When I started up this blog, that’s really what I was doing…savoring every little bit of life. There was my rather radical last push at weight loss through fasting that had me moving through the world in a normal size body for the first time in my life and the double-whammy corrective surgeries that removed about 15 pounds of sagging skin, the residue outer coating from a lifetime of morbid obesity. There were little snippets of new adventures out on the hiking trail (me…hiking….go figure), in the kitchen creating healthy food (there’s a first time for everything!) and impending travel plans to Italy and all the unbridled obsessive compulsive excitement that came along with it.

And then the hard edges of life happened. My mom died two weeks after my final surgery when I was still being held together with suture tape and a prayer.  Two days later my brother Randy was diagnosed with ALS. Fast forward four months and my mother-in-law was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and for five months until her death the rest of the life was put on hold. Travel plans were cancelled. Thoughtfully prepared healthy meals were replaced by fast, easy food thrown together at the end of emotionally and physically exhausting days. Day hikes, beach weekends, and and strolling through the farmer’s market were traded in for caregiving, doctor’s appointments, hospice arrangements, and end of life conversations.  And when, after five months my mother-in-law died and we were still fresh in  grieving her death our attention turned to my brother Randy and the lightening fast progression of his ALS. At that point life was no longer measured by weeks or months but by the short periods of time between the 600 air miles traveled to be with my brother and if I savored anything during those months from my mother-in-laws’ passing to the death of my brother it was savoring how precious life is in the moment. Knowing the time I had with my brilliant, handsome, and charmingly quirky brother was coming to a foreseeable end, I sucked the marrow out of the bones of every minute we had together. No minute was insignificant. Every second mattered. I knew it then when he was still here. I know all the more now that he’s gone.

During all the months that have made up the last three years, blogging plummeted to the bottom of my priority list while every meaningful relationship I have skyrocketed to the top. There were the months spent supporting my spouse as she cared for her mom, followed by months of spending every minute I could with my brother, and recently over the past two months life has been all about grieving his passing. Looking back, the only writing I’ve done through these months that’s worth anything at all are the words I scrawled together when writing the obituaries for my mom, my mother-in-law, and my brother. They were actually words that came easy even if they were the hardest words I’ve ever had to write. [Note to my surviving family members: No, I will not write your obituary if I out live you. Write your own or begin now to recruit one of your off-spring for the task. I'll correct the typos but that's all your getting from me because I've reached my obit quota.]

So here I am once again, getting back into some normal flow of life when life has seemed anything but normal and to get myself rooted back into ordinary life I’m going to make another run at blogging about this and that. Mostly this. Sometimes that. We’ll see where it takes us.

There’s a method to my madness people.

So here we go.

This was my breakfast yesterday morning. Scrambled egg whites and beans. Not exactly as glamorous as cake balls dipped in white chocolate and brushed with gold luster dust, but there you have it. Real food for real life and it’s time we get a little real around here because the brutal harsh reality is this girl (pointing to self) can’t live on cookies, cake pops and cupcakes, not if I ever stand a chance of staying in my size 12 jeans because right now these bad boys are a wee bit snug. They aren’t lay horizontal while holding my breath snug but they are definitely coming close to the button, zip and do a series of denim stretching calisthenics snug. Changes are coming. In fact, they’ve already started and I’m bringing you along on the ride.

I’m going to be kicking off my 2011 Kick My Butt in Gear Tour right here, beginning tonight. Here’s how it’s going to roll. I’m going to be photographing every SINGLE bite of food I put into my mouth. I mean everything including the nibble, bite, handful, and taste that somehow, mysteriously, when I’m not looking, enter my mouth. Now like a criminal in custody every meal and random bite of food will be photographed and then after a day of snapping (photos) and smacking (my lips)  I’ll be posting the photos. Rather than uploading 3 or 4 OR 27 food photos everyday I’ll probably put together one or two photo collages showing all the food for the day. There will be no beverage photos though since my beverages everyday are pretty much the same; four shots of espresso on ice with an ample splash (1/4 cup) of whole milk, and 60-80 ounces of water or no-calorie fruit-flavored water. Dana brings me a cup of coffee every morning as well but I only take a couple sips. I want to be a grownup and since everyone knows that grownups drink coffee in the morning, there you go. Does it diminish the fact if there’s an adorable little ceramic turtle in the bottom of the mug?

I know I know. Forget all those foodie blogs you’ve been following with their luscious, scrumptious, gorgeous photographs of crusty round artisan breads, cupcakes hidden under towering mounds of rich buttercream, and  platters of steaming pasta glistening with brown butter, and topped with  imported parmigiano reggiano and pan-fried strips of pancetta. Forget all that because right here, right now, at no personal expense to you, you’re going to have the chance to savor the beauty that is an egg white scrambled in an old scratched Teflon pan and covered in black beans left over from last Friday’s Mexican Salad. Other bloggers hold contests and give away prizes to keep their readership numbers growing but not here. It’s all about quality content that keeps ‘em coming back for more.

In addition to the spine-tingling photo journaling of my food, as if that wouldn’t be enough given that I’m providing this all free of charge,  I’ll  also be documenting my physical activity for the day. Did I just hear you gasp?! I’m telling you people, it doesn’t get better than this when it comes to blogging so call your friends and neighbors or risk their anger when they learn you knew about all this and never told them. On that day, I would not want to be you.

So that’s my plan Stan and I’m sticking to it. At least for a week that is. Oh. I did mention, didn’t I,  that my New Year’s Plus 10 Days resolutions are only valid for one week at a time with an option to renew at completion? I mean seriously, do you think I’d actually commit to photograph and blog everything I eat for an entire year? Are you out of your mind?
Makes me wonder just who I’m hanging out with and how you got here in the first place.

Anita

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P.S.  I’m just playing with you. You know I love ya.

Okay, now skip this paragraph if you’ve been following my blog and already know my story. For those who haven’t I’ve been on one ride of a weight loss journey over the past ten years that you can read about on The Journey to Finding Me. The Cliff Notes version of that story goes something like this:

• 1999: 325 pounds, miserable, sad, hopeless, desperate. Gave my will and my life over the will of a loving gracious God, worked a program of recovery, and lost 125 pounds. Gratitude, joy, and more gratitude.
• 2008: Felt the time had come to lose the last of the excess weight I was carrying, participated in a medically-supervised fast, continued to bust my behind at the gym, and lost another 70 pounds. Thrilled, amazed, and more gratitude still.
• 2009: Had corrective surgery to remove the excess skin. Ouch. Slowly had weight plateau about 20 pounds above post-surgery low. Full physical revealed in excellent physical condition or to quote my doctor, “If I didn’t know better I’d assume you were a conditioned athlete.” More gratitude.

And then came the Fall and Winter of 2010 filled with cake pops, cupcakes, and cookies. There were tables of goodies prepared for hospitality hour following church on Sundays.  There were high fat dinners and sugar-saturated desserts loving made and shared with my brother (ALS requires that he eat to keep as much weight on as he can); foods filled with childhood memories and staggering levels of calories from cans of cream soup and cubes of butter. All of which brings us to the orange clad still sweaty faced from a workout Anita in the photo montage at six o’clock.

And here we are. Up thirty pounds from my lowest weight and a solid ten to fifteen pounds from where I’d ideally like to be, and once again sporting a muffin top. You know the muffin top; that squishy belt of chub that resides just above the waistline. This little muffin-top, which in my case would more fittingly  be called a cookie-top since cookies are largely responsible for it’s reappearance, stands (or jiggles as the case may be) as witness to the virtuousness of my self-discipline over the past two months of blitzkrieg baking.

Honestly, I don’t know how they do it, and by they I mean those incredibly creative cookie bakers whose blogs I’ve been stalking following for the past few months. Unless their profile photos are actually a “cut and paste” JPG of a model from “Women’s Health Magazine” then clearly these women have established a reasonable level of sampling and taste-testing that’s not pushing past the perimeter of their pants.

And then again, maybe they aren’t all compulsive overeaters with no moderate set point as to how much is enough and how much is too much. I came broken from the factory. My dial is set to one more. One more bite. One more taste. One more plate, one more serving, one more dozen. These are just the facts of me and my relationship with food. I don’t make the news people, I just report it.

I can’t draw or paint or sculpt but decorating cookies is like creative expression for me. I love mixing the dough and decorating the cookies. Giving something from my kitchen is a natural and easy way for me to show care and love to my family and friends. Every time I put on one of my Etsy-acquired vintage aprons it ties me back to times I spent with my grandma making batch after batch of snickerdoodles and chocolate chip cookies. And with risking sounding like I’m taking it over the top, there’s something about spending time baking that restful and calming to me. Dare I say meditative? And here’s the really amazing thing; it seems I’m a more than respectable baker. I can turn out some awesome groceries with a few ingredients and an oven set to 350. Something I bake can make someone smile. How cool is that? For all these reasons I don’t want to give up baking but neither do I want to find myself in a dicey place when it comes to being around all that yummy goodness.

So what’s a girl to do? Well, I have a couple big cookie commits coming up soon but for the time being my focus is going to be

Less Baking and More Biking

Less time searching Saveur and time exploring Eating Well

And definitely, Less Pie and More Protein.

And only time and my cookie top will tell . . .

And did I mention 104 days until gelato?

That means I have 104 days to trim the little bit of soft and squishy around my waist that arrived in winter and made itself at home on my fleshy frame through spring. My goal in losing weight before Italy isn’t so I can eat until I pop, though I’m not saying that’s not possible given the newspaper headlines I read a few years ago that announced “Woman Eats 20 Pizzas and Explodes!!!” If the National Inquirer is to be believed it could happen.

But popping open like an overstuffed ravioli isn’t what I’m trying to avoid. Instead I want to get trimmed and toned so  a) I’m in the best physical condition to enjoy walking through Rome, biking around Tuscany, and hiking the mountains edging along the Amalfi Coast; and b) the travel clothes I’ve already bought will be loose comfortable instead of snug sorta-comfortable when I disembark at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport.

And really, despite my enthusiasm for getting to know the flavors of Italy on an intimate first-name basis, my expectation is to come home without gaining more than a couple pounds, if that. Wishful thinking, you say? A naive dreamer, you call me? Not so! I counter. Well, that is if historical evidence counts for anything since two summers ago I managed to eat my way through Greece and come home the same weight as when I left despite consuming vats of whole milk yogurt drowning in  honey and walnuts, sweet coffee drinks, slabs of grilled cheese, bowls of tzatziki swimming in olive oil, souvlaki sandwiches (skewers of lamb wrapped in warm pita and stuffed with a fistful of greasy french fries)…and then on my second day in Greece….

But for the next two months gelato and pasta will be reserved for my dreams while lighter fare will be on my plate, primarily focusing on non-processed whole foods high in vegetables, fruits and lean protein. That’s typically how we eat in our home anyway but the difference is getting myself back into the habit of eating moderate portions as opposed to my mile high heap on a plate default and writing down what I eat each day in a food journal, and I can’t say this enough but keeping a food journal is a tried and true key to successful weight loss and long-term maintenance! These days I’m using NetDiary for the iPad to record my food and exercise and I’m loving it. (Click on the image to the left to see a larger image of my exciting menu for the day). Speaking of which, after a season of cold weather hibernation I’m not only cleaning up my food plan but ramping back up to my usual exercise routine; core strength training three times a week, high intensity workouts (spinning, stair-stepping) three times a week, and plenty of walking, hiking, and biking for the pure enjoyment of being alive!

That’s why I watch The Biggest Loser. Those are my people. The details of their stories may be different from mine but the physical challenges obesity brings, the public humiliations that come with the territory, and the insanity of the food obsession is something we share in common and so when one of them is telling one of their fat stories or whining about the work involved in losing the weight or celebrating a victory like wearing their first pair of jeans or being able to touch their toes, I get it. We’re not only in the same book. We’re on the same page. Every season when a new batch of chunky monkeys (and I say chunky monkeys with tenderness, not sarcasm) stand on those ginormous scales for the first time I’m reminded of how miserable life was then and how committed I am to holding on to and building on the life I now have; and when I watch them celebrate their new life on the season finale, I can’t help but sniffle and tear up empathetic to the happiness they must feel in leaving their old life behind and their hope in the new life before them. Those moments are so inspiring that I’m willing to endure a thousand cheesy produce placements and awkwardly acted “spontaneous” commercials for a few truly genuine and heart-warming revelations.

So I naturally loved Fat Chance: Losing the Weight, Gaining My Worth, by former Biggest Loser contestant Julie Hadden. In an often-humorous and always inspiring way, Julie shares behind the scenes stories from her season on the show and describes her own personal journey toward as the sub-title reveals, losing weight and gaining self-worth. Duh. What I didn’t expect to find that Julie is a seriously hardcore Christian and so the book blends her witness as a Christian with her experience toward reclaiming her life and health. Because I’m a rather passionate Jesus girl myself, I really enjoyed the blend of the power of God and the power of Jillian as influences in her life!

One of the sections in the book I really connected with was when Julie wrote about three myths she had bought into around weight loss and maintaining a life of good health. The myths are Julie’s. The comments are mine.

Myth 1: It will get easier.

I really did believe that once I lost the weight maintaining my weight would be comparatively easy, but as you know from reading previous posts, oh, the sweet delusion of ignorance. I know this can be hard to hear when you still have a mess of weight to loss but in my experience, losing the weight is the easier part. Losing weight when I was 325, 275, and 190 pounds was made easy (relatively that is) because there was a constant pay off whether it was fitting into a smaller pair of pants, doing something I couldn’t physically do before, or having someone comment on how good I was looking. I use to ridicule normal weight people who whined about not being able to lose those nasty 5 or 10 pounds. “Oh boo-hoo, poor little you!” I had so little compassion for a 5-pounder knowing that my own weight was exactly the same as the Chicago Bears quarterback, William Refrigerator Perry. I kid you not. But now I get it. Trying to lose 5 pounds at 166 pounds is proving to be more difficult than losing 25 at 300 pounds, and then getting to a weight and maintaining it is a whole other ballgame. There aren’t new noteworthy successes around every corner. People stop commenting on your weight loss and how great you look. Your clothes and body aren’t constantly changing. You work out work out work out and instead of the scales dropping into another 10 pound range you’re lucky if there’s a shift in ounce measurements. So it doesn’t get easier but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing in the first place. Do the hard work of losing the excess weight because you deserve to be healthy and when you get to the weight you want to maintain then just do the work that’s required to stay there one day at a time. Considering the options, it’s worth the hard work because you’re worth the hard work and the good health.

Myth 2: One bad choice won’t matter.

I spent 40 plus years of my life telling myself that it wouldn’t matter, just this once. This one cookie. This one trip to the fast food restaurant. This one day of laying for hours on the couch. The end result was that I got up to 325 pounds one bad choice at a time. One bite. One meal. One bag. One container. Just one and just this one time. The truth is that very choice matters because the next choice builds on the choice before. It would go something like this. “I’ve been doing so good on my diet and I really really want one bowl of ice cream. Just one and no more. I know I probably shouldn’t but really, this will be all I have. Just one bowl.” So I’d eat the one bowl of ice cream and then a few minutes or maybe a few hours later I’d start negotiating inside my head. “I know I shouldn’t have any more ice cream but I had such a small bowl the last time and since there’s only a little ice cream left in the container I might as well finish it up. That way all the ice cream will be gone and I can start fresh tomorrow.” And the next day would come and maybe, just maybe I wouldn’t have more ice cream but usually I did. More ice cream. Another trip through the drive-thru. Another phone call for another four meal deal delivery from the Chinese restaurant.

But the good news is that just as one bad choice matters so does one good choice and good choices are something we get the opportunity to make every minute of every day. Choose to not make another trip to the refrigerator. Choose to not get a second plate of food. Choose the apple over the candy bar. Choose to walk one more block. Choose water over soda. Choose to go to bed an hour earlier. Good choice after good choice after good choice add up to getting you where you want to be. It happens one choice at a time and it’s in your and my power to decide whether that will be a choice that will work against us or for us.

Myth 3: Hard work equals radical results.

I’ve been working hard in recent months. I follow a limited food plan, saying no a thousand times a day to a bite of something here or there. I pass by the free samples at the grocery store. I put nearly blue low-fat milk in my coffee when I want cloud white cream. There are days when I’m craving a big bowl of pasta glistening in butter and instead I belly up to the bar for a bowl of steamed cauliflower with non-fat dressing. I go to the gym five days a week to work out with my trainer or take a high intensity cardio class. I spend an hour in spin class indoors and I ride my bike to get there. I’ve been working hard and doing all I can do and I’m getting minuscule results. I’m not losing the weight I want to lose but what I am is healthier and stronger than I’ve ever been, my weight is stabilizing, and most days I feel good about myself and where I am. Sometimes we need to take our eyes off the results and just focus on what we’re doing and let our satisfaction be found there. If we make those good choices one day at a time and do the hard work then the results will come in their own time. We can’t control when. Most of the time hard work doesn’t equal radical results. Hard work equals hard work and that in itself is a reward, especially for those of us who’ve spent years ignoring our health and our own needs.

Those are the 3 myths that Julie Hadden wrote about in her book but there are plenty of other myths around weight loss and good health that need to be dispelled. Can you describe another myth? I’ll send my copy of “Fat Chance” to the first person who posts another myth and explains how it’s impacted them.

So. Yesterday when the circle sharing came to me I was asked how the scars from my reconstructive surgeries were doing and as I began to describe how they were all at different stages of fading a new member of the group excitedly interrupted and proceeded to tell the group she’d had breast reduction surgery and that the scars were practically unnoticeable at which point this 65-something woman flung the front of her shirt up and over her shoulder to expose her bare-naked girlie bumps to the entire group for inspection. I dare say somehow I have managed to get to the age of 53 without ever being flashed someone’s grandma. Apparently the leader of our group had failed to inform our newest member that we limited ourselves to sharing and not show-n-tell.

Weird and all the more troubling because it was the highlight of my day.

Anyway, that leads to posting what will probably be a final review and update on the reconstructive surgery I had last summer and don’t let the opening story fool you….there will be NO photographs of any part of my flesh including my girl bumps. All you get is this image (which you can click on for a larger version), where I’ve gone ahead and added in the incision lines from the tummy tuck, mid-back lift, arm and thigh reduction, and breast lift.

The tummy tuck/mid-back lift took place in August 2009 and at this point those are the scars that have faded the most and I suspect both these scars will barely be visible in another year. The only lingering effect from these procedures is a continuing sensation of numbness just below my belly button where the stomach muscles were tightened but the intensity of the numbness flunctuates from day to day and most days it’s hardly noticeable. The only other lasting side-effects from the surgery is that any crunch work at the gym can cause some uncomfortable pressure across my mid-section and eating or drinking just a little too much at one seating causes an exaggerated feeling of fullness. All these lasting issues (numbness, bloating, pressure) are connected to having my stomach muscles surgically tightened which is a part of the tummy tuck procedure but not necessarily required.

The second surgery involved the breast lift and the upper arm and thigh reductions  and took place in September 2009. The breast lift was the easiest of all the procedures, both immediately after surgery and in the recovery time since then. There’s been little pain or tenderness around the incision sites although I’m still holding off for another couple months on my regularly scheduled mammogram. I’ll make the appointment when I can even think about having my new and improved all-eyes-ahead breasts squeezed between two plates of glass without wincing.

The thigh reduction incisions that run right along the bottom of my bum are also fading nicely but there are a few points along the incision line where the scar tissue has developed some hardness around it. This hardened tissue will eventually break up and soften but for the time-being it feels like I have a pocketful of pebbles when I lay my side on a semi-hard surface like the matted gym floor.

The scars that are taking the longest to heal are the most visible scars, those being the ones running down my inner arms just past my elbow and on my inner thighs running down just to above my knees. The thigh scars remain a darker pink/purple color and partially show when I wear shorts or shorter capri pants. Fortunately the incision lines have remained relatively thin and flat and I’ve been assured that given more time these too will heal to be very close to my natural skin color; and by that I mean to say  Pillsbury Dough Boy White. The most concerning of all the scar tissue to me is on my arms. The problem isn’t the coloring of the scars since they’re progressively fading too but the thickness and texture of the scars. In some areas the incision lines stretched to nearly double their original width and have developed a thicker texture that’s raised the scar tissue above the level of my skin. The reason for the damage to the scar tissue was due to being so physically active several weeks after the surgery when my Mom became ill and subsequently passed away. All the getting in and out of cars and planes, trips to the hospital, and multiple changes of clothing was all necessary for what was happening at the time but didn’t create the best case scenario for healing. Now that it’s nearing summer and I’m living in short sleeves and tank tops, the scars are hard not to notice but during a recent follow-up with my plastic surgeon he assured me even with these scars given a few more months of healing they’d take on a much more blended appearance to match the rest of my skin. The only thing that probably won’t change on its own is the width of the scar tissue but I’d rather live with that than have corrective surgery to repair it.

So the question is, after all the surgeries, pain, expense, disruption to my regular life, and the lasting scars, was it all worth it? I’ll answer that honestly.

The mid-back lift and tummy tuck, absolutely yes, they were completely worth it. The first week after surgery following the tummy tuck I experienced an incredible amount of pain related to the muscle tightening but I had pain medication for it and by the second week the pain was completely manageable. The time it took to really start feeling normal again took about four to five weeks but then it took a few more weeks beyond that to get back into my regular routine. And the results are fairly amazing. Before the surgery I had spent all of my adult life with an apron of fat and skin that sagged low over my abdomen and rested on the upper portion of my legs when I was sitting. My back and bum were loose and droopy from all the excess skin. The mid-back lift completely smoothed the surface of my back torso and exposed the natural lines and curves of the female anatomy. My stomach wins the award for “most improved.” My abdomen is completely flat and my belly button has been relocated to front and center.

The breast lift and the arm reduction is another unquestionable yes. I was totally surprised in the days following surgery as to how little pain or even discomfort was involved with either of these and the most discomfort I experienced with my arms came about a month after surgery when the skin around the scar tissue was itching and burning like crazy as a reaction to the natural healing process. There have been sporadic and temporarily painful hot spots on the incisions around my breasts as they’ve healed. The results from both of these procedures are better than I had expected. My arms now have a normal amount of sag for a woman my age and my breasts have less sag than normal for a woman my age. No complaints all the way around.

Had I truly known how painful and complicated the thigh reduction was going to be, I honestly don’t know if I could have gone through with it. It really was miserable in every possible way, beyond what I can and would describe here. At the same time I’m not sure if knowing every little ugly detail would have prevented me from going ahead because my inner thighs have always the thing I liked least/hated most about my body. I didn’t feel comfortable wearing shorts because most shorts weren’t long enough to cover them completely and bathing suits were out of the question! My thighs were so wide that to buy pants wide enough to fit over them meant wearing pants that hung loosely on my waist. And the issues I had with my thighs were far more than about vanity. The added weight put an extra load on my body and forced me to have a wider than normal gait for my size frame and the skin was more often than not irritated and sore from the friction of rubbing against the skin on the other leg. Not pretty. Not fun.

So yes, I’m thrilled and relieved I had the inner thigh work. My gait is natural. i can walk and ride a bike easily. My thighs are in proportion to my waist when buying pants. No rubbing and no chafing. But even so I’d be hesitant to encourage anyone else to have the procedure for themselves unless they were bound and determined. If you are, write me. Let’s talk.

So there you have it.

While I can’t say this tee shirt was tight at my biggest weight, I can’t say it was loose either. You be the judge. Anyway, the jeans were size 28 (I wore 30-32 comfortably), and the gray moo-moo tee shirt was a 3XL. Okay, that’s all the show and tell for today so keep scrolling down past my knobby knees.

It’s good for me to remember the old days and the old clothes because I absolutely believe that what the poet George Santayana said is true: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And so on a regular basis I remember the misery of my past which allows me not only to be all the more grateful for today but to do what I can to treasure and keep it.

So let me catch you up on what’s been going on since I haven’t been posting much. You’ll notice there’s not been any posts recently from my kitchen exploits because the deluge of Christmas baking basically wore me out and was also adding a few too many calories to my life. As a result there’s been very little culinary glamor to be found around here with our meals revolving around grilled chicken and fish, fresh veggies and fruit, and the more than occasional liquid protein supplement. With outdoor grill season just around the corner though you can be sure you’ll be treated to photos of yet more nearly-burned to a crisp fennel, fowl, and fin. We like to say around here that we don’t like burnt food but blackened food which makes it sound more like a style of grilling than an accident from multi-tasking one too many tasks while the food is on the grill.

And as to exercise to put it simply, I’ve been a maniac! After months of little to zip physical activity due to surgeries and recovery time, I’m focused on getting my muscle mass and girlie guns back to where they were before I turned into a non-green version of Gumby. Recently my fitness schedule has included strength training three times a week with a personal trainer and a whole lot of spinning! I’ve been averaging 4-5  spin classes a week and have found it’s the most effective and efficient way for me to burn the most calories in the least amount of time; anywhere from 500-700 for a 45 minutes class according to my heart rate monitor. Speaking of which, if you tap on the image below a larger version will open up showing the data from my Garmin Fitness watch and heart monitor for the past month, showing that since March 1 I’ve exercised a total of just over 21 hours for a total calorie burn of more than 12,000 calories. Those 21 hours include: strength training, spin class, road cycling, and the dreaded StairMonster. I take the elevator up to the gym so I can get on a step machine and climb nowhere. Don’t even try to make sense of that.

I’d love to tell you all this physical exercise and moderate eating has me at my goal weight but if I told you that I’d be lying through my little crowned teeth. My weight continued to sloooowly climb through January and February to 168 pounds despite my best efforts and an excessive amount of frustration and head-banging. And then….finally….my weight plateaued and since then it’s been letting go an ounce or two at a time and this morning the flashing digits on the bathroom scales read 166.6. I know. 666. The Omen. Scary. But actually this time it’s a good sign in that my body is finally getting back in shape and letting go of the weight. My weight gain over the past few months really has been the great mystery to everyone from my doctors to my trainer to me and the theories have abounded. My personal trainer thinks it was due to the loss of muscle mass from months of inactivity. Doctors suggested everything from a hormone imbalance to the physical trauma my body experienced from the surgeries to it simply being a matter of my age working against me. The last one was suggested by someone so young he looked like Beaver Cleaver with a stethoscope. But then again at my age, all the doctors are starting to look like Doogie Howser M.D.

Even our cats had a theory as to my weight gain that involved me sneaking their bags of kitty treats on the sly. As tempting as Kibbles Tuna and Liver Medley sounds…

So I think this has you all caught up on more than you cared to know about me but don’t think for a minute that’s going to stop me from telling you more! I’ll follow up in the next few days with a final update on where I am in terms of recovery from the reconstructive surgeries (Oh could it be she’ll include photos of her scars? Only time will tell!) and then I intend to start posting on general stuff related to health, weight loss, and nutrition that I’ve collected from my own experiences along the way.

Later Gators!

As a recap, the lowest weight I reached following surgery was somewhere around 150 pounds and because I hit it once I’ve been feeling like that’s the weight I should be at to be “successful,” but even with a minimal caloric intake, drinking plenty of water, increasing my activity, yadda yadda yadda, the bathroom scales refuse to decrease in number. Unless I have a little extra to eat at a meal or add an extra snack and then those old bathrooms scales don’t hesitate to flash me an upward turn.

So the other day I was again engaged in obsessive thoughts about all this when I remembered that when I began the fast in January 2009 I never entertained the thought of getting to 150 and wearing size 8 jeans. No. The goal I set for myself at the time was to one day weight between 160-165 pounds, to reach a BMI of between 25-27, and I would have been elated to imagine myself in size 12 clothing. Well, guess what? Here are the facts as they stand today. My weight has, for the past few months, been consistently hovering between 158-162, my BMI without exercise has been just above 27, and I’m comfortably wearing size 10-12 jeans (though the one pair of size 8 jeans I bought at 150 still fit though breathing is optional). It took a number of years but finally I reached my goal and now that I’m there…it seems it’s not good enough.

Which leads to the question, do we ever get to a place in our lives where we’re genuinely content with how we look? Can we ever just relax into our bodies, look in the mirror, and say, “Looking good today Sweetheart” and actually mean it?  I know I want that and I’m working toward that end but not all that surprisingly sometimes the hardest work we do is between our two ears rather than between the two sides rails of a treadmill. Without going all Oprah, it just seems it would be a whole lot more beneficial and productive to be cheerleaders for ourselves rather than a panel of multiple sneering, cynical Simon Cowles.

And so the work continues….

I spent a whole lot of years in churches that would traditionally hold a New Years Eve service that included a time when everyone would write out what they wanted to see God do in the coming year (a religious version of New Year’s Resolutions) and then we’d seal our note in a self-addressed envelope that the church secretary would drop in the mail to us six months later so we could see how God had answered our prayers and how we had followed through on the commitments we’d made to Him.

By the time I was in young adulthood the arrival of that envelope, addressed to myself in my own handwriting, was like a slap across the face, a literary reminder that once again I hadn’t done what I had been so earnest about doing six months earlier. Once again I was reminded that I’d failed to make any headway on the first item on every single New Year’s Resolution list I ever written during my lifetime. The wording was different from year to year but the intent was always the same.

1. I want to lose weight.

1. This year I will lost 50 pounds.

1. By next year at this time I will have lost 100 pounds.

1. I commit to losing weight in the coming year.

1. I promise that with God’s help I will get my weight and my eating under control.

One year I’d had enough of making New Year’s Resolutions that I knew I could never keep and so while everyone else was in church writing out their resolutions and commitments for the coming year, I was scratching out another kind of message to myself. Six months later when it arrived I tore open the envelope and read,

So, it’s now six months later and I bet anything you weigh more today than you did on New Year’s Eve, don’t you? When are you ever going to just accept that you’re always going to be fat? You’re such a failure.

No small amount of self-loathing in that little note to self. Ya think?

But it wasn’t just once a year I’d failed to live up to the word I made to myself. Every Monday was going to be the start of a new diet and this time I was going to stick with it, and sometimes I did stick with it. At least until Tuesday afternoon. Every night after I’d eaten Chinese take-out for four or a deluxe double-thick pizza with extra cheese and a half gallon of ice cream as a chaser and I was stuffed sick I’d swear to myself I was never going to eat like that again, and just to prove how serious I was I’d storm (or waddle as it were) into the kitchen and throw any food that remained (if any did) into the garbage can. But by the next day, after a small breakfast or no breakfast at all, and eating little more than a salad and a Diet Coke for lunch, I’d head to the fast food district of town and fill up the back seat of my car: a six pack of tacos from Taco Bell, two orders of onion rings from BurgerKing, and a half dozen Dilly Bars from Dairy Queen. Then I’d go home, eat it all, and feeling stuffed sick with self-loathing and food once again I’d swear I’d never eat like that again. But I would. Again and again and again. All the way to 325 pounds.

I haven’t lost 170 pounds because one year I made a New Years Resolution to myself to lose 170 pounds. There wasn’t a single ginormous last supper that made me so violently sick in body and spirit that I swore that was the last time and then I followed through from that moment on. My weight loss journey didn’t start on a Monday or on the 1st of the month or the 1st day of a new year. It began on a Saturday. May 8, 1999. I didn’t wake up that morning knowing I would always remember that date. I didn’t know that between then and the beginning of 2010 I would never again gorge on a fast-food progressive dinner, never order Chinese take-out for four for a party of one, or never lose myself in a half-gallon of ice cream or a two pound bowl of pasta and butter. When I backed my car out of the driveway that morning I didn’t know I would never be that heavy again. I didn’t know the next time I’d buy a car I wouldn’t have to have the driver’s seat soldered in place to keep my weight from breaking the steel joints. I didn’t know the time was coming when I’d stop waking up in the middle of night gasping for breath or fearing the pains that occasionally ripped through my chest. I didn’t know in a few short months I’d be wearing pants that zipped all the way up rather than being held in place with jumbo diaper pins and prayer. And I sure couldn’t have imagined that in a few years from that day I’d be wearing size 10 jeans and medium size shirts, walking a half-marathon, hiking through the Redwoods, or hearing my doctor say, “Anita, you are in more than excellent health.”

May 8, 1999 was the day that led to where I am today but I didn’t know it at the time.  I just knew I was going to go to a morning meeting of *Overeaters Anonymous that happened to be held in the back room of my favorite Mexican restaurant in town. I figured I’d sit and listen to a bunch of fat people talk about the diet they were on and whine about how much they missed eating ice cream and cake and cookies, and then at the end of the meeting I’d slip into the main room of the restaurant and order my usual double cheese enchilada plate with a side of chips and guacamole to go. Instead I went to the meeting and listened to thin and heavy people talk about having spent their lives eating like I thought only I ate and that they were grateful that for today they no longer had to eat like that. And at the end of the meeting, rather than leaving with the smell of a greasy plate of Mexican food covered in foil on the passenger seat beside me, I left with hope that at least for that day, I stood a chance of going to bed without being stuffed sick and ashamed. And I did.

That was the beginning for me. And there’s a beginning for you too. You just might know when the journey begins. But then again, maybe your journey already has started and you don’t even know it has or can’t believe it has.

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*Overeater’s Anonymous is part of my story but it might be part of yours. Instead it may be Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or private therapy or a plan of eating that you find in a magazine that works best for you.