I can’t believe that I have neglected to blog for an entire month. In my defense, I have been extremely busy losing .02857142857 pounds per day for the last 32 days (you math whizzes will quickly calculate that and come up with one pound). Yes folks, I lost a single pound so far! Actually, I lost five pounds but inadvertently gained back four. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy.
After I posted my first blog announcing my launch into a semi-public diet, I received a loving (slightly outraged) email from my old, OLD friend Sharon (we grew up in church youth group together and she was pretty in peach as a bridesmaid in my wedding to my first husband – Yes, I mean Attila!). She gave me permission to share her email with you:
“I have some thoughts to share with you about your struggles with eating. I am not preaching and I am certainly no expert. I have struggled with food, for I feel I was brought up to overeat. No dessert until the plate is clean (not portion sizes I selected, either), children are starving in Africa, don’t waste anything, that little bit won’t hurt you, etc. all trained me to be stuffed.
When I read what you write about being “on” or “off”, about humiliating yourself, about not knowing if you can “do it”, I feel genuinely sad. As you well know, life is way too short to spend one single moment in misery, especially when it isn’t necessary to be miserable. You are way too valuable to publicly humiliate yourself! Why do you do that? It won’t help you lose one ounce! Love yourself! Love yourself enough to want what is best for that body that has been so good to you. It carries you through the day! It’s given you healthy babies! It’s brought you plenty of pleasure! You never ever have to diet. Why not make some simple and easy lifestyle changes? You didn’t gain the weight overnight and you won’t lose it overnight, so why not just start ever so gradually and have half of a treat just once today? Then choose one thing that is the easiest for you to cut back on and just cut back on that one thing all this week. It’s so doable! You don’t even have to deny yourself any taste. Just remember that one M&M in your mouth tastes exactly the same as a handful, so make that one M&M last, but certainly enjoy it. You can lose weight joyfully, Kris. You can lose weight with dignity and pride and you don’t even have to be miserable doing it. It’s about changing habits and deciding before it goes in your mouth if it’s really what you want for yourself.
You lost weight when you were sick and gained it back. That wasn’t the best way, obviously, to lose weight, so it came back because your lifestyle didn’t change. If you lose gradually, very gradually, making lifestyle changes as you go (and as you can!) the weight will stay off. You won’t want it back! The thought of eating as you used to will completely turn you off. Plus you’ll start feeling so good (so will your knees, your heart, your back, your hips) you’ll want to make even more changes.
So I had all of this in my head as I turned on the computer to start this note to you. The first thing I check online every day is called “Daily Motivator” by Ralph Marston. Look at what he says for today:
No Struggle
Make the effort, to be sure. But do not make it into a struggle. Struggle is not a specific condition or action. It is a label that casts a negative spin on your efforts and unnecessarily puts you at a disadvantage. If you see yourself struggling, your expectations are already lowered and the best you can hope for is to break even. Yet there’s never any reason to see yourself struggling. Yes, the challenges may indeed be great. And you have what it takes to make real and steady progress in the face of those challenges. Instead of seeing yourself as a victim, see yourself as making the most of a valuable experience. Rather than living in fear of being pushed back, seize with enthusiasm every opportunity to move forward. Every situation is what it is, but it never has to be a struggle. For you are capable of doing much, much better than that.
Hey, it’s a God thing! All of your talking down to yourself is just negative energy that gets you nowhere! (OK, well, maybe heavier, but that’s it). The more you respect yourself, the more you truly appreciate yourself as your own best friend, the more you’ll want a healthier you and the easier it will be to do that for yourself. You would never treat Attila or Lyryn or Kathi or your mom (send her my best please!) the way you treat yourself. You would never in a million years speak to them, or any stranger on the street for that matter, like you do to yourself. Why is that? Oh, gifted one, answer me that will you? How do you think God feels when He hears one of His children spoken of in such a way? So please please please don’t talk about our Kris that way!
I’ll step down from my podium now. As your friend I just had to say that. If you ever need encouragement or just to vent, feel free with me. It was really really hard to go off wheat and dairy. You know me, Kris. You know how I love to eat. Yet, I feel so good now I don’t want to go back to my old habits. I want to be clear here that I’m not suggesting anyone go off wheat and dairy. It was just what worked for me with my specific issues. Be glad you don’t need to do that. You can have anything at all that you love. Just have a little bit of those sinful things. You can do it. You don’t need to be a switch. You never ever have to be on or off. Just be yourself and enjoy your food. “
I am grateful for friendships like the one I have with Sharon. She feels my pain. She rises to my defense. She encourages me in my frustration. And she has walked in my shoes a time or two. I responded to her email with some additional information regarding my own attempt to give up wheat and dairy last November. I shared with her how slowly the weight came off and how hungry I felt all the time. I told her about my heart medication which is a serious beta blocker that slows the metabolism and inhibits weight loss. Here is her email response:
“I see. You have some extra challenges with the meds that slow your metabolism. This is what happened with me. Chemo threw me into menopause and the steroids inflated me (think the blueberry girl in Willy Wonka). Immediate slow-down for the metabolism. Still, I thought I did OK to gain 8 lbs instead of the 25 most women gain during that process. But that 8 lbs. was on top of 15 I had wanted to lose before. So when I tried cutting back on food and increasing my exercise and still didn’t lose weight, I felt desperate to feel good in my own skin. I felt bloated on only a little bit of food, ate the high fiber, high fruit foods we are told are best for us.
One day in Borders, I happen to see a book called the Blood Type Diet which spoke of the very weaknesses and strengths I have and that’s what lead me to read further and eventually give up dairy and wheat. 12 lbs. fell off in a few months. I started very gradually, nothing drastic at all. Over the next year another 6 pounds disappeared, but more importantly, my thirst problem gradually improved. After the first few months I found I wasn’t quite as thirsty and tried cutting back to 3 pills a day instead of 4. Then a few months later I reduced by another, then another. So now I take one pill for thirst a day and am hopeful that some day I won’t need any. This is simply amazing to me since I’ve struggled for 8 years with this issue (Salivary glands shut down. At one point I was drinking 3 gallons of water a day).
Who would think, after visiting all the specialists you can think of, that diet alone would help resolve it? Doctors cannot explain to me why I have this problem and i have the feeling they wouldn’t believe me if I told them what helped. I think they’d just say it was a coincidence. NOT! I would still like to lose more weight, but my focus has shifted to good health instead of a number on a scale. Now I get really hungry for the next meal, which is a great feeling. I don’t feel bloated because I’m eating foods that are easy for my body (blood type) to digest. It’s difficult, but well worth it to me. “
So, I have decided to try the blood type diet again. Sharon and I happen to both be Type O, so I got lots of tips from her. Yesterday we went shopping together at Trader Joe’s and I bought things like rice pasta, organic blueberry preserves and rice cakes. She brought me flax and millet bread and chips to try. They are actually quite awesome!
Exercise is a critical element in health. The older I get the more I understand how true that is. My problem with exercise is that I have Fibromyalgia (my son-in-law Jesse calls it “Fiberglass Algae”). I ache or hurt somewhere in my body most of the time, but especially after any kind of exercise and particularly in the morning. I was going to Curves for awhile this past year but since Attila totaled the car in May I don’t have the transportation to get there. My alternative is this exercyclerowertypetorture machine that sits in my parlor wickedly taunting me every time I walk by. I can do ten minutes on the black metal creature and then I feel like jello and just want to get in bed. I “did it” yesterday and still hold out hope that I will make myself do it later today after my family leaves (my brother Rhys and nephew Jake are in town and we are having an impromptu family gathering).
I cling to my “some day” dream of installing an indoor pool off my kitchen so that I can swim laps year-round. Swimming is the least painful form of exercise for my joints and feet. Some people have suggested an “eternity” pool but I would find that impossibly annoying. I want to experience the sense of accomplishment I always feel after I flip at the wall and my feet push off for another lap. An “eternity” pool would feel too much like parenting!
So, the current stats are as follows: Weight = 218. Motivation = 99%. Stress = 153%. Ah, perhaps tomorrow we will talk about stress…
