Opening Pandora's Box: Katharcal's Diary

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katharcal

New member
When I was about twelve, I remember sitting in the examination room at the doctor's office with my pediatrician and asking her why I wasn't thin like my younger sisters. She looked at me and simply said "You will never look like your sisters, you just have a different body type." Now that I'm older, I see what she meant, but it hurt terribly at the time and I have always kind of stuck with the idea that it was hopeless to try to lose weight because I just wasn't born to be thin.

My doctor was right, so far. I grew to 5'4 and my "little" sisters now tower over me. Their weight fluctuates between the 120's and low 130's, where my weight fluctuates from the 160's all the way up into the 180's. I eat roughly the same diet as them, but don't do the same physical activities they do, so I can't say definitively if this is all genetic or behavioral. Probably both. I have come to accept the fact that I will never be tall with the athletic build that they have, just like they will never have the curvy figure I have. However, I do not believe that I can't be a healthy weight. I know that I can get down to 140, maybe even less, if I really give it my all.

A couple of years ago I joined Weight Watchers and lost nearly twenty pounds from June to August. One day I went to weigh in and my weight had gone up .2 lbs and I just stopped going altogether, I was so discouraged. .2 lbs!!!! That's nothing! I don't know why I let such a small setback, maybe not even a setback, discourage me so much. Needless to say, I gained everything back and then some in the blink of an eye. I still have my card that I used to keep track of my weight and it makes me so disappointed to see how I just gave up as soon as I faced the smallest challenge.

My lowest weight ever was probably around 145 in high school, but I only weighed 145 because I was on a lot of medications, some of which had weight loss as a side effect. I was going through such a difficult time then that I didn't even realize that I had lost weight or that I was "thin" (by my standards) until I saw pictures of myself years later. I met my boyfriend around the time I was at my lowest weight and he (along with a lot of other factors) really turned my life around for the better. We are still together after five 1/2 years, only I am about 40 lbs heavier than when we began dating.

Our six year anniversary is towards the end of June and so I thought that would be a good place to set my first big goal. I'm definitely not losing the weight for him; he has never complained about or even acknowledged my weight gain, but we are both getting giddy about the prospect of finally living together and learning to cook together, etc. We both know that when we do live together, we want to have a very healthy lifestyle; buying the right foods, joining a gym together, etc. It's easy for him. He likes to work out and he'll eat anything that is put in front of him. But me? I hate, hate, HATE gyms. I am completely afraid. I get so freaked out by the unforgiving florescent lights, the totally in-shape men and women, the fast pace, everything. Just thinking about it makes my heart pound.

I am a sit-and-think kind of person, if you can't tell by the novel I am currently writing in this post. I majored in English and I am currently getting my masters in English as well. I love to read, to discuss, to connect, to contemplate.. I basically live inside my head. Sometimes I forget that I even have a body (I have gone a day an a half without sleeping or eating because I was reading such a fantastic book, for example).

But then the summer comes and I go for a walk in the woods or I take a dip in a lake and remember that sometimes it feels great to have a body that is capable of enjoying those kinds of moments in life. My sedentary lifestyle and weight gain are starting to have an impact on my ability to enjoy the outdoors. When friends want to go for a hike, I am panting and sweating way behind everyone and I can't even enjoy it because I'm so self-conscious about people noticing that I'm out of breath. I was inspired to ride my old bike around the block a couple of months ago and could barely make it home--I thought I was going to die!

I remember my mother trudging up and down the snowy hill behind our house in the winter to take me sledding, picking up pumpkin after pumpkin in at the local orchard because I couldn't decide which one I wanted for Halloween, hoisting up the Christmas tree each year and running up and down the stairs to fetch boxes of lights and ornaments. These seemed like simple things to me as a child, but now the idea of doing some of those activities with my own future children exhausts me, and I'm pretty young! I'm 23!

I will never be the person who just loves to run around a track for three hours, but I COULD be the person who loves to go on an afternoon hike, or the person who enjoys swimming laps, or the person who can beat you at a match in tennis. I want to be that person, but I can't do it in this body. My sisters express themselves through dance, basketball, field hockey, etc. I write, draw, teach myself piano/guitar, anything so long as I don't have to showcase my body. It's time that I found a physical form of expression, too. Just because I don't have exactly the same frame as the rest of the family does not mean that I can't have a body that I'm proud of.

I always thought to myself "When I get engaged, then I'll HAVE to lose the weight" or "When I'm ready to have kids, I'll definitely lose weight first because I want to be totally healthy before I get pregnant," but I realize now that even if I did lose weight before getting married or having kids, it doesn't mean that I would be healthy--at least not for long. Why at 23 am I valuing the health of my possible future children over my own health at this minute? Why do I care more about how I'll look on my wedding day than about how I'll FEEL in the years following that one day?

So, to make a long story short (oh.. I guess it's too late for that!), I am ready to begin a healthier lifestyle for ME so that I can enjoy my life as much as possible. I'm still working on loving the body I was born with (I sometimes think of myself as the rough draft of the family), but this is the only body I have and I feel like I've been abusing it.

Most of all, I'm not going to freak out anymore when the scale goes up a tad. It's not worth it to cry alone in the bathroom over what could be a completely insignificant fluctuation. Right? Right. Whew.
 
Well, I haven't been on this forum too much lately. My next semester of Grad school is about to start and I've been getting ready for that. I've kind of relaxed my entire approach to weight loss, and I think it's actually a good thing. I was so stressed out and anxious the first couple of weeks of dieting, constantly checking the scale, randomly running up and down the stairs when it occurred to me that I wasn't working out enough, and just acting like a maniac about food in general.

My new approach is to eat less than I usually do and to eat BETTER than I usually do. That means when I went to eat brunch with my boyfriend yesterday, instead of getting my usual stack of chocolate chip pancakes with a toasted corn muffin on the side, I had two scrambled egg whites with some toast and hash browns. Still not the healthiest of meals, but a lot better (I think) than my typical alternative. A few weeks ago, I wouldn't have even allowed myself that brunch, and I would have been stressed out and miserable during my meal.

Eventually, I hope that I'll have a consistently healthy diet that will be a part of my overall lifestyle, but I realize that I have to work towards that gradually if it's ever going to be sustainable. If I deny myself everything that I'm used to, I think I will just give up right away because it's too much too soon. Small changes, like ordering a healthier breakfast when I go out, are very doable for right now, and I seem to be continuing to make small progress this way.

I don't care at this point if it takes me the next five years to lose the weight, even though I stated that my goal would be this June, as long as I can have a lifestyle I can live with for the rest of my life that will help me to KEEP the weight off.

Another small change that I've made that I'm proud of is that I've ONLY been drinking water--no juice, milk (unless it's a small amount in cereal), soda, etc. If I'm thirsty: water. I did rely on coke a lot for a morning boost last semester (never liked the taste of coffee), so that has been kind of tough, but if I'm at a restaurant and I really want something tasty to go with my meal, I have ordered a diet soda on at least two occasions, even though the taste is not nearly as satisfying as the real thing.

I feel lucky because I don't drink alcohol to begin with, so I don't have that same temptation that a lot of people seem to face when they're losing weight. However, I feel like I've kind of lied to myself in the past by trying to rationalize that since I didn't smoke or drink (like so many of my family members do to excess) I was healthy. Well, my family members are slim but smoke and drink a lot, and I don't smoke or drink but I'm very overweight.

I'm just as bad as they are in terms of disregard for the well-being of my body. I haven't been careful about what I put in my body, and even though I've prided myself on being a good role model for my younger siblings by showing them that not everyone in our family needs to turn to drugs and alcohol, I have been a bad role model in terms of modeling unhealthy eating habits and constantly ranting about how much I hate my body. I want to be a teacher when I'm done with graduate school, and I want to be a self-confident, healthy, happy woman by then. I want to be someone that younger generations can look up to for inspiration. As I am right now, I don't think anyone would aspire to be like me.

One last thing that I am trying to work on is my food-sneakiness. So many times I'll open the fridge and eat something that's bad for me while the door is open so no one can see me. It's like I'm committing a criminal act. I don't know why, but I feel so ashamed when my family, or anyone really, sees me eat. I'm afraid that they'll give me the look that friends give to their girlfriend when she tells them that she's back with her old, mean, terrible, verbally abusive boyfriend. Disappointment/disgust. So I'm trying to adjust that attitude and if I really need that treat in the fridge, I will take it out in the open from now on and take a very small portion for myself and I wont rationalize it to anyone because I shouldn't need to.

When I sneak food, I sneak a lot of food. You wouldn't rob a bank for 20$, and I wouldn't sneak just a single cookie from the cookie jar either. So I need to be open about what I eat because I really think it will help my portion control in the long run.

With that said, I think I will head off to bed since classes are starting tomorrow. I'll try to visit the forum more, because even though my approach is more relaxed, I owe that new attitude to some of the posts that I've read here.
 
Hey there, great to see you are getting a handle on some of your bad habits. You sound a lot like me, I used to eat something before my brain had even computed that I was putting it in my mouth. I am training myself to always think about everything I eat, and so far it is working. Great to hear about the water, that is a good habit to establish for sure!
 
Hey, thanks for the reply! Yeah, I notice that if I SNEAK food, I wipe it out of my memory completely and so I can't hold myself accountable for it. Actually preparing meals on plates has been helping me keep my portions in check. Thanks again for the words of encouragement!
 
Frustrations with Exercise.

Sooo, I've lost about 10 lbs so far, which is not terrible, but I feel like things are definitely moving verrryyyy slowly. I know what the problem is, but I don't know what to do about it.

So right now I'm eating a good amount of calories, but significantly less than usual. I've been cooking egg beaters like crazy (so many frying pans to clean) and usually a banana every morning and yogurt (is that bad? I have heard in the past that you shouldn't eat bananas when you're trying to lose weight, but they're so good!), lots of veggies with dinner, which is usually some turkey or chicken breast, etc. It's been mostly a healthy diet. I was drinking ONLY water for a while but now that the semester has started I am getting into about one can of vanilla coke zero a day. It helps me feel full when I think I'm hungry but I'm really just stressed, plus I can stay awake. PLUS it's zero calories and delicious.

So back to the PROBLEM. It's exercise. I don't get any. I don't think people understand when I tell them that I hate to exercise. I really mean HATE. I simply don't believe people when they tell me that you become "addicted" to it after a while. I just can not accept that because for me, it is the most awful thing in the world. If one more person tells me, eyes glistening, that they feel soooo GREAT after a long workout, I will just die.

Deep down, I will always think that for some reason that I can't understand, all of these people are lying. How can anyone enjoy running in circles or lifting weights or trying to keep up with an exercise video? I have a bad back, first of all, plus I'm "blessed" (cursed) with a "generous figure" as my mother would say, so jumping around is not exactly fun for me.

I know twenty-three with a bad back sounds weird, but it's true. My doctor's only explanation was that for whatever reason my back is just older than it's supposed to be, like I don't have enough cartilage between the bones in my spine. Who knows. All I know is I don't feel "the burn" when I workout. I feel like I am in horrible, miserable pain. NOT "good" pain, I tell you, HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE PAIN.

I'm getting very discouraged by this because I know that if I don't start incorporating a little exercise into my daily routine, I will just stop losing altogether and I will never make my goal or feel healthy. I don't know what to do.

I have Wii Fit, which is good for stretching and stuff I guess, but I know if I get back into that I will want to weigh myself daily and that will just discourage me further. If it were warmer outside, I would just take my mp3 player and go for long lovely walks every day, but no. It is 10 degrees outside. And icy. If there's one thing I hate more than working out, it's working out in frigid temperatures.

Maybe I really should just live like a bear, gaining lots of fat in the winter and then shedding it in the summer. That's been the routine for the last few years, maybe it's what I'm destined for. I am a real life Winnie the Pooh. Ugh, that just reminds me how much I miss eating honey.
 
I really need to commit to this.

I am so wishy washy about weight loss. I admire the people who can make these incredible life changes and get down to their goal weights. People twice my weight have gone from eating fast food for every meal to eating 5 servings of veggies everyday and running marathons. I'm not sure what my problem is. If I went outside and walked everyday and I didn't get so tempted by fatty foods, I could pretty easily lose this weight. It's only 37 pounds.

I've lost 11 pounds so far (started at 188), but I really need new clothes and I'm still not small enough to fit comfortably into most nice pairs of pants at the mall. I know I could just go to walmart or kohls, but I want some really NICE outfits for a change, and I don't want to squeeze into them.

Also, I played laser tag for the first time ever the other day and I thought I was going to die. We were all running around the course shooting at each other for about ten minutes straight and I had a blast--I didn't feel tired or winded at all. Until we STOPPED. Suddenly I became aware of how sweaty I was and how much I was panting compared to everyone else. My face was so red and I was coughing from trying to hide the fact that I was so out of breath, while everyone else cooled down fairly quickly.

I don't know how to restrain myself socially, either. At restaurants, if everyone else is ordering dessert, I feel like that gives me this huge green light because it would seem terribly unfair for me to just sit there while everyone else enjoys delicious cake or ice-cream. At the movies, I feel like I HAVE to have a snack, because it's tradition. It's as though I can't enjoy the movie without popcorn or a candy or soda. Actually, the snacks are the major reason I will even go out to a movie, because I can eat whatever I want in a dark theater and pretend it didn't happen.

I've been keeping my calorie count down, but my diet has been AWFUL nutritionally speaking. I'll have a hot chocolate with whipped cream, a 150 calorie Skinny Cow ice cream cone, 3 120 cal Slim Fast candy bars, etc. Not many calories when I add it up at the end of the day, but it's still all JUNK. It's making me feel sick. I just hate vegetables so much and I never seem to have time to prepare good meals for myself. I thought I could eat egg whites and chicken everyday, but I can't. It's those darn chocolate cravings. They will be the death of me. Maybe literally.

I had made this calorie with reasonable goals to meet for each week up until my final goal date, and I am falling so far behind already. According to my own little schedule, I should be around 169 by the end of this week, but I'm just barely at 177. I don't notice any physical difference in my appearance or the way my clothes fit. In fact, I am beginning to hate my reflection MORE than before I started losing weight. Maybe I should get a therapist first, and then start worrying about all this weight loss stuff. Sigh Sigh Sigh.
 
Trying again.

So, last January I think I was way too negative. I had so many emotional problems to work out that the "new healthy lifestyle" was just far too easy to put on hold. At least I didn't really GAIN any weight over the last year, and I think I just have to look at positives like that to keep me going.

so far I've just been making small changes; running up and down the stairs instead of lumbering up them like an old lady, drinking lots of water throughout the day, having non-fat yogurt for dessert instead of ice cream or cookies. Sometimes I forget that I really love cooked meals so much more than snacking on junk. It's just a bit more of a challenge to have to plan out what I'm going to make. Junk food is cheap and quick and easy. But it makes me feel terrible, and look terrible, and I'm done with it, now.

I need to start going to the gym again, which is hard only because it's winter and I don't have anyone to go with right now, but those are just excuses. I need to make it part of my weekly routine or I'll never start, and I know now that once I start, I actually do like it. It feels good, even though it is initially discouraging because I feel like I'm going to die from only a small amount of exercise.

There are also a lot of things I'm NOT going to do. I'm not going to weigh myself like a maniac, because it won't be about a number this time. I mean, numbers make for a nice goal to attain and good markers to track my progress, but the point isn't to be 145 or 135 or 125 at the end of all of this; I just want to have a healthy lifestyle and clothes that fit nicely. That should be doable, right? I'm sure I can do this.
 
So far things seem to be going really well. I haven't really been weighing myself, but I've been strict about other things, like counting calories. One thing I'd like to change is my tendency to avoid eating in the morning because I want to "save up" for later. It's like I'm afraid that I'll get to the end of the day and I won't be able to eat anything, but usually in reality I get to the end of the day and realize I can eat like 600 calories if I want, and I don't even like meals that are that large.

To change that, I've been habitually having a small bowl of cereal every morning, either rice krispies or cheerios with skim milk. I follow that with either a fruit or a 60 calorie yogurt. Yogurts are actually starting to taste like dessert to me, which is wonderful. It's pretty healthy and I can actually see it as a treat. I feel really nervous when I go out, still, but I've been good about looking up nutritional information for various restaurants ahead of time so I can make wise decisions.

I had a big wake up call when I looked at Dunkin Donuts nutritional information online. I always whined and complained that I'm so much heavier than other people, but I hardly eat ANYTHING. Well, I got into an awful habit last semester of driving through a Dunkin Donuts right before I got on the highway and getting a small coffee coolatta and one or two donuts. It didn't seem like much, since that was my breakfast and lunch, but I realized looking at the nutritional information that I was sometimes taking in about 700 calories just to start my day. And it was JUNK--just so terribly, horribly bad for me. Plus, I would usually get home and have a bowl of ice cream or something. So yeah, not eating much, but not eating anything that was remotely good for me.

I would sometimes go days without actually drinking water, too. I mostly drank milk or juice or soda, if I needed to wake up. Now I feel thirsty for water when I get up in the morning, because I've been drinking it so frequently.

I am hoping that these little changes will add up. I know how quickly time goes by, and I don't want to find myself in June at the same weight I am now, wondering how I let myself get off track. This is so important to me. I haven't felt healthy in so long.
 
I ate like ten cookies today. I was hungry and anxious about school starting, and I just went for it. I ate them standing up in the kitchen when no one was home. I felt pretty disgusted with myself afterward, and I've had a bit of a stomachache since then. Starting to secretly eat food is the first step toward me giving up on a healthier lifestyle entirely. I've been down that road many times. So I wanted to own up to it. Even if it's only here, and even if no one ever sees this. I am resolved not to let that happen again.

They aren't even that tasty. I don't know what's wrong with me sometimes!
 
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