07 July 2011

Freedom

Weight at Start: 229.6lbs
Current Weight: 220.0lbs

Weight Lost: 9.6lbs
It’s been a while since my last post - sorry about that.  I am down to 220.0 pounds – finally a loss!  It feels small, but the total for 5 weeks is 9.6lbs, so that’s healthy, right?  I’ll take it!  I found a denim skirt (a staple of my quotidian wardrobe) at Dillard’s on a sale rack for $9.99, and it was a size 20.  I was skeptical, but figured at worst I would have a look-forward-to-it skirt to hang in my closet… but it fit!  It’s made by Levi’s, so I was pleasantly surprised.  Topping it off, there was an extra 30% taken off the price at the register, so it was only $7.41, and you can’t beat that – not even on eBay! 
In the time since my last post I’ve been a big jumbled mess of emotions.  One day I’m gung ho and can’t wait to get out the door and kick it into high gear (which, unfortunately for me, is about 3.2mph) for a few miles.  The next day I stay in bed thinking to myself, “If you can’t even manage 10lbs a month, and this is the beginning, just think how much harder this is gonna get. I might as well be well-rested.”
One of my weight-loss buddies is down nearly 20lbs in this same time frame, and I am thrilled for her, but simultaneously immensely frustrated by my own slow progress.  I imagine how I'd feel if I had lost 18.6lbs already, and in my typical self-defeating thought process, I think, "If I'd lost that much already, I'd see a difference, and it would inspire me enough to get me out of bed every day!"  I heard a quote last week that I really liked: "Delay is the deadliest form of denial." ~ C. Northcote Parkinson 
This past week was when I finally realized that my body requires carbs to lose weight.  I’ve been so focused on eliminating all “bad” carbs from my diet over the past year that I neglected to realize that some of them actually serve a purpose.  I lost 3lbs over the past week, and my body finally gave up the weight when I gave it simple carbohydrates prior to exercising and sometimes afterward.  If I don’t give my body the carbs it needs, the weight stays.  It’s been a bit like hostage negotiations, really.
This is the first week since I started where I have felt somewhat discouraged.  I think I get overwhelmed a little more easily than most people, and when I started this journey, I didn’t realize how intertwined each aspect of our lives are.  It sounds simple enough, doesn’t it – to grasp the concept of mind, body, and spirit?  For two or three weeks now I’ve been saying that I really need to get the treadmill moved into my bedroom… and I have wanted the treadmill in my bedroom.  I abhor working out in front of other people. 
The thing about the treadmill is this: I am on the verge of being considered a hoarder.  My room is full of stuff.  I do not save trash, but I have a very difficult time letting go of paper things that are sentimental, and I loooooove magazines and books.  LOVE them!  I love learning.  Knowing lots of stuff about tons of things makes me happy because it means that I can communicate with a wide variety of people about things that interest them – it gives me common ground with a bigger portion of the world than most people.  That makes me feel good about myself.  Living in a body like this one hasn’t afforded me many other opportunities to feel that way.  Intellect and humor – that’s pretty much what I have going for me.
I have now parted with the magazines.  At first I sorted them and kept only the ones I really love, like National Geographic, Cook’s Illustrated, Vegetarian Times, or Smithsonian.  I kept some Christmas editions of Gourmet, Woman’s Day, and Good Housekeeping because they always have fabulous cookie recipes, but on this last pass I recycled them ALL.  It was a huge step for me, and a part of me was heartbroken because the tangible aspect of possessing these things brings me joy.  I delight in the photographs and the information.  Likewise, I love books.  I was an English major in college.  I still have every anthology I was required to purchase for my literature classes – and most of the books I had to read, though admittedly I could not get rid of Heart of Darkness fast enough once that Brit Lit course ended.  Joseph Conrad – a pox on your family.  I waited ever so long on eBay for an original copy of A Plea For The Queen’s English to appear, and I pounced on it when it did.  I love old English textbooks and grammar tutorials.
That said, my bedroom is full of stuff.  The past two weeks have been very busy with work, but I have a lot of trouble focusing on my work because I am so very focused (obsessed?) with losing this weight.  Like most fat people who finally decide to lose weight, I feel like, “Hey! I made the decision – why isn’t anything happening?”  Clearly patience is not my strong suit.  Working from home, from the desk in my bedroom, is making focusing even harder… because this pile of stuff stands (literally) between me and my goal of getting the treadmill moved into my bedroom.  I spent most of last weekend sorting and throwing away stuff, and I feel like it’s one of those never-ending bowls of pasta – like I think I’ve made a dent in the pile because I’ve spent so many hours working on it, but then I leave the room and come back, and it’s just as big as it was when I started.  Sigh.
Some of you are surely saying, “Just chuck it! Throw it away without looking!”  But what you should also know is that I am horribly disorganized, so IRS paperwork, photographs from my youth, DVDs, cassette tapes of my college radio show – they all reside in the piles of stuff.  My history is in this stuff.  I watched the tv show Hoarders last weekend while I was cleaning to help me focus on the important stuff.
Last week on the Bob & Sheri show, in honor of the 4th of July, they asked their listeners to call in and tell them what they were free from. Of course you had your calls about people being grateful to be free from ex-boyfriends and girlfriends, but the most interesting thing I heard came from one of the show's staff, Max, who said that for him, there was freedom in finally knowing, "If someone doesn't like me, it doesn't mean there's something wrong with me."  I was going to call in and say how grateful I was to finally be on the right track with weight loss, and that next year at this time, I'd hopefully be free of about 90 more pounds, but after hearing that, I decided I liked his thing better.
I am grateful to be free from the addicting cycle of sugar consumption.  I am grateful that this challenge was presented to me in a way that I can handle.  God doesn't give us more than we can handle, but He does expect us to put forth a reasonable effort.  In my case, I was given the opportunity to address an important health issue before it became a critical health issue.  I am grateful that I had to give up sugar, because for me it was like heroin, and I don't know that I could have given it up without the consequences at hand.  I am, perhaps, most grateful that I have friends who are fighting this same battle with me simultaneously, and I rely on their successes to reassure me that these are not insurmountable odds that we face.  This weight loss is possible... and I will get that treadmill moved into my bedroom in the next 7 days.  I might even photograph it as evidence.  Stay tuned.

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