March 2007, Weight Loss Journal
Updated December 04, 2007
1 March 2007
Weight: 173 (lost 27 lbs.)
BMI: 31.64
I just came back from vacation to a very popular them park. I tried to order what seemed to be the healthier food choices. I tried to eat lots of fruits and veggies. I tried to eat only half of the huge portion sizes. I drank ice water with lemon wedges instead of soft drinks (even many of the juices are really fruit flavored corn syrup). I shared my desserts with the entire family. I even brought my own oatmeal, so I could have a healthy breakfast. I walked for several hours every day (as you often do at theme parks). And...
I gained 4 lbs. Honestly, I was expecting to gain 5 lbs. Why? I was stressed out!
1) Lots and lots of people. Fighting through large crowds of people, having to speak very loudly just to have a conversation, and trying to make sure that my kids didn't get lost among the herds is stressful. I hate being herded around. I often found myself turning to food as an escape, focusing on eating instead of the noise and the strangers trying to push in front of us.
2) Traveling with children. Frantically searching for bathrooms, carrying exhausted toddlers and preschoolers, and listening to "I'm tired of being on this plane" for six hours is stressful. Again, eating took the focus off of the whining and seemed like a nice way to slow down.
3) The theme park is expensive. $100 just to sit down and eat food with a fork instead of living off of high fat, high sugar finger food. $5 for two handfuls of fruit, and often at least 1/3 of those fruit bowls were rotten. $10 per night charge to get a refrigerator in our hotel room, so we could try to save any leftover portions of healthy food rather than paying another $5 per person to eat another bowl of grapes and hoping that no more than a few in that bowl would be rotten. We got the pre-paid dining plan, and then I felt like we had to get food, so we could get what we paid for. Eventually I ate when I wasn't hungry at all, and even when I felt full, just because I felt guilty about throwing out the food.
4) When I travel, I get nervous about getting stuck without food. I've been in many situations in my life when I've been very hungry but stuck without a way to get any food for many hours. Most of these experiences happened when I was a kid, so they had a deep impact on me. Now, when I leave the comfort of my home, I make a point to carry food with me wherever I go. The further away I am from my home, the more I tend to carry, and if I can't carry it in my backpack, I eat it to carry it in my body. Now that I have kids, I noticed that I saved portable food for them and gorged on food I couldn't carry around the parks (such as pizza, pasta, etc.), so I wouldn't get hungry later and wouldn't need to eat the kids' food.
5) I was exhausted and in pain. My feet hurt. My back hurt. My shoulders hurt. I found myself saying, "I deserve to enjoy this chocolate cake. I deserve this carrot cake. I deserve this ice cream. I won't eat any more desserts for the rest of the trip. This is the last one. I deserve this one."
6) Most of the food for children was deep fried, highly processed, high in sugar and salt, and generally unhealthy in my opinion (but I'm sure they have hired some nutritionist who would disagree). The only healthy things on most kids' menus were typically carrot sticks and iceberg lettuce. If your child is a vegetarian, definitely bring your own food. Since we were on the dining plan, we had to order from the kids' menu or throw the money we already paid for the children's meals away. (They don't tell you what's on the kids' menu until you are ready to order, so we expected that kids would have similar meal choices as adults. We were wrong.) I felt so guilty about feeding our kids these foods, that I often found myself giving them my healthy foods and eating the unhealthy stuff myself.
I complain, but I won't stop taking my kids to theme parks or to other vacation spots. I enjoyed playing with my kids. I enjoyed the rides. I enjoyed seeing their faces light up when they saw their favorite characters. I loved seeing my girls smile. I just need to find a new way to handle these stressful situations.
I just don't think I'll be getting the dining plan ever again. I don't think I'll ever depend on a theme park for healthy food options again. I think the next time we go to any theme park, we'll walk a bit slower, find more quiet corners to avoid the crowds, and plan with my kids more, so they will know how to handle crowded bathrooms, busses, and other places that require us to move quickly. I will find new mantras to help me deal with all the noise and pushy strangers. I will focus more on appreciating the fact that I am fortunate enough to go to a theme park and can afford to pay for a $100 meal rather than focusing on how that theme park tries to suck a few extra hundred bucks out of its guests. I will focus more on watching my children smile and sit quietly with them when they whine.
So now that I'm home, I'm measuring out my high fiber cereals and soy milk, drinking my tea with stevia, planning my meals, restarting my exercise plan (today will be yoga), and letting go of the stress that has built up within me during the past week. I'll be down to 169 again very soon. I promise myself this.
5 March 2007
Weight: 170 (lost 30 lbs.)
BMI: 31.09
Ahhh, going back down. I guess Disney World didn't destroy me after all.
12 March 2007
Weight: 168 (lost 32 lbs.)
BMI: 30.73
Woo hoo! Back down to 168!
19 March 2007
Weight: Oops, I forgot to weigh-in.
26 March 2007
Weight: Oops, I forgot to weigh-in again
I think I'm getting passive aggressive about weighing myself. I haven't done my Thursday weigh-ins, and now I'm even forgetting to do my Monday weigh-ins.
Likewise, I haven't been exercising. Spring is here. I should be out doing my morning walks, but I haven't been. I should be doing my yoga daily, but I haven't. I should be focusing on my strength training, my martial arts, and getting outdoors, but I haven't.
PMS kicked in, and I even had a fit of the munchies.
I'm wondering why I haven't been inspired. I tell myself I deserve to be healthy. I tell myself that I will feel better after a work out. I look at the size 12 clothes at the stores to motivate myself, but honestly I feel rather happy to be a size 14 and don't feel compelled to drop to a size 12. I spent so much time focusing on getting to size 14, the size of the average American woman, that I don't have much motivation to get into smaller sizes. I still look in the mirror and say "yuck" but I feel like "I'll deal with that later." So why the lack of motivation? Something bigger has entered my life.
I'm debating how much to tell because my source of stress comes from a family member whom I love very much. She has develop a mental illness, and I spend an unusual amount of time wondering what I should do. It consumes me. I've tried everything I can do within my legal limits to get help for her. Talking to her stressed me out so much that I had to stop talking to her completely. I realize that I need to let go, live my life, and hope she takes the help that has been suggested and offered. Until then I can do nothing. So what does this have to do with exercise and eating?
When I exercise, I think about things, life, etc. The last time I went for a walk I spent every second thinking about her and what to do. I've started feeling that "I deserve to eat this" attitude about food because I've been so stressed out. I've thrown myself into other projects, obsessing about them just to keep my mind off of her, and in doing so, I've stopped focusing on weight loss or health.
So today I'm doing my best to let go. I'm going to start taking back my focus, reclaiming my life. I'm going to go for a walk tomorrow, and I'm going to make a point to think of something that I want to think about, not something that infiltrates my brain. I'm going to do my yoga tonight, and I'm going to focus on the movements rather than my problems. I'm doing to sit down and plan out my menus for the week (maybe even for the month) to take control of binge eating and munchies. I'm going to weigh myself tomorrow morning, and I'll just pretend I did it today.
To motivate myself, I've cut my hair today, put on some makeup and jewelry, got out of my housewife clothes, and started watching What Not to Wear again to motivate me to go shopping again (I've got to hit 160 to go on another shopping trip). I'm going to stop sitting around, sulking about the life that I'm not having, the fantasy relationship with her that won't happen, and the things I think I should be doing, and I'm going to start focusing on presenting myself to the world in the way that I want to be seen. I want people to look at me and see my personality, my values, and so forth. I don't want them to see a fat sloppy woman who seems like she has no respect for herself. I want them to see a successful, motivated woman who takes care of herself, takes care of her family, makes others feel comfortable, knows what she wants, knows what's important, and gets the job done. You just can't do that when your fat. (I know somebody out there will disagree, but let's be honest. Very few people in our society think success and self-respect when they see a fat woman.)
Likewise, I want to feel strong. I want to feel like I could fight off anyone who might try to hurt my kids. I want to feel like I could one-handedly lift a car to save somebody I love. I want to have enough stamina to hike across the country and survive the wilderness if something apocalyptic ever happened. I want to be small enough to squeeze through tight spaces to rescue my pet. I want to be my own super hero. You just can't do that when you're fat and out of shape.
So today I let go of my stressful situation, and I take back control of my life, not out of anger or disappointment or fear, but out of hope.
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