Weighty Issues

I'm officially in the range of normal for my weight.  It's a large range (depending on which chart you use) and I am in the heaviest end of it, but technically I'm not overweight, and certainly not obese.  It's taken a lot of effort, but it's good to be 35 pounds lighter than I was back in June.  I still have another ten pounds or so to go, because I want to be squarely in the normal range.  I would like the option of one day eating a cookie again without that tipping the scales into overweight territory.

Self-perception is a strange thing, though.  Other people tell me I look slimmer, but I'm not really seeing it.  I know I am smaller by looking at the clothes I can wear.  I was an 18 and now I'm an 8.  (My preferred swimsuit, however still fits best at a 14, because somewhere, somehow, I am always a size 14.)  But when my pants are tight enough to stay up I still have some muffin-top stuff going on, so I don't feel any different.  I have the same body issues, just different pants.

Off Switch Eating

I've lost about 30 pounds since the beginning of June.  That's enough weight that people notice, and many ask what it is I'm doing.

I know what people want to hear is that it's something that doesn't involve much sacrifice.  Unfortunately that's not the way it works.  For me, anyway.  Everyone's bodies and goals are different, so I can only say what works for me and people can take from it what they will.

For various reasons my weight has been up and down and all over the map.  I know at this point what my body responds to, how exercise and food affects it, and where most of my limits are.  My 30s were all spent in and out of pregnancies and breast feeding, and dealing with the stress of small children, starting a business, and my husband's deployments.  But now my last baby is about to turn eight, Ian returned from Iraq four years ago, and I've finally arrived at a place where I have no excuses for getting control over my own body and my health and my habits.

I've learned that exercise has almost no impact on my weight.  I swim a mile almost every day.  That was true 30 pounds ago and it's true now.  Exercise is important, and I'm glad it's something I've added to my routine, but I think weight loss has to do with what you eat, not how you move.  Exercise does affect the shape I'm in.  I think if I'd lost 30 pounds rapidly and without exercise I would look very different.  For instance, my arms are not flabby anymore, but only because my muscle tone is good and my skin has had time to adjust to the change.  So I'm not saying exercise isn't helping, but it does not affect the numbers on the scale.

What has brought my weight down is eating less.  I know, shocking.  But I'm not someone who wants to track every bite I put into my mouth.  I don't want to think that hard.

So I've come up with a system for myself that I'm calling "Off Switch Eating."

What I'm Eating

Or, I guess, what I'm not eating, which is sugar, dairy, and wheat.  Although, honestly, I focus on what I'm happy about eating and not things I'm avoiding.

Back at the beginning of the summer when I wrote about how I needed to get serious about my weight but wasn't sure anymore what to do, I made a decision to just do something and stick with it and see what happens.  And so far so good, actually.  I've been losing about a pound a week and I'm feeling better.  Do I miss things?  Sure.  But I figure the choice is between having those things and not feeling healthier, or feeling healthier and not having those things.  I've done it one way for a while, now I'm doing it the other.  I don't get to have it all so I'm not going to worry about what I'm missing.  I'll always be missing something.

So why am I cutting out those things?  Because it's easier for me in general to just cut out certain categories of food so I don't have to think too hard or struggle with anything.  When you flat out make some things off limits you kind of stop seeing them.  I did the paleo thing for a bit a while back, and the concept behind it is bunk, but it did work.  It taught me to read labels and focus on simple foods and avoid processed items, so going back to some form of that seemed like a good idea.

I have no idea what to eat.

I know I'm probably not alone in this feeling, but it always looks to me as if people around me have an idea or a plan or some handle on what they're doing where food is concerned, and I am just lost.  My weight is out of control and I need to do something, but I honestly don't know what.

I want to be someone who likes tons of vegetables, is not tempted by sugar, and can eat everything in moderation.  I am not that someone.  I'm frustrated by the fact that in many ways I know what I should do, but that I don't seem capable of actually doing it.  Am I broken?

I suspect that in our modern world many of us are sabotaged by our biology and our instincts in the face of comfortable lifestyle options and easy availability of unhealthy things to eat.  I'd like to think because I'm smart enough to recognize the problems I should be able to muster the will to deal with them, but I feel overwhelmed.  There is too much.  Too much temptation and too much information.

The last time I made the attempt to lose weight with any success I did a kind of modified points counting plan borrowed from Weight Watchers in combination with about 90 minutes a day of exercise.  It worked, but it was like a full-time job.  I don't want to do that again.  I don't want to get to the end of my life and have my weight be my only accomplishment because it took up all my time.  That's ridiculous.  Unless you are a serious cook you should not be obsessed with food.

A Matter of Size

It's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't struggled with his or her weight how difficult it can be.  I'm a pretty determined person and able to accomplish most things I set my mind to.  But getting down to a weight where I want to be and staying there?  I'm starting to think it's impossible.  Which is frustrating.

I try not to beat myself up too much about it.  I'm doing better at incorporating regular exercise into my schedule (I swim a mile in the morning about five or six days a week), and I'm trying to make better choices about what I eat.  But life gets stressful and I betray myself with decisions I know are bad but seem irresistible in the moment.  When I start to question my sanity and lack of will I think about how if Oprah with her infinite resources and all the incentive in the world to keep her weight down still struggles, then there is probably more to it than I realize and shouldn't feel like such a failure.

But does anyone who cares about me really love me less when my jeans are getting tight again?  Do I care less about anyone based on his or her size?  No.  So why do I obsess?  Why do I dislike myself so much over it?  I'm not sure, but I don't seem able to escape it.

Back toward the beginning of the school year I went through all my kids' clothes to figure out what fit them and what didn't, what should be handed down, and what should be given away.  We seldom have to shop for Mona since she is delighted to inherit whatever clothes no longer fit her sister, but each time Aden grows we end up walking down the street to Target and stocking up on some new shirts and leggings and skirts.  Easy enough.

But Aden has finally reached the limit of what the girls section at Target has to offer.  She's tall, like I am, and the biggest size girl clothes are 14/16, which are getting too short on her.  We looked around at things she liked, but realized anything we bought would likely not last the whole year.  So we had to move over to the older girl/women's area of the store.  And it wasn't good.

Mother's Day and Movies

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day! 

Mine was the best ever (with the possible exception of the first one I got to spend as a mother with a five month old baby Aden in my arms, because there is nothing quite like certain firsts).  It was a day filled with lots of nice moments and bookended with movies.

My kids made me breakfast in bed, which as sweet as it was, actually put me in an uncomfortable quandary. 

They have breakfast in bed down to a kind of science, where they know to clean up the kitchen as part of the present, and they give thought to what might be too messy (for instance, they always serve me water in a water bottle to avoid spills).  This morning they served me this:

That's a bowl of clementines all peeled, and a couple of slices of something we call a David Eyer Pancake (that they baked themselves) along with an overabundance of powdered sugar on the side to sprinkle on it.  (There is also the aforementioned water bottle, a little bouquet of things from our front garden, and the appropriate silverware and a napkin all on a tray that belonged to my grandmother.  This is several steps up from when Aden was three and she served me an uncooked egg in the shell with a fork a flower.)

So what was the quandary?  Well, I'm doing 30 days again of no grains, dairy, legumes, or sugar.  I fell off that 'paleo' diet wagon a couple of months ago and my weight started to creep back up and my headaches returned.  I miss bread and cheese and chocolate but I can't take the headaches anymore.  I want to do a whole month off of those items again and then experiment with adding things back one at a time so I can pinpoint what my problem might be.  I'm on Day 13.  And my adorable children specially cooked me a meal of flour mixed with milk and garnished with pure sugar.  Do I choose my own self-imposed food rules, or create a Mother's Day exception?

I really agonized.  And then I told them I couldn't eat it.  I thanked them, and ate the clementines, and then asked if I could feed the David Eyer Pancake to them instead, which turned out to be fun.  I haven't lifted a fork to any of their mouths in years, so they pretended they were little birds and each took turns having bites until the plate was clean.  Then Aden made me an omelet--with a tiny bit of cheese.  That I decided to make an exception for because come on.  (Cheese was the first thing I was going to add back into my diet anyway, so why not.)

I also got some amazing gifts:

Quinn made me a tissue flower, Mona let me have the duct tape 'angel dragon' she made a couple of weeks ago that I've been admiring, and Aden bought a watch from Target and replaced the band with one she crocheted herself.  They all pitched in to make the card.  I don't even know how to describe how much I love all of this.

Next we sat on my bed and folded laundry while watching episodes of Phineas and Ferb.  (We call these "Fold Phineas and Ferb Parties" and it makes laundry a pretty enjoyable event in our house.)

Then I made all the kids get out of my bed for a while and gave some thought to what I would like to do that would be just for me for a change.  And I picked archery.  I took archery lessons back in 2005 just because it was always something I wanted to try, and I loved it.  Aden used to come with me in her pretty little dresses and help collect my arrows out of the hay bale targets at the public park and it was so cute.  But then Ian got deployed and that was the end of that.  My bow and arrows have been gathering dust ever since.

Using the bow stringer

Until today!  But it almost didn't happen just because it had been so long I didn't remember how to string up my recurve bow.  I turned to YouTube where several different people demonstrated stepping through the bow and bracing one of the limbs against a leg, etc. and none of it rang a bell.  I tried to copy what they were doing, but no luck.  Then I found a different guy who said the bracing against the leg method was the wrong way to go and he was leaving one end of the string slipped down a ways, bending the bow, and sliding that end all the way up into place.  That looked more familiar, but still no luck.  After about half an hour of messing with my bow and trying to jog my memory and getting ready to give up, I looked at one more video and found a guy who said what I really needed was a bow stringer.  A bow stringer....  That method involved hooking a string to each end of the bow and standing on it to pull the limbs far enough to slide one of the ends where it should be.  THAT was starting to look familiar.  So I went to my arrow quiver and emptied it out and I'll be damned if I don't own a bow stringer!  Ha!  The second I saw it, it all came back to me.  Nothing to it.

So off to the park!  My kids loved it there.  Aden and Quinn retrieved my arrows, Mona collected broken bits of balloon from around the targets and created some pretend cooking game with them.  The dog even had fun running free until it was time for me to shoot and it seemed safer to put him back on the leash.  I was pleased to discover my aim is actually not bad considering how long it's been.  I think next time I'm feeling down I will head back out to the range to clear my head.  There's something nice about concentrating on an activity that is simple but not easy.

Perfect weather, perfect company, and I got a chance to do something with no purpose other than it's enjoyable.  Can't ask for a better Mother's Day than that.





After the park we got the kids a pizza and left Aden in charge of everyone while Ian and I went to a movie.  We've been experimenting more often with leaving them on their own for short stretches and they do fine.  It still makes me nervous and will take some getting used to, but the idea that we have the freedom to escape to a movie from time to time is a wonderful new thing.

Now, the movies at each end of my day could not have been more different.  In the morning I watched Melancholia on my laptop, and in the afternoon Ian and I went to see The Avengers in the theater.  Melancholia is about the world ending with no hope of saving it and some question about whether it even matters.  The Avengers is about saving the world and it's all very self-important.  Melancholia moves in a slow and deliberate way, with music by Wagner to imbue everything with a gorgeous sense of tragedy, and it made me cry.  The Avengers was all explosions and smashy smashy cool things to see and it made me laugh.  Melancholia was calm as the world ended.  The Avengers was frantic as it was saved. 

I don't know if I can recommend Melancholia because it's haunting, and once you've seen it you can't unsee it.  I don't want to be responsible for someone else having to ponder elements of it the way I seem to be.  It's beautiful, but painful.  The Avengers I would recommend purely for Hawkeye shooting aliens with arrows--sometimes without even looking (man, do I need practice!)--but also the Hulk hitting things and Robert Downey Jr being born to play Tony Stark.  It's all so silly, but the best kind of silly.

My day also included cooking with my kids and my husband, watching my kids make things out of modeling chocolate, walking with them to Target, playing games with them on the computer, seeing them bike, hearing them laugh, and just being proud that I have any connection to these lovely little people at all.  My life with them isn't the extremes I saw in either movie.  It's just right.  And I'm the luckiest mom in the world.