Cara's Weightloss Journal

I’m going through so much in my head lately. I’ve really started rethinking a lot of things. Mainly, how I think and feel about “weight loss”.

I’ve been doing a lot of research (which I’ll post about soon) about why our bodies get fat (or rather store fat), how the process happens, what types of foods encourage our body to store fat, and how it makes us feel when we eat certain foods. And I’m looking at food an entirely different way.

I’m even considering going back to school to become a nutritionist. But that’s a WHOLE other post.

I’ve been struggling to lose these last 30/40 pounds for almost 3 years, now (never missing one meeting of Weight Watchers, mind you). You’d think I’d have it all straight in my head by now. But I was talking with a guy at work today (who knows a LOT about nutrition and dieting) and it occurred to me that my weight loss is a whole lot less of a physical reaction than it is an emotional and mental battle.

Now, this isn’t a particularly new concept to me. I mean, I’ve blogged about it before. And I KNOW this weight loss thing is ALL in my head. But when I was talking with him today, and hearing how he has the same feelings about weight loss as I do (which I was surprised because he’s such a health nut and is always working out), I told him about an episode of David Letterman I saw a while ago. Jason Bateman was a guest. When he first walked out, I thought to myself, MAN he looks skinny! And as soon as he sat down, David asked him about it. After a few jokes, Jason made this statement about how he is able to stay so thin: “I have to spend at least 2 hours on the treadmill every day … because I have a 300-pound man screaming to get out of me.”

THAT is exactly how I feel. I truly feel like I have a 300-pound woman trapped inside me fighting me every waking hour to get out. It literally is an internal battle every waking hour of my life (and in my dreams too, actually). And the sad part is… I don’t see any end to the struggle. I mean, even when (IF) I ever reach goal, I truly believe she’ll still be inside of me.

I’m not sure what to do with the thought of that.

That’s a hard thing to face. It almost sounds a little demented–mentally, that is.

Have you guys ever felt this way? How do you deal with it?

I feel like I should start going to therapy or something. I’m just not sure how to battle this fat woman inside of me. She’s got to lose her grip on me at some point, don’t you think?

I mean, I’m going to continue the battle. I’m not going to stop trying to lose weight. And I’m going to figure out the physiology behind what makes me fat and how to combat it, but in the mean time, I guess I just have to take it one step at a time, one bite at a time, and ask her to try and play nicely.

I’ve turned a corner in my weight loss journey.

Well, no, wait a minute… not in my weight loss journey, but in my heart.

The most I can hope from this turn, is to not do a u-turn and head back down the path I’ve been on for the past couple of years.

As many of you might know, I’ve been on Weight Watchers since May 2007. So in a couple of months, I’ll have been trying to reach my goal weight for FOUR YEARS. (yikes) I still haven’t reached goal. 

Sure, I’ve reached major milestones along my journey, all of which I’m extremely proud of, but I haven’t reached my ultimate goal weight yet.

Well, now I hope with this new turn, I can get there.

A little bit of history about my weight loss journey, for those of you who are new. Weight Watchers has taught me SO much about how to eat right. It’s taught me what foods are good for my body and bad for my body. It’s taught me that I can eat whatever I want to eat as long as I eat responsibly and watch my portions. It’s taught me proper exercise. And an all around healthy look at the way I eat.

I’ve also tried a few other diet plans along the way, though none of them I’ve stuck with for very long. Maybe even a few weeks at a time. But each time I dabbled in something different, I learned so much more about foods and how they interact with my body.

I learned a great deal from the Eat Clean Diet. Man, if you ever want to learn exactly what food does to your body, that’s the place to start. My husband tried a medical weight loss diet and I learned  a lot from his journey about carbs and sugars and protein and how they break down in your body for the good and bad.

So, all in all, I’d say I have a pretty good grasp on how to diet, or rather how to eat right and exercise to lose weight.

But here I sit, still 30 pounds from my ultimate goal (20 pounds from my Weight Watchers goal).

I was almost at my wits end when I recently stumbled across a lady who’d written a book about cravings. It started me to thinking about how throughout the 200+ blog posts and 4 years of daily eating and exercise habits, it has always come back to cravings for me. That’s always been my down fall.

My cravings are SO bad. I’m sure you can all identify with it. A real good visual is the orange fuzzy monster that Weight Watchers came out with a couple of years ago to represent the “cravings monster” who stalks us and follows us wherever we go. I can say I’ve never physically seen that monster in my path, but I have definitely felt him emotionally and mentally taunting me and teasing me and making funny faces at me ALL THE TIME. My cravings are such a real and tangible thing.

So back to this book. It’s by a lady named Lysa Terkeurst and it’s called Made to Crave.

The book is about how God made us to crave, but not necessarily to crave food but more to crave Him. Listen to this verse: “How lovely is your dwelling place, oh Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.” (Psalm 84:1-2). It says ‘my heart & flesh cry out for God’. If I had to be completely honest with myself, my heart and flesh cry out for cheese fries, juicy burgers, lasagna, cheese & bacon soup, coconut cream pie, bacon & onion mac & cheese, donuts and full fat lattes (though my list of “crying out for” foods, could continue for another paragraph or two, to be truly honest). And I’m afraid that I’ve let my cravings for food consume my craving for God.

Here’s an excerpt from her book that really sums up how I feel right now. She’s talking about her endless cycle of waking up each morning and weighing herself just hoping that the scales would be kind to her, but they never were, and so she’d step into the kitchen and each whatever yummy thing she could find for breakfast, and start the cycle of bad choices for another day only to repeat this process every morning. Anyway, here’s the excerpt:

And the cycle I’ve come to hate and feel powerless to stop continues. … But I did need to make changes. I knew it. Because this wasn’t really about the scale or what clothing size I was; it was about this battle that raged in my heart. I thought about, craved, and arranged my life too much around food. So much so, I knew it was something God was challenging me to surrender to His control. Really surrender. Surrender to the point where I’d make radical changes for the sake of my spiritual health perhaps even more than my physical health.

Part of my surrender was asking myself a really raw question.

May I ask you this same raw question? Is it possible we love and rely on food more than we love and rely on God?

That hit me like a ton of bricks.

I am a deeply spiritual person and I rely on my God and my Saviour, Jesus, for every breath I take and everything move I make. How could this be humanly possible that I could love food more than God?

But I think back over the past 4 years, heck, the past 44 years, and I can see where my life has almost always revolved around food. I schedule for it. I anticipate it. I devote serious amounts of time to food every day of my life. You might even say I’m a bit obsessive compulsive about my lovely food. 

So maybe there’s something to what she’s saying.

Well, that is where I am right now. This is the corner that I’ve turned. I have no idea what’s around the corner, but I know that I need to reexamine myself and my heart and get my priorities and my cravings set straight.

I’m only on chapter 4, but I feel like I’m on chapter one of my weight loss journey. And I feel really good about that. I really feel that if I could knock my cravings, or at least get them under control, I could beat this weight loss thing.

Well, I’ll let you know how it goes. I plan on journalling more frequently (I know, you’ve heard that before). I want to work through this new process a bit more and I’m gonna need your help to get me through it. We’ll see where I go from here. I hope it’s to a better place and a more sane reality for me. Because I just don’t know how much longer I can stay on the path I’m on continuing to not reach goal.

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P.S. If you’re interested in the book, I can post more info about it. Just let me know.

Okay, so it’s been a MONTH since my last post. I’m a total blogging dead-beat!

A lot has happened since then, but then again, not so much. Since then, I’ve lost a total of 5.2 lbs. But if you remember, I had just come back from vacation where I’d gained about 8.2 lbs (officially, according to Weight Watchers–unofficially I gained 12 lbs on my scales at home because there was a no-weigh-in pass that I took the week I got back).

I still have 3 more pounds to lose to be back to the weight I was before vacation–before the week of Sept 18-26.

Okay, now that I got that outa the way. I have to say that I am as determined as ever to lose these last few pounds to make it to goal. Right now, I’m at 164.8.

If you remember last time, I’d resolved to change my goal weight to 160 rather than Weight Watcher’s goal of 155 (the heaviest I can weigh (according to their charts) for my age and height). Well, I have to admit something to you. I secretly want to make it all the way down to 155.

I can’t help it. It’s something I still want.

I haven’t gone to the doctor yet to ask him to write me a note saying that 160 is a healthy weight for me (which I’m SURE he’d do in a heart beat). But I really DO want to make it to 155.

I know I had made up my mind to not be defined by a number but be instead be defined by how I feel in my skin and in my clothes. And don’t get me wrong, I still do want that. In fact, I want that SO badly. But I still cant get that figure outa my head–155.

It haunts me still.

This is why…

It’s 10 pounds less than where I am right now.

Well…

Over the past 4 weeks, I’ve lost 6.6 lbs.

Pause for dramatic effect…

That tells me that I’m doing this right and I CAN lose the weight. It’s all in my head. Sure, there’s metabolism and eating the right foods (low sodium, low sugar, low fat, high fiber, high protein, low carbs, etc., etc., etc.). But more importantly is my mental ability to will myself to lose weight.

I swear, for the past 4 years, it’s been more about the battles I’ve had in my head than the battles in the numbers and on the scales. Sure, those are the outward evidences of it all. But the internal–both mental and emotional–has been my real struggle.

So, yea, I do want to feel good in my skin and be proud of my body. And I am. But I do still want to get down to 155.

I know it’s a total contradiction and I don’t know what to do with it.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t blogged in so long. I feel like I’m stuck in the middle of the road with a fork in front of me asking me to decide which road to take and I just keep digging at the ground in between the two paths so I can take both of them.

The thing is, sooner or later, I’m gonna have to choose… and I just don’t know how.

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Well, I am officially on a new path in my weight loss journey.

I’ve completely stopped weighing myself in the mornings and I feel so good. Liberated, actually. The only weigh-in for me is going to be on Saturday mornings at Weight Watchers and I may or may not look at the results. We’ll see.

This past Saturday, I had my first weigh in since vacation. Now, mind you, vacation was Sept 18-26. I weighed in the Friday before I left (17th) and while I was up there, I weighed in on the following Monday (20th), just 2 days into my trip. By then, I’d only gained 1 full pound. I thought that was pretty good considering I’d already eaten a ton of peanut butter fudge and I actually had fried chicken one day. But then it dawned on me that I didn’t have to weigh-in for another week and a half (Oct 2nd) and, in fact, I’d have a full week of being back home and back on plan before I had to weigh in to get any extra pounds from vacation off.

Well, that plan backfired.

When I got home, I stepped on the scales at home and I’d gained… gulp… wait for it… 12.6 pounds.

Yikes, is an understatement.

But I still had a full 5 days before weigh in so I figured I could probably get a few of those pounds off, and actually I did. By Saturday morning, I was only up 5 pounds (I’d lost 7 pounds that week) since before vacation.

But you know what I did. I took a no weigh in pass. I figured that would give me one more week to get back down to within a few pounds of where I was before I left.

Well, that didn’t work either. I actually gained 3 more pounds last week. So my official weigh in for this past Saturday was a whopping gain of 8.2 pounds (since before vacation).

Ouch!

I know, my new plan is to not think about the pounds, but the thing that stings the most is that I’ve now fallen down to below my 100 pound loss mark. I’m now down to only having lost 95 pounds. I actually cried a little bit while I was sitting in Weight Watchers looking at that number.

But I dried my tears and put my head up and remembered my new journey. My new journey doesn’t care about those numbers any more. My new journey cares about how I feel. So how do I feel?

Well, my jeans are getting a big snug. My beautiful skinny jeans are telling me I’m not skinny. It’s only 8 pounds, but evidently 8 pounds does make a difference.

So I’m gonna call the doctor tomorrow and make an appointment (or whatever I have to do) to get the note from him saying that 160 is my healthy weight instead of 155. And my first goal is to not get down to 160 pounds, my first goal is to get my jeans fitting me again. My poochey tummy is sticking over my jeans a little too much for comfort.

I feel so much better about this new plan. I truly feel liberated. I just hope I’m doing the right thing.

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