The Numbers don't lie

The Spouse and I joined a "Healthier You" challenge at our Y. My pride took such a hit. VO2max 21.774, bodyfat 47%, situps 75, pushups 10, squats 12, handgrip was fine. The bodyfat is lower than the last time I had it done. The VO2max number was crushing, as were my body measurements. Crud. On top that, I weighed 2.2 pounds more at Week 2 than Week 1. I suck. That and I started my period. We'll see what next week brings. I can't work out and I'm retaining water. What garbage. I worked out at least 10 hours Week 1 and gained 2 pounds. It has to be water. I have to set goals for the program and the next 3 months. Accountability makes me seethe with frustration. It must be a good thing we're doing this.

Not Ready to work at it

I'm not ready to work on an essay and publish it as a blog post. Too much for the five pound bag. However, I've been thinking about a passage from C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters and the soul who spent his life doing neither what he ought nor what he liked and found himself at the gates of Hell with no real enjoyment in this life and none in the hereafter.

How often does that happen to me? There are things I really like to do that I don't do because I "don't have time". But when I'm neglecting things I ought to do, I don't choose the things I like. There's no virtue in cutting school to go fishing, but you can miss school if you're sick. Wasting time on the unimportant to avoid the unpleasant important creates a double Hell. Hell here. Hell there.

Breakfast

Yesterday I tried eating an enormous breakfast. It had juice, two pieces of toast with butter, cereal, milk, and about an egg-and-a-half. Nearly 600 hundred calories of low-fat, gut-busting goodness. It felt sinful... and yet it really did keep me from pigging out all day. Even the almond kisses had no hold on me. Awesome. Time to buy more eggs.

Not about Ricky

Oh, to be witty enough to participate over at Althouse. Given reality, here is what I might have posted in response to this post at Althouse. The comment thread was worthwhile and there were two particularly touching posts for me. The first concerned a 15-year-old gastric bypass and the second the differences between stopping smoking and losing weight.

The question of whether gastric bypass is done too quickly with little regard for long-term effects really struck me. At some point in the last year I was looking for weight-loss information and the top google results were all about gastric bypass. That was disturbing. I read the pages and it all began to seem so reasonable, so ordinary. It's not. After some surgeon rustles through your abdomen it's still up to you to develop the discipline to eat correctly to maintain your health. That seems grossly unfair.

After an encounter with some greasy New Year's hoppin' john and googling for information about grease after the gallbladder is gone, here I am again reading in lap-band support groups about the side effects and issues after surgery and all I can keep thinking is "Man, hope it was worth it." Yikes. These women are in pain and they are waiting for everything to get better.

One of the bigger insights of my first encounter with big-enough weight loss is you are still you. Losing weight isn't a game-changer, not really. Back in the Althouse thread a man commented on his life after a divorce and stress-related weight loss made him more physically attractive to other people. He wasn't seeing the upside because even though his now ex-wife thought he looked great she was still his ex-wife. Speaking only for myself, when I changed my body without turning my mind or heart to changing I was shocked at how little the world appreciated my effort. Damn insensitive of them. Sure, there is the initial "Wow! You look great!" and then all that was left was the same stuff that repelled everyone in the first place.

The question was asked if fat acceptance has fueled the obesity epidemic, and I would say no, not directly. The availability of attractive large-size clothing has fueled the obesity epidemic. Perhaps even the distance between the extremes has helped. Back in the 70s as an overweight child I had certain limits imposed on me by clothing manufacturers. I simply could not find decent clothes for any waist size bigger than 33 inches, after being shuffled off to a dark corner of a store. Being larger than that wasn't an option. Now I can find clothing up to a size 32, however a 32 is defined. Hello? That is insane. Looking at the extremes, if there is enough concentration of wealth at size 32 to warrant being included in every Lane Bryant store and enough concentration of wealth at size 2 or 0, where is "okay"? Is a size 16 okay? That's the middle. A sixteen is not really okay. That's obese, as my WiiFit would say. When girls and boys can look around and see themselves as slightly bigger than everyone around them, their eyes tell them they aren't too bad and nothing says "Change". It's easy to slide up a size or two until you hit the top of the rack or the end of the display.

The woman who posted so passionately about the differences between stopping smoking and losing weight was incredible. At some point you have "quit" smoking. At no point can you not be losing weight. She did however, gloss over the lifestyle issues that are the same. For many people, there are environmental and social triggers to smoke in addition to the nicotine addiction. I don't smoke and never have. My mom is a lifelong smoker and my dad quit 25 years ago. There have been times of stress in my life, as a non-smoker, when I could feel the cigarette in my fingers. The cigarette went with the gesture I was making, as I must have seen my mom make that gesture a thousand times. What if I had been a smoker, had quit and now was making the gesture that seemingly required the cigarette? Would that have been enough to light one up? How would that trip to pick up a pack or a carton been any different than a run to a fast-food drive-thru? Smokers who quit have to change their behaviors and coping mechanisms to stay away from cigarettes. Are they so different?

It is the process of personal change we have to encounter as we go. Through gastric bypass I imagine people are hoping to be slapped into sense. They are expressing commitment by paying money and risking death during surgery and after by complications. This sounds harsh, but expressing commitment is easy. The externality of it all also strikes me. It seems like participants are wanting something external to control their actions. In that sense, how different is gastric bypass than signing up for food delivery? Express commitment with dollars and if you do exactly as you are required you will lose weight.

So back to the woman asserting that you can quit smoking but can never quit losing weight. Her post clearly relates how the body fights to keep itself, and the reasoning is seductive. Who doesn't want to believe our own struggles are more difficult than anyone elses? She bemoans the lifestyle changes that perpetually put her on a diet and it seems like she feels tricked that she can't diet and then not diet and have it be okay.

I cannot be the person I was when I was fat. I was a person who thought the thoughts and did the deeds that made me fat. The fat is a symptom of a disordered person. Is being thin in and of itself a noble goal? It can't be. Plenty of thin people are disordered, they just express it differently. The goal has to be to shape myself into a better person, mentally, spiritually, and physically. If I am not the person I was when I was fat, then these aren't "lifestyle changes" that I have to fight to maintain. This is my life and I am happy with it.

Collecing Sources

I'm a pretty active athlete, as active as family responsibilities allow, and a large woman. Often, the gear I need is difficult to find in the sizes I need and I'm finding other larger women are sent to me for advice on where to find gear and what to be doing.

Look for links on the right that will have good gear for larger women, and I'll try to post about experiences finding suits, shorts, and other gear with some product reviews.

Barney Frank said what?

It is my firm belief that Barney Frank should not be allowed to speak about Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac in front of a microphone, in private, or to himself again ever. Ever.

The Munchie Thing

There was an excellent article in Good Housekeeping this month about binging. The author described binging as a descent into numbness which I agreed with wholeheartedly. I have the munchies really badly right now because I would like to have a day off. Truly, the chips-and-salsa are about a day off and not the chips.

There's no extra cash, no extra time and I really want a day off.