Fat Chance GiveAway

March 27, 2010

I’ve never found diet books to be particularly helpful since the problem for me has never been about not knowing what to do. I don’t need one more food plan or another exercise routine. After more than forty years of trying diet after diet and accumulating a stack of unused gym memberships I don’t need more education about what to do; I need more motivation to keep me doing what I know I need to do, and I don’t get that motivation from diet books but from the personal stories of others who have been there and done that. If someone’s further down the road than me and has found some success along the way then I want to hear what they have to say more than I want to listen to what some naturally thin diet expert has to tell me. I need to be inspired.

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.

Posted in Health and Nutrition, Maintaining Weight, Weight Loss