A Dumbbell In A Home Gym

Reset.

(The above is why we're probably not going to be invited to any more gingerbread house decorating parties next Christmas. Or ever. It summed up this season really well for me, though.)

Hiatus over. See? Told you I'd be back.

So this is why December sucked: I spent my birthday having my elderly cat put to sleep. I'd had Rascal for almost my entire adult life; it's hard for me to think of a time when he hasn't been around. He was my buddy when I lived alone and was desperately lonely; I'd come home from a shitty day at work, hear him howling before I'd even turned the key in my apartment door, and think "Well, someone missed me." And even though he'd been declining for a while and I knew his time with us was growing short -- and that given the various illnesses he had, I got far more time with him than I had any right to expect -- his death still broke my heart. This wasn't like the last time one of our cats died; Rascal had a good long life and we have no regrets about any of the medical decisions we made for him. But it still left me completely gutted. We came back from the vet and sprawled on the sofa and watched the first Harry Potter movie (the most innocuous thing either one of us could think of) and drank hot chocolate and cried.

(I think that since my 39th birthday was so shitty, I get to be 38 for another year. That seems only fair, right?)

That pretty much knocked every last bit of joy out of the holiday season for me. After that, I was just going through the motions. Neither one of us was in the holiday spirit at all. If you're generally on my snail-mail Christmas card list and didn't hear from us this year, I apologize; we meant well, but we just didn't get to them.

If it weren't for my husband I probably wouldn't have gone to the gym at all for the rest of the month; I just couldn't care less. I had very little energy, and no inclination to spend what little energy I had exercising. And my eating went completely to hell, too.

2007 had its occasional high points but was, on the whole, a rotten year, and I guess I'm not surprised that I really struggled with my eating and exercise habits. I'm afraid I've still got some real work to do when it comes to the whole "Not abusing food when things get bad" issue. I always will, it seems.

But that's over. It's 2008 now. Time for me to get back on the stick. When things already kind of suck, letting my eating and exercise go to hell until my clothes start pinching only makes things worse.

As far as I'm concerned, this year is a totally new start. I'm going to try to think as if the last three years didn't happen and this year's effort is an entirely new one. For reasons I can't quite articulate, I feel like I've been coasting on the previous weight loss for too long. It's as if I assumed that the good habits I developed would just kick back in eventually without any actual effort on my part, and that's Not Good.

I've already blown all my old plans and stats out of Spark People and started my tracking there anew. And I'm going to try to restart by doing exactly what I did in the beginning: going slowly, instead of trying to make too many radical changes at once. I need to remember to keep doing the small things that add up: Taking the stairs more often (I'd been slacking on this a lot since my company's move to the Hellmouth earlier this year). Measuring my portion sizes with actual measuring cups instead of my eyes, which were starting to become very unreliable judges. Entering my food into SparkPeople. I hate, hate, HATE doing that, but it really does help keep my eyes open about what I'm eating.

And I bought myself a little gift for the new year, suspecting I might need it: an "All is forgiven; move on" rubber bracelet from Our Lady of Weight Loss. No more beating myself up for whatever I failed to do last year.

My husband and I went for a nice long trail walk today. It was brisk and windy out, but the walk felt great. A very good start for a new year.

Summer Setbacks.

First things first: Thanks for all the kind comments from people who stopped by from various Kimkins-related blogs and forums. I hope that those of you who got ripped off find justice and that the next time I write about our "friend" Kimmer, it's to say that she's headed to jail at last.

(I also kinda hope that I get my very own email threat from a Kimmer acolyte, because wow -- if you needed any more proof that the ship is going down with a 16-ton weight tied to it, there you go.)

And as some of you discovered, the comment function on this blog appears to be going a bit screwy. For whatever reason, it may look to you as if your comment has posted with the name of the person who posted before you. I have no idea why it's happening; all my favorite Web hangouts seem to be going buggy this week. Maybe it's the full moon.

So I must admit that this summer was a complete and total failure from any kind of weight loss standpoint. As in "disaster". I went from trying to lose more pounds to desperately trying NOT to regain. My motivation to exercise went out the window. My motivation to not cram gooey pastries in my face in the afternoons followed it. I could feel some of my smaller outfits starting to pinch.

And I was falling into the trap of absolutely *hating* myself for all this. And that's the worst thing that could probably happen. First I'd hate myself for overeating and underexercising, and then I'd eat and laze around because I felt miserable and didn't know how else to comfort myself. But the indulgence wasn't at all comforting and made me feel even worse ... and so on.

And then all of a sudden, as the weather started getting cooler at last, everything started clicking back into place. I've been working out regularly without even setting a goal to do so; I just *want* to. I'm falling in love with weight lifting again.

The eating has its good days and bad days, but at all times I'm being much more mindful. I'm getting better at trying to strike a balance rather than just giving up if I have a "bad" lunch and pigging out for the rest of the day.

Sometimes I wonder if I have some kind of reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder -- while others are depressed in the winter due to the cold and the lack of sunlight, I find that I get listless and uninspired and just plain sullen in summer's oppressive heat.

I do know that fall is absolutely my favorite season. The smell of burning firewood on a chilly autumn night makes my heart sing, and riding my bike through the trail on a cool morning with the smell of the leaves around us is so pleasurable that it seems like cheating to consider it a workout.

I don't dislike summers as much as I used to when I was an obese hermit, but once the community pool has closed for the year, I just don't see the point of extreme heat anymore.

(Which sucks, because we've had a return to the 90s this week.)

Oh well. Favorite season = more reason to be outside and moving.

Hello, autumn. Feel free to linger a little longer than you usually do.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.

Well, the Big Company move is all but a done deal. Tomorrow morning, we show up at the new place and start unpacking madly so our moving crates can be turned back over to the company.

Sigh. I am going to be one confused employee tomorrow. I need to find a good replacement place for breakfast. I'm already missing the multigrain bagels I got at my favorite little cafe near the old office. And I'm sure I'll be halfway down to the ground floor for my mid-morning hazelnut coffee tomorrow before I remember that there's no cafeteria in the lobby anymore.

Oh well.

I've decided to try to turn this situation into something positive. It's happening whether I like it or not, so I might as well. I've been backsliding into old, bad habits, so I'm going to use the new location to try to establish some new and better habits. I've been scoping out the food venues (there are a lot of them) and have started planning out places to get reasonably nutritious stuff. If all else fails, there's good old reliable Subway and its six-inch turkey sub.

I'm also going to start wearing my pedometer and trying to log 10,000 daily steps again. That'll be harder since I won't have a lengthy walk to the subway anymore, so it'll be more of a challenge. Should be workable, though, especially if the weather should ever decide to cut us all a break and stop being excruciatingly hot and humid. That'd sure be a nice change.

And another positive: The new place is apparently pretty close to a Dress Barn, and since I seem to have appointed myself Dress Barn's unofficial cheerleader, that could be fun. Wallet-threatening fun, but fun.

So we'll see. Wish me luck.

The Shape Cover I'd Love To See.

Shape Magazine Declares July 'Let Yourself Go' Month.

I love the Onion.

And I needed a good laugh this week because apparently I pulled something in my right hip in the pool last weekend, due to some aquatic jumping-around and me forgetting that I'm no longer eight and made of Silly Putty. I'm 38 and much more breakable. So I've been hobbling around all week with a gimpy hip, which makes me feel very old and cranky and like I'll yell at you kids to get off my lawn if you come visit. Ugh.

I've been trying to baby it and stay off it as much as possible and it seemed to be responding, but I went for a long lunchtime walk today out of sheer spite. Up yours, sore hip. It was too nice outside after days of suffocating heat, and I was sick to death of just sitting around. But the walk just made everything really hurt all over again.

Sigh.

To mitigate the boredom from the forced inactivity, I've started playing around with my eating. This week I've really increased my protein and tried to whittle down the carbs I take in.

I've been resistant to low-carbing for a long time. The reason why is both simple and rather petty: during one of my abortive dieting attempts in the 90s I participated on a dieting message board that was invaded by a squadron of low-carbers so militant, quarrelsome, and obnoxious that the board degenerated into World War Three. And I thought "Good lord, those people need to eat a damn donut and shut up already" and figured that if that's what low-carbing did for you, you could count me right out, thanks.

Ten years is probably enough time for me to get over it, already. And I've been pleased by my feelings of satiety this week; as I've been unable to do any real exercise, at least I've been able to cut down the food intake a bit. I'm certainly not going to give up my morning whole-wheat bagel before I have to, though.

And with that, happy weekend, all. I may be scarce online next week because as I said before, I'll be hiding from the Harry Potter Spoiler Brigade. Can't believe the last book is almost here.

Notes from a Sunday Morning Bike Ride.

The weekend mornings have been a bit too chilly for a swim at the community pool. But "too cool to swim" generally translates to "perfect weather for a bike ride," so it all works out.

Random observations: If you're on the trail and you hear something crashing through the woods so loudly that it sounds like King Kong is coming for you ... it's a squirrel. They make amazing, ungodly amounts of racket.

If you hear absolutely nothing and just happen to turn your head and realize that you're looking into another pair of eyes ... it's a deer. Even when they've been spooked by a human and they're bounding away for deer life (har!), they're so quiet.

And what I observed last year is still true: The deer don't like pedestrians and will skedaddle if they see you approach on foot, but they don't seem all that bothered by people on bikes. They'll still skitter off if you draw too close to them, but they'll stop running to observe you and your bike from a safe distance. I like to imagine that they're thinking "Huh, there's another one of those creatures with the funny-looking round legs."

Okay, so I'm entering Week 3 of Project "Back on Track". Regular damn workouts, accompanied by significantly restrained and mindful eating.

My weight has responded by soaring. As if I were eating entire extra-large Pizza Hut Triple Heart-Attack Cheese-Stuffed Cheese Crust Pizza With Extra Cheese specials for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I'm clueless.

My measurements have not changed appreciably (and have actually shrunk a bit around the hips) and my clothes still fit, so I'm not despondent. But it's really unpleasant to step on the scale expecting to see the mid-60s and instead see the damn seventies, and goddamn unfair when I know I've been pretty diligent.

And it's really hard not to mutter "Well, the hell with *this* -- I'm gonna go eat a piece of cake."

Hmph. Stupid scale.

The Week In Review.

So Monday was a bloody awful eating day, the kind that filled me with despair because at points it really felt like this was It, the moment when I was destined to fall off the wagon for good and return to the land of the morbidly obese. To fail, as I have so many times before. And I felt powerless to stop it. That woman from the last two and a half years, that focused, disciplined one -- where did she go?

It took a lot of positive self-talk to get myself down from that ledge. I was acutely aware, as I've never been before, that the choices I made right now were going to be the difference between this time and all the previous times I've tried to keep weight off.

Just being aware of that felt like a step forward. At that point, I was taking whatever I could get. In the past, it's been as if the bad habits and the pounds slipped back on overnight without me even noticing until I'd realize all my clothes were too small.

Tuesday was better. Reasonable meals. Healthful snacks, and not too many of them. No cookies. And I forced myself down to the basement and on the treadmill that night.

Wednesday: the same.

By Thursday, it all felt like habit again. The chocolate in my pantry is a treat for the weekend. The Sun Chips and popcorn in the office cafeteria and the gooey pastries at Starbucks didn't interest me at all. I didn't allow myself any loafing time after work before we changed into our workout clothes and headed out to the rec center.

Every night, I dutifully filled out my new workout log. Every morning, I'd wake up, flash back to what I'd done the day before, and feel happy and optimistic about the new day.

The mojo is back. So how the hell did I lose it so easily? It felt like such a simple effort to move myself back in the right direction. What took me so long? What's it going to take to keep me on the right track this time? This is the part where I'm really operating without a net, making it up as I go along. Keeping the weight off. Keeping the bad habits away.

Accepting that this process doesn't ever really end. It evolves, that's all.

Fake Food

Although I worry that posting to my blog two nights in a row might cause a rip in the time-space continuum, I wanted to make a quick note about something that's helping me a lot this year as I get myself back on track:

Jello Double Chocolate Sugar-Free Pudding.

Now, there was a time back in my first year of weight loss when I would have scoffed -- scoffed! -- at the very idea of eating what I've come to consider "fake food." "As God is my witness, I shall never touch that trash again," I'd declare. "I grew up eating Fake Food and it didn't do me a damn bit of good, and if I want chocolate I shall have *real* chocolate, because I am an adult and I can control myself and all that."

Man, I was annoying back then.

(I also have to admit that I'm somewhat leery of anything with artificial sweeteners; I'm always afraid that consuming them in excess will ultimately lead to things like me waking up with a third ear sprouting from my forehead. However, given that I sucked down the equivalent of a few water towers full of Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Everything during my teenage years and early adulthood, I'm guessing that any extra appendages would have started showing up by now.)

For whatever reason, I really was better at controlling myself around sweets back in 2005. Recently, I've been hopeless. Unfortunately, in the last few months I seem to have trained myself in reverse: a few days of letting myself have a piece of pie or a chocolate bar or some Trader Joe's cookies taught me that it's okay to do that night after night. And that, of course, means adding 300-odd calories to my daily tally at a time when I have almost no margin for error if I want to get anywhere near my year-end goal -- or if I want to not start the long slide towards regaining everything I lost. Not good.

The pudding has helped; it sates my after-dinner dessert craving without making me want something decadent. I eat it really slowly, as if I'm savoring the world's richest chocolate mousse. And it's working. Maybe my inner binge monster is dumber than I thought. Good. The stack of chocolate bars I keep in the pantry has been undisturbed all week and should remain so until this weekend when I'll allow myself one. And I haven't touched the bag of Trader Joe's Peanut & Chocolate Nugget cookies that my husband brought home on Monday. (Cookie enabler!)

And so far there are no extra ears growing from my forehead, which is also good.

Happy weekend, everyone.

Two Years: Sequelitis.

A side note: I thought for sure that the first commercial to annoy me this year would be one of those "Kamikaze New Year Weight Loss" ads, but nope: I just saw a Burger King commercial telling the viewer to "Eat like a MAN," where eating like a MAN means eating triple-decker crapburgers with cheese. Barf. I know this isn't a new advertising trend by any means, but this is the first time I've seen that particular ad. Oh dear ... my husband doesn't eat like a MAN. But the good news is that I might get to have him around a little longer because of his preference for unmanly fare like beans and fruit and nuts and tofu. I can live with that. I bet he can too.

Anyhow.

You know how it's almost a given that the second movie in a series is never as good as the first one? Doesn't it seem that for every "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," there are about 10 "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dooms"?

That's kind of how it was with my second year of lifestyle change. (I was feeling a lot cheerier after my first year.)

Okay: This year was not a failure by any means. Far from it. I lost more weight, and my husband and I continued to seek out new and different ways to exercise. I rediscovered swimming, which added a lot of joy to my summer. We joined a rec center. I regained about four pounds at the end of the year, but this is hardly a tragedy.

But there's no denying that I started to derail around midyear. Word to the wise: No matter how much weight you lose, never, ever assume that you've got this weight loss shit figured out for all time. It's much easier to backslide than I ever would have believed.

This year I learned some unpleasant lessons. I learned firsthand that the closer you get to a weight goal, the harder you're going to have to work to get there. This still seems profoundly unfair, somehow. I was dimly aware of this little wrinkle, but perhaps in my smugness I believed it wouldn't be a problem for me. Like I'd get extra credit because I'd lost so much already. Nope. It's an awful feeling, especially when you've been at this for a while and tend to think "UGH -- I'm so tired of this!" in your darker moments.

I also found out that the "small changes" theory of weight loss can work in reverse. Giving myself an extra night off from exercise; getting a grande instead of my usual tall skim mocha; treating myself to junk food (even the baked kind) in the afternoons ... it really is that easy to start backsliding no matter how firmly entrenched you think your new habits have become. I still don't believe in cutting out all "bad" food for all time; that's not a life I'm interested in, thanks. But there's a very fine line between "occasional treat" and "habit", and last year I spent a little too much time on the wrong side of that line.

But you know what? "Last year" is just that. "Last." 2006 is over. What matters is what's ahead of me and what I do in the new year. The good news is that I didn't put on any additional weight over December. Being mindful of my "In the Thirties by 39" challenge kept me balancing my meals and moving my body just enough to stave off tightening waistbands. And now I'd like to get the scale moving down again. I'm ready.

So let's hope that Year Three is more of an "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," and less of a "Godfather Three."

Scarred-sdale.

I wrote a while ago about being put on the Pritikin Diet as a preteen -- it
was during a summer break from school and I was either 12 or 13.

Well, I was wrong about part of that; I was actually on the Scarsdale Diet. I knew Pritikin didn't sound right, but neither did Scarsdale; I assumed that my morbid teenage self would have remembered if I'd been on a diet created by a doctor who ended up being gunned down by his girlfriend.

But we were at a big used book sale this weekend and I hunted through the enormous piles of old diet books, hoping that I could find something that might jar my memory. Leafing through a Scarsdale paperback did the trick. I remembered a lot of the advice and the anecdotes, and his obsession with protein bread was the dead giveaway.

I couldn't bring myself to buy the book. Having such a thing in the house would have felt as if I were bringing in a jar containing a pickled Evil Eye. Bad luck. Bad karma. Bad everything. But I skimmed the book enough to remember the salient points. (You can see actual menus here.)

I am absolutely astonished that I managed to stay on that dreadful thing long enough to lose 20 pounds. Shit -- I can't believe I stayed on it long enough to lose 20 ounces. You were only supposed to do the diet itself for 14 days, followed by some sort of maintenance plan. But 14 days would seem like an eternity when this was breakfast and lunch on a typical day for the diet: A grapefruit half for breakfast. Tuna salad (which was water-packed canned tuna with cucumbers and carrots; no fatty dressing!) and more grapefruit or melon for lunch.

Good god. According to FitDay, that is a hair over 300 calories to get me through most of the day. (And that was a generous day with an actual protein item for lunch -- sometimes lunch was "unlimited fruit salad". God.) Almost no fat and relatively little protein; I must have been hungry all the time. I eat way more than that at breakfast alone these days. How the hell was I not chewing my frigging arm off? It's a good thing I didn't do this diet during the school season; I'd never have been able to concentrate in class, and I'd likely have assaulted the kitchen workers for an extra helping of Gray Meat Surprise or whatever they were dishing out that day.

Oh, and exercise? Schmexercise! That was dealt with in one paltry sentence out of the whole dang paperback. He advised walking for about two miles a day. Now, that's certainly not bad advice, but that's also it for any talk of exercise. Which is just as well; I highly doubt I'd have had the energy to pursue a regular fitness program anyhow, what with the insanely low calorie intake.

The book assured me that over 90% of people who lost weight on Scarsdale kept it off. Hmmm. The percentage in our household (me and my mother, who was also doing the diet) was more like 0%. It figures we'd go and blow the curve.

To the best of my knowledge this was the first -- and only -- structured fad diet I ever followed. But it definitely served as a prototype for all the other dieting attempts I made up until this most recent one. Cut out just about all fat. Eat tiny portions and never, ever snack. When you get hungry, berate yourself for being a pig. I mean, really ... you had all that fruit salad for lunch -- how could you possibly be hungry? When you fall off the wagon after a few days of extreme calorie deprivation, judge yourself to be a hopeless failure.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Sigh.

Blech. I Want A Do-Over.

This has not been a great week, wagon-wise. It's been a week of "Oh, go 'head -- take another serving" and "Eh, I'm a tiny little bit sore, so I should probably just skip the workout tonight and rest".

I'm trying very hard to be kind to myself, to say "Okay, you screwed up. Big deal! Everyone does sometimes. What's going to make the difference is your ability to pick up and carry on. And you know you can do that because you've done it before." Rah-rah. Go me.

It's not helpful that several people have complimented me left and right on how good I'm looking. I feel like a con artist as I smile and thank them and answer questions about what I've done to lose weight, all the while thinking "Man, if they could've seen you making like Augustus Gloop and stuffing that chocolate in your face last night..."

But that's pointless. Shame and guilt aren't going to help anything. That's Old Nicole talking, and we already know that Old Nicole is full of shit. If she'd known what she was doing, I wouldn't have had all that damn weight to lose in the first place.

Part of my New Attitude! (cue the upbeat music) towards weight management is to take a closer look at my food journal. Maybe there's a genuine physical reason why I'm feeling the urge to gorge. Is there something I'm lacking?

Upon reviewing my SparkPeople meal tracker for the last couple of days, I noticed that while I was good on protein and carbs, I was coming in on the very low end of my recommended fat range. I wasn't going low-fat deliberately; it just worked out that way. (Until Wednesday night's chocolate binge, that is. And hey -- what does the chocolate I was craving so fiercely happen to contain in abundance? Fat!) If I don't get enough fat in my diet, I don't feel sated; I'll want to keep eating even if I'm physically full. Honestly, this has happened to me often enough that I'm surprised I don't automatically recognize the signs by now.

So I'm not an out-of-control hog; my body was just trying to get more of something it was lacking. And I'll bet I was the only person at Trader Joe's over lunch today reading a nutrition label and saying "Oh, good -- this beef stew is high in fat!"

Folks, this is why it's a good idea to track your food. I don't mind saying that I HATE keeping a food log; it smacks of "diet mentality" to me. It's tedious. It's a drag. But aside from helping to keep me realistic about how many calories I'm taking in, it can provide some very useful information. When I understand why I'm suffering from Eating Machine Syndrome and that it's something that can be corrected (oh no! I have to eat something high in fat! sucks to be me!), it's easier to keep the burning, destructive "You are a disgusting PIG" thoughts at bay.

The exercise is another matter. I suspect my problem there is that it's been colder this week and once I've bundled up on the sofa with a blanket, I'm warm and sleepy and incredibly disinclined to get up and move my body. The solution, which I don't particularly like, will probably be to exercise when I get home instead of waiting until later in the evening after dinner. My husband suggested a nice walk on one of our trails tonight. Good idea; it wasn't the most strenuous walk, but the woods were cool and pretty and the walk was a huge improvement over the nothing I'd been doing.

So hopefully things will keep looking up. Happy Friday.