-2.4 = 20 pounds!

Finally! All the working out and counting points got me to a total of 20 pounds lost (1 more pound and I'll reach my 10% goal!). But what I'm really happy about is the fact that I no longer weight over 200 pounds. I also am finally starting to believe that this may actually work. Before I had just hoped, but now I feel that WW can actually help me lose a real, significant amount of weight.

Unfortunately, I haven't really been able to celebrate because both Todd and I have been sick this weekend. I didn't go in to the office today, so I'm re-reading André Breton's Nadja today. Miss suggested that it might be psychosomatic because I've been under a lot of stress (though I prefer "stress-related" because it sounds less like I'm making it up). I was actually a little hurt by that. I think when people know that you are on depression medications, they are quicker to read everything as being based around that. Which is odd, since her husband takes depression medication too, so you'd think she'd be more sensitive than that.

If it is all in my head, then I'm sabatouging myself and hurting my chances of finishing my dissertation this summer, and I'll lose everything. Okay, maybe I am under a little stress...

feeling different

Okay, okay...I should be happy that I am, indeed, losing weight, but I just wish it would go faster. But today I noticed that my body is changing. Not in a weird way or anything. I mean, I've noticed that I've gotten stronger. I can run longer on the treadmill, and bike the five miles around Lake Winona and barely feel it. But today was different, I found thay I am holding myself differently. My posture has changed, and I feel more confident.

0.7 pounds lost

shit! shit! shit!

its all about food

Between Weight Watchers and becoming vegetarian, food has become an obssesion. I count the points for everythinng while at the same time I'm learning to eat a vegetarian diet. I'm perusing recipies, learning to deal with tofu (did you know that marinating tofu takes at LEAST 24 hours?!), trying to keep from disrupting T's eating habits, and discovering how limited our options for eating out are here in Winona. Pretty much all there are is the local sandwich shops (which are good for the most part) and the local Chinese place. Still, avoiding meat has not been too difficult, and I really haven't been tempted.

Sticking to my points has been hard though. I've been working out really hard, running on the treadmill for 35 minutes, doing some weight machines, and then bike riding around the lakes with Miss or T in the evenings. The WSU fitness center is only open during the week, so I just ride my bike on the weekends. After a few weeks, my legs started feeling really weak, especially after carrying our corgi Cooper up the stairs to go to bed. I literally would sink down to the floor because my legs felt so wobbily. So yesterday and today I didn't exercise. I feel terrible about it because I am honestly so desperate to lose this weight and I hate the idea of doing anything to slow my progress. Progress...right! I've been going to Weight Watchers meetings for 17 weeks and I've lost 17 pounds. And I feel like I've had to fight for every pound. My next meeting is tomorrow morning, so we'll see if anything has improved.

Bossy men in my life...

Why are men so bossy? It seems that no matter what I want to do, there is a man there telling me how to do it, or telling me that it can't be done.

Case in point: I ride my bike to work each day. It's a nice bike and I really don't want to lose it, so I made sure that I had room to park it in my office instead of the communal bike rack. I realize that it sounds a bit paranoid, but bikes get stolen everywhere, even in small towns like Winona.

So I ride up to my building and the custodian Russ is standing on the steps. (He's kinda taken me under his wing to help me with my office and such) As I start carrying my bike up the steps, Russ says "You aren't going to park that in your office! No! It's too much trouble! Park your bike in the loading dock." Well, I didn't want to, but he kept insisting that it would be fine and poo-pooing my protestations that I liked parking the bike in my office. Finally I just gave up and dutifully followed him to the loading dock where I parked my bike and took off the panniers holding my computer.

Problem was, the loading dock is constantly open, and Russ even said that he was just leaving for a long weekend. I thought about this as I made my way upstairs to my office and I also really resented his patronizing insistance that I do what he said. Don't get me wrong. Russ is a very nice man and I like him, but I'm so tired of men insisting that they know best and kindly bullying women to do things their way.

Once I dropped my stuff off in my office, I went back down and got my bike. You can take the girl out of L.A., but you can't take the L.A. out of the girl. Paranoia always wins out.

Funny thing is that T insisted that I start parking my bike in my office in the first place!

.80 pounds

I counted every fucking point, worked out six days a week and all I lost this week was EIGHT-TENTHS OF A POUND! I couldn't believe it. I just sat in the meeting on the verge of tears. I've noticed a difference in how my clothes fit, I think that I look better but the only objective way I have to track my progress is the weigh-ins at the Weight Watchers meetings. I've been following the program for five months and I've only lost a total of 17 pounds. Hell, even giving up meat hasn't had any impact, though that wasn't why I became vegetarian (which is going pretty well...I'm learning new ways of eating). I am so very tired of being fat!

Tired of feeling inferior to thin people regardless of anything positive I've done or accomplished. Tired of not being able to even try on clothes at a regular clothing store. I've always wanted to go in to one of those posh boutiques in L.A. and actually be able to try on something other than XL t-shirts and sweaters that stretch. Even one-size-fits-all clothes like Michael Stars t-shirts don't even come close to fitting me.

I have hated my body and myself for most of my life and I want it to stop. I'm going to try not counting my "activity points" (credits for exercise) into my daily food point totals and see if that helps. I'm actually enjoying going to the gym and riding my bike around the lakes, and I do feel stronger. I once said that I didn't care if I weighed 500 pounds, so long as I wore a size 6, but its not really true. I've been dieting in one form or another for most of my life. My mother put my on my first diet when I was ten years old, and I know that if she were alive today, she would be horrified at how big I am now, regardless of my good marriage, education, and university teaching position, she would be ashamed of me.

I'm discouraged, but I have no choice but to keep going because I sure as hell am not going to stay like this. I refuse to die this way.

a smaller, shinier onion

I remember watching a austrailian miniseries years ago about four young women who go into a convent and how their experiences shaped them. One of the nuns said that the self is like an onion, and the more you peel away at it, trying to "find yourself," you just end up becoming a smaller, shinier onion. So here I am, peeling away at the various layers of my self.

I quit smoking because I was tired of having an addiction that determined more of my daily activity than anything else. My day would be planned around when I could have a cigarette. I got up an hour earlier that I need to just to have time for a cigarette in the morning. When I was lecturing, I kept looking at the clock to see when class ends so I could smoke. I chose restaurants based on their smoking policies and resented having to go someplace where I couldn't have a cigarette, even outside. Then one day it changed. I had promised T that I would quit after the holidays, and when the time came, I found that I honestly wanted to quit. I used the patches provided by my medical insurance and have been quit for five months. This shiny layer of my onion is still difficult to peel off, because in many ways I still think like a smoker and resent how the limitations our "smoke free" world alienates smokers.

At the same time, I decided to lose weight and joined Weight Watchers. Every one I spoke to was surprised that I would take on quitting smoking and losing weight at the same time, but it worked. I've lost 16 lbs so far, which is slower than I hoped, but I have made progress. It was frustrating for a while becouse I kept gaining and losing the same pound for a number of weeks, but I pressed on and tracked my points. I started to work out at WSU's Fitness Center, but I actually gained a tenth of a pound when I was weighed last week. I konw, I know, it's a teeny amount, but anyone who has used Weight Watchers understands the frustration of working so hard only to find that not only didn't you lose anything, you gained instead I've been going to the gym five days a week, walking and running on a treadmill, along with riding bicycles with T or my dear friend Missy, who is also my Weight Watchers leader. Hopefully I'll see better results at the meeting this Saturday.

Finally I have decided to stop eating meat, which has made going out to eat a wee bit difficult in a small town like Winona. There really aren't many good places to eat, and the ones we have don't have any vegetarian entrees except for the Chinese restaurant. Luckily I've been finding some good recipies on the net but they're hard to find amidst the "Becoming vegan" websites. But I don't want to be vegan. What I do want is to learn how to maintain or improve my health now that I've given up eating meat.

I've also been devoting four hours a day to go in to my office and work on my dissertation. I am starting my third section (with my 5th and 6th chapters). It's really nice to have a space of one's own to do my work. At home there are too many distractions, like my handsome husband T or our corgi Cooper, both always ready to play.

I know that the result of all these changes will be to reveal a smaller, shinier onion. A smoke-free, smaller me with a Phd!

Vegetarianism

It's common amongst Buddhists and yogis but that is not why I've decided to give it a try. It's because I love animals and hate the idea of an animal being hurt or killed. Especially with the general love of hunting and fishing here in Winona. My father was a hunter, pheasants and quail mostly. He tried to get us to eat the birds he killed, but I cracked a baby tooth on buckshot, which pretty much ended eating them. I reconciled the idea of eating animals with being honest about where the food came from, and never "wearing what I won't eat." I would wear leather but not fur, and I adored the various cats and dogs that came into my life, and I would studiously ignore the fact that while I loved my pets, my eating meat linked me with the systematic abuse and slaughter of creatures just as innocent as my dog.

Then one episode of Queer Eye showed a man brutally ripping apart a live lobster. I watched another man on television making "fresh sushi" by vivisecting a fish pulled right out of the ocean. I began to feel like a hypocrite, loving animals and still eating them, unable to face the truth. I avoided scenes of slaughterhouses on television or in the press,becuase they made me so upset. But I would eat a steak, porkchop, or fried chicken without a thought. I discovered nice, lean buffalo meat, great for the Weight Watchers points, but also helping to create a market for a new animal to be bred and "harvested."

So I'm going to try to give up meat and no longer contribute to the horrible slaughter. Then I can look my sweet smiling corgi dog without being a hypocrite.