Eating returns to normal

Finally!  Somehow, being so full messes with my hunger signals.  I tried to walk off the fullness Thursday night, went with Miss Doggbutt to the park to watch dodgeball.  Three miles round trip, still stuffed.  Friday morning, I still wasn’t hungry, but I ate a bagel because I was going for a huge hike, didn’t want to pack lunch.  Nothing like a long slow hike to clear the digestive system, usually, but not this time.  I go about 7 miles, slow uphill, disturbingly steep downhill, took me almost 4 hours.  I stopped and took some pictures of the fog rolling in, loitered, relaxed.  I had fruit and pistachios for snacks, still didn’t get really hungry.  Sometimes I actually felt hunger pangs, but still felt as if my stomach was full.  I did have a bowl of pasta, and later salad and popcorn and watermelon and a grapefruit.  Sometimes I just feel like eating.

This morning, I’m hungry.  I ate a small breakfast, will have a bigger lunch (burrito, yum).  That way I’ll make it 7 hours until my landlord’s barbecue, which I haven’t decided whether I’m participating or not.  Might as well, he’ll have the grill going.  I am skipping the gym today, rare for a Saturday morning, and biking across town to go for a few hour hike in the big park across town.  Unlike yesterday, it won’t be on the steep side of a mountain, just low rolling hills.  A nice break for me, to congratulate me on 20 pounds lost.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend

Full

I didn’t eat too much real food, a lot of potato chips, cheese/crackers, and wine.  And a good chunk of turkey skin, yummy.  A bit of stuffing, a bit of turkey, a bit of gravy, good scoop of mashed potatoes, and a little slice of pumpkin pie.  I’m home and almost falling asleep, I’m so full.  But I did go to zumba this morning, and bike the 2 miles each way to my party.  If I don’t fall asleep, the doggie and I will walk another 1.5 miles each way to go to see people playing dodgeball in the park.  It’s cold out, though, but I’M SO FULL!

No worries, though.  It wasn’t that outrageous, and I’ve been exercising up to now, will continue to do so.

Yummy.  Happy Thanksgiving, all

Diet Food

I don’t understand why so many people refuse to accept that there’s any middle ground between starving oneself/heavy restricting/obsessing/denying of pleasure from food, and eating less overall, and healthier?   Does a  breakfast consisting of a bacon/mushroom/spinach/cheese omelette on toast, with fruit sound like I’m starving?  If I eat only one bacon/egg/toast instead of two, am I really dieting myself into an inevitable binge?  I’m still full, I’m just not in a food coma.  And I’ll lose weight, which is just fine with me.  I have discovered that it takes much less food than I originally assumed it takes to feed myself well.  How is that starving myself?  How is it a diet in disguise, not a lifestyle change?  I’d really like to hear from those who believe all “lifestyle changes” are diets in denial, to explain this to me.  Should I regularly stuff myself to the point of discomfort, so that I don’t feel restricted?    I think I’m just reading the wrong blogs.

A day in which I enjoy breaking diet rules

Most of them are stupid, anyway.  Enough to make you crazy if you try to follow them.  We had late dinner (none of this no eating after 7 pm crap for me), 10 pm, stuffed crust spinach and mushroom pizza.  I ate 2 slices and change, past full, but it tasted so good.  And 2 squares of dark chocolate with almonds.  This morning, I was still full.  Being that I had a few hours before I could cross the bridge without rush hour, I got some coffee, and went for a hike.  I paused and considered breakfast, but figured intuitive eating says I don’t have to eat if I’m not hungry, even if all weight losers should eat breakfast.

After a few hour hike, I was hungry, so went to a vegan Ethiopian buffet.  It’s heavy food, but very tasty and nutritious.  I ate 1.5 plates, couldn’t finish the second.  Now, I’m not really too hungry for dinner, still digesting lunch.   I will have a salad, because I’m not sure of the wisdom of just one meal a day, and I need to clear space for my farmer’s market bounty in the morning.  This salad will have blue cheese, pumpkin seeds, full fat oil and vinegar that I make myself, along with mixed greens, carrots, celery, red pepper.    In about an hour, I will go out and have a drink, maybe two.  As a concession, I’ll have grapefruit juice with vodka, not beer.

I feel good about my eating today.  Usually I eat breakfast because I “should”, whether I want to or not.  I would eat dinner because it’s dinnertime.  I’m still full from lunch, and my salad, and am content.  I don’t feel deprived, not craving anything.  Rules are made to be broken.

Addendum:  10 pm, I’m back home, slightly buzzed, and having a breaded chicken puck with habenero jack and a super yummy tomato.  I was hungry before I started drinking, so this is a favor to myself.  In the morning I get up 6:30 to make coffee, go to farmer’s market (via car) 2 hours at the gym, and then get downtown by noon (these last two on bicycle).  Saturdays are hectic.  I wish myself luck in finding time to eat before 2 pm tomorrow.

Tight pants!

My most comfortable fitting pants that fit me at my [recent] heaviest weight aren’t fitting too well anymore.  I don’t even need to unbutton them to get them on and off.  So, being broke, I looked through my closet for pants that I outfatted some time back.   They all fit, but only one was remotely comfortable, so I wore them.  It was a bit uncomfortable after 2 slices of pizza, maybe they were pinching my kidneys?

Anyway, I’m noticing that weight is leaving butt and legs, maybe arms, but my tummy is resisting.  Or I guess it’s happening, but not proportionally.  Is this common?  I know they say it goes first from boobs, last from thighs, but that’s not my experience.

Thin is the New Miserable?

Being the insomniac that I am, I’ve been up reading Alternet this morning, came across this article:

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/107661/thin_is_the_new_miserable/

My mom and her mom must have gone to the same school of bad parenting, aka “how to fuck up your kids”.  I mean, really!  I’ve confronted my mom about this stuff, and she still insists that she did nothing wrong, but I shouldn’t have been fat if I didn’t like to be browbeaten and tortured over it.  There are many “anti-obesity” advocates who still think that denigrating and making chubby people feel bad about themselves is the way to make them embrace whatever your ideas on the issue are, even if they are completely stupid, destined to backfire.  The worst are those who think that people don’t notice that they’re fat, so telling them in the cruelest way possible is the thing to do.  “I’m just concerned about your health”, so let me make you feel really badly, and then you can go binge to try to make yourself feel better.

For example, my mom.  Ugh.  She doesn’t understand why I should need to eat anything but fruits and vegetables.  Uh, protein?  Calcium?  Vitamin B?  Fat is actually necessary, hello?  I think the non-fat craze alone led me to gain 30 pounds.  I just never felt satisfied, would just keep eating.  Riding my ass until I would lose my temper and throw a fit.  To this day, she still sometimes does this.  Hiding food in strange places, such as the dishwasher (not used), her car.  This would be things like potato chips and cookies.  To this day, she tries to say that her diet is completely healthy, but my dad and nephew know better, and call her on it.    She is lucky to have a metabolism that burns it all up, but dad and I don’t.

I also think all this “weight loss obsession” is an excuse to not really live one’s life.  At least it is for me.  I am unemployed and single, having a hard time these days feeling enthusiastic about anything.  At least my weight is dropping, though.   I’m pissed about all the life I’ve lost, and continue to lose, waiting to be thin.

Why I’m writing this

Maybe I’ve got something to say, maybe it will be useful to somebody.  I’m trying to lose 50 pounds, and I’ve got 30 left to go.  I don’t do points, don’t do diet food, don’t make myself neurotic with guilt, am trying not to do anything that I’m not planning on doing the rest of my life.  Kinda radical for today’s ways.   I’m exercising a whole lot, since I’m currently unemployed (scary), and I’m eating less, practicing a modified intuitive eating.  I’m currently at 178, which puts me just short of obese, with a BMI of 29.9.  My highest weight was about 215, and about 3 years ago, I got to 150, which was just under the normal weight cutoff.  I hope to get back there again.

I keep hearing all this stuff about support being important, and this will have to be my support.  I’m not doing Weight Watchers, don’t want to count points, don’t want to weigh my food.  I absolutely don’t want to sit around and talk about being guilty about eating bad food, or virtuous for eating good food.  I do most of my own cooking, so calorie counts are hard to determine, so I won’t bother.  I can’t afford to eat at restaurants very often, and if I do eat out, it’s usually a burrito or something cheap.  These restaurants are not likely to give me calorie counts anytime soon.  I can generally tell by how full and/or tired the food makes me, but I figure it evens out.  If I eat a huge meal at 2 pm, I won’t get hungry again that day, will probably just eat a grapefruit for snack.

Honestly, I’m not as worried about the food as I am about my psychological state.  I spent a lot of my life bingeing, I don’t want to go there anymore.  I’m quite sure I would not have been overweight in the first place if I hadn’t started the diet/binge cycle, and I won’t go there again.  At this point, if I don’t eat outrageously, my weight stays the same.  If I exercise, it goes down slowly, and going down slowly it is. So that’s me.