Color Me Fit: weight loss, fitness, exercise

It all happened this morning, before going to work. There I was, sitting at the desk that I also use as kitchen table (you can’t win when you live in a one-room 20sqm apartment), my tiny spoon (I love tiny spoons) dipped in my bowl of muesli, casually re-reading, without paying too much attention, a few pages of Leslie Goldman’s Locker Room Diaries: The Naked Truth about Women, Body Image, and Re-imagining the “Perfect” Body.

Then something that hadn’t caught my attention the first time struck me. This passage is located in the last chapter, where one of the interviewed women mentions hearing other women at the gym asking each other: “What part of your body do you hate the most?”.

Which first implies that a feeling as strong as hate can be applied to one’s body, and also implies that there is more than one part a woman may hate. Come to think of it, this is disturbing.

As I was reading the woman’s comment about that (I don’t remember her name right now), all of a sudden it all became clear in my head:

“Why would I hate any part of my body? It’s my body!“

Something must have hit home, indeed. I think I’ve finally reached that point. My body is not perfect… and I just can’t care! I’m not some sort of broken thing made with bits of appearance nobody else would want. There is a sense in all of this, a purpose, a subtle alchemy, and whether is is conform or not to the given beauty ideals of a given society, doesn’t matter in the end. It is the body I was born in, a body that carries me to where I want to go, a body that allows me to move, breathe, speak, sing, look, smell, touch, and everything else a body is designed to do.

I look at myself in the mirror everyday, and everyday I like what I see, because I understand its real purpose.

And it feels great.

“I’m learnin’ one thing good,” said Ma Joad. “Learnin’ it all a time, ever’ day.” Well, I learned something too: that Pizza Hut is not my friend. And it has nothing to do with calories.

After three days of taking the written part of my national competitive exams, I went out with friends yesterday evening. Well, it was more like we had coffee together and then decided to order something because there was nothing to eat in the house, but we still went out to buy drinks and then grab our orders. The orders were from Pizza Hut.

I hadn’t eaten their food since 2002, at least. At the time, I was living about 10 minutes from their store (10 minutes on foot), so it happened that we ordered there and did just what we did yesterday: grab it ourselves so  that we wouldn’t have to pay for the delivery. It made a pleasant little 20-minutes walk before eating, and it made it less expensive. Of course, at the time, my eating wasn’t what it is now; my weight was somewhat acceptable, but my eating was pretty much erratic, I didn’t eat my 5 fruits and veggies a day (more like my 5 fruits and veggies a week…), and I had no idea about proper nutrition.

So. Yesterday. We ordered from Pizza Hut. The taste was okay—nothing world-tumbling, but not disgusting either. The only thing was that I was sick all night long—slept 3 hours, spent the other 3 hours turning and tossing, plagued with nightmares, and I must admit that when I walked back home after our little dinner, I was two inches from throwing up. In other words, my iron stomach can still fathom a lot of foods, but not that one. Probably too fatty for my gall bladder, and all that.

Lesson learned: Pizza Hut is not my friend, and now I have definite proof of it.

And I still feel like shit today, but I’ll still hit the weights room at 10, because I’ll be tired all day long anyway, so I might as well have a good reason for being physically tired.

For the few lost souls out there who still have this blog on their ‘roll or RSS reader: I’m not dead (as evidenced from this post). It’s just that what I wrote here in October indeed turned true, and since I have little time to devote to my non-school activities, blogging has taken the back-burner.

Actually, I’ve even considered closing this blog down, but somehow I still feel like I’d want to write here, so for the time being, I’m going to leave things as is. And make an effort to update its blogging platform, although I won’t do that now, because the written part of my exam is next week and I’m supposed to be revising right now and as you can tell, I’m soooo fed up with it (I have the  definite impression that I already know everything) that I even prefer to go running rather than to cram. The only reason why I’m not doing that is because it’s raining cats and dogs *and* I’m still a little sick. (What’s a competitive exam without falling sick the week before, huh?)

Anyway.

There are lots of things I could write about, and they wouldn’t fit in one post, unless I want it to be one ginormous post. I guess this leaves me with easy-to-find material for articles later on. Let’s just say that a few realizations have dawned on me recently, and that I’d like to share them. *tease, tease*

Thus, what I’ll be saying so far is that the morale is still good, the troops go on marching, and blessed be my sister for working in a clothing store, because 30% off all the time and VIP cash desk just for me are The Win.

And hey, that’s my first post for 2009!

Got you, huh?

Here’s a little update on things. After a good six months without focusing on weight matters, I realize that taking a ‘break’, if I may say so, was a good solution. A break from forums, websites, blogs and the likes, I mean, not a break from being reasonable when it comes to feeding myself with the right stuff. Anyway. It was a good thing. It has allowed me to take a step backwards, breathe a little, and stop defining my life in terms of food and such, whether I wanted it or not.

As I mentioned in my previous post (back in July… my, how fast time flies!), I passed my License degree, and I am now attending what I hope will  be my last school year. It’s going to be tough, since it’s a national competitive exam, and therefore I cannot just get away with very average grades. However, it’s also been going in an interesting way so far, and I’m amazed at how things have turned out.

I thought I would be depressed. I am not.

I thought I’d get crappy marks. I don’t. Not so far, at least. Rather the contrary, compared to the rest of the class. In a way, it’s mind-boggling.

I thought I’d start piling on weight, due to being overall inactive (I have to cram about 70 hours of work/school/homework each week, and I should probably be doing even more). I don’t. In fact, it’s the first time in my life when I seem to be eating all the time and losing weight instead.

I thought studying so much would be a chore. It turned out that the program is very interesting: King Lear, Jane Eyre, The Grapes of Wrath, the ‘imperial presidency’ (cf. Arthur Schlesinger Jr.) in the United States… Therefore, it’s not a chore, it’s a pleasure! Last year, I had to take some of my classes just because they fit in the schedule instead of others, not out of vague personal interest for them; this year, it’s totally different.

I thought all that stress would make me fat in no time. Actually, I’m so excited about learning more and more about those subjects that I don’t dwell too much on eating, because spending a lot of time eating would reduce my time spent on studying. And so I eat in a sensible way—no “oh, let’s find something else to eat, just so that I can finish watching that episode on my DVD of Series X”. KWIM?

And I love that. Not because of the weight thing, just because I have that feeling that I’m doing something with my life, that my days aren’t spent in idling. Maybe that’s what I needed: that feeling of completion. Maybe not having it was part of my bingeing problem. I don’t know.

Oh, I won’t pretend that I’m doing everything ‘perfectly’. I don’t exercise that much, for starters: a stretching class, lots of walking, but no time (yet) for resuming weight-lifting. I try to eat vegetables/proteins/non-refined carbs, but I can’t do that all the time (campus restaurant, for instance), and sometimes, well, I do like the other students and eat cookies. But I do all that because I’m hungry, not because I want some comfort, which is a huge step forward, and away from the behaviours that had plagued me for months.

Due to that work load, I won’t be able to post much on this blog, so don’t expect daily or even bi-weekly updates. This said, I felt that it was high time to blab here a little again.

And I haven’t regained the weight I had lost. If anything, I’ve lost the few pounds that remained after my bouts of bingeing. Perhaps I’m not such a desperate case, after all.

Okay, so I’m not dead.

However, I suddenly noticed that the blog was unavailable. I don’t know for how longs things hadbeen this way, but since my webhost moved my files to a new server a couple or a few weeks ago, things probably went bonkers at that time, and I didn’t notice it at first, having a lot to do with my various sites after that. It seems that one particular plugin was causing problems, so I just deleted it, and I’ll be checking things more thoroughly in days to come to make sure that there aren’t any more problems.

In the meantime, I’m happy to report that things have been going better. Not perfect, not suddenly right again, but better. I also go my license degree (probably with honors, if we had such a thing in my college), which is quite a relief, if you ask me. One more year to go, if everything goes as planned, and I’ll be where I wanted to be.

What, you thought you’d be rid of me so easily? I thought so as well. But it seems I still have a few things to gab about, after all.

I decided to focus on health/fitness goals only. I’m still sticking to my “no counting calories” policy (and hoping that soon will come the day when I don’t look at an apple and immediately worry about how many calories it contains–seriously, it sucks big time). And I don’t need a food journal these days to realize when I’ve been overboard and when I haven’t. So that leaves me with exercise. Believe it or not, I don’t care about exercise for weight loss, I care about exercise because having your ass glued to a chair all day long is boring! No kidding. Besides, I have to move to avoid that lovely blood of mine clotting in my veins, right? I might as well like moving, then, it makes everything easier.

So. What does it have to do with this blog? Simply that: I caved in two weeks ago and bought a new pedometer, with a couple nifty functions such as letting me know what time it is, how many steps I’ve walked, or how many kilometers I’ve walked, too. I had remembered the famous “10,000 steps a day to ensure good health” thingy, and decided that since I go everywhere either on my bike or on my two little feet, why not have fun with that? (I must add that I don’t obsess over a number of steps like I used to on a number of calories, and it’s all good this way.)

To add more fun to it, I signed up for the Eowyn Challenge. Basically, it’s all about selecting a starting point and a destination in the world of The Lord of the Rings, and adding the miles you walk until you ‘reach’ it. I had done it a few years ago, but had kind of fallen behind without a pedometer to track my progress, and then completely lost track. Things are a little different now, if only because I actually have reasons to go out, compared to a couple of years ago. I don’t use the BMI/calories tools on the website, but I appreciate the kilometers-to-miles converter, and how I can log in what I’ve walked every day and it keeps track of it for me. I just find it more interesting and funnier to tell myself that I’m biking along the road from Hobbiton to Rivendell, rather than from home to work. Once I’ll be there, I’ll push further, to Lorien or Gondor, and this will probably keep me busy for a couple of years.

I’m not being ‘perfect’ with food and I’m not dieting. The hell with that. I’ve realized that 10,000 steps a day is actually the bare minimum in my current life–what I walk when I don’t do anything else than going to the campus for a 2-hours class and then buying some groceries. Most of the time, I walk more than 10-11 kms a day. And just for that, I am happy.

- K.

• The Eowyn Challenge main website
• Signup (it’s a little hard to find at first)

I have decided to seriously tune down the amount of weight loss-related forums and blogs I read. Not because I don’t care at all. Not because I’m planning on denying my meager support to anyone (as if it was that useful to start with, haha). Simply because I feel that I cannot find my own ‘peace of mind’ as long as I’ll be in such intense contact with anything even remotely linked to ‘dieting’.

I can make healthy food choices. I can choose to walk instead of taking the bus. I am wise enough in terms of lifestyle to know what works for me and what doesn’t, and I haven’t lost natural hunger cues and other similar body sign. Nowadays, I know that I dont need some plan to tell me how much I can eat, nor how many glasses of water I should drink every day.

But what I can’t do is recovering from a newborn eating disorder while being surrounded all day long by ‘lose weight’ messages.

I did my best to prevent myself from obsessing about calories and the likes, which is a set of habits not that easy to lose, once you’ve taken it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. I can’t just snap my fingers and decide that voilà, there it is, the obsession is gone. If my binging problems have been getting a little better (meaning I binge like once a fortnight instead of every two days… guh), I’m still far from being rid of this particular issue. From what I’ve observed, I do better when I’m not focused on weight loss matters, and therefore not being constantly faced with the underlying pressure of “you know, K., not worrying about these things is what’s best for you right now… but you still need to lose weight, so get to work on it, I mean NOW, m’kay?“.

Yup. It’s not easy at all to get rid of such a mindset when it has become to overwhelming…

So, for the time being, I’ll be stepping down from 3FC and other places from some time. Even if I didn’t post a lot. Even if all I did was to read threads, and answer a few PMs. Because right now, at this very moment, I swear that if I see one more “OMG I’ve eaten one cookie I’m SUCH A FAT PIG” thread (why so much hate for ourselves…), or any question about how much gas or crap weigh in one’s intestines (so that this weight can be substracted from that on the scales, of course…), my wires will seriously get crossed. It’s just not possible anymore. It’s not… not healthy. At least not healthy for my mind.

Now, I don’t think I want to give up on this blog. I like it, and I do want to lead a healthy, balanced life, after all–which is exactly why I also want recovery, and won’t bury my head in the sand claiming that my binging problem is ‘only overeating in front of the TV sometimes’, or anything to that extent. This said, I don’t know yet if I’ll rather talk of walking, exercise, that kind of things, or if I’ll stop writing for some time. Honestly, I don’t know.

What’s sure, though, is that hating myself for binging and obsessing about having to buy new clothes and all that shiz is no good. Therefore, I’ll be removing the weight loss-related triggers. These ones, at least, I may be able to stay away from, contrary to my stressful life and the fact that I’m a little too lonely these days for my own good. (Yes, I know there’s also the media and its twisted messages. Maybe I can just avoid buying magazines? It’s been years I haven’t had a TV, only a monitor to watch DVDs, so I could probably push it just a little further?)

*sigh*

(I wanted to write a post about this before, but my host seemingly deleted some files for this blog out of the blue, and when I finally had the opportunity to fix them, it was a little too late too blog. So here it comes now.)

I should probably have griped about this during the week-end, since it was at that time that things were the hardest for me; I suppose I was too busy actually taking care of myself to find any desire to blog. What amazes me is my ability to go through strenuous activity and get out of it unscathed and perfectly healthy, and then one week later I pick up some greasy paper on the ground and hurt my back in the process. Really, I don’t understand. The result was there, though: there was no way I could do squats and generally lift anything heavier than a small pan not filled with water, because I became the ‘happy’ owner of a lumbago.

At least my positive reaction was: “Oh, it’s only in the muscles, so it doesn’t mean that my vertebrae are all broken? That’s good news!”

The bad news, of course, being that every exercise save from walking (not too fast) was out of the window. A couple of helpful people on 3FC suggested swimming, which was an idea I loved; alas, it wouldn’t be very nice from me to spread my foot fungus in the city pool. I can probably thank one of my nice neighbours from last year, for having left that in our shared bathroom for 13 people. Bummer.

Which brings me to this… I’m certainly not an intense exerciser. A lot of what I do actually involves everyday actions, such as always taking the stairs instead of the elevator to go to the fourth floor where I live. Or biking to wherever I go, including work, which is a good 10 kms away or perhaps more. This said, I also like lifting weights, and I especially wanted to run on Sunday. Finding myself stuck in my apartment, unable to properly move, was extremely frustrating. (Keep also in mind that with my Factor V problem, I’ve been made even more aware of the necessity to “keep moving on a regular basis” to avoid clotting as much as possible.)

If you had told me, ten years ago, that I would actually felt bummed, frustrated and almost angry at having an official reason to skip the gym, I wouldn’t have believed it.

Now I do

Fortunately, the pain is subsiding, I can walk normally again, and in a few days, it will probably be gone for good. It’s just so annoying, even if I know I wouldn’t have run a marathon this week, nor gone on anything very intense. I especially miss lifting, to be honest, and when the doctor tells you “well, just lift with the arms, maybe?”, you feel like snickering a little. I don’t know what kind of lifting doctors do, but as far as I’m concerned in terms of personal experience, it’s hard even on a machine to NOT use any of the back muscles, if only to maintain proper balance and form. Let’s not even talk about free weights.

On a totally unrelated side note, it’s 7:30 am and it’s snowing here. When the official date for Spring is only but two days away. Beats me.

Or so I think, of course, because I know plenty of people who would disagree with me.

This all stems from my general feeling of being fed-up with people’s commentaries about my meals. Especially at work, where we all eat together and everybody gets to analyze what the neighbour is eating, probably because our lunch room isn’t that great and being there is boring. Yes, that’s where I got remarks about how ‘diet-like’ I eat, just because I had more vegetables and protein than starches on my plate. Seriously, most people can’t recognize healthy eating anymore when it stares at them in the face.

But I was wondering. Maybe I do take it too far? Maybe I can afford eating regular yogurts, instead of fat-free fruit yogurts, or low-fat chocolate mousse? Just maybe. (It’s a whole other matter that I started buying those because at the time, they were on sale for weeks on end, therefore cheaper than ‘normal’ ones, and then I simply got used to it…)

So I tried. And the result wasn’t great. I don’t know if it’s because I’m used to my favourite little desserts now (I use that kind of dairy as desserts, it can’t be worse than tiramisu ;)). I don’t know what gives. But the fact is that I now find a lot of the regular stuff icky. A regular mousse doesn’t taste more chocolate-y than my low-fat one. And the regular strawberry-flavoured yogurt tasted more like chalk, whereas the fat-free version, at least, had some strawberry aroma to it. Then I went to Germany to pick some desserts that were yummy according to everyone I know… and I didn’t find them terrific at all. (They were cheap, at least. That’s one of the great things about living next to the border. Moreover, I get to bike 7.5 kms just to go there!)

My rule of thumb is: I don’t eat what I don’t like. I agreed with myself to make an effort when it comes to what I know is healthy–that’s how I taught myself to like a lot of vegetables, in the end–but it’s an effort I’m not ready to make for desserts or junk food. If that stuff tastes foul, then I leave it aside. It’s not like someone is putting a gun on my nape demanding that I eat that chocolate muffin at the campus restaurant. Besides, it’s just a chocolate muffin, it’s not the last one of its kind on Earth, and if I really want one, then I can go and buy a really flavoured version. Anyway. You get my drift, I guess.

I don’t eat what I don’t like, including these foods. Especially these foods, in fact–I don’t see what would be the point. I find it easier to go by this rule nowadays than to obsess about every single calorie, to be honest.

Conclusion: maybe I’m not such a freak. Maybe I just eat certain specific brands of fat-free foods because I like their taste.

That said, give me a yummy-tasting regular food, and I’ll eat it as well.

It took me more than one week to come back to this blog, but since I’ve done much worse in the past, I probably don’t need to apologize. Besides, I needed the time away. I also needed time, a lot of time, to work on an oral presentation that I finally went through on Monday, and given my general state of exhaustion last week, finding the strength to do school-related activities was no small feat. I think the presentation went well. But it’s not what I’m going to talk about today.

In general (and perhaps also due to my young age), I think I can consider myself as kind of blessed in terms of health. Although the period when I was the most overweight made me quite miserable, I still wasn’t plagued with serious illnesses. My worst moments, I knew them in my childhood, when I caught every cold, otitis and other nose/throat-related ailments. Even this has subsided by now, and I suspect that the Power of Fruits and Veggies®­ had a lot to with that. Therefore, overall, I’m a happy camper.

But I have a Sword of Damocles over my head–one that I’ve always had, without being aware of it until now. The result of a genetic test I made in February arrived in the mail yesterday, and it’s official: I’m heterozygous Factor V Leiden. I already suspected it. I prepared myself to it (if you’re expecting the worst, then the worst cannot crush you as much as it could if you were full of hopes, right?). Now it’s simply been confirmed.

It’s a blow, alright. I had hoped no matter what that I’d pass through it. Tough chance. Now what?

Well, I can live with it. This is my decision. I can and I will live with it, and if it can be another reason to go on pursuing a healthy lifestyle, then I’ll take this positive side of things over all the negatives. The major change right now for me will be to go off my BC and take another one. Or not take any; it’s not like I really need it at the moment anyway. I just went on taking it for the really nifty benefits of not bleeding to death five days a months and cramping like crazy for three. If I lose this, I don’t need the pill for the time being.

I have no control over my genes, that’s a given. This said, there are things I can do. Moving, not living a sedentary lifestyle? I can bike to work and school instead of taking the bus, and have a walk after lunch and dinner, and go on exercising several times a week. That was on the program anyway. Controlling my weight, because obesity increases the risks? Already doing it. Mention it if I need to get surgery? Tell my doc to temporarily put me on blood-thinners if I ever have to fly for ten hours straight? Sure, I can do that as well.

For what it’s worth, I may not have any problems at all during all my life. It’s just a risk. A more important risk than for a normal person, but a risk, not an absolute given. I’m the only one who gets to decide if I want to let this make my life rotten with anxiety, or if I want to go on leading the life I’ve started to carve for myself.

Is there any need to say that I haven’t chosen anxiety? Remember the benevolent wolf…

I guess it’s a shame that it takes a health problem to make most of us realize what is good for us and what isn’t. But it’s the way it is. In the end, it alway goes back to our choices. So I’m seizing all the reasons to never let myself fall back into my old, wrong habits. Because now that I know for sure, and not only theoretically, that they could be akin to me playing Russian roulette with my veins, all of a sudden that McDonald’s meal doesn’t seem so appealing anymore.

• Factor V Leiden