Rethinking.

First, I’m thinking of instituting what I’m calling “The Lady Time Clause” here at the ol’ blog.  Basically, anything I post the week of my Lady Time should be read with the awareness that the writer is adrift in a sea of hormones and discomfort and therefore is not in her best frame of mind.

Because y’all?  I don’t really want to diet.  It’s so not even about my weight or my appearance right now.  I literally have no issues with the size of my jeans or the shape of my thighs.  And honestly, I am keenly aware that dieting would make the tiny cleavage I’ve grown (second puberty!  Woo!) go away and I’ve grown rather fond of it.

What is making me CRAZY is how unfit I feel.  Running is too hard these days.  It didn’t used to be this hard.  I could fly through the miles at a respectable pace and not feel like I was going to throw up.  Now I just putter along, wheezing.  And it’s not just the running.  My upper body strength is a joke; ten push-ups shouldn’t leave me noodle-armed.  Add that to my gastrointestinal system going on strike, and I kind of tumbled into a hole.

I feel out of shape and out of sorts, and my Secret Dieter is always ready to remind me of how easy it used to be to run and lift heavy things; she says it’s because I was smaller.

She’s, of course, an idiot.  It’s not because I was smaller; it’s because I had a very consistent exercise plan that incorporated lots of running and strength training, which in turn made me better at running and strength training.

Why, it’s almost like practicing something makes it easier!  I should totally fund a study!

So, here’s the thing.  I want to be better at running and I want to improve my upper body strength.  I’m already working on the running, and need to just give myself some time to build my endurance back.  And as for my noodle-arms, I’m going to try to get a plan together that I enjoy, and trust that I’ll get stronger.   I mean, my husband has gotten downright cocky these days, and somebody needs to take him down a peg with some arm-wrestling.

In regards to the digestive issues, I’m going to the doctor next month, so in the meantime, I’ll keep a very informal journal of what I’m eating and how my body is responding.  That feels like a right thing for me, and it may offer some solutions.

The thing is, after I initially lost that 50 pounds and then “maintained” in the mid-130s for the five years, I didn’t actually feel like I was still on a diet; I simply didn’t know any other words for what I was doing.  I was just trying to eat more whole foods and lots of veggies and fruit because it made my body feel better and it helped with both my high cholesterol and The Crazy.  But I also went out to eat whenever I wanted and had dessert and didn’t write down every morsel of food.  I worked out regularly and intensely, but only once a day, and I took rest days when I felt like I needed or just wanted them.  All the real restriction and overexercising didn’t start happening until January ‘07. 

So, now that I know more, I think what I was doing for those 5 years fell more in the realm of HAES (for me)-type behaviors.  I wasn’t trying to lose weight and wasn’t actively trying not to gain either; I was just doing the things that made me feel healthy and strong and good, both in my head and in my body.

I’m going to try to resist painting every healthy behavior (Eating veggies!  Following a training program!) with the broad brush of “dieting,” and I’m going to try to recapture those feelings of health and fitness and bendiness and vigor that I had back then by embracing the behaviors that made me feel my best.

And even if my weight changes nary a pound?  I’ll still feel better, which is all I really wanted all along.

Reckoning.

I weighed this morning.

152.

Yowza.

Granted, my period is due later this week and what with my chronically broken digestive system, I’m sure I’m retaining all kinds of…well, you get the picture.  So I know it’s not all permanent parts of me, not all bone and fat and muscle and gooey bits.  But that number?

Again I say: Yowza.

Why did I weigh, you may be wondering.  The answer is simple: Because I wanted confirmation that I was truly as fat as I suspected I was.   I wanted a number.  I wanted a reason to toss all this damn body acceptance shit out the proverbial window and I wanted an excuse to get back on some kind of Program.  I wanted something to shock me so badly I could say, “Man, this past year was a horrible, horrible mistake.”

It kind of worked.  It kind of didn’t. 

I really want to lose weight.  Really, really badly.  Not a lot of weight.  Just a little.  Just…well…17 pounds.  That’s not a little, is it?

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.  I hate this.  I hate feeling like I have to choose either hunger and exhaustion, or sadness and a pervasive sense of being icked out by my own chub.  Where’s my middle ground, damn it?  It’s like I’m not allowing myself any other choices:  I’m either a disordered eater and compulsive overexerciser, or I’m a girl who feels regret over what she’s given up, who misses both her functioning colon and the tiny shred of social acceptance her smaller ass gave her, but who is too terrifed to pay attention to what goes into her mouth lest she spiral out of control again.

I miss seeing my abs.  I miss feeling fast and light.  I miss sitting in a chair and pulling my feet up and tucking my knees beneath my shirt, so lithe and bendy I felt.  I miss feeling like I could trust myself with a freakin’ food journal when having digestive issues and trying to track down a cause.  Now I feel lumbering.  I feel Too Big for the kind of life I like leading.  My abdomen hurts.  I feel heavy and bloated and full of rage.

I don’t know what to do anymore.  It all feels like I have to pick one path or the other.  Do I fight the good fight on behalf of all the fat girls and eschew anything resembling restriction or dieting, or do I try to make this fat girl feel her best, even if that means a food journal and workout logs?

I want to be where I spent those five years between 11/01 and 1/07, where I worked out hard and ate mindfully, but didn’t beat myself up over pizza and beer on occasion.  I felt good there, strong and healthy and fit, but not disordered or deprived or sluggish or bloated.

I guess to be there,  I just do what I did when I was there.

I just wish it didn’t feel like a betrayal.

Time Flies When You’re Navel-Gazing.

I started this blog on May 13, 2007, as  way of forcing myself to be accountable to my three-month No-Dieting contract.  I suspected that without someone, even the faceless internets, knowing what I was doing (or not doing), it’d be easy for me to quit.  To diet again.  To hop back on the treadmill and stop the fattening as soon as that first pair of pants got too tight.

The only reason (and I really do mean ‘only’) I did not return to dieting is because of the community of body acceptance and fat acceptance I found out here in the ether  And I remember being so shocked that people were even reading what I was writing, let alone taking the time to comment, to buoy me up after a hard day  or to celebrate with me after a good one.  I felt so propped up by this community as I tried to figure out what healthy looked like for me.

Because let me tell you, after that initial high of not counting grapes wore off?  I wanted to diet a lot.  More than I even said.  Like, daily.

I was freaked out by my changing shape, freaked out by not knowing to the ounce what I weighed each day.  Again and again, as people “noticed” my weight gain, I found myself trying to put into words why I was making the choice to leave behind the socially-accepted body I’d worked so hard for.

I still dont have a good answer that doesn’t sound like justifying or, well, loser-talk.  Every answer sounds like I just wanted to eat malted milk balls and go out to dinner a few times a month.  And you know, a lot of it is that I wanted to eat malted milk balls and go out to dinner. 

Because the fact is?  Dieting totally works for me.  I’m a person who can lose weight pretty easily while still eating a reasonable number of calories (far more than, like, Weight Watchers would let me have) and working out a mere hour or two a day.  I can achieve a body weight that is BMI-approved.  I can fit into clothes at any store.  I mean, my body settled at 135 for over 5 frickin’ years, only requiring a bit of mindfulness in regards to my food choices, and would probably still be there now if I hadn’t decided to screw with things back in January ‘07.

True, to get to anything below 130, I have to get obsessive about food and overexercise, but to hang out around 135 and a size 8/10? I just have to eat one tablespoon of peanut butter instead of two on my English muffin.  I just have to run 30 miles a week and lift every other day.  I just don’t eat the second I get peckish, and instead ride it out to the next snack or meal-time.

Is that dieting?  Hell, I don’t even know anymore.  I do know that lately I’ve been really missing that 135, but the choices I’d need to make to get leaner sound restrictive and therefore…hypocritical?  I mean, not eating when hungry is going against the first rule of demand-feeding!  Not eating when hungry is restriction!  Restriction is Dieting!  Bad Megan for even considering!

I don’t know where I’m going with this.  I know it’s physically easier to run when I’m thinner because my body doesn’t bounce about quite so much and I feel…speedier.  And running at 135 simply doesn’t make my feet hurt like it does at 148 pounds.  While this hurts the most to admit, I know how to recognize my body at that size.  Even now, my brain doesn’t always understand the dimensions of this body; I often find myself trying to squeeze through too-small spaces.  I glimpse my reflection in store windows and can’t immediately recognize the chubby girl I see there.  I feel the terrain of my body beneath my hands in the shower, and it seems like the topography of a foreign land, all hills and valleys I don’t know.

I don’t hate it.  I don’t find it unattractive.  I just don’t feel like it belongs to me.

The truth is, I’d prefer to be 10 or so pounds lighter than I am now for practical and aesthetic (yes, that too, I shall not lie and say it’s all about function) reasons.  It’d take minimal effort to make the rather small changes to get me there.  Because right now, my intuitive eating sucks.  I eat past fullness routinely and snack when bored almost daily and my digestive system is jacked upbecause I’m no longer careful about fiber and vegetables and such because it sounds diet-y and I don’t want to be a bad intuitive eater and OHMYGOD JUST MAKE IT STOP.  It makes me long for the relative easiness of my old meal plans.

It sounds like I’m trying to talk myself into dieting, doesn’t it?  Maybe I am.  After all, most everyone around me is doing it.

Maybe I’m just tired of swimming upstream.

Comments disabled because I’m about 85% certain I’m going to regret this post tomorrow and take it down anyway.

Going the distance.

Back when I first started running, my goal was to run three miles without stopping.  Once I’d accomplished that, I began working on increasing my distances.  I wasn’t fast, and knew I’d never be fast, what with the stubby legs and knocked knees, but I could boost my endurance; I could learn to run and run, knowing my legs and lungs wouldn’t quit on me.  I never ran, like, marathon distances (because…well…I also enjoy lots of couch-sitting), but I’d generally clock 30+ miles a week with a couple long runs of 6 or 7  miles.  It was a respectable number; it was enough to make me feel like a Runner with a capital R.

And then I got really into dieting, and while I continued to put in hours of running a week, I lost my ability to run very many miles at a time.  I’d break my distances into smaller amounts:  3 miles before work, another 4 when I got home, that sort of thing.  My endurance was shot to hell; consecutive miles became too hard.

When I ended my diet, I had to shelve consistent running for a while.  Physically, I had some injuries that needed to heal.  Bu I also had to heal my relationship with running.  It had come to represent only a way of burning calories; every mile was a number.

It’s taken time, but I’ve gotten back to a place where running is joyful.  I even run outside regularly, away from the mile-tracking of my treadmill.  That’s how I know it’s not about calories for me anymore.  After all, as I wind through my neighborhood and let myself choose my path based on what street has the prettiest flowers that day, I can’t even attempt to calculate the distance and calories burned.

But even on the days when darkness or rain or American Idol has driven my run indoors and I can see the distance ticking away, I never run more than 4 or 5 miles.  I can’t even remember the last time I ran a 10K distance.  It makes me feel like a runner with a lowercase r.  And that makes me sad.

I feel like I’ve put some healthy distance between me and my overexercising; I think I’m ready to attempt something resembling “training.”  So, I have found myself a training schedule for running a 10K, and plan to work my way back to that distance in the next few weeks.  I know I can handle 6.2 miles; I’m just out of practice.

I want my capital R back.

Cake Day.

It’s Public Service Employees Recognition Of Willingness To Be Paid Peanuts And Get Yelled At Week, or something like that, so the office party-people have planned events for each day.

They all involve food.

I like food.  Like, a lot.  But it’s such a semi-painful experience to be in an office filled with disordered eaters and watch them navigate the minefield that is a box of donuts. 

Should they?  Shouldn’t they?  Perhaps just one?  Perhaps just that harmless, glaze-glistened yeast one?  That’s a better choice than the chocolate iced, right?  Or the one with the lemon filling and drifts of powdered sugar?

It goes on and on, and then my head falls off and rolls under my desk.  Or I wish it would.  Either way.

Today was Cake Day.  At precisely 2 PM, the cake was due to arrive.  The Weight Watchers began discussing whether or not they would be having said cake at 1 PM — yes, a full hour before it got there.  They asked if I’d be having cake, and I told them I had no idea if I’d be hungry or even want cake in an hour, so I couldn’t say.  And the cake arrived and a while later I got hungry, but for yogurt and crackers, so I had that instead.  I don’t have to eat cake just because it’s there and/or free.  They were befuddled by that.  I remember that befuddlement.  I’ve been there, too.

Honest truth is, I’ve been feeling sorry for myself for a couple of days because my brain has been spreading rumors that my body is lumbering and awkward, that it is Too Fat.  And I’ve been kicking myself rather endlessly, both for being such a tool for believing that “Too Fat” is a Bad Thing, and for being such a sap for believing my giant ass is anything but revolting.  Kick, kick, kick — for falling short in every possible way.

But these two days of watching my coworkers turn pastries into morality plays reminds me of what I have to treasure.

Hard days happen.  Even the most deeply rooted belief can shake if the wind blows hard enough.  But even on those hard days, I know my value isn’t dictated by my menu or my jeans.  I’m lucky, because even when I don’t like what I see in the mirror, I still get to feel love for it in my heart.

Happy International No Diet Day, everybody. 

Let go.

In the last few weeks, something has begun shifting for me.  It’s been a revelation, because I wasn’t aware how super-secretly I was hanging on this idea.  But I get it now.

I’m not going to lose any weight through the power of intuitive eating.  I’m just not.  And it’s okay.

Because honestly?  I’ve still been clinging to a tiny, shredded hope that my weight was going to “settle” lower than it is now.  I thought this stop in the high 140s was temporary, just a response to feeding 5.5 years of denied cravings.  I was secretly convinced that when things settled, I’d end up in the mid-130s.  After all, I’d maintained there for several years with only moderate restrictive eating and fewer than 5 hours of exercise a week.

Yeah, the fact that there had to be “moderate restrictive eating” to keep me there should have clued me in that 135 wasn’t a natural weight for my body, but I’m not always Ms. Self-Aware.  Also, I’d stopped taking BCPs before I got into the really disordered dieting and then resumed them the same month I stopped dieting, so I rationally should have expected some new weight as a side effect, huh?

But I didn’t.  I still believed that 135 would be my number, and I stubbornly held on to certain clothes and checked my body against them periodically to see if I was back to that size yet.  I wasn’t going to do anything to try to get my weight back there; I simply believed it was going to happen.

And then…some part of me (a part that I’m awfully grateful to and probably ought to pay more attention to) began rejecting that.  I started looking at myself in the mirror and not comparing this body with the 135-pound body I was waiting on.  And more and more, I found myself thinking it was time to get on board with what I’m seeing now because this is what I look like.  This is my body.  It might be skinnier or fatter or exactly the same in the future, but that doesn’t matter –  right now is all that matters.

It wasn’t, like, a big epiphany with a heavenly choir and rays of light shining down or anything, but my body just became real to me.  The whole thing felt like my spirit just shrugged and said, “Okay.  This is what I look like.”

It’s what made me able to give away those too-small clothes.  And it’s made me comfortable wandering around the house in my underwear, because I have nothing to hide (I’d always claimed modesty, but it was really shame).  I’m happy to find that I’m not disappointed; this is the first time in my life I have a (mostly) healthy relationship with food and exercise, so this is the first time I’ve ever had a chance to see what healthy looks like on my body.

It looks perfectly okay.  And it’s nice not to be waiting anymore.