I watched a great episode of Scientific American Frontiers from 2003 (worth it for the nostalgia alone) called "Losing It," where Alan Alda joins a small group of New Englanders trying to lose weight and keep it off through a variety of methods. As they were clear to point out, following dieters for 6 months cannot comprise a scientific study, but by having the subjects keep video diaries and discuss their struggles, they hoped to gain some insight into the psychological process of the weight loss challenge.
(I've embedded it above, and you can watch it on Hulu here.)
This program was made before The Biggest Loser or the host of weight-loss reality shows that cropped up in the years since, and I liked that it followed normal people in their everyday lives. They still had to go to work, pay for the food themselves, wear their own dumpy clothes instead of getting celebrity makeovers, and so on. It had a level of authenticity that I found much more relatable, since most people trying to lose weight don't have eight hour blocks of time to go to the gym every day between filming confessionals and endorsing sponsored products with debatable subtlety.
I also enjoyed examining the different weight-gain scenarios that had gotten the participants to this place in their lives and the different diet and exercise options they attempted. I was amused, for example, by a woman scrolling through eDiets and saying that no, peanut butter and jelly probably wouldn't go over well with her family for dinner, having had that exact struggle when I lived with a resistant boyfriend. I got to see what Weight Watchers meetings might be like and consider if the communal aspect was a good one, and I also saw people who followed more generalized diet plans, like eating Mediterranean style foods or pursuing a modified Atkins (does this sound familiar?).
Alda and the filmmakers explored some of the science behind weight gain, hunger, and the struggle for weight loss, and they revisited some of the discoveries I've made along the way, such as the myth of low-fat foods. They didn't tread any particularly revolutionary ground for me, but in addition to being entertaining, it gave me a good opportunity to think about what I've been doing and why.
A problem well-stated...
One of my favorite (and probably overused) expressions is, "A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved." So often we are able to identify what is wrong or what we'd like to change, but until we pinpoint why and how this problem came to be, the course of action to solve it remains vague and tenuous.
In my case, I am keenly aware of my bad habits, and one would think all I'd have to do is list them out, then put a big "STOP" before each one et voilà, problems half-solved.
Obviously it's a bit more complex, so I've started to consider more specifically why I have the bad habits that I do.
The behaviors behind the bad habits
- Ordering Take-Out or Eating Convenience Foods - This is by far one of my most egregious diet sabotage maneuvers, as no matter how terrible I know it is for my health, I find myself ordering pizza or Chinese take-out way too frequently. I don't even want it, often, or enjoy it once I get it, but it's more about avoiding cooking or going to the store than craving that particular type of food. When I do go to the store, I am full of ambition and make healthy choices, but then I find most of the vegetables rot in my fridge and I only eat the prepackaged, unhealthy convenience foods.
Why am I so loathe to cook? It's actually embarrassingly simple. My kitchen is usually incredibly messy. The less I cook, the worse it gets, until that whole room becomes little more than a repository for pizza boxes and take-out trash. I seem to fall behind on dishwashing way too easily, even with a dishwasher, and especially since I made an effort to reduce the amount of pots and pans and kitchen stuff I have, it feels like I never have anything clean to cook in. I can't count the amount of times I've wiped out and reused the same crepe pan to make grilled cheese sandwiches, rather than take the few minutes to properly wash my cutting boards and pots to prepare the more balanced dishes I planned.
I would say, in truth, that the messy kitchen is probably one of my biggest healthy eating deterrents at this point, and I need to commit a window of time where I get my whole apartment in order so I can live more productively here. - Not Drinking Enough Water - I know that my health will vastly improve if I replace the crazy amount of Diet Coke I drink with water. The truth is, I hate drinking water, but when I start, I tend to gulp it down by the liter because my body is so dehydrated. My system responds problematically to water initially, with a bloated, excessively full and sloshy feeling, and then of course, I have to pee thirty five thousand times an hour, which is usually what causes me to go back to sweet, dehydrating soda.
Further, water does not have the caffeine on which I seem to depend, and because I don't drink coffee and rarely drink tea, I sip diet soda as a gradual pick-me-up throughout the day. On particularly bad days, I take caffeine pills too, so I don't actually *need* the caffeine from soda, but I feel more awake by sipping it.
I know that if I want to feel more awake and alert, I need to get a good night's sleep, which comes from a healthy diet, exercise, and drinking plenty of water. Vicious cycle, but a conceptually simple one. I also know that I will not always feel sloshy and like I'm about to wet my pants once my body unshrivels from its Diet Coke snare and reestablishes a more hydrated equilibrium.
Bonus (and this is something I do know from chemistry): by adding more solvent (water) to my system, the metabolic reactions necessary to provide energy, and eventually lose weight, can proceed more readily and efficiently than they do now. Which is to say nothing of the gastrointestinal benefits I'm sure to experience with proper hydration. - Indulging in Sweets - I have a massive sweet tooth. I always have, and I tend not to feel satisfied after meals unless I have something sweet. More problematically, though, I use sweets to comfort myself and feel better if I'm having a bad day, scarfing down cookies, jelly beans, candies, little cakes, and suchlike with abandon. The more stressed I am, the more thoughtlessly I add "treats" to my shopping baskets, and at several points this semester, I found myself with several bags of Easter candy floating around my apartment. I recently got in a car accident and bought so much candy while I was upset that I've had an unopened bag of Oreos on top of my fridge for two weeks.
The obvious solution seems to be to never buy this stuff in the first place. It's not like I'm going to leave my apartment and walk to the store to buy a bag of cookies, but if they're on top of my fridge, I will eventually eat them all. It's more than that, though, since replacing the processed garbage sweets with healthier alternatives like yogurts and fruit doesn't help - it all just rots in my fridge or on my counter, and I feel sad and deprived. I need to address the emotional difficulties in my life in a way that's healthier and more constructive than binge-eating. My stress response may seem physically demanding, but it certainly doesn't require 3500 calories at a time. - Body Image - I would be lying if I didn't admit that the biggest reason I want to lose weight is to be more attractive. I am painfully aware of the health concerns and risks associated with being overweight, but at age 29, I'm more upset about looking bad in my clothes and not getting the right kind of attention from guys. The flip-side is that because I am on this cusp between overweight and officially capital-O Obese, I can tell myself it's not as serious as it is. When I allude to my need to lose weight, basically everyone in my life looks perplexed and says something like, "But you're not obese - what are you talking about??" I know I have kind friends, but in a crowd, I don't usually come off as that big fat girl, so much as an average-weight woman. Some of it is that I am proportionately fat over an athletic build, and I'm a pretty careful dresser, so while I may come off pudgy or a little round in the face, I don't think people see just how much fat I've got to lose.
The problem with this is that it lets me make excuses for myself. I may be disgusted, but if I can still cover it up with the right cut of clothing, I act as if the problem's not there. Like many overweight women, I can still look very sexy and put-together in a nice dress because I'm very aware of my body and know how to accentuate curves, and I don't have as many moments of horror as I should, for example, when I look at photos of myself with my average-weight friends and I look the same or a little smaller than them. My body isn't making its decision about heart disease based on whether or not I'm the fattest in a group, though, and I need to recognize that until I am at a healthy weight, this is always, constantly a problem.
Constant Vigilance and the End Game
Having addressed a handful of my more warped behaviors, I come to an observation of sorts about weight loss. Alan Alda mentioned in "Losing It" that to maintain his weight loss, he could no longer mindlessly shovel food into his mouth or drink wine without considering its caloric impact. He said that it became something he had to think about all the time, remaining constantly on the defensive against the weight creeping back on, and I realize that this is one of the massive challenges many dieters face. Being on a diet is not fun. No matter the health benefits or amazing increases in happiness that come with losing the weight, people who have had to lose a significant amount of weight will usually gain at least some of it back because they don't naturally eat that way.
By way of analogy, my brother used to work with drug and alcohol rehabilitation patients, and one of the more surprising treatment concepts is that the client is always an addict, even after quitting the problematic addictive behavior. Much of rehab is to do with replacing the addiction to a given substance with a new addiction, to being sober, which is why the meetings, counseling, and ritualistic behaviors are so key to a client's continued success.
In a similar way, I think that overweight people often remain overweight in their minds for long after they've physically lost the weight. The behaviors and issues that caused the weight gain in the first place are still there, just like an addiction, and replacing the relationship with food to a fervent relationship with dieting seems often to have only limited or short-term success.
As an example, I've been struggling with someone who isn't really a friend anymore, but used to be. Part of why she's not my friend anymore is that she's inordinately self-centered and unkind, but it's taken me a while to recognize this fact about her. She used to be morbidly obese, and her selfishness took the form of gluttonous binge-eating and materialism, splurging on decadent treats and all kinds of expensive "stuff" to fill the emotional and personal voids in her life. At one point she and I were out for a hike, which we had to cut short because she was so tired and hungry. She started whining about food and fretting that she wouldn't have time to get lunch before getting on her train home, and I promised her I'd get her to a sandwich place before putting her on the train. This thought became all she was thinking about, and she started mumbling to herself that she was going to have a big sandwich and an iced tea and some cupcakes and later after work, she'd get ice cream, and so on, planning out the binge that was going to soothe her. I tried to distract her and talk about what a beautiful day it was, or reassure her that the hike wouldn't be much longer, but she not only started getting angry with me, but started crying as she lashed out for making her exercise when she was this hungry (it wasn't really my fault - we were a certain distance into the woods, and I had no control over how far it was back to the car).
When we got to the parking lot, we drank a lot of water, and I tried to cheer her up a little as I let the car air out to cool down. She was furious with me, sat down sweaty on the hot seat, and closed the door. I started getting annoyed at this point, since we're both adults and there was no reason to take it out on me, when a very handsome bicyclist came over and started chatting. We talked about what a beautiful day it was, how it was hot on the trails but the breeze kept it pleasant, and he was getting to the "Do you come here often?" phase when I noticed my whole car was shaking with my friend's thrashing around as she tried to give me pointed looks and indicate that she wanted to leave. I realize that she expected me to get right in the car and tear off just as she did, but we're talking about 30-45 seconds of conversation, which I then had to cut short by saying, "I'm sorry, my friend is really impatient, I guess she's got a train to catch."
When I got in the car, I snapped at her a little. "You'd rather sit in the hot car sweating on my upholstery than cool off?" She folded her arms and stared at the windshield. "Too bad," I continued, "that was actually a really nice, handsome guy," and I tried to get her to look out her window as he drove by and waved. After refusing to look, she turned to me with hot anger, seething, and grunted, "I don't care, he's not a sandwich."
It was at this point that the depths of her food issues started really coming clear, and I wanted to believe she had some sort of wake-up call afterwards because she went on a massive diet (albeit an unhealthy one).
I saw her a month or two later (I needed a break), after she had been obsessively dieting and lost 15 or 20 pounds. I saw a huge boost to her confidence, to the point where she started treating me poorly because she intended to diet down to a smaller size than me. Once she lost enough weight to get within 30 pounds of my current weight (however, she is still much bigger because she has almost no muscle tone and now resembles a misshapen deflated fat person), she started getting just plain cruel. She concluded that guys hadn't paid attention to her before because she was heavy, but now that she was thin, she was entitled to all their attention. I tried gently pointing out that it's not just your appearance, but your personality and what's inside you that attracts people to you, when she turned and said, "Well guys like you because you're slutty and put out." I was stunned and appalled. She is a virgin, so she has never had a sexual relationship, but one would hope that even she could recognize the difference between having a lot of casual one-night stands versus long-term committed sexual relationships with a boyfriend. (For the record, I don't sleep with people when I'm not in monogamous, romantic relationships).
I don't just mean to air my dirty laundry with this friend - I'm actually coming roundabout to a point.
She replaced her addiction to food and unhealthy behaviors with an addiction to carb-free eating and going to hot yoga classes five times a week. The commitment involved to that level of dieting and exercise made it that she doesn't pursue most of her other interests anymore, and in conversation, all she has to talk about is food and exercise. Before I decided I didn't want to be her friend anymore, she started picking on me and my behaviors, constantly offering unsolicited advice or suggestions to do just as she did. I tried hard to remain supportive and say I appreciated her concern, but that excluding carbs from my diet caused a lot of gastrointestinal problems for me, or that I worried about my skin and hair suffering if I tried to lose weight too rapidly, and she shrugged it all off, smugly saying her hair was nicer than mine now anyway (it wasn't, at all).
Obviously this friend has a number of personality defects, so she might not be the best example of diet-obsessing, but I've noticed it in surprising places as well.
A cousin who had been overweight her whole childhood went gung-ho on Weight Watchers, and now she's a meeting leader. I was really happy for her when she started, and it's been great seeing how happy she is now that she's reached her goal weight and succeeds in maintaining it. But... that's all she talks about. She used to have funny, interesting things to say on Facebook, and her statuses started to read more like weigh-ins and mantra recitations. Eventually, she stopped posting anything at all, and it made me realize how much I miss my funny, interesting cousin, instead of the WW After poster child she had become.
One of my brother's ex-girlfriends has had a lot of weight fluctuations and yo-yo dieted her whole life, but eventually started obsessive dieting and marathon training. More than half of her profile photos are side-by-side comparisons of her at her heaviest with her at her current weight. I get so sad seeing them, because I never thought of her as an unattractive fat person - she was always this lovely, happy girl. Now she looks strained and a little crazy-eyed, tensing her neck and trying so hard to look thin that I wonder where all the joy has gone from her life. My take-away thought wasn't "Wow, she looks great now!" so much as "hmm, I didn't realize she was that overweight back then."
Lastly, even my mom, who is usually my measure of sanity and reasonable behavior in the world, has started dieting because she's going on a vacation over the summer and wants to be fitter and thinner for it. She is nowhere near as obsessive as the other ladies I've mentioned, but I notice increasingly that when we talk on the phone, she gives me lists of what she's eaten and the exercise she's done that day. We've talked about how people have to focus so much energy on weight loss that they get obsessed and it becomes their only topic of conversation, and while I know my mom isn't going to become one of those people, I have to say, I don't want to hear any more stories that start with, "Well we were at dinner, and I had only had two Slim-Fasts, some carrots, a yogurt, and an orange that day..."
I don't want to be that type of dieter...
As I'm sure is clear, I do not want to be the type of dieter described above. I know what level of attention and commitment it takes to stay on a diet, but to me, that's as private and uninteresting to others as say, my skin care regime. Or... whether or not I'm doing Kegel exercises. Now maybe, if I lose a lot of weight and someone asks what I've been doing, I'd consider sharing, but I never, ever want to be like my former friend, who spends an entire meal going on and on about how she could never eat what I'm eating, or how she spends her yoga classes staring at her fat angrily in the mirror and thinking "Die fat, die!"
I never want to have side-by-side photos of myself where I show off how much weight I've lost. That seems so mean to yourself and such a badge of insecurity and desperation. I never want to brag to people that I dieted and exercised and am however many pounds from my goal weight. I will never, ever post my weight on Facebook as an accomplishment.
Mostly, it's because I do not want to be Vicki, that Girl Who Used to Be Fat and then Lost 80 Pounds. That's a repulsive oversimplification of who I am. I would be so insulted if someone reduced me to the amount I'm overweight now, so I refuse to ever do that to myself.
I keep this blog anonymously so that I don't talk about all this stuff with everyone in my daily life. When I want to obsess about issues related to being overweight, I compartmentalize it here. I have resisted sharing the URL with friends or family because I don't want knowledge of their possible readership to influence how honest I am with myself. I know that this could be a handwritten paper journal or a computer file, but even with some anonymity, I feel a sort of accountability by publishing a record of what I'm doing, and without trying, I found amazing support from strangers who stumbled over here. I also hope, since I'm going to be writing all this stuff down anyway, that putting it in a public place could help others who are going through the same things as I am, just as the dieters in "Losing It" and countless other essentially anonymous bloggers or people on TV have helped me by sharing their stories.
...because I don't want to diet.
The other big reason I don't want to focus on "becoming an After" is because I don't want to lose the weight by dieting. I don't want to replace my unhealthy behaviors with addictions to dieting and losing weight because I will never make lasting changes that way.
If I set rules for myself, I will fail, and not only will I gain whatever weight I lose back, but my self-esteem will take a hit for failing at dieting too.
I want to make deep lifestyle changes, gradually, incorporating healthier eating and exercise into my daily habits and routines. I want to explore healthier cooking not because it is what The Diet Commands, but because I want to find recipes I enjoy, to replace the take-out and gross stuff I eat now. I want to enjoy exercise as a fun activity that relieves stress and improves my health, and while I realize it will require discipline to stick with it, I need to do it for me, in a positive way, not because I'm punishing myself for being fat.
I realize, in examining my behaviors and attitudes toward my weight, that I will never succeed if I am negative or pessimistic about it. The only way I can ever hope to change my life for the better is to be nice to myself and improve my lifestyle because I deserve to be happy and healthy.
The water drinking, of course, will just have to be something I force myself to do.
