would be three months. 12 weeks. That is 4 plus pounds a week. Possibly both unreasonable and unhealthy. I could compromise. How about 2-3 pounds a week. That would be around 24 pounds lost by Christmas, which would put me at about 125. There. If you are paying attention, you have figured out how much I weigh!
Okay, boring monologue aside, here's my Game Plan. I worked it out with God the other day when I was busy praying over the sad state of my tummy. Tired of being asked if I am on fertility drugs (since I am obviously long past child bearing years but apparently quite pregnant looking with my little round tummy), I sat down with my journal, a glass of iced tea and my favorite purple pen. I prayed for wisdom, and three words leapt out at me:
Walk. Nourish. Thrive.
Thank You, God! Simple, strong, sure. I need to walk every day, get in my exercise for my body and my mind, use that time to work out the kinks of my everyday little world. I need to nourish my body by putting in healthy, whole foods that will give me strength mentally and physically. And, last but actually most important in my book, I need to thrive in every area of my life by pursuing a strong spiritual connection with my God, my daughters, my boyfriend and my entire family and friends network. I can do this by having a daily quiet time, time to center and draw on the spiritual resources I already have, and time to shore myself up by finding new resources to supplement the ones I currently enjoy. I need to be open and honest in my relationships, and to spend quality, real time with my girls. I need to be with my dogs. I need to pray often, read lots, and rest more.
I weigh....well, that's between God and me! but suffice it to say that my weight loss goal is 50 pounds.
I'd like to lose it by my sister's Christmas party. That would be three months. 12 weeks. That is 4 plus pounds a week. Possibly both unreasonable and unhealthy. I could compromise. How about 2-3 pounds a week. That would be around 24 pounds lost by Christmas, which would put me at about 125. There. If you are paying attention, you have figured out how much I weigh!
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