The numbers people, numbers

Posted on January 12, 2007 at 10:38 PM - Post Comment

I know after reading volumes written about health and weight loss that you aren't supposed to focus on a certain size.  Yeah, i get it.  Its about lifestyle change, and HEALTH not a number.  But in the health statistics game, numbers are everything.  Your weight number, your cholesterol number, your HDL & LDL numbers, numbers people.  Numbers.  Don't tell me it ain't about numbers.  People often thrive in accountability programs because of the weigh in.  Numbers people.  Numbers. 

So my numbers make me sick.  I am 5'6 and about 300#.  Its really sad when your doc says at your check up "You carry it well."  What rot.  So barfing out more numbers I'm not afrais to tell you I'm a size 26 in jeans today (passed down from a friend who is amazingly successful at weight watchers and had to purge fat clothes from her closet.)  I'll be referring to her and her hubby as the Incredible Shrinking Couple. 

Goal:  Size 10 pants/dress.  Size 10 seems reasonable. 

I know I have to become an athlete to be a size 10. 

So be it.  If that's what it takes, bring it on.

So other numbers:  Three marathons in one year.

One Rock wall climbing // REI membership.

One Arboretum (with a 3 mile nature loop path) membership.

One Gym membership. 

One fierce determination& work ethic and a complimentary belief in miracles.

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF....

Number comparisons?  In the beginning of 7th grade I was in size 16 pleated jeans.  I needed the extra room from the pleats.  I was a a fashion victim, as I also pinned those jeans and wore two different color socks in junior high too. At my smallest when I had atrociously painful headgear and braces in 9th I relished being a 12. My "Skinny" summer I had a plaid, silk lined pair of "executive" type walking shorts, size 12.  I kept them.  I loved them.  I will get back in to them soon.   But MILES to go, miles to go.

In HS I was a 14 and pretty much thought I was fat, but accepted my self as I was -- I was academically driven, always on the honor roll and was an extra curricular star: newspaper, photography, debate, speech, theater, honor society.  All sorts of friends in many different social groups.  Basic gregarious overachiever.  Who needed thin when you could get by on your GPA and your personality?  Well being 30, no one cares about my GPA and my personality is flickering and dimming in the shadow of my obesity.  I relish in the time tested fact that I will get smarter and my personality will radiate once I am thinner.  

The night I graduated from HS I was in my first car accident (from sunset glare of all things)and totaled my car, a gift from my parents. I was devastated.  Emotional eating was my only comfort that summer as I hibernated from the world in my parents basement and contemplated my world without transportation.

In college I stayed a 14. I was active and put in monster hours. The woman next door was an open foodie connesseur anorexic and another was an open exercise bulemic.  I never lived the "college years" life I thought college kids were supposed to.  I was tee-total, lived in chemical free dorms all 4 years, and lived in the theater for my major.  My final semester how ever, after a semester in London where I walked everywhere and was almost down to a 12 again, was lived on barrels of Mtn Dew and piles of chocolate chip cookies from the caf.  It was 17 weeks of sugar OverDose in the name of deadlines, and an insane number of projects and activities.  And it showed.

One day after graduation from college, I was in another car accident:  at 3:30pm broad sided on a highway from a moron who didn't want to stop at his county road stop sign. Another summer immobilized in my parents basement doing piddly jobs here and there and susisting on crap food for solace.  I became good friends with Betty Crocker, Hostess, and Sara Lee.  And it showed more. So I felt worse.  And ate more.

I took a job that paid me $250 every two weeks.  And discovered why the poor in America are obese and overweight.  Healthy foods are expensive.  Crap foods are cheap and abundant.  From cheese doodle wangles to preservative packed poobahs and other nonfoods (did you know it says right there on the Velveeta box "cheese food" -- what is that, the food they feed cheese to make it grow?  Not really a cheese?  A labratory created food entity?  Yep!)  crap foods seem like the only source a pinched income can afford.  It was a year of alot of cardboard pizzas, milk and cereal and cheapo noodles among other blech things.  

The next year I took an internship - a whopping $100 a week.  True.  Don't even get me started on how the internship undercurrent in this nation is not an economic disservice, its illegal.  I was in Florida near the ocean, and biked to work most of the time. Lived off of bunch of burritos packages.  Cheap, small, portable, and filled you up.  Plus all sorts of foods with ingredients I couldn't ever pronounce. I gained more weight from that experience from a crap diet, and from depression.  I had a 4 year degree, ugly educational debt and trying to climb the "you need experience" ladder took on two years of poverty.  I was not in a good place when I took my next job.

Next job was amazing -- a jet set job.  I travelled to a new city each week, had an astounding paycheck (what?? pay my bills and put away into investments and savings?  I'm a king!) But the hours were cruel.  More depression from monster hours all the time.  The people I was with out of necessity would go out to each each night and we'd have a huge plate then go to bed and live off of caffiene and vending machine food and fast food during the day. Blech. By this time I am very aware of late night meals, lethargy, creeping in limited mobility, feeling gross and a blob.  I knew food was not going to help me.  Instead I adopted social anxiety and after work avoided my co workers and went to bed.  Sleep and avoidance, what a yucky thing depression does chemically to your brain.  Then the botched election of 2000 and a new president and well... I know now it was the start of my "shutting off."  (More on that later).

So from 2000 to 2005 I hovered around an 18.

From Sept 2005 - March 2006 I was in a relationship with a great guy (but not great for me turns out). I couldn't deal with a lot of what he considered normal -- like not ever cleaning your fridge or oven in 7 years.  And he had a pack rat complex and was underhandedly controlling. Oh not good. Not good. I moved to a new city to be with him, and couldn't get a job for love nor money.  Lets just say the episodic depression turned to self loathing and WAY too much eating and sleeping.  On our combined income we should have applied for food stamps, instead wanted to keep our pride and pinched pennies instead.  The people at the free-food at the church days were kind, but I hated my self for allowing myself to believe this was supposed to be normal.  I had a college degree, world travelling experience, public speaking talents, a sparkling personality and was living like a caged rodent grateful for any rotting scraps I could procure. 

For the most part I've blocked that part of my life out of my memory.  It really wrenches me to think about it as I type it.  The feelings of THEN are feeling very REAL again now.  Wether its PMS or just an aha moment of "look how far you've come" I'm crying as I write all this.   Blech. Deep breaths.  Okay...

I knew I was in a bad place.  I felt trapped. My parents and family had already made it blatantly clear that I was a major disappointment to them all.  I was not invited to my sisters wedding.  Emotional bloodbath. In retrospect lets just say all those cheap day old donuts were the most expensive food I'd ever eaten.  I gained an unhealthy 70 pounds in those 6 months.  Oh it was bad.  BAD.   It was devastating when I didn't fit my fat pants any more and relegated to hiding in drawstring and elastic sleep pants as daily wear.  When I hit 300# I really had to give myself some slap therapy.  And a whole lot of TLC and self care.

I left him.  I moved out of state.

I finished my masters degree.  But that seems small in comparison to the next 300 days:  finishing a committed program to getting myself out of LACK and into ABUNDANCE.

And its been a slow process of change -- especially thinking.  I now think better, but have to ACT better.  I know better, I just don't do better.

That's what the next 300 days are all about.