Monday, July 21, 2008

Fat, Diets, Neurosis and Old Clothes

Looks like my non-scrappy friends read my blog more than my scrappy ones based on the lack or response to the LO post. I'll keep that in mind :-)

I'm on Day 60 of my diet. Saturday morning the wii Fit had me down twenty-three pounds from my starting weight. That's pretty good. Once I'm down thirty I want to go see the doc who said with my thyroid I can't lose weight and shake my skinny (er) rear end at him. That of course wouldn't be very modest but a girl can have her fantasies, right. It bugs me like nothing else when people say I can't do something.

While living a life free of all animal products, gluten, sugar, caffeine and alcohol was never something I imagined doing, it's been good. I've had so many smaller health problems disappear entirely, I'm off almost all meds and according to my GP, I'm better nourished than I've ever been.

What I don't like though is the reading labels, weighing myself, constantly pawing through my closet for something that fits well - it makes me feel neurotic, and FAT. I've never paid so much attention to my food or my body in my life. Frankly, I've always left that level of obsessing to the pretty-but-cuckoo chicks. I mean at my worst, my husband thinks I'm hot, I think I clean up well, I'm reasonably pretty at thirty-five and I still garner unwanted male attention. My self-esteem has been unaffected by my pant size - I really like me: mind, soul and body. But since this diet, I've felt fat, unattractive and more insecure than I have since I was fifteen. It's just strange being so vigilant about every single bite of food that enters my temple. I think about food, weight and size way too much now. But a diet so full of restriction does require an amount of planning and cooking that my previous lifestyle did not.

I've found it pretty easy, neurosis aside, to stay the path. Not one bit of contra-band food has passed my lips. Since I am doing this for my bone disease, cheating doesn't make any sense. Really, if you compare the luscious taste of bratwurst to the rest of my life in a wheelchair, the bratwurst is considerably less appealing.

Yesterday I was feeling a lot better in the morning and when I was dressing the two brown paper grocery bags at the top of the back of our closet caught my eye. Those bags mock me - really they do. Wrapped in their scratchy caress are all the clothes I've out grown over the years that were, in my opinion, timeless: A-line skirts, wide-leg, pinstriped dress pants, suits, sheath dresses. The items date as far back as 1997! Some were deposited after I had Trenton in 1996, most hit the sack when I gained forty-five pounds on Depakote (FWIW, my doc said most of his clients on that particular blend of meds gain over 100 pounds so I did "really well") and the rest tumbled out of favor after my hysterectomy (that five or six pounds pushed a few things to their limit) or dribbled in after my bone disease. It was almost like strata, each layer representing a time in my life where my figure changed. Those bags represented 56.5 pounds of change since my wedding day.

Instead of being intimidated by the contents by the bags, I decided to take that 23.5 pound loss out for a spin and see how far I could burrow through the bags before they got too tight. The entire first bag fit. And I was right, the clothes are timeless and awesome. I was positively dreary over my favorite skirt hanging so low on my hips that it was about four inches longer and very unflattering and lo and behold, the original skirt that was the inspiration for my too-big favorite skirt fits again - and I love it as much as I ever did. Same for the dress pants and all the other skirts. My suits are still WAY too small - but they are size eight, tailored Georgiou two and three piece suits and I'm a mile from getting back into those. They're teeny.

As for timeless, only the mini-skirts were a poor choice. I laugh at the thought of the number of times I've moved those tiny things. While they fit, they just aren't appropriate anymore. But, when I came downstairs to show Chris he said, " I love that skirt. You wore it to meet me at the airport in San Diego." Must have been very memorable. LOL.

Anyhow, I'll keep you posted on my progress. Changing my eating habits has been such a great help for my bone disease and losing weight has been a wonderful byproduct of those changes.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aw! Keep the miniskirts!!

Perpetual Beginner said...

Woot for the weight-loss!

Your commentary on feeling fatter reminded me of a study that showed that the closer women's bodies were to the "ideal" - I.e. the thinner, blonder and prettier they were, the more critical they were of their body, and the worse they felt about themselves. It wasn't universal (what is?), but it was apparently a pretty clear trend.

I dropped 17 pounds when I started my pill regime, but have hung out there for nearly a year now. I'd really like to drop another seventeen!

Nicole Maki said...

Sanguinity:

I did keep the airport skirt - Chris *really* likes it. But the floral ones were just too awful for words.

Nicole Maki said...

Hey Cindy:

Thanks. Weight loss is good :-)

I can see how that study could be true. I think that the more I'm within reach of my ideal weight (still 33 pounds away) the more I'm comparing myself to a younger me - and this 35 year old just isn't 21 anymore. Nor would I want to be.

Good job for keeping the seventeen pounds off for a whole year. I have always been afraid of weight creeping back so a year is terrific.

Susan said...

Just saw your Esty shop, very cute!

Nicole Maki said...

Hi Susan:

Thanks so much for checking out my Etsy shop. Uploading photos and writing descriptions has been a good diversion for me during this illness.

I'm such a fan of your sketches and I can't wait to do this months from TSR as soon as I'm feeling a bit stronger.

Mary C. said...

Yay for you! Hope you keep the skirt, if only to give Chris a thrill from time to time.
I love reading about your reality while losing weight. I think we can all relate.

Nicole Maki said...

Hi Mary :-)

Glad reading about my diet isn't dead boring. LOL.

It is shocking how body conscious you become when you spend as much time as I am right now tending to it.

Hope you are mending well and will be back to yourself soon.

Karen Compton said...

It's always so nice to fit into those old and beloved clothes! But I'm sorry your new diet regimen is making you feel fat :-( I think the best part, though, is that it is making you feel HEALTHY. Or at least healthier. I hope your little maladies continue to fade away with the pounds.

Nicole Maki said...

Hi Karen:

The strangest thing to disappear is my asthma. I wonder if it was triggered by wheat or something else in my diet. All the bleeding tummy stuff was gone within 24 hours of starting my diet - how crazy is that? Ditto for migraines.

I asked my doctor what he thought and he said a lot of health problems can be cleared up eating how I do but he never suggests it because people just won't do it.

I immediately thought of you and how your diet cleared up all that trouble after Chase was born. How horrible to think that dietary changes can help and most doctors won't offer them.

As for feeling fat, it's just that I haven't adjusted to being hyper-aware of everything I eat, how I feel and (thanks to wii Fit) my daily weight fluctuations. Before I was more of less oblivious and it just wasn't something I obsessed about. Much.