Weight Loss Stuff

So today I decided to just begin jotting down a few words a day on my struggle to lose weight or at least get healthy.  It's close to the new year celebration, so I'm not quite out of the holiday eat-your-weight-in-terrible-choices season, but I know I will be soon and I'll be joined at the gym by hundreds of folks that will disappear around mid-january/Feb.  I'll work out at home until then.

So. TODAY.  Today I ate craptastically. I did have a salad.  But it was a cobb salad adn It had eggs, blue cheese, cheddar cheese, avocado, nuts, etc.  I also had two waffles. Oh, and too much at dinner (dinner at my sisters).  Sigh.

But I did get in 20 minutes of a good vigorous walk/jog on the treadmill only allowing one break when I thought I was getting dizzy.

So that's my day.  Not awesome but not the worst day. No candy or - woops. Yep. I did have pie.

Well at least there was 20 minutes in there.

I'll try again tomorrow.

Still 173.  :/

Day One of - well the millionth Day One

It's not REALLY a day one. It's just today. But like many, I will soon be faced with a barrage of "...so what are your resolutions" questions.  To be clear:

I have NO resolutions.

• I will NOT resolve to lose X lbs. by X date.
• I will NOT resolve to have [crazywonderful] job by this time next year.
• I will NOT resolve to make better choices
• I will NOT resolve to go the gym 3 times a week.
• I will NOT resolve to be more patient with my relatives.
• I will NOT resolve to be more organized.

Why? Because there has been countless broken resolutions over the decades. If they were tangible, by January 15 there would be more garbage strewn about than on the ground in New York in Times Square on January 2.  No landfill would be able to accommodate the amount of forgotten good intentions, slyly dumped resolutions, and broken promises set out to the curb after life gets back in the way again.

So no, I will NOT be resolving to do anything for the rest of the year.

What I will do is each day get up and do my best. Each day will be Day One.  Each day will be a new day to try and get it right. Maybe put a new practice into motion. Maybe Day One of exercise. Maybe Day One of eating healthier. OR, maybe Day One of being good to myself and not stressing out about society's images.

I will wake each day and live my life, this I know will happen.  I know I'll keep striving to be a better person, this is what I do and have done always so I know this will continue.  I really believe that's all we can do.

But I won't be making any promises that I can't know if I'll be able to keep, least of all to myself.  I don't know if I can exercise every day. If I can't make a day I and I've "resolved" to, I'll feel guilty and like a failure.  I just will do my best.

Good or bad, promising or not - I will do each day like a Day One.

Maybe I'll make it to Day Two eventually, but I'm not making any promises.

Happy New Year!  

Somewhere in the middle. A whinging post......

I'm right in the middle.

It's been this way for awhile I've noticed. I straddle the line politically, spiritually and now I sit here firmly in middle age gaining weight in the middle.

I'm also a middle child.

Now I understand the term "middling". I am the definition of that.

The trouble comes for me not in defining myself, but and I'm ashamed to say this, in appreciating myself physically.

I have been a "love the skin you're in" person most of my life. I am a firm believer that beauty comes from within no matter your shape, your size, or your weight.  I find that right now my own philosophy is challenging me.  I struggle EVERY DAY to look in the mirror and not be disgusted with what I see and I wonder, does this utter hatred come truly from me or all that we as women are subjected to?

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with large people. I don't. I don't care what my friends look like, this is how I feel when I look in the mirror.  I know what I used to look like and my struggle to even get a step in that direction is like walking through set concrete, I haven't.

I have slowed/drastically reduced carbs = nothing.  I have eaten more protein and drank more water = nothing.  I have been working out (although I will say thaat i've been slacking for two weeks) and guess what? NOTHING  I haven't even lost a single portion of a pound.  I am firmly at the same weight I have been for months. MONTHS.  One hundred sixty five pounds.

For those of you keeping track, for a 5'3 person, this puts me less than a point under the obese scale and at the very top of overweight.  That's not the middle!
   

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmicalc.htm

It's very hard for someone like me to hear everyone around them tell them they aren't overweight.  That I don't look a certain way. That I don't need to be so hard on myself. That I just had a baby! That it's hormones.  That it's [insert thing to make me feel better here].

*sigh* look. I get it. I know why those things are said. And yes, I appreciate that they are said. But it makes me feel even more confused about myself.

I look in the mirror and I see what I see. I don't like it.  I don't like how I'm shaped. I don't like how I fit in my clothes. I don't WANT new clothes, I want to wear the ones I already own. I don't like how I feel, I don't like how I feel when J-Man and I are snuggled up, I don't like anything about this body that I'm currently wearing. I feel too large, too out of shape, too uncomfortable.

I went on to NIH and pulled that scale up there and felt somewhat better and simultaneously worse. Better because I KNEW I was massively overweight and worse because, well, I'm massively overweight for me.

I have a trainer, I try to eat right and keep active.  I am also still breastfeeding some.  All of these things should have me in the thin but - no. I'm not even in the healthy.

So I have to wonder - what is it about me that makes me hate myself so much? Is it the fact that all of the ads out there look like teenage females?  Or that no clothes fit me? I'm in the middle remember - right at the tippy top of sizes for regular clothes, and not even IN the plus size. Regular clothes aren't cut for me and neither are plus size clothes? (another blog on clothing for us Middling Middlers coming).

Not only that but why do my friends and family keep telling me my feelings about myself are wrong when EVERY.SINGLE.ADVERTISEMENT is meant for women my daughter's size?  They don't make a world for women like me.

Think about these things, even the very words sound negative:

Mom jeans.
Mom Butt.
She's got a pretty face!
She just had a baby.
Moms wearing yoga pants.
Step.
Skinny Cow.
Support Bra.
Curvy.
Padded.
"something to hold on to/snuggle up with/grab on to" (<---because THATS what I want to be, some man's teddy bear/sex toy)
Phat
Dat Ass.

Are you hearing what I'm hearing? That rounded is good, but only so much. Have some padding but don't be fat.  Have a big butt, but be thin.

IS ANY OF THIS EVEN POSSIBLE AT 40????

UGH.  There is no real point to this except that either society or myself, possibly both, needs to adjust the view on what is attractive, because I certainly can't compete with anything out there right now.

As I just recently said to a dear friend, about 3 seconds ago, "When did my body become not ME anymore? I feel like I've been overtaken by something else and can do nothing about it".

*sigh*

Compostable Mom...

As I wash the dirt from under my fingernails in the kitchen sink, I smile at the first harvest of wild pepperweed I've just harvested.  I think about maybe I can make something for some of the ladies in my breastfeeding support group, Milk Makers Community.  After the dirt is uncaked from under my nails, I sidle over to my keurig and replace this mornings' coffee pod with a new one, tossing the old one in a re-purposed lunch meat bin to be dumped in the compost crock later.  I like this brand, New England, because there's very little plastic and it's easy to open and dump.  Compost likes coffee. I have a lot in

common with compost it seems.

I realize, sitting here amidst my coupons, my height measuring wall-art for the baby's room, my coffee, and my bag of Skinny Pop Popcorn, waiting for my cloth diapers to dry - I've somehow overnight become this hippie version of myself. Why buy it if you can make it? Why make it if you don't need it? Why throw away something that can be repurposed or recycled? Am I recycled?  What happened to that person that once said, shamefully, "...recycling is a pain in the ass. I won't be here when it matters and neither probably will my children.  Tree huggers need to get over themselves."

Sigh. I shake my head at that person who put more value on waist size and shoe brands.  Who was I back then? There really hasn't been any major thing that happened that made me make such a radical shift in thinking. It's been gradual.  Seeing how much garbage a family of 5 can produce, seeing how little our children understand about the food they eat, the world they live in, and the cost of blindly walking through life - I come to the full realization that I have massively changed.

I care about our planet. I care about the small patch of dirt I am living on - this place. I want my grandchildren (if they are in my cards) to know the wonderful smell of healthy dirt. Understand the meaning of "loamy soil". Giggle at the feeling of an earthworm desperately trying to mimic a coiling snake. And for that matter - giggle at the feeling of a worm snake desperately trying to return to eating earthworms.

I buy items that are less plastic, less wasteful and try to eat healthier.  I try to work out to be healthy, not thin - though that is a nice side effect.  I try to show my kids that being thoughtful is better than being "better than".  I coupon, I stop and say hi.  I help others when I can.  I try my best to think of why that jerk that just cut me off might be speeding and driving erratically - is he heading to the hospital? Is a loved one ill?  Is he late to pick up his child?  Did he just get fired?  Or is he trying to get home to that newborn?  Maybe he IS just a jerk, but hopefully one day he'll see his actions through others' eyes. Or maybe not - in the end it doesn't really matter.

There is no Gandhi-like saint residing in this tattooed skin. I get angry, I yell at my kids when they do something dumb or thoughtless. I sometimes want to grab Mr. Man and shake him when he complains how hard his day is and how tired he is and is any laundry done and why are we out of creamer...when I've had 4 hours of sleep,  3 bored summertime kids, a yard to mow, dogs to walk, a house to clean, laundry to do and dinner to make.

On those days, I take a deep breath and look around at this chaos, this mess. This out of control life.  Smelly diapers, dirty knees,  grubby fingers and dog slobber.  All of it is a blessing when I stop and think. I have a home to live in. I have good food to eat. I have healthy happy children. I have healthy happy pets.  I have a strong relationship.  I have a skill set my mother gave me to sew, cook, garden and manage a house that I am blessed to have. There are so many without.

As I finish up sweeping the floor and picking out a bread twist tie to toss in the recycle I note that I smell like the earth from weeding and putting compost around the root of our volunteer pumpkin.  I smile and think about how much I've changed over time having a lot of garbage dumped on me and how I feel like I've changed into something healthy, earthy, giving, and full of good stuff.

...And I like coffee.  I really do have a lot in common with compost.