That was interesting — the division in reactions to my last post about commentary on weight loss.  To me, there is also a difference between an aquaintance saying something and a good friend or family member.  Friends are privy to the fact that I have changed the way I’ve been eating; aquaintances, beyond those who read this blog, are not.

So.

How did I change the way I eat?

I really can’t imagine a post more boring than describing lettuce-eating.  I thought I’d spice this up by adding in zombies and a magical squirrel who will grant you 16 wishes and a pie I found that has NO CALORIES!  But… I don’t know… I am outlining this as much for the people who asked how I lost the weight as I am for me because let’s be honest: old habits die hard and there is no guarantee that this weight will still be off years from now.  I want to be able to look back on how I did this.

But there’s a really huge problem with weight loss posts in general, an elephant in the room that most people who create eating plans refuse to acknowledge: one solution does not fit all.  It doesn’t even fit some.  Like the one I did?  It sort of fits only one — me — the person who lost the weight.  I know this because I have tried to follow what other people have done numerous times before, and it has never worked.  I don’t believe in replication, but I believe in the gathering of ideas, so in the spirit of that, this is how I lost 30 pounds.

Starting Point

I started by passing up Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig and Whole30… pretty much every eating plan or healthy eating idea package.  Because packaged ideas don’t really work for me, though they obviously work for a lot of other people, hence their popularity.  I started with the idea that since there was no plan out there I felt comfortable following to a T, and the tweaks I’d need to make would affect the results, I should go with no plan at all.  It was like Richard Pryor in Brewster’s Millions chanting: “what are you gonna vote?” and my internal voice echoing back, “none of the above!”

And then I tried to figure out what I know about myself, since my personality seemed like it would be the hardest thing to change.  Eating habits, in other words, seemed more malleable than character traits, and I didn’t think it possible to change who I am.

I am someone inherently lazy.  I don’t like to move around too much.  I think best when I’m driving or taking a shower; not when I’m taking a long walk.  I will always opt for reading a book over exercising.  But if I do have to exercise, I like running.

I am incredibly stubborn.  I’m good at walking away from something if a door is firmly closed, but I have trouble letting go if there’s any chance that the door might open at some point.  I like sweet things over salty things.  I hate fried foods.  I won’t try anything just for the sake of trying something.  I have more foods on my will-not-eat list than I do on my foods-I-enjoy list.

I like to keep track of things.  I am a fan of to-do lists.  I like writing everything down, especially blogging.

Now would not be a good time to add anything else to my schedule because I already feel stretched too thin.

Um… that pretty much sums up what I came up with — all things I thought would add or subtract from my ability to eat healthy.

Now What?

So I took everything I realized about myself, and I started to see what was going to help me lose the weight and what was going to derail me.  Writing everything down seemed like a good starting point.  I began by downloading an app called My Fitness Pal.  Years ago, I had a lot of luck in gaining control of my eating habits with Weight Watchers.  Okay, so I was cheap and I didn’t really do Weight Watchers in the formal sense, but my friend taught me the general idea and I recorded everything I was eating.  My Fitness Pal is free and self-explanatory vs Weight Watchers which would require me to learn how to use that system, so I went with MFP.

I needed to change the way I ate before I added in exercise.  I think I needed to see some result first before I could talk myself into giving up more of my time or changing more of my habits.  So I waited until the first five or so pounds came off, and then I added in running.

And yoga.

I added in yoga because Lori likes yoga.  I signed up for two weeks of yoga and hated it on the first day.  But I had already paid for two weeks, so I went back again the next day and it was a little better.  And by the end of the fourth class, I had convinced myself that I could fit this into my life and do it religiously.  Do I love yoga — no.  If you told me tomorrow I never had to exercise again, I would take you up on that.  But in so far as exercise goes, yoga has been a good fit for me.  I like the vinyasa flow classes.

How Much is a Cup?

My friend turned me on to the recipes at Skinnytaste.  I like that she doesn’t use chemicals to cook; she just uses realistic portions and lower fat ingredients.  Uh… about those realistic portions.  A cup of pasta is much smaller than what I thought of as a cup of pasta.  I started using smaller plates and bowls and measuring my portions, writing down what I was really consuming.  So… yeah… if I took three servings of pasta I had to admit that I just ate three servings of pasta.  Which meant that I stopped eating three servings because eating that food meant that I couldn’t have other food later on.

The first few days of eating normal-sized portions were hard and I was hungry, but after about three days, I got over the hump and I started feeling satiated.  I also would take one portion and cut it in half, leaving part of it back in the pot so I could feel like I was having seconds even if all I was doing was having the other half a cup to make up the one cup portion.

I also halved every restaurant meal, immediately setting aside half of it to take home.  I started asking myself if I was eating because something tasted good or if I was eating because I was hungry.  If it was the first case, I stopped.  If it was the second case, I kept going.

No Cheat Days

I know that if I give myself an inch, I take a mile.  Or, more accurately, I found that when I tried to introduce the idea of ending my day with one Hershey kiss as a treat, I moved to two or three kisses on a bad day, and then two handfuls of kisses in the middle of the day… you get the point.  I know that about myself.  I know a lot of people suggest having a day of the week where you stop thinking about how you’re eating, but I can’t do that with myself and stay on track the rest of the time, in the same way that I can’t talk myself into the idea of skydiving.  Knowing this about my personality, I make myself stick to this way of eating and recording everything I eat in the app, even when I go on holiday or to a party.

Permission Days

On the other hand, there are days when I crave something or when I can’t control the food situation, and in those cases, I give myself permission to eat the food in front of me and be mindful about it.  I’ll have pizza for dinner, but I eat the rest of the day knowing that I’m having pizza for dinner and adjust accordingly.  I’ll exercise more or sometimes just suck it up and know that I consumed more calories than I need that day.  Afterwards, I set that hour or that day or that weekend aside and return to my normal meals.  Using MFP is great because I can look back and see a day when I stuck to my calorie count and then go back and replicate that day’s food in order to get back on track.

No Clothes in the Middle

I know some people use visual reminders — a picture of themselves at a weight they want to return to or buying clothes that they hope to fit into once the weight is off — but I also know that those tricks would derail me more than motivate me.  I waited to buy new clothes until the old clothes looked like clown pants.

Last Point, a Reiteration

My only real advice that you can take away from this post is to know yourself, because you will determine whether something does or doesn’t work for you.  You are going to be the one who derails things and you are going to be the one who holds fast to things.  I am working against myself at all times; there are aspects to my personality that keep me from being successful in eating healthy, and I need to acknowledge and own those traits because they are part of me.  To be fair, I also have personality traits that make eating healthy easy for me.  So I need to embrace those characteristics.

You can change the way you eat — you may not be thrilled with the new lessons, but you can do it.  But it is much harder to change who you are — you are stuck with yourself, both the good and the bad.  And knowing that, tailor your plan accordingly because you are the only person who knows what works (and doesn’t work) for you.

And that’s how I did it.  I would love to hear your tips too since I am always collecting more that I may or may not be able to incorporate into my life.

I have lost a lot of weight since last February, almost 30 pounds.  Because some people asked, I’m going to outline how I changed my eating habits in a separate post that you can read or skip.  I lost the weight because I (1) was scared about my visit to the general practitioner, especially that she might say that I was prediabetic… or diabetic, (2) wasn’t fitting into a lot of my clothes comfortably, and (3) didn’t feel great, especially my joints.

I did not, I just want to point out, lose weight because I didn’t like the way I looked.

I actually thought that I looked pretty smokin’ hot 30-more-pounds ago.  Especially when I wore my beige suede-like pants and my sister’s grey sweater.  I would throw on that outfit and feel beautiful.*

Prior to February, with the exception of Josh and a handful of close family members, people rarely commented on my looks.  Understandable since I’m in my late thirties, not exactly an age that attracts a lot of attention, and I’m not an extraordinary beauty by any definition.  But still, everyone is on the receiving end of some commentary about their looks — either critically or complimentary — at a certain point in their life, and I assumed that point in life had passed for me when the comments on my looks had trickled dry years earlier.  I only missed the idea of people commenting on my looks when I forgot about how many times I’ve been upset by something a person said.  How statements about looks often sound — mostly unintentionally — like backhand compliments making commentary on some other facet of life.

And regardless of all that, it didn’t matter if no one else spoke about how I looked because the only person who mattered is myself and if I felt good about my looks, though — to be completely honest — Josh’s opinion mattered too.  Josh makes me feel beautiful, so in turn, I believed myself beautiful.

Still, I was willing to change how I looked if it also changed my health situation.  Because how I was eating, how I was living, was not very healthy.

Within a few weeks of changing the way I ate, people started commenting on how good I looked, and now, 30 pounds later, the commentary has reached a fever pitch, especially with people who don’t see me very often.  People are constantly telling me that I look fabulous.  They tell me that I’ve gotten so skinny.  That I look amazing.  And I know why they’re saying this — because weight loss is such a huge part of American culture (the focus on your weight, that is) that people believe it is ALWAYS a compliment if you are physically okay (meaning, the weight loss is not a symptom of illness) and losing weight.  They want to point out that they’ve noticed my hard work, since losing weight is hard work, and in the same way they would comment on a new book deal if I physically wore the contract as a dress, they are responding to the physical reminder of an accomplishment.

For the people I have shared the fact that I changed the way I ate — family members, friends, and all of you — it makes sense to comment on my weight, and I don’t feel self-conscious at all.  I told you I was doing this, I obviously stuck to that promise, and you are now commenting that you notice my hard work, and for that, I am grateful.  It feels nice to have an accomplishment recognized, and it is no small accomplishment to completely overhaul 38 years of eating habits.

But there are people who I know don’t read the blog, they aren’t friends or family members, and when they comment on the weight loss, they preface it by asking if I’ve lost weight, as if they’re checking before they continue with their train of thought.  Those people invariably say that I look amazing or fabulous or so skinny, and instead of making me feel good, it makes me wonder how they saw me months ago when I was 30 pounds heavier.  Because I thought I looked beautiful back then, and while it didn’t really matter to me that they said nothing about my looks at the time, the fact that they are commenting now means that they either have been sucked into the weight-loss-is-always-good-and-should-be-recognized myth OR they thought I looked like crap before and I am finally pretty in their eyes.

These are people who have even seen me in the beige-pants-and-grey-sweater ensemble.

It’s sort of like, if they didn’t think to tell me that I was pretty 30 pounds ago, they probably don’t need to tell me that I’m pretty now.  Perhaps we don’t have the sort of relationship where we comment on each other’s physical traits, and that is a good thing then to continue to that vein and not comment on each other’s weight.  Because the flip side is that I could put on all of that weight again — it is just so easy to do — and what will I think that they’re thinking when I’m 30 pounds heavier again?  That I’m not pretty anymore?  That my looks are fine, but not worth mentioning?

I am really not sure what the answer is.  On one hand, compliments make a person feel good.  On the other hand, compliments can apparently make a person question the unspoken words behind the statement.  Which is not to say that people shouldn’t give compliments, but rather that this is what goes through my head sometimes when a non-family member/friend/all of you comment on my weight.

How do you feel when people tell you that you look amazing after a change?  Am I the only one who feels this way?

* I’m aware that saying I thought I looked beautiful makes me vain (and in this Internet world, practically invites people to tell you that you’re actually ugly).  And while I doubt that I will ever be asked to pose for the cover of Sports Illustrated nor win a pageant (or even have some creepy art teacher ask me if I want to be a nude model for his class), I think I have moments, when I smile, where I look pretty by my standards.  And I would like to teach my daughter not to fall into the trap of continuously berating her features and instead accept them, finding beauty in their familiarity.  And that starts by projecting a happiness with my own looks, even as I contemplate giving in to colouring my hair.

What if a horrible virus was sweeping across the Internet, pulling apart the emulsion of comments and blog content and deleting one entirely.  Entirely means entirely; there are no loop holes to this what if: any cut-and-paste jobs, Google Reader stars, any emailed version of comments or posts — all of them gone when they disappear from the url.  But this virus is also merciful (perhaps invented by a white hat hacker) and gives you ten seconds to choose one or the other.

Which will you save: all of your comments, which obviously speak about the post and may even contain a quote or two, but you’ll be left without any of your content OR all of your blog posts, which obviously record your life, but you’ll be left without any reminders of the support or advice you received.

Which are you saving: comments or blog posts?

Succot starts this weekend on Sunday night, and for the first time in a long while, I am going to step offline for a bit.  I am not taking a complete break from the Internet for the holiday — that just isn’t me — but I am going to curb my usage to a very limited amount, and if this works, I’m going to repeat it again in the spring with Pesach, which is also an 8-day holiday like Succot.  Two little self-imposed Internet cut-backs, one in the fall, one in the spring.

I did all of my work-work early, and then made a list of the time I would normally spend online during this time period, attempting to rank the activities from “best use of my limited Internet time” to “can wait.”

Possible contenders for my Internet time (in no particular order):

1. Read emails
2. Respond to emails
3. Write posts
4. Read other people’s blogs
5. Check Facebook
6. Check Twitter
7. Check Good Reads
8. Update the IComLeavWe list

Reading emails seemed like it should take the number one slot.  I mean, that is the most common way people attempt to reach me AND it is the only method for communicating with me that I see 100% of the time.  So it seemed like if I had a half hour online, I should use at least part of that time to cull out important emails from the inbox and read them.  Going hand-in-hand with that is the idea of responding to emails that require a time sensitive response.  So know for the 8 days of the holiday, I am going to read email and will attempt to respond to your email quickly if it requires a time sensitive response.  If the response feels like it can wait a few days without slowing down your life, I am going to wait until the holiday is over and do a mass catch-up on email.

Writing posts seemed like a poor use of my online time.  If there are posts that float into my head while I’m offline, I will write them down on a piece of paper as I did at the beach.  And then, when the holiday is over and I return to a normal amount of screen time, I will either type up these posts or… I don’t know… move on from those thoughts if they’re not still relevant.  On the other hand, I have a shit-ton of posts in my draft folder, and this seems as good a time as any to unleash a few on you.  So my blog will still update during this time period, but I won’t be using my limited online time to do so.  I know this is sort of cheating since I used up a lot of online time prior to this weekend in order to do this, but still, I’m going to count it under ways-I’m-limiting-my-online-usage.

Reading other people’s blogs seems like a good use of my time.  I’m sort of counting on all of you to provide me with great posts that use my time well… no pressure.  So I am going to be blog reading as many posts as I can fit in before the hypothetical buzzer sounds though in order to read more, I may star some that I want to comment on to return to later.  So apologies if you get comments on 8-day-old posts when I go back to normal use of the Internet.

Checking Facebook seems like a decent use of time because it’s somewhat slow-moving.  I can scroll through a lot of status updates quickly and get a sense of what is happening in other people’s lives.  Twitter is a waste of time because it moves too quickly.  If I have five minutes left online, I don’t want to use four minutes of it just trying to follow a conversation thread and figure out what people are talking about.  And Good Reads can wait.  I have a stack of books set aside to read during this time period, and I’m going to tackle them vs. read about the next books I should put on my list.

Which brings us to updating the IComLeavWe list.  I have decided that while I may update the list if I find myself with leftover time, I am putting it as a low priority.  What does this mean?  Still add yourself to the list and upload the icon on your blog.  When the holiday is over, I am going to upload everyone at once.  There will be a note on the October IComLeavWe list reminding people that I am going to be slow to upload people to the list.  So — no worries — I will get you up on the list, but it will be after the holiday is over on September 9th.

So in order of I-am-going-to-use-my-time-to-do-this to I-will-probably-not-get-to-this:

1. Read emails
2. Respond to emails that are time sensitive
3. Read other people’s blogs
4. Check Facebook
5. Update the IComLeavWe list
6. Respond to non-time sensitive emails
7. Check Good Reads
8. Check Twitter
9. Write posts

Oh!  And that includes the Roundup.  I will have something else fun in this space next week, but since I had to write it ahead of time, it won’t be highlighting posts that were written during this upcoming week.  Still, it will be fun.  I promise.  I know this because it’s already finished.

So, I am around, I am reading your blogs, I am posting posts I’ve already written, I am answering time-sensitive emails, I am reading pretty much all emails, I am maybe checking Facebook and updating the IComLeavWe list during the course of this Internet break.  But take pity on me as I try to squeeze online time into a half hour a day.

I’ll let you know on the 9th how effective this was or it was more of a pain-in-the-ass than it was worth.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Good Grief… Why Do I Feel Guilty?” (Mommyhood After Fertility Frustration)
• “Diamonds and Rust” (Nuts in May)
• “And Then I Had a Talk with Silent Bob” (Mommy Odyssey)
• “It’s Supposed to Work” (MissConception)
• “A Letter” (Follow Every Rainbow)
• “Finley Helps Save Lives” (Dear Finley)
• “About That Time…” (Beyond Acquara)
• “A Conversation with Two of the 47%” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Dora and Mina!
• “My Life as a Human Ping Pong Ball” (Adventures in Infertilityland)
• “Can You Imagine Not Having a Child?” (Baptism by Fire)
• “Jade is Not a Pretty Colour” (Happily Ever After)
• “A Reason to Live” (Still Standing Magazine)
• “One of Those Days” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “A Birthday Boy and Girl…” (Marwil)
• “Cleaning Out Cabinets” (Three Geminis and a Sagittarius)
• “The Pregnancy Factory” (Little Chicken Nugget)
• “Unlovable” (An Embarrassment of Good Fortune)

Okay, now my choices this week.

I loved Julie Godar’s post about the validity of living child-free on BlogHer this week.  Though she knew even before she was rendered infertile that she didn’t want to parent, she discusses the ways people approach the fact that she is child-free and has moved from saying “can’t have kids” to “won’t have kids.”  I loved these lines because they are applicable in so many discussions regarding family building: “I hate justifying my decision, and I shouldn’t have to. I hate that just speaking my truth freights casual chitchat with tension. I really hate yelling at the Thanksgiving table.”  Great post.

Bloodsigns has a gorgeous post about resurfacing after a long sojourn from her blog.  This is one of those posts where I needed to take a highlighter across large sections of it; there were just too many moments I loved so deeply.  It begins: “I can’t remember a time in recent memory where I’ve left my blog untended for so long. It isn’t even that I haven’t had anything to say and in some cases have had far too much to say so I don’t say anything at all.”  We have all had whispered to ourselves that we want to be Somebody.  This post will resonate with almost everyone.  And what G said… was perfect.

A Woman My Age has created the most brilliant phrase for those pre-parenting daydreams (which I think we still have until we hit each stage too): “show and tell adventures.”  Because that’s it; isn’t it?  We don’t daydream about the toddler tantrums or the endless hours that take us from wake-up to bedtime.  We daydream about the trips to the pumpkin patch and the first haircut and opening Christmas presents.  We dream about all the doing that we’re going to do.  And then the reality of life sets in — a fantastically accurate description of the exhaustion inherent in toddlerhood.

Lastly, An Unwanted Path has a post about allowing herself to enjoy Christmas this year.  After many years of dreading the holiday and the conversations that went with it, she is now looking forward to the surreal fact that she’ll be able to start the family traditions she dreamed about all those Christmases while she was waiting.  And yet she also admits: “Parenting after infertility is amazing, and at times it’s difficult. I’m supposed to be fixed now, if you didn’t get the memo from all my friends and family. I’m not supposed to ever try again, my son is all I’ll ever need, and all the years, the lack of support, all the children I lost, shouldn’t matter.  Except everything still matters. It all still hurts.”  A very honest post.

The roundup to the Roundup: I am cutting down my online time to a half hour per day for 8 days — can I do it?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 21st and September 28th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

On the day that Josh bought me tickets to an upcoming Green Day show for their current tour, I planned out my outfit in my head.  I would wear my new black pants and a black tank top; the pants because they have deep pockets so I won’t have to bring a purse and the top because I planned to dance the whole time.  It was a small thing to look forward to, and I set up my calendar with all of their promotional appearances for the next few weeks to celebrate their new album.

And then, while we were driving back from the funeral, my mother sent me a link to an article with the subject line: “Isn’t this the band that you just purchased tickets to see?”  The lead singer was stepping back from promotional appearances to seek treatment.  Some places reported it as substance abuse.  Others made it sound as if it had more to do with depression.  Regardless, the promotional appearances were removed from the calendar.  We’re not sure right now if the show will go on.

Alanis Morrissette stepped in for the band for their Jimmy Kimmel appearance and she sang their song, “Basket Case.” (Learning it, impressively, 11 minutes before the performance.)  I had never paid a lot of attention to this particular song, and then I heard her version and it was arresting.  There’s a term in Hebrew — ma pitom — and it translates literally as “what suddenly” but is used to convey surprise, disbelief, the fact that something has changed unexpectedly.  And that is the word that I said to myself as I listened to what was now this incredibly sad, incredibly moving account of mental illness.

I don’t know Billie Joe Armstrong (though I do extend my good thoughts to him — as one human being to another — and wish him a good recovery), but hearing the song this way was this ma pitom-like reminder to listen to people. To listen between the lines. To not write off what they’re saying. To not dismiss things. That often times, though we only hear messages after they’re drilled into our heads, they were there all along.