Another fat summer

Summer is finally here and yes, I feel fat.

So far this summer has been a bit chilly so I've been able to avoid feeling like I could lose some weight, but here I am again wishing for a thin summer.

I have had thirty nine summers in my life and every one that I can remember I've felt fat or wished I had lost weight during the winter so that I could be thin. I have wasted each and every summer convincing myself that I look good in sleeveless t-shirts and shorts, and this year is no different. Today it's 27C (which is warm for here) and I put on a tank top to go out. I could barely look in the mirror and caught myself wishing I was thin. Again.

Each spring I start thinking about how I'd like to lose weight by summer. Each summer I try to feel as comfortable as possible in clothes that don't make me look too fat. Each fall I'm a bit relieved that it's time to wear pants and coats again.

I am so tired of this cycle. I have no memories of feeling good about myself in the summer. I have no memories of feeling sexy/cute/attractive in the summer. Always fat, lazy, gooey, saggy and gelatinous.

This year I have the added bonus of feeling really old. My skin is saggy, like it's one size too big for me. My knees and elbows have that sag of skin over the joint. My cleavage has a wrinkle in it. I have wrinkles between my eyes. My breasts feel like they are sacks of fat instead of balls with a bit of fat around them. My body is changing, and while I've always thought I would be ok with aging, it turns out I'm not. I want to be young again. I don't want this saggy skin, elephant knees and wrinkles. And I especially don't want the fatty boobs!

Somehow I want to break the cycle. Either to get in the shape I want for next summer or learn to accept me as I am right now for the rest of my life. I don't even know where to begin.

Self Image

I went to a bar last night with my boyfriend. His friend is the cook at the bar and had invited us out for dinner. The music was loud, the crowd young, and the atmosphere intimidating.

Let me start by saying I'm 39 years old. I don't do bars anymore. When I was 18-21 I would go but didn't like it much then either. I didn't like the way the people rated each other based on looks, and I never, ever felt pretty enough to warrant attention. Last night I was downright invisible. My poochy body just didn't fit in with all the young girls with their firm, glowing skin. They were all decked out in their tight clothes, make up and styled hair. There I was in a tie dyed, fitted t-shirt, jeans, super-short (almost buzzed) hair and no make up. I didn't look in style, or pretty, or slender, or young, or fit. I felt old, dumpy, matronly, gray, plain, faded, and invisible.

My boyfriend made a few references to women while talking to his friend. Things like telling the story of how our neighbor across the alley peed near her back fence (no idea why) and how he didn't know what she was doing until he saw her stand up and pull up her thong, then pants. He made sure to mention that she was hot enough to be able to wear a thong. He has never said I look hot in a thong, and as a matter of fact, he says it doesn't matter to him what underwear I'm have on. He pointed out to me that the waitress knew how to get tips because she had her boobs on display. Of course she did - she's a bar waitress! I really expect nothing different from bar waitresses. IMHO. He studiously looked straight ahead if he was caught looking at a young woman.

My boyfriend is a man that says he only sees me, but likes to look at made-up, beautifully dressed women. He tells me I'm beautiful and then comments on some woman's long hair, big eyes, long legs, dress, or height. I'm short, with short hair, no make up, small eyes, short legs and I wear pants. So...if I'm beautiful, why does he find all these other features in women beautiful? Never has he pointed out something about a woman that is similar to my physical characteristics. So how can he find me beautiful if his measuring stick is the opposite of me?

Somehow I've gone and chosen a man who doesn't actually see me. I have perpetuated my feeling of invisibility by selecting a man that might like my personality but will never see me as desirable as he does a young woman. I just don't measure up to a girl who's just barely old enough to go to a bar. All of my life I've felt invisible, ugly, fat, unattractive, stubby, undesireable, and plain next to everyone else. I have taken that belief and found a man to mirror it back to me. OMG - that's exactly what I did with my ex-husband as well! He always joked about leaving me for a younger, thinner woman...and he did! I was never physically good enough for him and I taught him it was ok to treat me like I'm made of cellophane. I thought I was looking for someone who would pay attention to me when I was single. What I neglected to realize was that first I needed to change my image of myself in order to have someone in my life treat me differently. Both men saw me as a person but would still turn their heads at a physically beautiful woman...making me feel invisible. First I need to see myself as beautiful before I can expect my man to turn his head at me instead of away from me.

Last night was a smashing reminder that I am in middle age. I am no longer considered young. There will always be someone younger than me, more beautiful, thinner, happier, sunnier, taller, more fit, and generally better than me, depending on my rating system. My older sister has been complaining of getting older lately and how she hates it. I thought I was ok with my age. I really did. I was fooling myself.

Last night I could see that I was thinking that if only I lose the weight, if I get more fit, if I have better definition in my muscles, if I have that flat belly, then my life will be good. Then I would be beautiful. I was thinking that I would be happy as soon as I've got the body I've always wanted. I thought I was done with thinking like that, but I suspect I only buried those thoughts and put chocolate on top of them. And what about the body I've always wanted? Somehow I haven't adjusted that image for age. I seem to have been deluding myself into thinking that I could still attain the body of a 20 year old. Not possible. My skin already looks a bit dry and parchmenty, the cellulite on my legs is starting to sag, my breasts sag, my belly is flabby and wrinkly from having two children. I will not ever have the body of a woman in her twenties. It's just not physically possible. Besides, is physical beauty the only kind of beauty?

Of course not. But I suspect that I've always believed that to be true. My own personal measuring stick has been how flat my belly is, how perky my boobs are, how clear my skin is. But it has never been enough. I have not once, not ever, had perfectly clear skin and felt I was not good enough to wear foundation. I have never, ever, had a flat belly, but also never persisted with the exercise that would help. My boobs are the mystery of nature. They are perkier than some, saggier than others. I wear a bra, that's all I can do.

Somehow I need to learn to love myself and find myself attractive. I need to stop looking to my boyfriend for expressions of how beautiful I am or how worthy I am. It means nothing if I don't believe it. And I need to stay out of bars :)

Small changes

Well, I've stopped counting my calories for now and stopped making my daymaps. I was getting to the point of being stressed out over what I eat, how much I eat, and when I eat that I thought it would be good to stop tracking for a while. Maybe it'll be good, maybe not. I know that when I don't pay attention I eat more, but hopefully I can regain the thinking I had when I lost all the weight after the book Diets Don't Work. Somehow I had managed to stop filling any emptiness with food at that time, and that's what I hope to regain.

Martha Beck writes and article for O Magazine every month and this month the subject was....weight loss! She mentioned her book The Four Day Win and also gave some additional strategies for dealing with food. She calls it the "So Far" Technique. Very briefly, it goes like this: S is for stop - whenever you are anxious you just stop for a second. O is for open - open yourself up. F is for forgive - forgive yourself and think of things you and your body have done right. A is for accept - drop all resistance to things as they are right now. R is for renew - renew your commitment to any eating plan you like. This is the first article I have ever torn out of a magazine and kept. I refer back to it frequently and have been practicing her technique. Well, in stages.

First I just learned to be aware of when I am feeling anxious, upset, or stressed. That was a bit deal for me. Now I can feel it around my eyes and mouth where I tense up a lot. Consciously opening up and relaxing was the next stage for me and I picked up on that one very quickly. The forgiveness part took the longest. Sometimes it's hard to remember what my body has done well and think of things that I have succeeded at. The accepting stage I've only just started on. It's a bit odd to think of just giving up my resistance to the world. I have fought my weight for so long that it's just become my way of existing. But to just give up and accept that things are as they are...that's new. So I haven't gotten to the renew stage yet, but I will.

I want my life to stop being about weight loss. I want to just live and enjoy myself and feel good in my body. There have been times in my past that I've felt that way and it was so freeing. There have been some small changes so far, like not caring what size I wear for the moment or not overeating when I have the opportunity. I would like these small changes to become permanent and get out of this rut I've put myself in. Food is not comfort, it is fuel. That's what I feel like I need to remember.

I actually skipped a donut

Hey...I've discovered something...when I eat on my break at work I only eat what I brought. I have learned what a portion size is and have made my parfaits and salad pita/wraps to include about a cup of food. On my break, I only eat that and nothing else. Partly because it takes all of my break to finish it and partly because it's easy to stop eating when it's time to stop eating. When my break is over I go back to work. Since I'm not allowed to eat on the job I have to wait until my next break to eat.

When I get home there is no clear dividing line for when to eat and when to stop. If I portion out my food, sometimes I will eat more anyway. My workday is so structured that I don't have the time to eat randomly so I've learned to be full after fifteen minutes. At home I need to rely on my willpower to stop eating at one portion or within fifteen minutes. I could also just go and do something else that makes it difficult to eat, like gardening, scrapbooking or some craft. But really, my entertainment is frequently tv and computer. I can eat boatloads in front of a screen.

Maybe I should treat home life like work life and only allow for fifteen minute eating. I wonder if that would cause a Polar bear effect.

One good thing was that I avoided eating any donuts on payday! I don't think I've ever not had a donut when they are there. Most of the time I take one (or two) and eat it before I realize what I'm doing, but this time I saw the donuts and thought to eat my salad wrap first. But by the time I was done the salad wrap I didn't have any break time left for a donut, so I thought of having one after work. By the time I was done work, the donuts were stale and yucky so I didn't take one. Yay me!

Only 1200 a day?

I've still been counting calories and I find it a bit helpful. I mean, it's good to know what I'm putting in my mouth all the time, but it's difficult sometimes to stay on track anyway.

I read in the newspaper today that the average woman only needs 1200 calories a day. Seriously! That would be half of what I eat in a day so I've been keeping it to below 2000/day. Mostly. Restaurants are the most difficult - their portion sizes are huge! I ate at Red Robin recently and my burger alone was over 1100 calories. That's just ridiculously big. Good burger though :)

The other problem I have is, of course, emotional eating. I ate a slice of cake today even though I wasn't really hungry for it. Actually, I liked the first bit that I had. It satisfied my want of chocolate. But I didn't need to eat the rest of the slice just because it was sitting in front of me. I totally Polar-beared it, according to Martha Beck. I ate the cake too fast to see what I really wanted. My mind was on auto pilot and even though I told myself I could walk away from it, I still ate it. So I still need to work on that. Sigh.

Empty calories

Since I've started counting calories, I've been noticing what 'empty calories' are. These are calories that do absolutely nothing to fill me up. You'd think I'd've known that but somehow I missed what it actually meant.

So today I had my salad wrap and it was around 250 calories. I would have been totally satisfied but had a donut anyway. That donut was 260 calories. I wasn't overfull from eating it, I didn't feel stuffed or uncomfortable. But I was mostly full from my salad wrap and would have been fine if I'd stopped eating right there. Juice is another culprit of empty calories. I had a glass and it tasted very good, but it was 100 calories. It felt somehow that I'd wasted my calories on something that was tasty but not really usable by my body.

After keeping track of my calories for about three weeks, I discovered I eat an average of 2600 calories a day. No problem. So I thought "I wonder if I can keep my calories to under 2000 for a while"...so I started that four days ago and I've actually been successful! I am honestly surprised at the idea that I can eat less and not be hungry. Well, ok, maybe a little hungry but it's at the times I eat anyway. So before, was I eating even though I wasn't hungry? Probably.

The other side effect to keeping track of calories is that I don't want to put any unwanted calories in my stomach. Three times at work one girl gave me candies. The first one went in my mouth out of habit, but I spit it out less than halfway through. The other two times I tossed them without eating them. Why take them then? Because I don't want to deal with the usual feigned shock people give when I refuse candy/sweets. I work in a bakery and we make some excellent dough. One type is chocolate with chocolate chips in it and it tastes like cookie dough. I always used to filch a bit of dough and eat it, but this time when we made it I stayed away from it. One coworker made fun of me and kept asking if I felt ok. Like something must be horribly wrong for me to refuse the dough. And yes, I've done the same thing to other people so I'm not complaining about it, just noticing that it does happen to me as well.

Anyway the other thing I've turned away is whipped ganache. The people at work know I love, love, love the stuff so they give me the whip to carry to the washing area. It's like getting to lick the beaters when making cake, times about 100 because the whip is huge :) So the last couple of times, I've carried the whip to the sink but not eaten any of the ganache. I just set the whip down to be washed and then went and washed my hands. People still think I lick the whip, but I don't. Well, I haven't lately.

Now I'm starting to see food as calories and check in with myself as to whether or not I'll eat something. I don't know if this will work long term or not, but it's working for now. Right now I give myself treats like cookies or a bit of candy, but I pay attention to how much I eat and never, ever beat myself up if I eat a bit of extra something. And I still have been keeping my calories to below 2000/day. The other thing I consider is whether or not this food will fill me for the number of calories it has. I could eat eight cookies totaling 680 calories and not feel full. Or I could eat my fruit parfait with 150 calories and be satisfied.

Hey, that's another thing I'd forgotten about: the difference between full and satisfied. For some reason I'd been thinking that I was done eating when my stomach had that full feeling. You know, a little heavy but not super stuffed. I don't know exactly where I got that idea from, but that's how I figured I was done eating. Now I'm done eating when my portion is done, or after I feel satisfied but before the full feeling. I've been learning how big my fruit parfait needs to be (1 cup of fruit, 1/8 cup yogurt and a little less than 1/4 cup of nuts/granola) and how big my salad pita/wrap should be (1 cup salad, 1tbsp hummus and 1 wrap/pita) and these sizes actually satisfy me! Now don't get me wrong, I could eat two wraps or 4 cups of fruit, but that would be over eating. For me, anyway.

Now that I'm not filling myself to Just Below Bursting, I find I can actually feel hunger. And it's normal hunger, not urgent eat-my-own-arm hunger. Interesting that I'm learning not to panic when I have less food, and not to panic when the portion is done, and to listen to what my body really wants to eat.

"Don't rock the boat"

Bobbie's Babbles is one of the blogs I read every day. Today I almost fell out of my chair when I read this in her blog:

"Middle children [it seems] are the peacemakers. I'm not so sure this was so much a part of my personality as a kid [although I hated to see anyone bullied], but as a young adult, I didn't like to see things out of sorts and so I would try to make "it all better". Over the years, peacemaker, for me, has morphed into the "giver inner" and the "lets not make waves" and the "don't hurt anyone's feelings" person. I've thought about this recently as it relates to my "food issues" and I think a lot of my EATING was due to resentment [can you relate?]. Because I didn't get what I wanted and didn't have the confidence to say what I wanted, I shoved down my feelings with food."

Oh. my. goodness. That's me! Well, sort of. I am also a middle child and also have fallen into the role of peacemaker. What I didn't realize was that it could have changed into those character traits. I very much try never to rock the boat. I am very much afraid of what will happen if I tell people what I actually want. As an example, it took quite a while for me to start taking breaks alone at work, even though I'd been wanting it for some time. Sadly, I will agree with people regardless of what I really think in order to not hurt anyone's feelings. But I didn't ever stop to think that I was eating these feelings away!

I've learned the one time I don't eat is when I'm sad, really sad. I don't want food at all and it is no comfort to me. But I do eat from frustration at myself for not being authentic.

Another example: I have a girlfriend going through a separation/divorce. She put hidden cameras in her house and a back door program on her ex's work computer (ok, she helps him run his business, the program was so she could access the work stuff from home to avoid seeing him or going into the office). She logged in to the computer to see him looking at porn in their living room while he was still living there. She also logged into the work computer to spy on her ex and capture his screen names and passwords. My first reaction when she told me all this was shock and a bit of happy surprise. Yes. Happy surprise. It is something I would have thought of doing with my ex as well. But after about five minutes of really thinking about it, I realized she's violating his privacy in a really big way and that's just not right. But I didn't disagree with her or express my true opinion on it. Instead I have allowed her to complain to me about all the porn he's looking at, the websites he's joined and his disgraceful computer viewing while he's at work. My urge to not rock the boat or offend my friend has kept me from saying anything to her.

Wait. I think I just figured something out. The only reason this is affecting me is because I'm allowing it to affect me. I don't have to be drawn into her drama. I don't need to go out of my way to hurt her by saying how strongly I disagree, nor do I have to read her Facebook updates. And I don't need to give my opinion unless I'm asked, and even then I can find a gentle way of saying what I need to say. This friend is someone who thrives on drama so I imagine we won't be friends after I disagree with her. But that's ok. I think friends like that might be toxic to me anyway.

Now I would like to figure out a way to still get what I want, express my opinion, not agree when I don't agree and speak up when I believe in something strongly enough. At the very least, I need to be more aware when I'm eating out of frustration for not being myself and instead being whatever the person wants me to be. That seems like a difficult but rewarding goal.