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Weight maintenance and the Akron U-turn.

It's been a while since I posted an update on the topic of weight loss and weight maintenance, which continues to be the number-one reason people find their way to my blog.  So.... how is it going?

Well, let's recap with a little data.  I gave birth almost a year ago, in January.  Here's some data that begins May first.  My postpartum goal was to take the weight down to 112.  Right about the time I got down to 112, the baby started solids.

 

Here's a closeup of data from this month.

 

I think I can safely say I'm holding pretty steady at 113, without much effort.  I want to bring it down to 110 eventually, but not on any particular time frame; and not because 113 is "too heavy," more because I want to give myself a little extra margin of error.  

So, one thing that I have noticed, about 3 years since I began the lifestyle changes that took me down to a healthy weight:  I think my body is doing a pretty good job at driving me to eat to maintain my current weight.  

About a month ago I thought I might try to control my eating a little bit more strictly to try to slowly take off just one pound.   Interestingly enough, it didn't work.  Granted, I wasn't working very hard at it (and I'm still confident that if I decide to work hard at it, I will do it).  But this is what happened several times.

(1) Day 1:  Wake up in the morning, decide "Today I will carefully watch what I eat, avoid taking seconds or nibbling leftovers, and I'll skip bedtime snack."

(2) Follow through well on this plan all day long.

(3) Day 2:  the scale will look about the same, which is fine and to be expected.  I'll continue my plan.

(4) All goes well until dinner.

(5) At dinner I'll be freezing cold and RAVENOUSLY HUNGRY.  Real, pit of the stomach hunger.  Since it's not terribly important that I lose weight at this time, I go "Screw this, I'm starving" and I have more than one helping.  

(6) Continue craving, freezing, and nibbling all evening.

(7) Day 3:  Get on the scale expecting to see that it is spiking high because I put so much food into my body the night before.  Scale actually shows that I am a pound or so low.

(8) Remain hungry, cold, and nibbly for the next couple of days.  Scale eventually returns to where I was on Day 1.  

(9) Once scale goes back to where I was, I miraculously regain the will to control my food intake.

My guess as to what's going on:  my body is driving me to eat every time I start to burn some fat, and I am mostly responding to it.   This is not a bad development, considering that where I am is a good place to be (BMI 22.8, and looking pretty good in my own opinion, and my clothes all fit.)  

I think I always have had this weight-stabilizing mechanism in place though.  I suspect most people have it, and it works pretty well even in the obese:  a feedback loop, a system of urges which responds to fat burning by driving people to eat, and which go away when we stop burning fat.     Weight stability seems to be something the body naturally seeks.  

When people say that their "hunger signals are broken" I think that this may really just mean that they have difficulty identifying the sensation of hunger as hunger -- a cognitive difficulty.  Ultimately it doesn't matter how the body convinces your will to put stuff in your mouth.  I think, sometimes, in its drive to keep you from burning more than a little fat, it will use all the tools at its disposal to get you to eat and STOP THE SCARY DANGEROUS FAT BURNING, from pure animal hunger to emotional mood swings to higher-brain rationalization.

If you have ever tried to lose weight on purpose, think back.  After dropping a couple of pounds, and still wanting to lose more, did you ever find yourself thinking, "I'm down a couple of pounds.  I can afford to splurge at this meal/have this extra snack/eat the whole thing."   I am sure it is really common; I have done this myself, lots of times.  

Step back and look at how loony it is from a loss standpoint.  "I'm down a couple of pounds; I can eat more" is correct if your goal is to remain the same.  Because eating more will fix the problem of having lost weight.   This is what your body has tricked you into thinking with that supposedly smart brain of yours!

 It is as if you have started driving from New York to L. A.,  and after a while you realize you've gotten all the way to Akron, so you decide you can afford to turn around and go east for a while, which feels better because now the sun isn't in your eyes so much, and then after a while you're like:  What the hell?  Why am I seeing these signs for Scranton?  This isn't working!   

No, the proper response is:   I want to go past Akron.  I got to Akron by traveling west.  Therefore, I can keep going west and that will get me past Akron.  

  Not "I have made progress, so I can reverse my progress;" but "I have made progress, so I can continue my progress."

Successful weight losers have to exert their will to override all the messages the body sends them to try to put the brakes on their progress.  They have to get hungry and stay hungry for at least a little while every day.  They have to resist the impulse to respond to a milestone by turning around and going back to the last one.   

It isn't terribly important to me to drop one pound right now, so I haven't resisted the corrections my body keeps applying every time I start.  But having made a few attempts and watching what happens, I think I understand those corrections a little bit more.  If I decide I am going to drop that one pound, it will require me to spend a couple of weeks feeling an urge to eat and resisting that urge.  I know I could do it if I really wanted to because I've done it before; the evidence is that I don't want to enough right now to push back (which is fine; as I said, I am in a healthy weight range).

And there's the hard truth about weight loss in general -- if you have many pounds that you want to lose, it requires you to spend quite a long time feeling the urge to eat and resisting the urge.   It is do-able, but it is difficult, and because (I believe) the body enlists the help of the brain's rationalization capacity to trick your will into submission, it requires mustering your intellect as well.  

Because really, don't you want to get out of Akron?

Not with a bang but a whimper.

The stomach/intestinal bug hit us around 3 AM, the morning after Thanksgiving.

By seven or so, I lay in bed sipping weakly from a glass of diluted Gatorade that Mark had just brought me.

"You're probably dehydrated.  You should weigh yourself!" he said cheerfully (considering the circumstances) as he went out the door to tend to the boys.  Sickness makes them noisy squabblers, and Grandma was laid low too behind the bedroom door a few feet where they were playing.

I grunted and rolled over, but a few minutes later staggered into the bathroom to step on the scale.

106.4, huh.  Well, that makes my 5-day average.  With room to spare.

The next time Mark came up to see how I was feeling, I told him the number.  He grinned.  "Congratulations, hon."  We both twirled our index fingers in the air and muttered, "whoo."

Party today.  In my in-law's bathroom, next to the toilet bowl.  Today, I am so totally going to eat all the saltine crackers that I want.

This concludes the category called "The last three pounds."

" It is one thing to KNOW what one should be doing and eating; it is another, more shameful thing to acknowledge that you are too weak to do it."

This is something Margaret wrote in a comment to this post a couple of days ago, and I can't get it out of my mind.

I know what Margaret's talking about, and I just realized what it is about this insight of hers that stuck with me.  It's that the shame is completely counterproductive.

Apply an economist's thinking to eating behavior.  People do whatever they have the strongest incentives for.  It may seem that shame about eating too much, or about eating the wrong stuff, would be a strong motivator for people to eat less, or to eat the right stuff.  Yes, it can be a strong motivator -- I've used it -- but only if you let yourself feel it, let it pull against the other incentives you have to eat what you're usually eating.

The thing about shame is that it feels bad to feel shameful, so people always have a REALLY STRONG incentive to avoid thinking about hard truths that make them feel shameful.  If you take it for granted that acknowledging the truth will make you feel shame, then... you just might ignore that truth completely.  So you never have to feel the shame.  Because it hurts.  It sure as heck hurts more than a plateful of chips and salsa.

So, even though some people CAN harness shame to their benefit, maybe it's best to make an end run around shame.  Maybe the first step is not to acknowledge "that you're too weak" to eat the right amounts of the right stuff.  This is a judgment that need not be made.  Maybe the first step is simply to acknowledge:  "This is what I eat."

To see what you are choosing to put into your body with clear eyes.  Count the chips and simply be aware:  I chose to eat 27 chips.  Scoop the ice cream and be aware:  I had one and a half cups.  Keep that food diary that the experts are always saying is so useful for turning around bad habits, and do your best to see it not as an exercise in self-shaming, but as simple data collection.  This is what I do.  This is what I did.

It's not what you are.  It's what you do.   And it's important to know what you do.   Emotions that make you unwilling to know what you do,what you have been doing -- emotions that reward ignorance and punish awareness -- won't help you.  Replace them with something neutral. 

How about curiosity?  Can you be motivated simply to find out what this interesting person, yourself, does each day? 

More about delayed gratification.

In comments to the post about delayed gratification, Christy P writes something worth highlighting.

I think you got it there - you redefined your goals, and therefore success, into ones that were quantifiable and achievable not just on a daily basis but multiple times each day. Rather than focusing on a primary goal that seems so far away "Lose 40 pounds", you kept that as not just a secondary but even a tertiary or quaternary goal. The primaries were "Eat an appropriate amount at this opportunity", "Exercise today", "Let myself feel hungry for two hours from 10AM to noon". Each time you achieved one of these goals, it made you into an achiever, and if you didn't at one meal, then you weren't a complete failure, because you had a string of successes in your back pocket. It is really like the idea of intentional living. Making choices with thought behind them instead of reflexive action.

We talk about small goals in other parts of life, but I think the concept gets neglected with good eating and physical activity. Those lifestyle choices are seen as such an all or nothing prospect that people lose perspective.

I hadn't really thought about it, but she's right -- if anything, we undermine short-term health goals.  You're supposed to exercise so many minutes PER WEEK, for example.  Doesn't that make it sound like a long-term commitment?  Oh, and by the way, you should get checked by your doctor before starting!  God forbid you should decide to take a walk around the block TODAY! 

But another question -- how can a person create that motivation within herself, the motivation to seek the behavior change for its own sake and not just for the long term results?  I didn't really realize what I was doing at the time.

There is some precedent for this in mainstream weight loss advice. Haven't you seen recommendations to get exercise for its own sake?  To find a physical activity that you enjoy, whatever it is, and then get out and do it regularly?  What you don't see is a recommendation to learn to prefer eating less.  It's generally assumed that eating less always feels yucky and is only chosen in order to lose weight.  (You do see a recommendation to develop a taste for healthy food instead of unhealthy food, but that's a little different.)

I don't really know how I started to desire to eat less.  I do know some of the mental images I cultivate to maintain that desire. 

---I think about the evenings, Mark out of town, when I would order pizza for myself and the kids, and eat an entire medium pizza by myself while surfing the web. (plus a 20-ounce Coke and a big salad) This image horrifies me now, even though once upon a time I used to sort of look forward to it.   

---I think about my lapses in and out of bulimia in my younger days.  That's pretty disgusting. 

---And -- I'm not really sure if doing this is good for my attitude towards my fellow human being, but I'll throw it out there anyway -- I go to restaurants with buffets or salad bars, I sit near the buffet, and I watch people and their plates.  I find a fat person and I look at his plate and see what he eats.  I wish I could tell you that often the fat person I see has filled her plate with fresh greens and a reasonable portion of healthful entrees.  Haven't ever seen it in months of peoplewatching.  I watch them and they pile the plates high and go back for seconds, thirds, fourths, then desserts.  I watch the fat people eat and eat and eat -- I watch them get breadstick appetizers before their pizzas, and dessert pizzas after their pizzas -- I watch them supersize their fries and I say to myself:  "Self:  That was you, and that could be you again if you don't watch it."

I had to be grossed out by the behavior, not just by the results of the behavior. 

Is it possible to MAKE yourself change that attitude?  Is it possible to MAKE yourself be motivated by the short-term reality instead of the long-term dream?  If so, how do you make yourself feel that way?  I don't know because I've never tried to do it on purpose, I've only discovered it by accident.

How to answer the question, and a musing on delayed gratification.

So maybe readers can help me out with this one. 

What do I tell people who ask me "How did you do it?  How did you lose all the weight?"

You know that the answer is long and complicated, not something that is easily distilled into a sound bite.  On the eating level, I have developed something like two dozen different strategies to help me control gluttony.  The exercise is easy to explain, but its effect is, I believe, mostly on my confidence and mental state.  And then there's the motivational strategies -- there are probably a dozen of those too.

I get the question a lot though.  "Look at you!  How did you do it?"

Yesterday my inner technical editor realized that there isn't a single answer or a single set of answers, because the inquiry represents two distinct questions:

1) What strategy and supporting tactics did you employ?  what did you DO?
2) Why did you succeed this time and not the other times?  How did you stick to it?

Some people are looking for an answer to (1), others to (2).

I also have to ask myself, what can I say that will really be helpful to other people?  My interlocutor might not need to lose weight, but maybe she will tell my story to someone who does.  Most people believe that "eat less, exercise more" is oversimple -- that is, though, what I did.  The only layer of complexity I added to it was that I chose to seek out "eating less" and "exercising more" each for their own sake.  I became motivated to eat less because I didn't want to be a disgusting glutton anymore.  I became motivated to exercise more because I wanted to be a person who exercised.  

Instead of delayed gratification (I ate less and exercised more and then I lost weight and that made me happy) I achieved sooner gratification (at that meal I ate less, I succeeded at defeating gluttony; this morning I exercised, I succeeded at swimming so many yards).  It is so much easier to be motivated when the gratification is close in time to the decision point.

Stuffing.

Thanksgiving week, for me, began Saturday morning and ends next Saturday night (so it's really eight days).  In that week I count 6 meals-on-the-road, 3 restaurant meals, and 3 family holiday get-together meals.  Plus all the normal eating.

I will be content to remain more-or-less steady, a half a pound above my target weight.

Last night dinner at a fancy seafood restaurant.  I followed the "fill up on vegetables" strategy: a giant salad with dressing on the side, baked fish with broccoli and red pepper, and I had them swap the rice pilaf for a second side dish of asparagus.  I was far too full to even think about dessert, so ended with cappucino.

I am not sure about the "fill up on vegetables" strategy.  When I first started back in May, I was determined to practice getting hungry, to learn to be unafraid of hunger feelings.  Filling up on vegetables denied me opportunities to practice feeling hungry instead of stuffed.  Later I decided I'd had enough practice with that and started pounding the Brussels sprouts.  But I'm not sure -- maybe it is better to avoid ever "filling up" on anything.  Is it still gluttony if you stuff yourself with plain okra?

Maybe the important thing is to have both those tools in my toolbox.  I can fill up on vegetables when there are vegetables available (plain ones anyway; butter-soaked asparagus and dressing-soaked salads have limits).  And if there are not healthful food choices around, I can practice my staying-hungry skills until I get within striking range of some lettuce. 

Sushi strategy.

We got carryout from a great local sushi restaurant today, and had to wolf it down quickly with our dinner guest, Mark's friend Eric from work.  They were headed out tonight to Midwest Mountaineering  for the Outdoor Adventure Expo -- to hear U.S. expedition leader Mike Farris give a public presentation about the accidents on K2 earlier this year that killed 11 climbers.  Anyway, they were in a hurry, so we got sushi, ate it, and sent them on their way.

I'm overfull.  I used some of my strategies, but I made mistakes and learned from them too.  Here's what went right and wrong.

 - Right:  I ordered two salads (a seaweed salad and a regular lettuce salad) and had them before I turned to the other stuff.

 - Right:  I brewed up some coffee to end the meal with.  This is getting to be a regular tradition and it really helps me put the brakes on.  But I really need to start the coffee before I sit down for the meal, so it's ready when I need it.

 - Wrong:  I should have had miso soup too.  It's mostly water and might have slowed me down.

- Wrong:  Mark suggested we eat "family style," with a lot of different things spread out on the table and everybody takes what looks good:  spicy tuna roll, salmon avocado roll, "crazy  roll" (which turned out to be tempura-fried), some udon  noodles, katsu don, gyoza, etc.  Note to self:  THIS IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA. Obviously I should be able to take a reasonable amount and just stop there, right? Wrong.  I had seconds.  And thirds.  I failed to anticipate that it would be hard to pass up the seconds and thirds.

- Wrong:  I thought it didn't matter what kind of sushi we got.  I really didn't need all that rice.

OK, I think I've learned my lesson.  Next time, I opt out of the family style smorgasbord thing.  Next time I order the two salads, or salad and miso, and *I order a single hand roll for ME.*  I already know that a typical hand roll -- this is different from the ordinary sushi rolls that are cut into chunks you eat with chopsticks, it's more an ice-cream-cone shaped thing  -- is about the right size for me.   But when there is a big pile of maki on the table, I lose count of how many I've had.  

Let everybody else eat family style.  I need my dinner to be more circumscribed -- literally, by the edge of my own plate.

107.8.

The first measurement below my target.

Yes, it's necessary.  My target weight range is between 106.8 and 109.2;  as I've said, I want my weight to fluctuate around 108, not above it.   My 5-day running average still has not reached 108, though.

Weight-maintenance experts -- see Thin For Life by Anne Fletcher and Refuse to Regain by Barbara Berkeley -- recommend setting an upper maintenance limit (Berkeley calls it the Scream Weight) a few pounds above your target; if you see that number on the scale, you must act immediately to reverse the gain.

Mark, who occasionally has to design process controls for a living, took a look at the normal variation in my weight measurements and based on his statistical analysis, suggested a whole set of triggers.  I am supposed to immediately start weight loss mode if I see:

Rule 1.  One scale reading above 111.6 

Rule 2.  Two out of three consecutive readings above 110.4

Rule 3.  Four out of five consecutive readings above 109.2

Rule 4.  Seven in a row above the target of 108

By the way, the rules are symmetrical.  I'm also supposed to enter "weight gain" mode -- whatever THAT looks like -- if I have one scale reading below 104.4, or two out of three below 105.6, and so on.  I am not too worried about this happening, but you never know.  So there you go, everyone who is worried I will become anorexic.  I have a plan to avoid that, just in case.

The power of routine, or, is it a good or bad idea to be flexible?

One thing I'm discovering is that I screw up -- eat too much -- far more easily when I'm deviating from my usual schedule.

I realize it very quickly these days.  Now that I'm out of "practice," I feel uncomfortably full just a few minutes after overdoing it.  

This happened to me today.  Usually, I have breakfast when I wake, lunch at 12:30, and dinner at 6 or 6:30; I usually don't eat solid food after dinner's over, except maybe a piece of chocolate.  On Thursdays, the kids have swimming lessons from 6 to 6:40, so that's our Family Gym Night.  On Thursdays we have dinner around 7:15.  I have a midafternoon snack, and I get dinner ready in advance so I don't nibble while preparing it, and usually there's no problem.

For a couple of reasons, tonight Mark and I decided I should feed the kids and myself an early dinner BEFORE meeting him at the gym for swimming.  I made scrambled eggs and ham and toast for them.  And I ate... OK, you're going to think this is weird, but I ate an entire package of Brussels sprouts.  So far so good, but then I went on and had some of the ham and eggs and  toast too, and also some leftover rice noodles, and ... what was I thinking?  Right NOW I am thinking "ooooff I feel so full."  But what was going on with that?  

A mess of stuff.  I skipped the 3:30  snack because I was going to eat dinner at five or so, an hour early.  And then by the time 4:15 rolled around, I wasn't HUNGRY exactly, but I started to want to eat.  I was cold, for one thing.  I am cold all the time now, I guess for want of insulation.  And the thought of eating something hot started to consume me.  So I started cooking the Brussels sprouts.  And then the eggs.  And then the eggs were done before the sprouts.  And then the kids didn't finish the eggs.  And then they left a bunch of toast on their plates.  And I started thinking, "Gosh, if I don't eat extra now, I'll be pretty hungry later, seeing as how I never eat a bedtime snack anymore!"  (Mental note:  Beware, beware of the "I'd better eat more now so I'm not hungry later" line of thought.  It is evil.)  I don't know.  Somewhere in there came the thought that I should eat some chocolate to send a signal to myself that my dinner was done.  Somehow I decided I needed to send that signal a couple of times.   

I'm OK now.  I have a cup of coffee in front of me.  And I have to leave for swimming soon.  And I feel alarmingly full.  And I know, I just know, that I would not have done this -- basically a binge, which is only sort of redeemed by the fact that it's mostly Brussels sprouts by weight -- if I had planned on eating dinner after swimming as usual.

This all underscores to me that even though I am not overweight anymore, I still have a problem.  Euphemisms, sheesh.  I have an unhealthy attachment to food and to being unhungry.  I have developed a lot of coping strategies, and I can't let go of them, at least not yet.   One of those strategies is, more or less, a strict schedule for my meals and snacks.  I have seen that I change it at my peril.  

It comes on top of a recent conversation I had with Mark.  He thinks I should start being more flexible. Especially with regard to exercise.  I still refuse to miss a swimming workout.  I still swim every Monday and every Thursday.  When our pool was closed for repairs over the summer, I drove across town to another one, even if it seriously messed up our family's schedule.  I am already making plans to drive 20 minutes into town from my in-laws' so that I can swim at the Y near their house when we stay with them later.  He wants me to quit swimming so much and take up something more portable, like running, that I can do even if swimming becomes unworkable on a particular day.

He has a point.  I am not ready, though, to change my routines.  I lost the weight by doing what I have been doing.  I don't want to do something else.  Mark thinks it's time for me to move on.   He has been fantastically supportive, and has never complained about the stresses I put on our family with my workouts and the scheduling of meals -- at least not until now.   I know from experience that I can change my routines, but I also know from experience that I have to change them slowly, experiment with them, see what works -- not just jump from one to the other.  Safe "flexibility" is a carefully curated toolbox of strategies, each proven to work in different situations.  I have had time to develop only a few.  This is going to take me years.

I think he looks at me and sees someone who has solved her weight problem.  But I am me, and I know what I am, and I am not someone who has solved her weight problem.  I am a person who still lives with it, because my "problem" is the cause, not the symptom; the weight is gone, but I have the same biochemistry, the same psychology, I always have.  I am not stable here.  I am not robust.  I am a recovering obese person, and maybe always will be.   

Licorice. And a tea link.

I love licorice.  If my kids buy a bag of jelly beans or spice drops, I'm sure to hover over, begging for all the black ones.  (Purple too, if it's clove flavor.)  I don't keep a lot of candy around for myself, and am trying to develop a  taste for the obligatory Daily Square of Dark Chocolate that is supposed to be my antioxidant-packed sweet-tooth indulgence; but every once in a while, black licorice calls out to me. 

 Lately I can't get the idea of eating an entire bag of black gumdrops out of my mind.  So I got a little bag of Hershey's boutique licorice at Target and have been allowing myself ONE after dinner, leaving the dark chocolate to Mark.  (Believe me, sticking to one is a good idea.  I have a fighting chance of stopping after one.  I count licorice as prehistoric people are said to have counted:  "one, two, many.")  I can report that it is very nice licorice, but I am still unsatisfied.

I think it's time for me to investigate other sources of licorice flavor, like xylitol gum or herb tea or flavored black tea.

By the way, the two tea links go to TeaSource, a St. Paul tea merchant that I totally recommend.  Check out the herbal teas -- especially Margaret's Soother (peppermint, clove, and licorice!) and Evening in Missoula, which are two of my favorites.  If you need a random emergency gift to take home with you for Christmas, just in case you forgot somebody, it's hard to go wrong with a packet or two of boutique herb tea.