“Getting Healthier” by losing weight… April 1, 2010

There is this new Weight Watchers ad, featuring their newest spokesperson, Jennifer Hudson:

(this is the Jezebel article on the ad)

And the commentary is, “well, at least the focus is on health and not how her body looks” (even though the second ad is all about how she looks, and what size she is “the smallest in my adult life!”).

I have been there, also thanks to Weight Watchers, the smallest I was in my adult life. I have proudly worn jeans I never thought I could get into–and I still wasn’t happy with my body. I was below my goal weight, but I still didn’t feel like I had the body that was supposed to go with the size I was wearing or the amount that I weighed. When I was my actual smallest, and possibly my healthiest, I had adapted a very active lifestyle, was working my portion control, watching the butter and cheese, and possibly not eating a full three meals a day. Actually, I’m not sure how healthy I actually was…

The thing about Weight Watchers, about any diet, is that it is still a diet, still something focused on how much you weigh and how that corresponds to how you look. Don’t get me wrong–Weight Watcher meetings were often my group therapy, the first time I was ever around a group of people also dealing with the same body issues I was dealing with, with the same drive to feed our emotions with cookies and ice-cream, and the same throw-in-the-towel mentality that said that because we would never have perfect bodies, who cared about thinner versions of our already imperfect ones? The staff preached “body image is not self-image”  but there was no denying the link between weight loss and celebration and success.  Smaller was still seen as better. Smaller portions, smaller points, smaller bodies–small = good. Large = bad. How were we, those who were least likely to ever have perfect bodies, supposed to deal with getting smaller, and still not being small enough, when smaller was always supposed to be better?

The flip side, as was touched on in the comments section of the Jezebel article, is that Weight Watchers (and similar programs) make people obsessed with their food intake, their weight–all the numbers associated with dieting. It takes a ton of time, effort, and energy to follow the program. It takes a level of obsession that I was able to maintain for a while, but man, I got tired of it. I didn’t want to think about my strategy to get through every holiday, every meal. It is likened to a 12-step program, where you take weight loss one day at a time, five minutes at a time if you have to, as though we were all addicted to food, an it was bad.

Well, we are all addicted to food, and for good reason. Without it, we die. And being obsessed about food is somewhat natural too, because of that whole, “without it, we die” aspect. But the obsession of old was where were we going to get it from, how much of it were we going to have, and when were we going to get the next meal after that. It wasn’t, how am I going to get through my friend’s birthday party and not eat cake? It wasn’t, what can I do when I feel hungry, but I’m not supposed to be eating? It wasn’t, how can I convince myself that celery tastes  just as good as a bag of chips?

Here’s the deal–if you are craving a bag of chips, what you are craving is salt, starch, and fat. Celery has none of those things. And if you want salt, starch, and fat, you are probably  looking for energy, and possibly need some water (or something to make you drink more water, like those nice salty chips). Your body is more complicated than sitting there going “we don’t like ourselves, so we’re going to have chips in order to sabotage all our future happiness because fat people who eat chips can’t be happy.”

I haven’t fully investigated that whole “eating intuitively” thing, but I’ll tell you what–when I stop obsessing about food, I actually eat less of it, and am less hungry. When I know I can eat whatever I want, when I want, and not feel guilty about it, I am sometimes perfectly happy not having ice cream in the evening, or finishing my entire lunch. But when I’m in deprivation mode (which every diet, however well conceived, puts  me in) all I want to do is eat,  because the one thing my body is really great at is rebelling.

I do, in fact, want to be healthier. And if Jennifer Hudson got up there and said “I found the  love of spinning class!” or “taking up hiking has really changed my life” I’d be like–oh, okay, that makes sense. Working out really does make you healthier.

I’m not convinced that weight loss does, so much as it makes you skinnier, and the problem with Weight Watchers, and the ad, is that is assumes a connection between losing weight and being healthy. However, anorexics are very small, and not healthy. And when I was at the peak of my Weight Watchers weight loss, I was losing lots of weight–but I was NOT eating very healthy. I hear the new program is trying to stress eating better foods, making more of your points, but still, the underlying assumption is still there: weight loss = healthier.

Adding fruits and vegetables is healthier (and easier than taking any food away, or replacing chips with celery, which, again, is not hitting that same craving place at all). Exercising is  healthier. Stopping when you are satisfied instead of full is healthier. Cutting out trans fats, hydrogenated oils, fake sweeteners, and processed foods is healthier. Doing all that may, or may not, make you lose weight, but it will make you healthier.

And that is the difference. If Weight Watchers were to ever change their name, and their message, do “Health Watchers” I’d be right back in the fold in an instant, going to weekly meetings to discuss everyone progress on their journeys to change their lives to healthier ones. I’d sign up for a walking/hiking club, discuss the merits of yoga and Pilates, figure out which multivitamins actually work, and the best foods to eat to get the most essential vitamins naturally.

To be fair, there is a lot of that same discussion going on at Weight Watchers meetings, but the meeting starts and ends with the weigh-in, with the celebrations of weight loss, with making progress toward the ultimate goal of hitting a goal weight, and staying there. Never mind if you get there by skipping meals, or through a binge and purge type of lifestyle. Never mind if you have to track every bite of food, every ounce gained or lost.

It’s that obsession, that tracking, that focus on food and the weight and size of your body that I have to declare is, ultimately, unhealthy. Body image may not be self-image, but when you have to think about your body every time you take a sip of a beverage or taste a bite of food (and write it down), how can you help but confuse the two? And how can you help but judge your own self-worth based on how “good”  you were, and how much you weigh?

I’m not a good person because I eat salad instead of a burger for lunch. Food doesn’t have that kind of  morality attached to it (aside from some people’s moral ideas about “meat is murder” and all that–which is not what I’m talking about). I am not a better person because I had the lower-calorie (and worse tasting) version of a higher calorie food. There is no actual virtue involved in suffering through a tasteless diet that leaves you hungry most of the time. Celery does not redeem me.

If I am ever to truly believe that I am not what I weigh, or what size I wear (or that those things don’t matter in terms of what kind of person I am, anyway) then I can’t live a life dedicated to watching how I measure up in both.

I appreciate that the new Weight Watchers ad is focusing on health, I really do. I just think that ultimately it’s still sending the wrong message.

Lifestyle Change… March 3, 2010

When I went to, and worked at, Weight Watchers, we always talked about how our program wasn’t a diet, it was a lifestyle change. However, it was a lifestyle change that started out as a diet (as defined by having a calorie restriction, which is the point of every “diet”). The goal was to become a lifetime member, someone who was at, and maintained, their goal weight.

I got to my goal weight. I became a lifetime member. And then I stopped following the program. Why? Well, that whole lifestyle change? It requires doing the same things over and over, being glued to the scale, to your points counter, to the Weight Watchers lifestyle. And I’ll tell you this right now, if you work the program, the program works. But I will also tell you this: no matter what program you use, if you are an overweight individual, you are fighting yourself when it comes to maintaining weight loss.

First off, most diets don’t work (as this article about a UCLA study shows). Secondly, there are real reasons why:

According to Dr. Rudy Leibel, the genetic predisposition to fat is so strong, it’s the reason why 95 percent of the population regains all the weight they have lost from diet efforts (article here linking to this videocast). According to Dr. Leibel: (as stolen from a BBC News article)

“If someone loses a lot of weight, they often have persistent hunger, even if they are eating enough to sustain themselves. ‘Think of it like a thermostat and that each person has a set point,’ says Dr Leibel. ‘When it is reduced below that point the body begins to do    things that will force it to recover its lost body weight.’ … ‘The body will constantly tend to try to bring you back to whatever your normal body weight is,’ he says. But he does not think this is the full story. There are other issues that influence a person’s weight. ‘Fifty per cent is down to genes and the rest is probably down to environment. If you get the gene for Huntington’s you have the disease 100% of the time. That’s certainly not the case with obesity.’”

So, when I found myself consistently gaining weight, I had to wonder why. Yes, I was no longer working the program (because my tolerance for counting every calorie that came into my body was limited) but also it seemed like trying to eat the same as my naturally thin friends was also making me fatter.

I am convinced now that my body has a natural weight it wants to be. I don’t know what that weight is though–when I was my thinnest, I was in the mindset of portion control and picking the healthiest of choices, and I was exercising a lot more. However, since then I have been struggling with the mindset of “dieting” because, frankly, I’m tired of dieting and I’m not convinced that if I lose weight I won’t be back here yet again a few more years down the line. Do I want to always yo-yo, or do I want to find my natural body weight and stick there (and finally get a complete wardrobe I don’t have to keep changing)?

The only real way to test this theory is to figure out which factors, by body or my lifestyle, are making me gain weight. And so, in the spirit of Lent and science (how’s that for a combo) I have decided to give up my ultimate indulgence for 30 days (even though I missed the initial start of Lent, I’m starting now, and 30 days seems long enough to me). So, for the next 30 days, I will not eat ice cream. I will, however, eat pretty much anything else I want. I will try to eat vegetables and fruits, lean meats, and try not to pig out on pasta (though I make no promises in regards to that). I will keep eating my desk-drawer mini candies as I see fit (or need to…I’m a stress eater), and I will try to incorporate exercise into my life (though, again, I make no promises).

But I’m an ice-cream addict. I live off the stuff. I feel better when I have it in my freezer (there is a Ben and Jerry’s pint in there now). However, I don’t like to be ruled by addiction, and this might be a good way to prove to myself that I don’t *need* the ice cream. And it might also be a good way to see if eliminating one of my favorite (and nightly) treats will have any effect on my body weight.

My scale has been battery-free for a while now, so I will have to judge any change in my body by the jeans test (they are tight on me now, so we’ll see). I may also put on a belt to see which hole that is on, and see if that makes any difference.

The problem with the idea of a lifestyle change is that the idea of doing something, anything, for the rest of your  life is daunting. I don’t want to always do x, y, or z.

But I do want to be healthy, however I can define that for myself, and at a level I can live with.

So, I will never fully give up ice cream. I don’t see the point. But I will try to replace the comfort and, whatever, that I get from ice cream with journaling, exercise, pudding if I have to, and kitty snuggles, and see what helps.

I would like to know what my body’s natural weight is. I would like to know what it would take to keep it there. I would really like it to be smaller than I am now, and if not, would love to find a way to be okay with where I am now (or with where I end up).

But I’m not comfortable with this weight gain, this slowly inching up. I just still don’t know the best way to deal with it.

Healthy is What Again? February 16, 2010

So my plan seemed pretty simple–I would abandon anything remotely related to the idea of diet. However, I would try to increase my daily consumption of fruits and vegetables.

This started out by me having a banana with peanut butter for breakfast. I liked it–I got protein, fat, and a enough energy to last me till lunch. This lasted about as long as it took to get a really bad banana, and then I was off bananas for a while. After that, I switched back to cereal, raisin bran,  hoping the raisins counted.

Lunch started out as a some sort of diet frozen mean with a salad (since I am  never full enough from those meals). But then the salad became the more interesting part of lunch, so now I have a not-so-dietetic salad with dried cranberries, glazed walnuts, feta cheese, and the best blend of spinach and baby lettuces I could find. Yeah, I’m missing carbs somewhat, but that’s what the Tricuits are for…

Dinner was not dietetic, by design, but was supposed to have veggies, if possible. Made a pot pie that was great. Aimed for things I could have salad, or at least avocado with.

The flip side to all this healthy eating was that I was supposed to work out. Started a new log that would track my work out hours per week, with a goal of working out 120 minutes (that’s two hours) every week. Since most of my stuff is 20 minute videos or the like, that seemed like a decent goal.

Week one of “Operation Be Healthy” actually went really well. Thanks to an hour and a half yoga class, went well over my minutes goal. Manages to greatly increase my fruits and vegetables consumption. Week two hit a snag thanks to Valentines Day weekend (aka, stay home, eat, and try not to feel depressed weekend) and I didn’t make my minutes goal.  But, I did have lots of avocado and salsa…

So now it’s week three and I’m having another set back, another photo taken when I wasn’t expecting it, another shot of me looking plumper than I’d like to look. It’s hard not to want to immediately start a brand new diet, to not swear that I’ll up my working out to 40 minutes a day, every day, to not take the drastic measures toward weight loss that always lead me to ultimately feeling crappy about myself again. I’m trying really hard to focus on being healthy, but it’s hard to remember what healthy is in the face of “feeling fat.”

Healthy is not taking extreme measures. Healthy is  not trying to conform to some prepackaged idea of what attractive is. Healthy is not hating your body. Healthy is not massive calorie restriction for the sake of rapid weight loss. Healthy is not lingering on a photo that makes me feel bad about how I look. Healthy, in fact, really has nothing to do with how I look.

I just have to remember that, focus on that, and keep up my mission to be healthy–not skinny, not thinner, not some gym-body-goddess. Just–healthy. Healthier, at any rate.

Eye on the prize. Fruits and veggies, regular exercise, a slow build up to a healthier lifestyle. But some days, it’s really hard.

Bleh Negotiations January 28, 2010

So here is the head trip I’m struggling with: to diet or not to diet. See, dieting seems to be associated with being healthy (or at least making a concentrated effort toward being healthy). The problem is, I feel like I’ve been on one form of diet or another for almost my entire life. And I’m tired y’all! And ultimately, diets don’t work.

Now, I’m someone who lost 95 pounds on Weight Watchers, so, yes, I know that dieting can help you to lose weight. And I even worked for Weight Watchers, so I know all about how it’s “not a diet, but a lifestyle change.” However, that change still comes with taking careful stock of everything you put into your mouth (that has calories people, that has calories), and measuring your progress through weekly weigh ins. It’s not a bad system. It gets shit done.

And  yet, having worked at Weight Watchers, I can tell you how  many lifetime members (people who reach a goal weight and keep it off for six weeks of maintenance) end up coming back in, over their goal weight, starting the whole process again.  And when someone gains weight during the week (when they’re supposed to be losing) we always go over the same questions: what did you do differently? Did you write down everything you ate? Did you drink your water?

And while we were taught to be careful about tone and all that, what it really feels like is “you didn’t do your homework, did you? You didn’t study for the test. You failed your weigh in.”

Since having lost 95 pounds, I have gained (the last time I weighed myself) 30 back. Trust me, I don’t like it. It didn’t come on all at once. My lowest weight was a good 10 pounds below my WW goal weight, so when my weight crept back up to the goal weight range, I was okay with that. What’s 10 pounds, really? I’d lost almost a hundred. And then over the next year, a few more pounds crept on, and then a few more, and then one really bad year I got pretty depressed, and then the creeping took up speed.

I have no idea what I weigh right now since my scale battery died a few months back and I haven’t replaced it. But my clothes are tighter and my belly looks  bigger, so I’m pretty sure the number has gone up again.

I was all determined to go back to Weight Watchers, start the process again. I bought a season pass. I lost five pounds. And then, I stopped going.

I stopped going because I read this book about Fat Acceptance and how diets don’t work. I read about Healthy at Every Size. More, I read about loving your  body no matter what, no matter it’s size or shape. And the idea of it was wonderful! What if I didn’t have to lose 30 pounds to feel good about myself? What if I could just feel good now? No more thinking of food in terms of good food and bad food. No more weekly weigh ins making me feel like I was about to pass or fail a test (or even if I lost, feel bad because I didn’t lose enough, get a high enough score, and that meant it would take me that much longer to reach my goal weight).

See, it took me two years to lose 95 pounds. I lost a pound a week, on average. At that rate, it would take me 5 weeks to lose 5 pounds (net). Thirty weeks to lose 30. That’s over 7 months. Seven months of writing down everything I eat, of thinking of food as good or bad, of feeling deprived and resentful about not being able to just have what I want when I want it. Thirty weekly weigh ins, and no, not 30 weeks straight of loss either. My pattern was lose 2.5 pounds, gain one back, lose .2, gain some back, etc. I was a yo-yo, two steps forward, one step back, but the net, the overall average, was a pound a week.

I don’t want to go through that again. I can’t. The very idea makes me want to cry. For what? This time, would I be able to keep it off? For how long? I was at my lowest weight 5 years ago. It took me five years to creep back up 30 pounds. So, does this mean it would creep back on again? How long would I get feeling thin? How low should I aim? What’s the magic number that will make me feel good again? Plus, I can’t always be diligent. I can’t always avoid splurges and special occassions, or fast food. I will gain weight. And then I will have to lose it, again.

And the only alternative seems to be to stop dieting, stop the cycle–and live with the fact that my natural body weight (if there is such a thing…I still have a hard time believing in that) is 30, or more (I feel like I’m *still* gaining) pounds over my lowest  (which, I might add, wasn’t even my ideal–I still wanted to lose at least another 5 from there).

Not to mention all the issues that being a heavier person in the world comes with. I’m still single, for one.

This is my head trip. This is my head ache. I’m going to have to accept one reality or the other, being heavier, or being a lifetime dieter. And I honestly don’t know which choice is the right one. I really don’t know which one is healthier.