If you really wanted to you could do it

Hey everyone, this is Betty. I used to have a blog (about my own life) but I got nervous about some visitors to the blog (from my work) and I was unable to separate work and life when I wrote there (or at least, it was a struggle). The whole deal of maybe saying something about work that I shouldn't was too stressful for me, so I deleted that blog and will probably never start again. I've been missing it, though and part of the reason is that I've been wanting to talk about my weight issues some with you all. Active Academics is the perfect place for me to talk about stuff, get feedback and share the bits about healthy eating and exercise that I have learned with you all. For me, knowing I have a supportive environment where others are dealing with similar issues makes me more likely to try hard and succeed at something that is incredibly difficult for me. So that's my motivation for joining. I'll probably mostly blog about my struggles with losing weight and getting back into exercising, although, as you'll see I'll include a lot of emotional distress and frustrations with society and with friends because I can't really separate the physical act or trying from how I feel about it.

The title of this post is a phrase that I think should be banned from all discussions of weight loss, self image, exercise plans and healthy living in general. It's often used by supposedly well meaning people when they want to help a person who is struggling with accomplishing a particular task. In my case, this is usually a friend or accquaintance talking to me about my fairly obvious self-esteem and weight loss issue. This phrase never fails to make me feel worse than I did before talking to the person who said it to me because what I hear the person telling me ALL I have to do fix this pasky "fat" problem is to just WANT to be skinny.

I always want to say "OH MY GOSH, OOOH, REALLY? I just have to WANT to be skinny? Should I use the "reducio adipo" spell, or are you my fairy godmother who'll just wave your health wand over me singing "bippity-boppity-BOO" and the fat will melt away? Either way, you should write a book or something, your solution is so simple!" I never do yell at them (except maybe once to my mom), I usually just decide that's the last time I ever talk to this person about my own struggle with staying fit and losing weight.

Seriously though, the reason this phrase should be banned is because if someone is actually struggling with getting fit, then they obviously want to do it and there are other factors that make that difficult for them. My personal goals are to a) lose weight and b) get back in shape (I used to run). There are two types of barriers to me acheiving these goals. The first type will always be present in my life and those are a) genetics b) former eating disorder which physically is under control but which mentally I believe will never leave me c) I have an anxiety disorder and I deal with that primarily by comfort eating and d) I have never and will never truly enjoy exercise. I'll call those the Constant Barriers. There are also some other barriers which change depending on what's going on in my life at any particular time. For me, right now, these are a) I'm facing major uncertainty and anxiety in a job search which may or may not result in a job and may or may not result in move across the country (all on an unknown timescale - one month, 6 months....) and b) I'm single and depressed about that. I'll call these Added Barriers.

I think the people who use the offensive "if you really wanted to you could do it" phrase aren't bad people, I know they mean well. But I beleive they don't understand the Constant Barriers that some people face. They see something like a "little job stress" as a "bump in the road" but they don't understand that for some people, a lot of hidden factors make the struggle seriously difficult. I don't think any of my barriers are unique, although I do think the combination of them is fairly potent. The people who tell me I just need to "put my mind into it" are usually those peopele who can eat a ton of whatever they want and stay healthy or skinny becuase they've got awesome genes or because they enjoy exercise and want to do it. Or they're just regimented enough to force themselves into doing the hard work because eating right and exercising aren't emotional issues for them. But for me, it's just not easy.

For example my constant barriers of genetics, comfort eating and former eating disorder are bad enough on their own - but they are also intricately related to one another and feed into one another in a sort of synergistic way. I come from a family of extraordinarily tall, slightly overweight men - my dad is 6 feet, 6 inches and probably weighs over 300 lbs. The women in my family pack fat right around their thighs and lower tummies. My mom is 5 feet 6 inches and is skinny now only because she has an intestinal disorder that prevents her from eating much. Before that she was probably a size 16. Unfortunately we also have small breasts in our family. All these factors together mean that I am basically a GIANT PEAR. I'm 28 (almost 29, yikes!) 5 feet 10.5 inches and I do not know how much I weigh, but I know it's more than I ever have before. I'll guess slightly over 200, but I really don't know or want to dwell on that too long. I used to be fit and in shape, I could even run 10 miles. Even when I was thinner, though, I never felt good about myself (that's maybe another post). Anyway, now almost all my excess weight is in my lower stomach and upper thighs. I wear a size 12 top and a size 18 bottom. Designers do not make clothes for PEARS, they only make clothes for uber-thin, waify models or apple shaped people who are balanced on the top and bottom. Shopping is a nightmare. And so I never shop for new clothes unless I have to. Which means that I only have ugly old clothes that I hate. Which means that I never feel good about how I look, EVER.

This makes a person like me, who is prone to negative thinking, feel crappy about myself basically constantly (this is not the only thing that makes me feel bad, but it's one seriously major one right now). Then, after a whole day of wearing a jacket to cover my fat stomach even though it's hot hot hot, making sure I suck in my stomach when I sit down or walk around so that people don't see my gut hang out, avoiding looking at or walking near that one door into my building which makes me look giant when I see my reflection - I go home and I over eat. I make a yummy meal of what usually is semi-healthy food (former eating disorder mandates certain types of cooking like never using butter unless absolutely necessary) but I eat at least twice as much as I need to if not more. I'm always stuffed at the end of dinner. And I drink wine with dinner too. Usually I eat with a friend, who is also prone to comfor eating and has a healthy appetite.

The comfort eating is both nice and scary for me. We love food in our family. I mean LOVE food, a LOT. We talk about it all the time - planning our next meal, watching cooking shows, exchanging recipes. When I was younger, we actually fried our french fries in boiling oil. We also fried vegetables, chicken - everything got dropped in there and cooked up to a crispy goodness. We ate a lot of potato chips, frozen pizzas, sodas and just all kinds of junk food. We were picky eaters and I don't blame my mom for giving up and feeding us whatever made us SHUT UP. When we were sick, my dad made this special chicken noodle soup that we got to eat. I have am amazing grandma who makes and amazing pound cake that she used to mail to me in college because I missed it so much. All my warmest associations of family and childhood fun have to do with eathing. So...I'm pretty sure this is where the comfort eating comes from.

But the overeating is scary too - becuase in 11th grade I started worrying about how much I ate. Unable to control the urge to eat and unable to stand the thought of my thigh fat "spreading out" when I sat down (I wanted the width to stay the same, standing or sitting) I just started throwing up any meal I thought was bad for me. It was actually fun. I wasn't scared a bit. It felt normal and a little rebellious since I obviously didn't want to get caught. I didn't do this all the time until I left for college. I think it was really bad for about 1.5 years. I thought my roommates didn't konw, but they did. They just didn't know how to help me. I was miserable and yet also felt compelled to eat all this glorious food and then magically get rid of it. I got this whole thing under control my second year in college when I finally was taken to a therapist by a friend. I pretty much stopped then, although I had relapses once in a whele all the way until my first year of grad school when my friend was really sick and then my grandfather died I was sort of a mess for a while. But since then, I haven't thrown up my food on purpose.

But I think about it all the time. I think about how much I eat, especially compared to how much other people around me are eating. It's bad bad night if I eat more than a guy. It's a good night if I eat less than a skinny girl. Stuipid, but habits of mind are hard to break. So I worry now about the over eating because I know if I get focused on it enough, I could relapse. Just writing about this makes me want to try it. I won't, don't worry. But I want to get this under control.

So my goals for this week (which incidentally include travelling home to do a job interview and then go to my brother's wedding) are to eat less and to make healthier eating choices when possible. Here are a few specifics:

• I will choose steamed vegetables and lean meat if ordering food in a restaurant (we always eat out with my family and the job interview will include a dinner)
• I will limit my alcohol intake to 2 drinks at the BBQ I am attending today and only one drink at any normal dinner with my family or friends. I'll try to only have 2 drinks at the wedding, but I won't get upset if I have a 3rd (it's going to be a long night....)
• I will eat a normal sized meal. I know what this is, I've done weight watchers kind of diets before, so defining this won't be difficult. In a restaurant I'll try to split a meal with someone or I will take half of what is usually a GIANT portion home.

Hopefully I can stick with these goals for a week. The BBQ today and the BBQ on the 4th will be sort of hard, but the plane rides across the country will be the hardest. I've got very little money right now and I'm using dad's frequent flyer miles which means I get to fly first class. So, I have to eat the food on the plane becuase it's free. I really worry when I'm traveling that I won't be able to eat on the next flight and so I alwasy eat a giant meal whenever I can to ensure I don't starve on the next leg of my flight. This time, at least that won't be a problem - although I dont know it for sure, I'm guessing they'll feed me something in first class. I'll just have to exercise a little self control if I've got options, I guess.

Any ideas from others on how to eat healthy while traveling or how to control portion size would be appreciated.

I'll report back on my goals when I return. And even though I make it sound like I eat tons (ok, I do) I actually do eat healthy food sometimes. I have a few good recipes that I'd like to share. Especially ones that are cheap and work for a single person cooking for one, as phdme mentioned in the comments of an earlier post. So hopefully I'll be able to contribute some actual good ideas that others will find helpful.

Tags: Obstacles, Goals: Accountability