The Return of Lunch Time Walks

I took a walk today during my lunch hour. I used to do it almost every day back when I was blogging and genuinely focused on trying to lose weight. As I was out there in the not too terribly cold fresh air, I knew what I needed to do. I've known what I've needed to do for a while now. I'd just been too terribly scared to do it.

I needed to come back.


Slightly before Thanksgiving, I made a few food mistakes. At home for the holidays and my birthday, I made more. And between the icky gains on my scale and the fact that I just couldn't really control myself around food, I became too afraid to come back and own up to my failures. Not coming back immediately was a mistake.

While I was away, for most of the time, I kept yearning and thinking about going back. I silently visited some of the blogs of people I just couldn't let go of—Katie J., Jo, Monica, the kittehs, Actual Scale, Learning to Be Less, and 266, just to name a few—but avoided my own like it was toxic. I winced every time I typed anything starting with an "H" into my browser.

From November to late December, my weight hovered in between about 238 (what it initially jumped up to) and 240. I kept going to the gym, but not with the regularity I had been. I kept hoping that on my own I would find the strength to get the numbers lower, that I'd be able to come back here and post some number, any number that was lower than the 235.5 I left. As late as the beginning of January, I had a weigh in at 237.7.

And then there was the rest of January.

My weight this morning was 244.5.


These past three weeks have been entirely and ridiculously out of control. And it stops now.

I'm heading home from work in just a few minutes. I'm going to go home, change, and head right off to the gym. When I come back, I'll toss out what junk food I've accumulated these last few weeks, make myself a healthy dinner, and come say my hellos in blog land.

I've missed you guys, and I've missed making progress. It's time to get this weight loss show back on the road.

Scariness Ahead

One thing I occasionally do out of habit, even though I've been comfortably ensconced in my job for about 10 months, is check the employment opportunities at other places where I'd think of working later in my career. Since people typically stay at the job I have for only a year or a year and a half (sometimes 2 years, but that's rare), I had been planning on ramping up a job search come December.

On Friday, however, I saw something moderately close to a perfect job. It's a policy analyst position, in my field, and they're looking for someone with pretty much exactly my experience and education. (Although they do say a BA or MA in economics, and I only have a BA. So, I don't mean to suggest that I'm a slam dunk for it, but I do fit the requirements. This think tank is also one of the rare few that will hire policy analysts without Masters degrees, although there's sort of an understanding that you'll pick one up eventually.) I'd get to publish my own research, and self-direct my own projects. It's also not short term, and I wouldn't feel pressured to look for another job two years down the line. It would be perfect. It's the sort of job I've dreamed about, and it's the sort that doesn't come up all that often. After hemming and hawing a bit on whether it would be rude to apply when I've only been here less than a year--general consensus was that it would probably be close enough to the year by the time they actually finished the hiring process that I could go ahead--it seems like what I ought to do is apply for the job. And I will, probably tonight or tomorrow, assuming I can get over myself long enough to do it.

The issue is, basically, I'm petrified. I wasn't expecting to be looking at jobs when I was still this heavy. And yes, I'm less ridiculously fat than I was when I interviewed for my current job in December of 2008. But I'm still, well, ridiculously fat. I'm morbidly obese. I'm just not even close to where I wanted to be when I started doing interviews.

Being fat makes me less likely to get hired and more likely to get paid less even if I do get the job. That sucks. But honestly, there are so many ways in which I'm just not ready for this job yet. I don't want to be extremely fat in front a whole new group of colleagues, and colleagues I'll be around a while at that. If I were to get the job they'd likely take a picture of me to post on their website, and I'm so not ready for a photo of what I look like now to be the first thing someone who does a google search for me finds. There are so, so, so many ways I'm not ready for this.

But I think I should try to get over myself and apply anyway. It's likely I won't get the job, but if I do it would be great for my career. Sure, there will be fears and challenges and it will suck to start my next job fat, but it's worth it. I just need to face my fears and do it. There's no harm in trying.

Amnesia Spell

I saw my parents last night, as well as today at lunch. The first words out of my Dad's mouth were "you look great, Hadley" and my mom, as expected, remained silent. I smiled, said thank you, and we moved to talking about other things. I missed them so much, and I really am incredibly glad to see them again.

Yesterday in the comments, S. (who by the way runs an awesome blog called Ethereal Endeavor that I'd highly encourage you to check out) said "I wish I could just have the results and then cast some sort of amnesia spell over everyone so they could just forget that I was ever fat." That sentiment, right there, captures exactly what I wanted to say.

For me (and I'd bet for her) it's not that were not willing and able to put the work in, we both are, and we both currently do. I'm okay with the occasional hunger, the workouts, and the slow and steady building of deficits over time. And I get that I spent quite a few years digging myself into this hole, and that it'll take me a reasonable while to get out. I'm okay with that: I accept that I can't get results now, no matter how much I want them. My issue is that even when I get there, the memory will remain.

Lynn (aka Actual Scale, whose eponymous and epicly good blog is here) and a few others rightfully commented that my "if she's on a diet she cares too much about her looks" sentiment evoked vanity, and I realize now that that wasn't the tone I meant to strike. Because if a fat person like me goes on a diet, they're more likely to think "about time" rather than "she must be vain."

Being on a diet doesn't say "I care excessively about my looks." It just doesn't, at least not for people who, like me, could indeed stand to lose a few pounds. But it does say something else, something intensely personal, and something that I'm not necessarily 100% comfortable shouting from the rooftops at any given moment.

What "I'm on a diet" says, essentially, is "I was wrong." It says somehow, along the way, I messed up. Maybe I thought I enjoyed food more than the idea of being thin, maybe I was stressed and let impulse get the better of me, maybe I was just plain lazy, but what I did, was wrong. Being fat was a wrong choice. I messed up. And right now, I'm fixing my error.

That's the knife. That's what I'm afraid to say, afraid for people to notice. But the thing is, it gets much worse.

Saying "I did something bad, but now I'm redeeming myself" isn't really that terrible. Sure, not something you'd necessarily want to inadvertently share with colleagues and casual acquaintances, but it's not the worst thing in the world. You're taking the right path now, you're on the road to redemption now. Sure, you fucked up, but people do, and that's okay, you're slowly picking yourself up.

But what happens if you fail? I don't think I will, but I'm also smart and honest enough to know that it's within the realm of possibility. One commonly heard statistic is that 95% of diets fail. Other times you hear 90%. Either way, those aren't good numbers. Want to be depressed for a bit? Scroll down to the bottom of my blog list and click "show all". What do you think happened to those people who haven't updated in a while? Chances are, they're not chugging along but not posting. And I've only been writing for a bit over three months! If you look at a blog that's been around a bit longer like Learning to Be Less (another great blog that I'd recommend for your reading list), practically the bottom half of her blog list hasn't checked in in over a week. And those are probably just the non-updated ones she couldn't bear to cut. Sometimes you'll stumble on a blog that hasn't been updated in a while, and find that neither have all the blogs in the blogroll. These things happen. Diets die. Blogs fade. Things fail.

So what you're saying, if you fail, to all those people who sort of know you, who you see from time to time and smile at and say hello is "There is something deeply wrong with me. I know it. I tried to change. But I failed. I failed, and I am failing every day." And that, that is what scares me.

Part of it also is, that I don't know if I'm really at the point where I'm ready to say something was deeply wrong, or even wrong at all, when I was choosing to get (and stay) fat. I don't want to say there's something wrong with someone who is fat and chooses to stay that way. If you want to make and eat delicious foods, and eat more of them then society says you should, I'm okay with that being your choice. Right now, I am choosing to not stay fat because there are currently things I find more compelling, with a big giant flashing CAREER being the one that tips the scales in favor of thinness. There are good, logical reasons why I'm changing my body, but I certainly do realize it's a trade-off. And if someone's preferences are slightly different than mine, and if for them the extra time from not working out and the extra cheesecake for deliciousness is worth a bit more, that's okay. I don't think there's something all that wrong with someone who chooses to stay fat.

But, the girl with the cubicle by the elevator, or the guy who works the front desk, they don't know that. And the sort of friends, the cousins, the social acquaintances, all the people who will pick up on my not-so-rapidly shrinking butt, they're not going to see that. All they're going to see is "guess she finally realized how fat she was, it's a good thing she's changing it." And if, just if, my butt ends up growing bigger again, they're going to see "well, I guess she lost control again."

And that's why I, too, really, really, really wish I had an amnesia spell.

What, for you, tipped the scale that made you want to lose weight now? Do you think you've implicitly judged your past actions (and past fatness) by losing weight? What do you think losing weight says about you? And if you were to fail, what do you think that would say?

Some business:

Per request, I've added a contact email up by about me. While comments will probably get my attention more quickly, I do check that email addy every day or two. If you ever have something private and need a relatively quick reply, an email and a "I sent you an email" comment will probably get you the rapidest response.

Lynn of Actual Scale, not too many days ago, gave me an Over the Top award. Thanks Lynn! I added it to my sidebar. I also finally got around to adding my Honest Scrap award. Quite a few of you bestowed that honor upon me (for which I'm quite thankful), and I apologize for the laziness in putting it up. I'll do my best to collect the names of all the people who gave it to me and add them to the sidebar.

And, last but not least, there were a higher than usual number of new folks who commented yesterday, so welcome! If I haven't already, I'll be stopping by your blog--if you have one--shortly.

Have a great weekend, all!

Ten Things

Per the Honest Scrap award, ten things:

1. I am absolutely petrified of the dentist, and have an appointment today. This is the first time I've ever gone to the dentist on my own volition: every previous time I'd just been forced by my mother. I'm petrified that he's going to give me horrible news, and have been brushing and flossing like a mad woman since I made the appointment a few weeks ago. I'm pretty sure something's wrong with at least one of my teeth.

2. I am 99.99% certain I have PCOS. When I was a junior in college, my mom sent me an email saying "now that your 21 I think you should know you might have this because I had this." I have a lot of the symptoms (stray hairs I need to pluck, wildly irregular cycle, obesity, occasional acne, and the fact that whenever I google weird things about my body to figure out if it's normal a PCOS forum always shows up). The most common ways to treat PCOS are diet and exercise and the pill. An enormous part of this whole weight loss thing is to get rid of my PCOS symptoms. I'd like to get on the pill, too, but for that I'd need to see a doctor, and well . . .

3. My deepest fear is that I'll get diagnosed with diabetes before I'm able to join the Foreign Service. Once I have it, that's it, there's no way I'd be let in because they need to clear you for worldwide availability. If I got diabetes my life's ambition would be dead in the water, and I wouldn't have the slightest idea what I wanted to do with my life. One of the craziest things about diabetes is that just through diet and exercise, people can improve their health enough that they don't need any medications and can get results in the normal range on the "do you have diabetes" tests. But even though they test as normal and really no longer have diabetes, they count as having diabetes. Which, to me, says "do everything you can to avoid being diagnosed." Right now, if I had diabetes, and I keep losing weight and self cure, as far as the world is concerned, I'm not a diabetic. If I go in and see a doctor, get diagnosed, and then cure myself through diet and exercise, I'll still be a diabetic and can't join the Foreign Service.

4. I don't really think I have diabetes just yet, though. I'm still quite young, and my father didn't get it until his 50s. When I take online tests they say it's possible I have prediabetes and that I'm at risk and should get tested. Still, getting the pill to help with PCOS is not worth the risk of ruining my dream.

5. The only places I've ever lived for any length of time are New York City, Chicago, DC and Paris. I hate crowds, and part of me hates cities. Sometimes I think I should pick up and move out to Montana.

6. I grew up in Manhattan and went to one of the top private schools in the country. Yes, sort of like Gossip Girl, only less salacious. No, not really like NYC Prep, those kids all went to crap schools like Birch Wathen Lolnex. Whenever I meet people from NYC who grew up in the private school circuit, my first impulse is still to judge them on where they went to school. I try not to, though.

7. I once earnestly tried to explain to my college friends that I wasn't rich by using the argument that my parents had sold our second country house to help pay college tuition for my brother and I. As someone who's now seen a bit more of the real world, I now at least partially recognize how ridiculously sheltered I was.

8. I'm still ridiculously sheltered, though. I have an entry level DC salary (read: low) and live in a one bedroom apartment in the heart of downtown DC in a nice doorman building. My parents pay the vast majority of my rent and for all of my clothes and shoes, as well as a few other expenses. If it were up to me I'd live some place cheaper since I don't think the place is worth the rent, but my mom's a bit psychotic about safety, and since my parents were the ones picking up most of the bills I couldn't really argue too hard against it. In spite of that, I'm pretty frugal about most things and place a high value on saving money.

9. My friends from New York are all brats like me. My friends from college are mostly upper middle class kids, many of them the children of professors. I only have one friend who's from a wildly different background and who didn't grow up with the expectation that "of course everyone goes to college." I somehow met him through a friend of a friend of a friend at some event in college, and we ended up somehow hitting it off. He told me he went to UIC, but it turns out he'd dropped out about six months before I met him. When he told me the truth a few months later, I didn't blame him for lying to me.

10. The best $900 I've ever spent was to pay his community college tuition. I finally convinced him to go back to school this semester, but then a series of events (some partially his fault, some not at all) depleted his savings. Convincing him to accept the money was among the hardest things I've ever done, but also the best. I still worry, sometimes, that the money will somehow end up coloring our friendship, but thus far that hasn't been the case. I teared up the first time he emailed me from his new college email address. I am so, so, incredibly proud of him for going back.

Tuesday Weigh In

Weight: 248.0

Well . . .

I only lost .2 pounds this past week. This is a major disappointment. I'm glad I did still manage to lose, but I'm more distressed by just how bad the number is, and how off track I've been.

I didn't go to the gym yesterday.

Sigh.

I'm saddened and I'm stressed. I feel like I'm losing my fire. I'm just not doing as good a job as I used to. I'm not as dedicated. I'm just lost.

I think I'm going to hold back from posting daily weigh ins for a bit, and see what happens. I'm still going to weigh myself daily, since it's an important motivator, but I've been stressing over posting them. It makes me feel like I have to start every post talking about my weigh in.

Okay, here's where things get interesting. There are two different ways I could start this next paragraph, and I'm not honestly sure which one is correct.

Option one: Weigh ins are important, but weigh ins aren't everything. Yes, the scale matters, but the scale lies too. What's going on in your head and your day to day habits are important, independently of the scale.

Option two: Weigh ins are important. Weigh ins are, in fact, everything. In the end, the ultimate arbiter of success is moving the numbers down. There's certainly a good range of healthy weights, and sure BMI's not perfect and there are bodybuilders who count as obese, but for god's sake, I'm not a bodybuilder and 278 at 5'4 is just not healthy. I'm morbidly obese. The head game, the habits, those are all nice, and they can help along the way, but they're honestly irrelevant when compared to morbid obesity. It's a trump card, it's all that matters, nothing else even counts.

I'm not sure which I believe. I know I believe in the primacy of the scale. At the end of the day, the success of any weight loss endeavor hangs on whether or not you actually drop pounds.

But still, I'm going to stop starting every post with a weigh in. I will post Tuesday weigh ins to remain accountable. (I'll still be weighing daily, keeping charts and graphing my progress, and I may occasionally share extra good news on non-Tuesdays.) I think discussing the head game, the habits, and the philosophy is more interesting. I'd rather be able to post about those without worrying about commenting on each morning's number.

I need to be less scared

Before I get into regular posting, I just wanted to say that work stuff has calmed down quite a bit and thank you guys for your supportive words. The weight loss blogosphere really is filled with such wonderful people, and I greatly appreciated your thoughts and sympathy last week.

Anyway, let's get down to business:

Weight: 252.6

Yesterday I weighed in at 251.7, so in many ways 252.6 isn't the best number that ever was numbered. But I don't mind.

I'm still sort of in shock at how low the numbers are. I don't really think of myself as weighing in the 250s. And the craziest part is that in the not too distant future, I'm going to be in the 240s. I'm still sort of amazed that I am doing this and that this is going.

I've noticed myself slacking a bit of late, though. I think part of it, honestly, is the starting tomorrow GAG challenge. While I obviously don't want to ruin my streak by having a week to week gain or holding steady, I don't want my lowest ever weigh in to be tomorrow per se.

I actually read a paper about this one time: one of the effects of weight loss competitions (things like office competitions and the Biggest Loser, etc) is that people tend to gain weight right before the competition starts. They do so both because they're about to experience a period of relative deprivation, but also because it increases their competitive advantage. While I'm not doing that, I'm definitely not planning to avoid sodium like I generally do the night before my weekly weigh in.

I'm a little on pins and needles about one part of the GAG competition though: the need to post a picture. While I know I said last week that I was fine with it, I've started to become really self conscious about the idea. After all, I did take some before pictures early on for this blog, only to decide to not post them in my abject horror about just how wretched I looked. I do know I look better than I used to. I wore particularly tight clothes in the before picture with the idea that I could use them again in future sets and see the progression from "ridiculously tight" to "about right" to "way too loose."

Logically, I don't know why I'm so afraid of posting a few progress pictures. It's not like you guys don't know I'm fat. It's not like you're going to say, "Oh, her tummy's too big, I don't want to read her blog any more." And yet . . .

I really need to stop being so afraid. I need to suck it up, accept that I need to post a picture for the GAG challenge, and just go ahead and do it tomorrow. Yes, my body is still a horrific mess, but that's okay. It's not about what I look like now, it's where I'm going.

Also, I seem to have inadvertently crossed the 25 pounds gone mark since I last wrote, so there's a small (and happy) bit of victory.