Diet and Other Four Letter Words

Do you know any of these people or programs? Yes? Then you'll experience the confusion right along with me.
Mark Hyman, M.D.
The Bigger Loser Club
Kim Lyons
Isabel De Los Rios
Mike Geary
Jon Dana Benson
Coach Josh
Joel Marion
Jayson Hunter
Coach Jesse Cannone
Rob Poulos
Biggest Loser
Kyle Leon
Dr. Kareem F. Samhouri
Dr. Oz
Dr. Travis Stork
The Pink Solution
Vince Del Monte

Are you as disillusioned as I am and feel that the start of the New Year sucks--I mean as far as making those resolutions to lose weight and get in shape. Year after year I make the same resolution. Get healthy. Lose weight. Look like a normal human. Believe it or not, I actually had a year like that. The only good year--2008. 2008 was great. (You can read about my weight loss journey from my earlier posts.)

What happened to me? I was eating healthy, thanks toWeight Watchers. I exercised for hours a day, thanks to Contours, a women's gym that has since hit the skids and gone away. I was doing everything right. Then I hit the Christmas wall. I hadn't learned how to handle Christmas. The worst thing though, I became the cooking culprit and undermined my own success. By the New Year 2009, I upped twenty pounds.

Then 2009 struck and sucked the life right out of me. I'm not going to elaborate the problems with 2009, there isn't enough space in this post. But 2009 was my cancer year. But the end, I'd gained back another twenty pounds by operation time and after laying in bed for months, I tacked on another twenty, by the end of 2009.

2010 wasn't the greatest year either. I quit Weight Watchers. (I hated watching the scales and my weight go up and up.) I was a weight watcher all right. Up, up and away. I couldn't keep paying to have my weight increase. 2011 wasn't much better. In April my dad passed away. The grief of his passing, my struggles with editing my first novel and my inability to lose weight added to personal financial woes and . . . boom, the scale continued to climb. Explode actually. Not only that, I broke out with a bad case of hives and they and the weight gain continued to plague my year.

Now I face a big empty New Year. What to do? Of course all my doctors are expecting me to shed those unwanted pounds. (Side bar: have you ever, and I mean ever, known anyone who had WANTED pounds? A rhetorical question.)

But my questions is HOW?

And that brings me to my current dilemma. How to choose a good program.

Have you ever had trouble finding the right diet or life style program that doesn't cost as much as a Lear jet or force you into the gym to pump iron for hours or run on a tread mill for mile after monotonous mile? Well if you're one of those people, I sympathize. I've been bombarded with email ads for this diet and that. Boy, you sign up for one to try and every exercise guru from California to New York City jumps on your case, touting that their program is designed to make you into a bikini babe in a couple of weeks.

What's worse is that they have a sharing system where one exercise guru tells another one about you until your email inbox looks like the Who's Who of the diet and exercise industry. I tell you, this is no easy decision deciding who has the best program that can be tailored to me and my physical restraints and needs.

Do I know the answers? Heck no. I want answers like the rest of you. I want a diet/life style change that isn't going to be too hard to follow. I don't want craziness. I don't want to forsake ice cream, candy, bread, crackers, chips, pancakes, potatoes or any other bad carbs. I want sensible. Or am I deluded myself into thinking a life style change can include junk?

Okay. At one time or another I've listened to all of the diet grurus. Somehow I got hooked up with Tony Hortonand his P90X. One look at the program and I shut it back up in the box. I'm fifty six years old, bad knees, way over weight. This thing's for young people.

So I ordered Jon Dana Bensen's Every Other Day Diet. I'm sure it's a wonderful program, but it was just a little too weird for me. Eating nothing but a grass and whey shake for breakfast and an apple and a handful of almonds for lunch. Then the next day, the shake and for lunch--BAM! you can go hog wild. I just didn't have the stamina to stay on the everyday bit. No offense Jon.I'm sure your program has served many well. Those people who are already a size two.

There must be an exercise guru co-op somewhere because each one of these gurus promote the others.With all their enthusiasm it all looks wonderful, exciting and the easiest thing you've ever done. What they say is so attractive I couldn't help but be sucked into their spiel. Right after they wow me with their examples of people who've shed thousands of pounds, you hit me with the bottom line. It's going to cost me and cost me plenty.

Their simple program with their fifteen thousand steps isn't enough. Books on diet, recipes, calculating daily intake, mind transformation, motivation, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah. That's enough reading for about three years.


But wait! There's more!

Their initial offering isn't enough, there's always one more thing to entice me into buying their COMPLETE program and only their program. And you have to have the rest. Training. Recipe specific books. Motivation books. Other manuals. How to train. Videos. Meal plans. Etc. Etc. Etc. By the time your basic $47 to $97 program is finished, you've spent close to $500.00 and the programs are so drastic, there is no way in this world a regular person like me can stay on them.

I can't squat, pushup, jump around or crunch. I'm old. Give me exercises I can do. I have sciatic nerve pain in one foot. I can hardly walk some days. I've got a compressed disk between four and five. Whatever that means. So I'm not doing your extreme workouts.

And when they're finished roping you in, they send you emails introducing yet another guru's program in the hopes that you'll to buy that as well. Each email to you is another offer. Flat abs. Burn belly fat. Washboard abs without crunches, etc. Instead of losing weight safely, with an exercise program I can follow, I'm spending money I can't afford to spend for a program or dozens of programs that aren't geared for me.

I took a test to see if I was sluggish and run down. Hello? You have the metabolism of a 200 year old woman. Mark Hyman, M.D. recommends his program at only $396.00 per month. It's called the UltraSimple Diet Enhanced program. Do I look like I'm made of money? Maybe that's how they get you to lose pounds. They lighten your wallet.

Even the TV Doctors, Stork
and Ozhave their own personal program. Just sign on the old bottom line, or enter your credit card numbers and you're as good as bikini ready. They're ripping my mind apart with their promises, their come-ons and declarations that promise a new you in six weeks.

Who wouldn't like to look like Ashley of the Biggest Loser or have her success?


Weight Watchers is great, but does it really teach me what to eat at any given time, how much and the right combinations? What about The Biggest Loser? Do I look like I could do those exercises in a gym 24/7?

I just don't know anymore. I wish there was a magic diet genie who could outline a modified lifestyle, that doesn't forbid a splurge once in awhile, that has exercises for my physical limitations, that says when to eat and what and how much. Can there be such a person or system or program or suggestions that don't require that I turn over my entire pay check to them every two weeks? Oh, stop the insanity. (Say, isn't that an exercise program?) Well, never mind, I'm not doing it.

Finding the right path for me will required some dedicated research. It may not happen right away. But the one thing I know, is that I don't want to die wearing enough weight to equal another person. My feet are getting really tired of dragging around that extra gal. It's time to let her find someone else to hang off of. So if you have a program you'd like me to evaluate--keep it to yourself.

Falling off the wagon!

I haven't written in my blog for a very long time. There are many reasons. I'm enrolled in a college English course and the writing is tough and demanding of my precious time. I've become involved with another company and I'm helping them with their books and the training of their new bookkeeper. (Heaven help them!) I'm still working for the two other business I go to at least four times and week and now I've taken on the books of my boss's son. I have about a years worth of bookkeeping to catch up on. Yikes! And of course, I'm busily working on book number five, then throw in my birthday and Tim's and a quick weekend trip to Southern Utah to visit my dad and his wife, Edna plus Tim's father passed away and we spent a lot of Saturday's visiting him in the hospital--and you've got life at it's finest.

However, those are not the only reasons--which are very good reasons--for not writing in my blog, but the simplest reason and the straight forward one is that I've fallen off the wagon.

We've all seen people who've tried to improve their lives through weight loss, quitting smoking and drinking, stopping drug abuse and so on. And then they've seen them slip off their tenuous program and indulge in he behavior that got them in trouble in the first place. Somewhere in the back of my evil twin sister's mind, we look at them and say, "I knew they couldn't stick with it. They're so weak!" Come on, I know you've all heard that nasty little voice in the back of your head say something vicious like that. Or maybe not. Maybe it's just me. It's not that we like to see people fail at something, it's just that we don't want them to best us.

Well...I now know what it's like to slide off the wagon and back into patterns of behavior that are familiar yet destructive. Before Christmas I finally reached the middle pinnacle of my weight loss journey. 104 pounds. Although far from my goal, that seemed like a great milestone. But that's where it ended.

I know first hand what it feels like when a recovering alcoholic hears the call of the bottle which reaches out, enticing them back with the alluring feel of the liquid gold sliding down a parched throat. I know what a heroin addict must feel when they walk the streets and a dealer shoves bag of the white siren's powder under their nose. I know what seduction there is in having another smoker in the same room with you when you're craving a draw on that tobacco stick. I know because I'm also an addict.

I thought I'd concurred my addition, my obsession, my passion for FOOD! But after only eight months of strict obedience, I had not learned the basic lessons of control. I also realize that with an addiction to food, you can't completely shove it out of your life. It's around you everywhere. Your life is constantly bombarded with reasons to eat: Christmas, New Year's, birthdays, anniversaries, travel, funerals--grief. And if you haven't learned what it means to control the situation, then you'll slip off the wagon just as surely as a heroin addict or a recovering alcoholic. There really is no difference.

I then heard the other little voice in my head, the one that tells you that you really can't do it. You have no business trying to quit something or restructuring your life. You're just no good at it. We all have that voice as well. I listened when it told me "just one won't hurt." So I believed and fell. Just one box of Sees, just one pound of fantasy fudge, just one pound of honey baked ham and one pound of scalloped potatoes and one pound of pumpkin pie. Just one drink or two of egg nog and vanilla ice cream, just one more, and one more and...You get the picture.

Then there's another little voice (I'm full of them) that tells you "well now you've fallen off and lost your momentum and slipped up a few pounds, so what?" That's the voice I really hate. Because that's the voice I believe the most. "Yeah, you're right. I've really messed up. I knew I couldn't lose weight all along. You told me I couldn't do it and now you're proven me right." Boy! I hate it when I agree with myself. I sound like I'm slipping into existentialism. You know what that is, right? According to Wikipedia, "a philosophy that begins with a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. Or in other words--nonsense!

I believed the nonsense that only my mind can produce. I believed a lie.

I believed the lie my existential mind (disoriented, confused, absurd) mind was telling me. So here I am. No longer at 104 pounds down. I won't bore you with the details of exactly how many pounds I added back on my bones, but enough to have me believing the lie--you've failed, you can't go on--you're a loser. (Well technically that would be NON-LOSER!)

What's great about Weight Watchers, (and this isn't a shameless plug) it that they help you see around the lies you tell yourself and help you through the barriers that keep you from taking the first step toward jumping back on the wagon. I'm still racing behind the wagon hoping it will slow down and let me catch up. No more excuses, no more rationalizations, it's my choice whether I eat low calorie filling foods or consume everything that's not nailed down. I'm still getting my feet under me. Still trying to push out the third voice and still trying. Period.

Thank goodness I didn't stop going to the gym. That's the only thing that's saved my bacon (no pork-fat jokes, please). I still go every morning, punish myself for an hour so that I don't climb into a ditch after falling off the wagon. So for the present, I'm still running behind the wagon, praying for the strength to fight another day. That's all we can ask out of life. And oh, one more thing--I need to forgive the little voices in my head and forgive myself for tripping. After all, that's all we want from life is a little forgiveness when we stumble and a hand up. That's what Weight Watchers does for me. They offer a hand and it's my choice to clasp it or not.Anywhoo, I still can see some improvement even though I'm running fast to catch up with myself. (Is that an existential statement?)

Weight -- Update!

As of September 26, 2008 - total weight loss = 101 pounds.

My Weight Watchers leader asked me what was the best part about losing 101 pounds. I told her it was "losing 101 pounds". What's sweeter than that? It took me a year to lose 31 pounds at the gym alone and seven months to lose 70 pounds with diet and exercise.

I don't know.
Can you tell a
difference?


















I spent the following Saturday morning remodeling some of my clothes. My good friend Monika gave me some fabulous blouses and dresses. One was a size 14/16. IT FIT!!! I also found a skirt that my tiny mother wore, and IT FIT!!! But all in all, having clothes that are much, much smaller and fit is only a side benefit of losing weight. My doctor just dropped my high blood pressure and my cholesterol and heart medications. I'm only on 1/2 of a blood sugar pills. (Refer back to one of my previous posts about the benefits of losing weight.)

People ask me all the time, where did you get your motivation. Like I've written before, there wasn't one single situation, event or idea that sparked my motivation. It was many things. It was mostly a matter of control. For the majority of my life, food was in control of me. It was my Lord and master. Now I'm the master, and I can eat what I want, when I want and stop when I'm satisfied. And that--is something I never thought I'd be able to do.

Weight -- Update!

I'm down 90 pounds on 8/28/08!!!--that's right--read em and weep--90 big ones. That's 1,440 ounces. 315,000 Calories, and 40.8233133 Kilos. But I like it better in pounds. Sounds more dramatic and I like drama!

Here's my progress chart:

Began an exercise regiment at Contours Women gym - February 2007

February 2007 to May 2007 gained 15 pounds

May 2007 to September 2007 lost 13.8 pounds

From September 2007 to January 2008 lost 6.2 pounds

From January 2008 to March 8, 2008 lost 8 pounds

From March 8, 2008 when I joined Weight Watchers to August 28, 2008 I lost another 62 pounds

Total weight loss 8/28/08 = 90 pounds

I decided not to include a photo on this post. Losing another 10 pounds doesn't really that much difference from the 80 pounds lost. So maybe when I hit 100 pound weight loss, I'll include another picture. It's just too bad I don't get younger with every pound I lose. That would be worth a few bucks wouldn't it?

Food and diet are four letter words...!

Adding insult to injury, realizing that I had an addiction--to food that is. I struggled long and hard to find a "diet" that would work for me. As a child I was taken to fat doctors, pumped full of pills, shots and the latest crazy diet. They'd work for a while, then when I ate something off the diet, the insane cycle would start again. I'd berate myself and jump off the track all together.

As a teenager I did Weight Watchers. It was rough. The recipes were gross and the meetings sappy. I think I may have dropped ffifteen pounds after a long period of time, only to find them again when I quit. Then my doctor introduced amphetamines. Wow! Man! Heavy stuff....! This is good sh%$...! I lost tons of weight had jumbled nerves and was freaked all the time, but I got down to 112. Once they outlawed the lovely little pills, I puffed up.

College brought exercising as a college course. I actually considered being one of the little exercise bunnies with the firm abs and tight buns. I approached my exercise leader, a woman with a body like a goddess, who explained that I still needed to loss another 35 pounds to qualify to be a bunny. Curse my stupidity now, I felt it too much of a challenge and let my addiction have it's way with me. Boom! 200pounds, well maybe a little more.

After college---work. I drove up the scales topping out at 225. I received a call to serve a mission for my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Independence, Missouri. Walking all over Kansas and Nebraska helped me drop 80 pounds. Now I'm 145.

Now I'm home and looking to get married. Still more weight comes off. I join a program. Drop 11 pounds in a week. (The food was disgusting. Gag me with a spoon!) Got married, got pregnant, got sick, gave birth. Surprisingly I was the same weight when I delivered my son as when I got pregnant. Nice surprise!

New son, new marriage, new experience. I don't want to get pregnant again. New problem. I eat like there's no tomorrow. Gain 153 pounds. No more pregnancies!

Food was my friend, my companion, my lover, my temptor, my jailer. Harsh. No I consoled myself with food. Going out on a date, we ate. Being with family, we ate. Go to a church party, we ate. Going on vacation, we ate. I can tell you every vacation we've ever been on by the restaurants we ate at, from the Spaghetti Factory in Honolulu to the Three Crabs in Squim, Washington to Dan Mario's restaurant in Orlando, Florida, and a little closer to home, a buffet in Salt Lake City. Boy those are great memories. Mmmmm!

Twenty five years later, I believe I have started a diet on Monday mornings, done a little exercising, thought positive and starved myself about as many times as McDonald's has fries. Millions and millions served.

My husband lovingly told me I had an attitude problem. What attitude?! Who wouldn't be cheery, happy, delighted, ecstatic, tickled pink or bursting with joy with an overblown, morbidly obese body that won't walk properly, has to buy two plane tickets or has to have one of those perky female ride operators at Disneyland call loudly for the seat belt extender because "fatty" in #3 can't fasten her saftey belt. I just told him, "Hey, buddy, I'm a realist!"

So what changed? When did I make the decision I'd had enough? When did exercise become a part of me like a thirst that can't be quenched or a hunger not sated? Where was the shove that pushed me through the door of a Weight Watcher's meeting again and making that work for me. He$#... if I know. (Excuse my Mormon French, I'm from Utah!)

There was not one single defining moment that sticks out in my mind, but a series of steps along a very, very, very, very long path. Sometimes it was really hard to keep going. Like when I had lost about 50 pounds and a good friend of mine told me that she didn't notice any weight loss because I only wore moo-moo's. Ouch! Pow! Zowie! (A little Batman lingo!) Boy did that smart! And to prove to her and everyone else that I was on my way, I lost another 20 pounds. Now it shows, she says.

So to end this rambling on a good note, I am still on the journey. I'm still losing weight. I still exercise six days a week. My body aches. It's still so very hard, you have no idea how hard it is. But that's part of the journey too.

My Addiction

I have struggled my entire life to learn the secrets of self-control. I learned at the tender age of three that I would always have to fight a battle with my addiction. You might ask, “What kind of addiction would a three year old girl have to battle with?” I will answer honestly. It’s my addiction to food. Not the food itself, but the interconnected feelings and emotions that are associated with food and the pleasure derived from partaking.

My mother worked with my father in his business and often left me in the care of babysitters. These folks didn’t care what I ate. I suspect now that it was an organized scheme to keep me, as it were, doped up with food so I would be docile enough to not be a pain in the rear. Having four brothers that ate like garbage compactors didn’t help either. My mother always cooked like she was feeding the hay bailing crew. Huge amounts of beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, homemade bread, and jam and calorie laden desserts decorated our dining table like presents under our Christmas tree.

I didn’t work hard around the farm like my brothers did, so when I ate the same way they were fed, I gained weight. At age ten my mother purchased me my first bra, and it wasn’t a training bra either. At age eleven, I remember vividly going to J.C. Penny in Salt Lake City to purchase huge clothes in their “Chubby” department. Yes, the store actually had a chubby department for us girls who had no idea about watching what we put in our mouths.

There were also happy times associated with eating. My Grandmother lived on a dairy farm in a small town south of our home. Going there was a treat. It was my job to go to the milk house early in the morning to retrieve the fresh cream from the milk separator for our morning cereal. I consumed tons of Sugar Frosted Flakes with fresh, butter rich cream. Mmm, I can still taste that buttery goodness. My grandmother was a great cook. We ate well from the farm animals that were slaughtered, preserved and then prepared with love, such items as bacon, pork roasts, smoked hams, beef roasts and steaks. My grandmother’s family was large and every occasion we got together included enormous amounts of food like casseroles, homemade breads, brownies, cakes, pies, and homemade ice cream. Who wouldn’t have become a plump, round little butter ball?

I was taken to medical fat clinics and pumped full of serums and pills in the hopes that the weight would magically melt off my over inflated body. Nothing seemed to work. I remember going to Weight Watchers as a teenager and being so discouraged that pizza, double patty melts and chocolate malts were not on the menu. I lasted a couple of months. Even the happy little stars you receive as a congratulatory recognition didn’t help me stay motivated.

For a time in high school, my doctor recommended amphetamines. Those lovely little pills worked great. I felt wonderfully spirited away. I didn’t care much about losing weight, school or anything else for that matter. My hands shook all the time and I was terribly nervous, and paranoid, but the weight seemed to melt away. By the time I was a junior in high school I weighed around 115 pounds. That was the least I have ever weighed. Then I met Cathy. She was a big girl. And I do mean big. She and I became the best of “eating” buddies. Our best times were spent in trying every restaurant from Covina to San Diego. We left no burger uneaten, no pizza in the box.

Over the years, I have gained and lost weight so many times that I have lost count. When I got pregnant with my son Michael, I was so sick that I was actually the same weight when I gave birth as when I got pregnant. But after Mike was born, I completely lost control. I gained about 150 pounds. And for the last 25 years of my life have lived in sorrow and regret. I never wanted to be in pictures. I never had any confidence. I hated myself.

Finding the motivation to lose weight came in spurts. I’d join a program, lose five or ten pounds, then discouragement would set in and I would stop and balloon up again, worse than before. My doctor was worried. My parents were worried. My husband and son were worried. I contracted diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I even thought I had a heart attack once. Still all these medical conditions did nothing to motive me.

I decided in February of 2007 that I should join a ladies’ gym in Camarillo, called Contours. It took me an entire year to lose 20 pounds. Mostly because I was only exercising not eating correctly. I loved the activity and being with women who had the same fight. This year, 2008, I took part in a weight loss challenge. My partner, Murielle O’Brien and I won. We received a t-shirt for our trouble. In January, my husband Tim and I started taking our writing class taught by Professor Clive Leeman at Moorpark College. I started to work on my novel. I had written the best chapter of the book years ago, but never put a story around it. Suddenly my entire novel was finished. It’s pretty good, I think. This singular achievement has brought me a measure of satisfaction and accomplishment I had not experienced for a long, long time. Around the same time, I decided to add Weight Watchers back into my life.

The Weight Watcher program has changed and had two options: a points system, where you can eat what you like, and a system where you eat low carb foods. I chose the points system. Within four weeks I had lost 21 pounds. It’s not a lot considering what I have ahead of me, but I take solace in the fact that I’ve started. I’m on my journey. I’m doing something I love in my writing and somehow the motivation, the power and the control that has been lacking from my life has descended upon me like a blanket of newly fallen snow. I feel invigorated and enlivened. I write at night instead of watching T.V. I’m reading more books than I have in the past 25 years and I’m at last in control. With the help of Contours and Weight Watchers, as of May 26, 2008, I’ve lost a total of 60 pounds.

I will always be a “weight watcher”. Food will always be a severe addiction for me. But I will not let it be my master and my prison any longer. As one of my son’s favorite comic heroes, He-Man stated, “I have the power!” I have the power to change my life for the better.

Well did you like it? Did you find a point at which my motivation kicked in? Please write and tell me if you did. Thanks for your consideration.