Color Me Fit: weight loss, fitness, exercise

It’s neither the first nor the last time that I blog about food at the office, but this tile I thought about it in a different way.

Where I work is not the worst place when it comes to sweets. We tend to regularly have them in the house, so to say, but we don’t have “pig-out days” or whatever these might be called. When someone brings a cake, it’s ONE cake; we don’t end up with ten different kinds scattered around, and this is precisely part of my strategy to cope with food–I know that if I don’t have a slice right now and “wait just a little, you can have one later on”, by the time ‘later on’ comes, the cake is gone. Good riddance, right?

But earlier on this week, I confessed on Jonathan’s blog that I, too, tend to unload at work.

Yes. When I find myself with leftovers from my birthday, I bring them at the office. Or at school. Or at friends’. But mostly at the office, because I know I can just leave it there and someone (not me, by all means) is bound to eat it.

So, of course, I too take part in that food fest. I plead guilty. Sometimes, I throw candy and leftovers away; sometimes, also, I feel bad about wasting food all the same. hen you don’t have much money, every food looks like some kind of sacred thing, I suppose. Unless I am just weird like that.

Maybe I’m just using other people as a trashcan. Maybe this is bad. Maybe I should stop. Nobody would resent me if I were to never bring food at the office again (it’s not like I do it every day, and they’re not exactly used to expect something like this from me!). After all, I am the first one to grit my teeth when a cake appears in the kitchen in the morning, and it’s not because some WW leaders or whoever and their dog suggest we unload at work that I should do it and maybe tempt other people will it.

Yep. I think I will stop. The trashcan will remain my trashcan, the one that sits lazily in my mini-kitchen, and nothing else/no one else. I know it’s an example nobody at work will follow, first of all because I’ll never mention it, but perhaps I’ll feel a little better about it.

I know I’ve already mentioned it a few times on this blog: I’m quite sensitive to cold and to changes of temperature. Losing weight has not contributed to improving that in the slightest. On the contrary: I’m of those people who are still at ease with long sleeves and a cardigan in a room heated at 26°C (and my thyroid is alright, it’s not the problem). I’m just, well… easily cold. That’s all.

So why couldn’t I realize sooner that not turning on the heater since November could only cause me problems?!

Granted, all I have is an electrical heater, and using it will make my bill bigger. It’s already hard enough as it is–my salary allows me to survive, but I can’t afford many things for myself, nor can I really save money every month–so I preferred being careful about that. I haven’t caught a cold or whatever due to that, thanks goodness, because I have lots of clothes to pile on, and blankets, and a tiny heater under my desk that I turns on sometimes; besides, between work, studies and being at the library, I’m not that much at home. Nevertheless, when I am, like I was these past Christmas holidays to revise for my exams, it was hard. Very hard.

Now, considering that being cold tends to make me very hungry, is it a wonder that I’ve had binge episodes throughout these two months? Heh.

(By the way, I’m still unsure whether I should call these ‘binges’ or not. I don’t eat to forget sadness or solitude, I’m not particularly ashamed of myself, and save for the huge caloric intake in a short amount of time, my ‘episodes’ don’t fit the classical definition of a binge eating disorder. But for want of another word, let’s use this one, unless someone can suggest a better one to me.)

Because, come to think of it… When I overeat, I’m warm. I don’t mean “I’m feeling warm inside” or something like that in a psychological way. No, I’m just warm. Physically warm. Perhaps my body having to digest all that useless fuel makes it produce more warmth? I don’t know. It works even better when I eat warm foods, which is logical enough, I suppose.

This past week-end, I gave in. I turned the heater on. Oddly enough, since that moment, I haven’t had any urge to overeat. I may be hungry before going to bed, but it doesn’t bother me. And after a meal, I’m able to put the fork down without immediately grabbing for more.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed. If this was a reason to that odd behaviour of mine, if not being so cold can help me in solving the problem, then, tough it up, I’ll accept a higher electricity bill at the end of the month. It will be hard; but it can’t be harder, in fact, than spending more money than needed due to emptying my whole cupboard and then having to buy everything again, can it?

Tags: cold, eating, overeating

Recently, a thread with this title appeared on the 3FC boards, and the answers posted in it were quite interesting and enlightening.

How did we get so fat? How did I? Honestly, I don’t know. I wasn’t a pudgy child when I was very young, but I started getting a little belly and gradually putting on weight around the age of 8–I guess I have to thank a very early puberty for that, and let me tell you, when you’re 8, you’re really not concerned by healthy matters, diets, potential boyfriends and wearing that cute little skirt.

Maybe it was all the wrong foods I had at home. Being taught that it’s okay to eat Nutella on bread and drink hot cocoa for dinner because it’s less expensive than meat. Being served pasta and pancakes several times a week because it doesn’t cost much to make. Never getting used to eat vegetables and fruits because they were too expensive. And then, at other family members’, eating all the cake, bretzels, buns and other ‘delicacies’ because I knew I wouldn’t have any at home. Maybe it was that. You know there’s something wrong with what you’ve served daily when you use your little amount of (rare) pocket money to go buy apples. Earrings? Clothes? Magazines? Nope. Apples.

But maybe it was also what happened later. Meeting a man. Living with him. Unconsciously starting to eat the same portions as him, because it’s easier to divide quantities this way rather than the contrary, rather than impose your low quantities on him, who needs more anyway because he’s taller (and it’s not hard, being taller than I).

Or maybe it was giving my life away to please others, following them where I didn’t want to tread, and kind of losing myself in the process. Maybe it was getting depressed, staying at home all day long, not having a car or other means to get out of the village, in which there wasn’t much to do to start with. And without anyone to see, without friends around, why dress up like a fashionista? Ending up continually wearing the same old baggy things because they are much more convenient to do the housework and chop wood or something.

Maybe.

Maybe these were just excuses, or parts of the problem without being the whole problem itself. Maybe I also lacked awareness and information regarding what I was doing to myself. Maybe not being happy played a part as well. Come to think of it, my best years were between 18 and 21, the very period when I lost weight without even realizing it, just because my life was interesting enough for me to stop thinking about food as comfort. Or something like this. Why did I ignore it? What was I thinking, how did I manage to kid myself in front of my own mirror, or standing on my own scale or at the doctor’s?

However, I guess I am still to be counted among the lucky ones, so to say. Because it could have been worse. I could’ve woken up much, much later–both in terms of weight and in terms of taking my life back on the right track. It could have been worse, and sad, and sordid. I don’t know. I hope I’ll never know. I am glad I’ve taken things in hands now, and not at 40 or 50.

Why did I get that fat? I have hypotheses, and I can work around those. Some may be the right ones, some may be completely wrong. But as long as it works, as long as I can tread on a healthy path and be the one I am meant to be, I hope all those mistakes will become useful experiences, and not something to cry about.

And how we all got so fat is still an interesting question, in my opinion. Because once it is asked, it makes us think

- Kery

I recently stumbled upon a new blog to read, and as usual, I decided to browse through the archives a little. One of the older posts got me to think about having different food patterns–some people would probably call them “weird”, but I prefer to say “different”.

Until a couple of years ago, I was convinced that I “needed sugar” for breakfast. However, this wasn’t true. I just needed to eat something. I cannot go without a breakfast at all, but whether I have bread and jam or green beans and an omelette really doesn’t matter to me. Actually, I could eat a steak or asparagus for breakfast. Smells of ‘lunch’ or ‘dinner’ don’t bother me, don’t disgust me, and I guess it’s probably a blessing, because nowadays, it means I can toy with more possibilities in a given day. Moreover, it’s easier to get my daily minimum of five fruits/vegetables this way.

Also, as another example, I sometimes happen to eat dessert before the meal itself. (Dessert in my case usually being yogurts, and I don’t put extra sugar/whipped cream/whatever in them, so it probably plays a role in this behaviour of mine.) I know many people who find this shocking or even disgusting, but I figure out that if my family never saw anything wrong with eating Nutella on bread for dinner, then meat at breakfast or yogurt before eating my vegetables can’t be that much of a problem, can it? And like I mentioned in a comment on Crabby’s blog some time ago, I can also brag about having eaten a can of tuna at the gym because I needed protein. (Yes, I’m able to go as far as that.)

Reading the blog entry I mentioned reminded me of that, and of much more. Of feeling confident enough to eat what I want in front of other people, for instance–now I won’t hesitate anymore to ask for a fruit if it’s what I really want, even if there are tons of sugar-laden foods in front of me. Still, I also remember that about two years ago, I blogged here about the feeling of pressure laid on overweight people as soon as they’re seen eating some ‘bad food’ in public. Having different food behaviours isn’t such an easy thing at times. Somehow, we already know that sooner or later, we’ll be judged on them, that people will inquire about them, that some will criticize them as well. Indeed, it takes confidence. Which is something that, unfortunately, often tends to disappear in proportion with the amounts of pounds that creeps on.

I don’t know if this post really makes sense, or where I’m going with that, if I ever had a goal in mind when I started writing it today. I just find it interesting to think about these matters, about how we are judged, about how even a perfectly healthy way of eating will attract attention, in our surroundings that are usually full of junk foods (so much that junk foods seem to become the norm, and normal foods the exception!). Maybe there is a lesson to be learned in that. Maybe it is worth exploring different eating patterns, because–who knows?–having meat for breakfast might actually help you go through the next four or five hours way better than bread or cereals will ever do. (It is my case.)

Anyway, we shouldn’t be ashamed about eating differently. Pass the yogurt, please; it’s high time I start eating dinner!

- K.

• Eating when and what you want

Tags: eating, meals, breakfast, foods, patterns

It’s that time of the year. Or is it of the next year? Tonight, or tomorrow, people will take new resolutions, as every year. And as every year, you can bet that 95% of them will have given up by the end of January, or perhaps February at the most.

Resolutions can be a good thing, as long as they actually prompt you to get started with something, whatever it is, but they don’t work in my case. At first, I thought it was because I was just lazy; in fact, I guess it’s more because I don’t see the point and don’t really understand the purpose of the whole thing. I tell myself that if I can take the resolution to do X or Y from January 2008, then why can’t I do it from December 2007? Or March 2008?

I won’t even try to guess the amount of people who will resolve to “lose weight in 2008″. Again, if it allows them to find the commitment to do so, then it’s all for the best. For me, it just feels like the same old elusive “I’ll start my diet on Monday”, and it’s not like I haven’t had had proofs of this either. Not one week ago, a member of my family told me “I’ll start my diet, but not before New Year is over”. Which to me sounds more like “free license to pig out on food until then, in a Last Supper manner, using the holidays as an excuse” — we’re not a very extended family, and I know that between the 26th and the 31st, this person would not have had to face countless dinners and temptations. (As for me? Well, I did pay attention during those days, and lost a pound from what I had much unfortunately regained. Seriously, why wait for NEXT YEAR if I can get it done NOW?)

Therefore, once again, no resolutions for me. I don’t need to resolve to do something I’m already doing. Lose weight? Exercise consistently? Eat a minimum of junk food, and favour healthy foods? Yup. Already doing it. There are bumps on the road, but there’ll be bumps as well in 2008, after all. Nothing new under the sun. And if my trip along this road is a slow one, I don’t care, as long as I reach my destination with the least amount of hurt as possible (even the way I’m doing things, I run into problems of obsessing over calories and the likes, so what would it be if I were doing some crash diet…).

Oh, I do have “goals”. Not being heavier than I am now by January 2009, for instance. (Maintaining is so much harder than losing, then regaining, then losing again, then… Well.) However, provided I just go on doing what I’ve been doing so far, I know it’s a goal I’ll attain, period. No need to write down a “resolution” for that.

This said, if anyone feels that a list of resolutions WILL help them, then by all means, I hope it will, and that things will work out alright!

Tags: resolutions, new year, weight loss

This morning, upon getting up, I found in my e-mail box the latest issue of Tom Venuto’s newsletter. Although its first article dealt with something I had already decided for myself, it had the nice side-effect of actually reaffirming my commitment.

Whether its a pound or ten pounds, did you ever ask yourself why does holiday weight gain happen at all? Here are some common answers I’ve heard:

“I’m too busy over the holidays to work out as often as usual.”
“I’m more stressed over the holidays, and the food is there, so I eat more.”
“I have at least three parties to attend and then there’s christmas and New Year’s, so it’s impossible to stay on a diet”
“No one can tell me not to enjoy myself over the holidays so I’m just going to eat whatever I want.”

These answers all have a few things in common. First, they assume that it’s an either/or proposition: You can either get in better shape or enjoy yourself, but not both. Stated in reverse: You can either deprive yourself of holiday enjoyments or gain weight, but it has to be one or the other. The truth is, “either/or thinking” is a very limiting form of thinking.

And what have I decided? Exactly that. That holidays would not be an excuse to gorge myself on food I don’t even really want, nor to keep my arse stuck on a chair or a couch all day long. Because my body does not care whether it’s Christmas, New Year or the birthday of the Great Cthulhu. The needs it has all year long remain the same during the holidays. It’s only logical.

Of course, the campus gym is closed until January 7, and I will not be able to lift weights (unless I shell out 10 bucks and go to the gym in my neighbourhood, which, mind you, I am very tempted to go, since I really like strength-training). But nothing prevents me from popping a Walk Away The Pounds in my computer and work out at home, or go talk a brisk walk, or whatever. Christmas does not mean I have to become a couch potato, even temporarily.

Seriously? If I am able to find the time and commitment to stay in front of my PC for two hours on the morning of the 25th before everyone gets up, then I can very likely find the time to do one hour of cardio. It’s all a matter of choosing one’s priorities, and being fit and healthy is more of a priority for me than pigging out on truffles. (I ate some dark chocolate truffles recently; I was very disappointed, because they were way too sweet to my taste. So much for the ‘pleasure’ it was supposed to bring.)

I so totally agree with Venuto on this. We can have fun and enjoy food during the holidays without abandoning an exercise routine and without hoarding food like there’s no tomorrow. Getting up early to exercise won’t be very different from getting up early to check my e-mails before tackling the housework of Doom. And even if I do “only” half a hour of cardio, this half hour will do better for my mood and my body than an extra half hour of sleep or TV or whatever.

Therefore, I commit to exercising at least half a hour every day (yes, even on the 25th or 26th), and to enjoy my food without going overboard, which won’t be too hard, especially now that I have imposed the presence of vegetables on the table. (I will have to relate that tale later, because it’s both hilarious and tragic all at once. No kidding.)

And I already know I’ll actually be happy about it, because for once, I won’t feel like crap during the holidays!

- Kery, determined to not slack off (too much) during the holidays

• Tom Venuto’s Newsletter n°61

Tags: exercise, holidays, christmas, fitness, commitment, excuses, venuto

I’m quite a proponent of weight-lifting, and not the kind of sissy stuff where you take a 2-lbs dumbbell, do 20 reps, and call that “lifting”. I guess I’d rather fit in with the men, grunting and breaking a serious sweat because I want to develop some muscle.

Well, I told myself recently that maybe it would be worth trying to eat protein bars at times, because I’m afraid I don’t eat enough protein to supplement my efforts. That’s why, last Monday, when I biked to the nearest German town on the other side of the Rhine to refill my stock of quinoa and oatmeal, I also took the opportunity of being in the middle of products cheaper than in France to get a few samples of protein bars.

This morning, as usual, I had one of my weight-lifting sessions, and when I came back home, I figured out it could be worth incorporating a bar into my food plan for the day. Which I did, before proceeding to eat said bar.

How to put it… it was… yucky? It tasted like some Snickers or Mars stuff — 2-cents chocolate with an awfully sweet taste. I love my carbs and I’m a sucker for dark chocolate and plenty of other fattening stuff, but that kind of things is definitely out of my league. Moreover, I hate the aftertaste it leaves in your mouth, sometimes even after you’ve brushed your teeth. Yuck and yuck again.

I have a couple of other bars from a different brand, so I’ll try these all the same a next day, but somehow, I fear that the experience will just end the same. Maybe I just have to stick with cottage cheese and the likes, although it’s not exactly convenient to carry with me when I lift, then spend the day out.

Or I need to up some more the quantity of proteins I eat at breakfast, and ditch carbs altogether in terms of morning cereals, etc. I’ll see.

But that’s too bad for those bars. Their wrappings promised something good. I guess I’m not cut for foods that are very sweet.

Tags: food, protein, weight lifting

Contrary to what the title could lead you to think, this is not a rant, but a simple reminder, for me and perhaps for others who’d be interested, of how overeating causes nothing but complete misery, come to think of it. Unless I’m just the only one with a body reacting violently to and overload of (binge) foods, but somehow, I’m sure this is not the case. Not all the time, at least.

Yes, I’m aware this may become a TMI post, or at least one containing gross ‘revelations’, but I don’t care. If it is what it takes, if writing it down can remotely help anyone, myself included, why not face the facts and the truth, and think of all it entails? (You don’t have to read what follows if you don’t want to be disgusted, by the way. I sure am disgusted. Which is why I wanted to write it down, black on white.)

Therefore, I need and will quit that silly behaviour of bingeing, because…

• I feel and am so effing bloated, and it tends to last for a couple of days.
• Do I need to mention ‘not feeling too well and wondering if I’m going to throw up or not’?
• Even sportswear tends to get tight after a binge. That’s not a funny realization.
• My kidneys ache. Seriously. I’m not sure it’s exactly that, but I don’t know how to word it otherwise, and it precisely corresponds to that area of my body, so let’s say that my kidney aches. It’s worse when the binge included junk food such as McDonald’s. Must be all that sodium and other crap.
• I’m always thirsty for hours on end. Usually, I tend to drink a lot, but this takes it over the roof.
• Exercising is hard when you’re feeling so bloated.
• I have a temporary ‘energy rush’, but this is not productive energy (if I can even call it this way!). It won’t allow me to revise my lessons until 2 am or work on an essay, for instance. Rather, it will keep me up until 2 am, and then I’ll lack sleep and be cranky and more tired the following days.
• Once I’m in bed, I don’t sleep well, which adds to the general tiredness that is to follow.
• I wake up sweaty (it’s awful in winter, because I don’t heat my room during the night, and therefore being wet in the morning = being cold). I don’t even get that sweaty after lifting weights for one hour. I absolutely hate that side-effect. It’s so gross and disgusting.

In brief: the aftermath SUCKS.

And I don’t ever want to get through that crap AGAIN.

Sheesh. You’d think I’d have pulled a Sherlock long ago, added X to Y and realized that all of these ’symptoms’ were all linked to the same cause. Well, now I finally did. And it’s not pretty. And because it’s not pretty is precisely the reason why I needed and wanted to post here today.Now we can all proceed to a general barfing party, then resume regular, normal, healthy eating.

A little tidbit that occurred to me a couple of days ago: snacking.

Snacking is a two-sided sword. If I was a Vorlon, I’d go so far as to say that it’s actually a three-sided sword: my side, their side, and the truth of the matter. A lot of weight loss related websites will tell you that grazing all day long is of course a no-no, and that you need to pay attention to all those licks, bites and tastes. And then they also tell you that letting yourself become too hungry will ensure a lunch or dinner of complete overeating, so you still need to snack, but do it intelligently.

Okay.

Enters the French woman who had lost the habit to snack since she was 18 or so. Because, you know, every diet book says French people don’t snack. I don’t know where this comes from, because we do, but I guess we’re not hell-bent on it either? Whatever. I had stopped snacking when I entered cram school. I didn’t have too much money to spend, so most of the time, I preferred to spend it on books rather than on buns and bretzels. I discovered after a while that not having a snack under the hand at all times wasn’t a problem. If I was hungry, I was hungry, bear with it. On very time-consuming revisions periods, I would go with a hot tea, an apple and a yogurt for a dinner, so no snacks really wasn’t such a biggie in comparison. (And no, this period of my life did not make me fat, on the contrary! At the time, I was barely heavier than I am now.)

Anyway, fast-forward to 2005 and my first “real”, “serious” attempt at losing weight. Fast-forward to websites, forums, diet books and other readings about the do’s and don’ts of weight loss. Everywhere, I would see that stuff about snacking. So I kind of began to force myself to snack in order to avoid being uber-hungry come lunch or dinner time.

The result? I accidentally conditioned myself to be hungry every 3 hours or so.

Nevermind that I eat a solid breakfast. Nevermind that it includes dairy, fruits, veggies, proteins, instead of crappy cold cereals for kids that won’t keep anyone full for more than half a hour. No. You can be sure that if I eat at, say, 7, I’m hungry again by 9. Illogical. I’m not supposed to be hungry, given what I eat in the mornings. And I didn’t have that problem when I wasn’t used to snacking.

So here’s a habit I need to break. I don’t plan of voluntarily driving myself crazy with hunger, of course. but when your “hunger” goes away all by itself if you don’t give it a snack, and you don’t arrive at the dinner table with a stomach ready to eat a whole buffalo, then it probably means it wasn’t that important a hunger, right? (As a matter of fact, that’s what I did this morning: I was at the gym at 10 am, I ignored my hunger, and then when I went to eat lunch at 1 pm, I was quickly satisfied, and didn’t devour a meal for 3 people.)

Intelligent snacking can be a good thing, I’m not saying the contrary! However, I guess that in my case, snacking just because some diet book tells you so is not a good thing in the long run.

Tags: eating, snacking, weight loss

Yikes, you could say. No updates on a weight-loss blog usually doesn’t bode well, right?

Okay, so for the latest news of the front on my personal battlefield…

I’m slowly getting the bingeing part in check. It’s not perfect yet, and I must admit that so far, I’ve been gaining and losing the same old 5 pounds so often that it’s not even a matter to laugh about anymore. But I’m getting there. Maybe I sort of ‘needed’ to go through that to experience what ‘real’ food problems are at least once in my life? (Yeah, right, denial much, huh.)

It’s a little sad that December had to be here for me to finally start to manage, although, as the saying goes, “better late than never”. The Christmas challenge will be something else to tackle. I’ll very likely be the one cooking this year, otherwise I’m afraid we’ll have to face a ‘traditional’ (read: very very heavy and fattening meal) for lunch on the 25th, followed by a… raclette in the evening. In the “hello, I am fattening and very heavy and I’m here to force your gall bladder to commit suicide” meal series, you couldn’t do better.

Anyway. That’s for the food part.

The family part is going better than I dreaded, and I’m not complaining about that. My mother’s been out of the hospital for a solid week, and so far there haven’t been any more problems. However, I’m still uneasy about it. Her physician wants her to see a cardiologist, because he finds her heart rhythm “a little too fast compared to the norm”. I’m not sure what norms he’s talking about: the regular norm for everyone (in which case, it’d be normal, since being very overweight tends to make one’s heart rhythm faster, right?) or HER norm, which would be more worrying IMHO. However, no results are available as of yet, so I don’t know more.

No matter what, I am definitely bringing my Walk Away The Pounds DVDs at my parents’, with a nice copy for my mother, and will do my best to preach the good word. I don’t care that “yeah but the person has to be willing to do it” and all that shiz; willing or not, I want my mom to still be around in 5, 10, 20 years (she’s not even 60 yet!). I just can’t sit around on my bum looking at things unfold this way. If I have a chance, even a slight one, to bring some improvement in all of that, then I must do it.

Oh yeah. I gave my blood again last Monday. It had been so long that I had forgotten how ravenous this tends to make me! I literally devoured the protein-laden foods they gave me at the donation center (oddly enough, carbs didn’t seem very appealing at that time). I plan on going again as soon as I can go back. The only thing that bummed me is that they told me “no exercising in the next 24h”; next time, I’ll be cramming my exercise in before donating.

With that, I must be off to work and classes. I’ll be back later on for another update… and not only in three weeks, I hope.

Tags: family,, health,, weight loss