What's Your Malfunction?

Another admission. For years I've told myself I struggle to lose weight.  Truth is that's not an accurate assessment. Mostly any plan I've followed with vigor has been successful except for the sour straws  and Wise butter popcorn regime I went on for a day, circa 1988.  I was ten cut me some slack - any sensible plan followed consistently has been successful.

Turns out my shortcoming is  consistency. I think the last plan I went the distance with was the first go at weight watchers. I believe it was a seventeen week commitment that I followed routinely relatively speaking. Back then physical activity was built in to my day thanks to the Bd of Ed, I walked to work twice a week and to and from school daily.  Back then there were no activity points to trade in for food.
Sticking it out was challenging but I was determined,focused and most importantly enjoying my too small entrees and snacks, especially the warm desserts - Delish!

What makes me quit? It varies but usually comes back to frustration with slow or no results.  Nothing is more agonizing than going through a "good" week to see little or no loss on the scale.  Sure the scale cannot be your only measurement but heck - at weigh in we are not looking for a warm smile accompanied by a canned response about "Retaining water or muscle weighing more than fat"  (though they are perfectly valid claims) We are looking for a win - something to convince us to stay on board through the next week or even day which usually means less of us in pounds, stones or kilograms   On the flip when we lose after a "bad" week we still enjoy the reward of having lost and convince ourselves we weren't all that bad after all.

No judgement, merely  sharing  my experiences.

The other common reason for my previous quits is having a bad day and going rogue on the plan -convincing myself on Wednesday because I got off the program unintentionally at lunch I may as well continue on the road to destruction and start over the following Monday .
Monday? Really?? Chuckling because admitting this openly makes it sound even more ridiculous.  Before I know it I'm eating  everything I deemed off limits  and suddenly I need another few days to get myself together.  Which incidentally is code for there's more crap that I want to indulge in so allegedly I won't cheat to have it next time I start over.  Really? This from a logical individual-yeah OK!

Then my personal favorite: I'm not prepared.  I'll start tomorrow... And tomorrow gets pushed as far back until an occasion approaches and I'm stressed about going shopping to find something that fits and....is flattering. That last part is key!

Learning that a large part of this journey is identifying habitual behavior, destructive patterns and acutely identifying triggers.

Having admit this, I can no longer tell myself (or others) that I struggle to lose weight.  I struggle to commit to losing weight. There is a fundamental difference. I don't suffer from an over or under active thyroid or have auto immune deficiencies that keep my body from functioning properly. Well technically I've been recently diagnosed with one, but I haven't suffered from this the entire time I've been struggling with my weight.

Soak a towel with enough self pity, frustration and doubt and you are bound to grow weary of dragging it around and toss it...eventually.  
Soak that same towel with perseverance, forgiveness and a wee bit of  faith and it doesn't seem as daunting to carry regularly.  In the past my towel hasn't been soaked in the right agents and its cost me all of my effort up to that point and that SUCKS! The vicious cycle begins again.

As we achieve small goals we need to stop and acknowledge them. Announce it: "Look Madge [Chubb]! I soaked in it!". Remember those old  Palmolive commercials?

Theory of Relativity

This past weekend my god daughter was over and for shyts and giggles I asked her to get on the scale, she's pretty solid and evenly proportioned, but girthy nonetheless. She weighs 54 pounds and I hear myself saying to her "OMG you are heavy! I don't think I'll be able to continue picking you up."  She smiled sheepishly and walked away.

Today I found myself thinking back to that conversation and saying HOLY CRAP - she is  heavy but YOU are carrying around an extra fifty pounds every day. It's no wonder you're tired all the time!

We have all been through the 3 oz of proten is the equivalent of your palm minus your fingers, an ounce of cheese is y our  top joint of your thumb, but let's think a woman with man hands vs a woman with very small hands, whose three ounces would a greedymon prefer to consume. Not everyone's hands are built in direct proportion to the rest of them.

Let's face it use your measuring devices until you can comfortably eye ball it, now how much does a pound of feel and or look like?

I remember being in a Jenny Craig 'meeting/consult' whatever they call them these (no disrepect intended JC) and my 'weightloss coach' showing me what a pound of fat looks and feels like. It was pretty gross; the visual was meant to be accurate and perhaps it was. Maybe I needed to carry that visual aid or twenty replicas of them around in my bag every day as a reminder of just what it looks and feels like.

Something to ponder. Maybe I SHOULD pick my god daughter up more often as a reminder of my excess weight thats strategically placed between my neck and my head and my ankles.

With that I guess the healthy serving of grapenut ice cream on a sugar cone that cost me 11 POINTS is dinner. I will go to bead with a five point surplus for the night.

Any thoughts on relativity?

Is Ignorance Truly Bliss?

I've decided to blog to vet out my frustrations and  see if there are others that live in what seems like the land of the 'always dieting'.


It took me  while to find the right name for this blog - lol and I have to give some of the credit to author Jenny Gardiner (Slim to None). If you are a battling the bulge and truly appreciate food, give this book a whirl. I can't stop chuckling. More on this book later. Back to the blog..But first we need to define Chubbette:


Per Urban Dictionary :







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chubbette
	A fat chick. A chubby girl. A plumper. Someone with whom a hogger would go hogging.

Ive always been  chubby. I remember at 5 years old going to the doctor for a check up and I was fifteen pounds over weight (or so he said).  I wasn't a junk food eater but  FOOD FOOD EATER.. Not until a year or so ago did I realize the term " FOODIE" existed and it is me - personified. I quite enjoy meals. When dieting I'm typically cranky and irritable.


My first time honest attempt at a diet or weight loss plan was WW was back in 1996 for my high school prom. Let me preface this by saying I'm not one of these people that has only ten pounds to lose. It’s always been at least 25-30 and these days it s more like 40-50... Getting back to the beginning... This was back when WW sold food at the centers and you could select the number of days you were on the program (seems like eons ago)! 


I remember losing 20.5 pounds, fitting snugly into my prom dress and feeling amazing at the prom and SHOPPING for my first semester away from home at college. It was the MOST exciting summer of my life and I vowed that I'd never gain back the weight - FAT CHANCE (pun intended). By the end of the first semester I hadn’t done myself in entirely, but I was conscious of the pickup. No worries I started playing racket ball and I was OK by the end of the freshman year and realized that "Late Night" was not a good idea - Philly cheese steaks prepared perfectly on white toast or fried wings slathered in honey BBQ sauce was absolutely not a good look for me at all. Thankfully being on a campus the size of University of Maryland at College Park living in the freshman dorms, you have built in physical activity. Not mention I was still 'young' and didn't realize just  how much versatility my bod had.


Fast forward a few years and there was more weight gain, no involuntarily physical activity, a driver's license and  a few more unsuccessful WW attempts. Enter the millennium and I discovered the big deal Atkins/low carb diet, so I tried that and was successful on the first try - lost about 30 pounds and was OK with giving up carbs. Was not at my goal weight, but definitely felt I was well on my way. And willpower like you would NOT believe. 
 Yeah OK my 27th birthday came accompanied by a surprise party with all of my favorite foods - potato salad, 3, 4 maybe five different cakes from red velvet, to cheese, to coconut lemon, etc and I couldn’t believe how much I missed carbs. You know how this story ends after I convinced myself I could go back into 'induction' phase to catch up - NOT SO MUCH. The cravings grew incredibly and before I knew it my no carb cabinets had rice, flour and still no cookies but they were making their way into the house on a single serving basis.


Shortly after this stint and feeling out of control I found a NYC bariatric specialist that I started going to weekly who administered B12 shots and prescribed meds to help cut cravings, suppress appetite and I believe there was a water pill involved and you only consumed about 500 calories in food since supposedly the b12 shot was approximately 1000 calories of the 1500 you needed daily. Sounded like a good idea at the time. I did that for a few months lost about 18 pounds and then almost killed myself with boredom. This plan was painfully restrictive but promised huge losses in a short time - don't we all want that? Needless to say I quit this short time later and proceeded to try it 2 more times because clearly I forgot how unsuccessful I had been at it the first couple of rounds.


I forgot to mention the "Fit for Life", "Skinny Bitches", "Abs Diet", "6 Week Body Make Over", Nutri System, Jenny Craig plans that were all squeezed in at some point in time as well. Don't get me wrong each time I picked up a 'new' regime I was convinced that not only could it work but that I would actually stick to it - Yep, if I lasted 30 consecutive days on any of them it was plenty. I never forgot about WW, but I convinced myself that WW was too slow and I shouldn’t have to wait a year at best to reach my weight loss goal... God Forbid! In the meantime the energy I spent starting over I could have been a lifetime member at WW and received my key chain. Because it's ALL about the key chain and the charms!!!

The most recent was the popular Kate Middleton "Dukan Diet". I started it on July 11th and lost approximately 12 pounds in roughly 3 weeks. LOL the irony is I was still going to weigh in at the WW center. I rejoined WW online last May before my wedding and then transitioned to meetings early spring. When I decided that while its slow it is steady and reliable and doesn't require anything super outlandish in terms of restriction and office visits.

Surprisingly I was happy with my slow and steady weight loss (it was slooooow - I lost about 17 pounds in four months - 4lbs/ a month is definitely nothing to brag about) until a colleague mentioned their great success with this "Dukan diet". Then another co-worker mentioned it and I had to read the book and of course I googled it and found successful (and not so successful blogs) and thought how bad could it be? Got this bright idea that I could be down 15-20 pounds by my 33rd birthday.  I started and as the claims read - I was losing EVERY DAY! That was incredible. Then I had company for a weekend and didn't want to share my secret diet and ate everything from cake to bread (all not allowed) and also wasn’t weighing in at WW, but was weighing daily. And of course every dieters 'trick' - Id take a laxative the next day. Just had to be careful to time it right. 


Conveniently this weekend was a week or two before my 33rd birthday so I tried to get back on track (to no avail) and went FULL Monty my birthday week. I vowed to start back on Dukan that Monday to get back to my lowest weight while on Dukan. I dropped to the lowest weight in those three weeks than I'd been in over 6 years - one would argue "Why the hell didn’t you just stay on it then?" I would answer sheepishly “Because. I got bored and the book said I could get back on the wagon if I had a bad day". Well I had several. First came the beating myself up and then the maniacal googling.


In the midst of this I started new medication which has a side effect of "INCREASED APPETITE AND WEIGHT GAIN". What struggling dieter needs to learn that?


So what happens? Where am I now?


BUGGING OUT because I don't know what plan is best for me. Is it possible I know too much for my own good. I know cutting carbs works, but I know that it gets painful to stay on that plan and I'm just miserable and would I Dukan low carb (which doubles as low cal) or Atkins low carb which is high fat - which I remember how badly that was to my body/skin and hair ? I know portion control/all things in moderation is key, but that is sooooo sloooow!


Last week somewhere in between obsessing over what I can have, can't have, should have and won't consider having I decided to go back to WW after breaking down to a friend that I was afraid to eat (that fear lasted all of 4 hours), of course I put in a call to a Nutritionist to see if she can shed any light on the best practice for me to proceed with given the meds that I'm on and the research I found.


So I finally get to the point: Back when I was a teen and only knew Weight Watchers I was not harassing myself with the impact of net carbs, insoluble fiber or anything of the sort. I was doing exactly as I was told and it was working. I put everything else out of my mind. I began research and realized there is so much out there weight loss wise and a lot to digest. I consider myself to be fairly intelligent but when it comes to losing weight I can be a real da dunt da dunt. I know any plan you follow will work, but I think secretly I want my cake (and potato salad and rice pudding ) and eat it too. I can admit that.


So, long story short is I've decided to go back to counting points (Plus) where I can have flexibility and where I can take it easy on the simple carbs - though I love them so until my appointment with the nutritionist at the end of September. I need to make progress before I get the or I'm liable to eat myself into oblivion and feel even more conflicted and terrible than I do now.


I have days when I'm the consummate dieter and days when I'm beyond annoyed that I have to struggle with my weight and the woe is me nonsense sets in. Fact is we all have some struggle of sorts and while today I've counted my points in breakfast and feel in control of the situation, I can't guarantee that will be the case during dinner or even at tomorrow's breakfast.


Hopefully this blog will keep me somewhat honest and solicit positive feedback from others about similar obstacles and challenges. Hopefully I can be of help to someone as well!


Thanks for stopping by and I hope this wasn't too long winded for you to stop by again. Promise to keep my ramblings shorter....if I can.