Cookie sent me a fantastic book for my birthday: Tales from the Scale, a collection of essays by women in the throes of weight loss. I highly recommend this book for anyone struggling with their weight, or living with anyone who’s struggling with their weight. These women managed to put into words a lot of things I’ve never been able to articulate about my issues with food.

Two sections in particular really resonated with me. One woman talked about plateauing after losing 30 pounds, because she was feeling like a “weight loss superstar.” She’d lost 30 pounds - she was special. She could have this candy bar; she’d earned it. So what if she wasn’t losing now; she knew she could whenever she wanted. This totally captures my mood right now. I lost 15 pounds in a few months, and although I’ve managed to keep it off, I’m not losing any more. I’m working out regularly, and eating mostly healthy - but I’m eating too much. I can have dessert, because I lost 15 pounds already. I can have this extra snack in the afternoon, because I earned it with my workouts.

Another essay was about how a number on a scale can have a disproportionate effect on how we see ourselves. We can wake up feeling thin, fitting into jeans that were too small a month ago. Then we step on the scale and see we’ve actually gained a pound - and we feel like a failure. Why does that number matter to us? In the opposite direction, we can know we’ve been bad (overeating, not working out), and inexplicably lose a pound - then it seems like an excuse to continue being bad, because hey, we lost weight!

It’s funny, all the little traps we Fat Chicks fall into. It just shouldn’t be this hard - but I found it comforting to read these stories and be reminded that it IS that hard, for lots of women.

I’m comforting myself with the fact that at least I’m not gaining weight. But I’ve been sitting just under 190 since early May, when I really thought I could be under 180 by now. I’m so close to being able to fit into some of my favorite clothes. And yet when presented with the opportunity to eat ice cream, I take it - because I lost 15 pounds already. I’ve earned the right to eat these calories.

I’m not sure what it will take to get myself back into the zone. The zone where I easily turn down extra food; where the thought of fitting into my bikini (which fits when I’m about 180, although it’s not the most attractive sight in the world) keeps me from eating those extra chips. The zone where eating well is its own reward, no matter what the number on the scale says every week. I’ve got the working-out down, and that’s something - but it’s clearly not enough.

I’ve only been so-so about dieting.

But I’ve been excellent about working out. For the last 3 or 4 months, I’ve been working out between 3 and 7 times a week (usually closer to 7), alternating between the pool and the gym. If it’s a pool day, I aim for 100 laps - though I’m lately cutting back to 70 or so, just for time reasons. On gym days, I do 30 minutes on the ellipticals and then spend an hour lifting weights.

The net result? Not that much weight loss; I’ve stalled around 188. But at least I’m down a pant size.

To cheer myself up about the stalled weight, I decided to look back at my weight-lifting notebook and see how much of a change I’ve made in three months of lifting (or less; some of these I started later):

Not too bad. Check out those hip muscles, huh? That would be the slightly obscene-looking machines where you sit and then either spread your knees to push weights outward, or squeeze your thighs together to pull weight inward. Figures that I’m making the most progress on a relatively useless set of muscles, but onc day when the fat starts to fade away it should make for some impressive looking thighs.

I think it’s sort of interesting that my legs seem to be improving faster than my arms and torso. I guess they get the hardest workout on a day-to-day basis, just from carting around my 190 pounds. :) It’s my arms I really want to be stronger, though, so I have an easier time carrying scuba gear. That darned bicep curl drives me the most bonkers; every time I think I’ve managed to increase the weight, I wind up having to cut it back down again due to excruciating pain. That “25″ was new today, and I don’t expect it to be the norm quite yet - it seems to depend heavily on how many days I give myself between lifting, for now. It’s also a pain that both the curl and reverse curl machines were really not designed for people with boobs; if I have the seat at the perfect height, my chest is smashed rather uncomfortably against the arm pad. It might be time to switch to free weights on those, but I like the mindless nature of the machines! I can just zone out for an hour, except for keeping count.

Sorry to bore you all to tears with this blog entry. I’ll try to do better after my weekend playing with the Brantleys in Colorado!

It’s been a hustle-bustle sort of month, and I’m afraid I’ve let my blogging fall far, far by the wayside. Unfortunately, the longer I put it off, the more I have to write - and then the more reason I have to put it off, because I keep waiting until I have time to sit down and write properly.

So, in an effort to just catch the heck up with myself and be able to go on blogging at a normal rate, here’s my last few weeks in short:

• Nice dives in Hawaii after my work meeting - read all about them here. No video yet, but I might put something short together one of these days.
• Work. Work work work work work. It’s been nutty, and likely to remain so at least until this Big Deal Thingy we have coming up in October, when various folks decide if our project is “ready” for operations. Upside: I like having lots to do at work. Downside: most of what I have to do right now to prepare for the Thingy is fairly dull. I try to pepper my days with a few minutes of the more fun stuff, and remind myself that this job lets me go to Hawaii several times a year.
• To steal a phrase from Jen, I’ve resurrected the ARP with a vengeance. (ARP = Ass Reduction Plan) It’s been going moderately well. I’m not losing tons of weight, but I am losing steadily, and in fact have now reached my lowest weight since shortly after marriage. Mostly, I’ve just ramped up my workouts, as well as including a lot of weightlifting, which is new for me. This has all been further complicated by the above bullet re: lots of work - to get in 1.5-2.5 hours of gym time every day without slacking off in the work department, I’ve become a morning person. Now, don’t misread me; I’m not going to the gym first thing in the morning. That would be insane. But I do have a lovely workplace that is located right next to the campus gym, and a lovely boss who doesn’t mind my taking 1.5-2.5 hours off in the middle of the day as long as that time is made up for at the beginning and/or end of the day. Fair ’nuff!
• On an only-slightly-related note, I’m considering password protecting this blog so I can keep tabs on who’s reading it (or - more to the point - assure myself of who is not reading it). Now’s your chance to weigh in with vehement Ayes or Nays.

That’s life in a nutshell. Hopefully we will soon return to your regularly scheduled blog updates.

At my doctor’s recommendation, I started taking Meridia about a week ago. Meridia is a diet pill, that works by interfering with your brain’s re-uptake of released serotonin - in other words, it tricks you into thinking you’ve already eaten.

From the research I did online, it seemed like for most people, Meridia made them feel full. I wasn’t sure that would really help me, since I’m perfectly capable of being stuffed and yet continuing to eat.

But for me, Meridia seems to just kill the random food cravings. It’s hard to describe exactly what the difference is, since most people probably don’t “randomly crave food” quite as much or as often as I do, so I thought I’d present a little before and after table of my “inner dialogue.”

I’m truly fascinated by the subtle-yet-drastic change this puppy is making to how I think about food. Besides the above, I also find that junky and greasy foods aren’t as appealing as fruit and sandwiches, and that I don’t have any desire to eat until stuffed.

Here’s hoping that a few months on the little yellow pill will help me get into good eating habits! As a bonus, it’s also helping me sleep better than I have in YEARS - for the first time since our marriage, Jeff now regularly listens to ME snoring at night instead while he waits to fall asleep, instead of the other way around!

Side note: after making it until 2pm today before I was remotely hungry, I realize that I’m now in the bizarre position of worrying that I may not be eating ENOUGH. I suspect getting back into my daily workouts next week (now that my cold is finally gone) will get me back to wanting to eat more often.

I’ve discovered a great new way to kill my appetite. I just watched the eating-gross-stuff part of Fear Factor while eating lunch. My vegetable soup became a whole lot less appetizing after watching people scarf down silkworms in brine, liquefied pig liver, and soft-boiled duck embryos.

Blech.

Guy number 3 is now on the duck embryos. Crunch, crunch. I might go lose the half-bowl of soup I managed to get down…