bearing blog

All caught up on the chronological index.

This is just a sort of bookmarking post to let you know, in case you are one of the readers who care about it, that I got all caught up on the post that's the chronological list of all posts about gluttony, weight loss, and weight maintenance.  Entries are now up to date through, uh, a few days ago.  

(That took me a while, because it had been more than a year since I updated it.)

Maybe I should repost it, I don't know.  It gets a fair amount of traffic.  Anyone think that would help?

 

I take it back, that on-off habits thing.

All right, I said I was going to handle weight maintenance in a certain way, and I'm officially going back on my word.  

+ + +

So when I first got near my goal weight, you may remember, I was going to chart my weight on a little chart that Mark made for me modeled after a statistical process control chart.  Cue the theramin music as we go back, back in time to early 2009...

Mark made up the chart, and the "rules" at the top.  

It's like this:  I am supposed to begin doing something to bring my weight back to the middle whenever any of the conditions described in the rules are met.  I cannot return to normal behavior until the running average of five measurements in a row crosses the midline again.

This is great, except that I have not gotten around to defining "normal behavior," nor the positive and negative types of "doing something."  Right now "normal behavior" is "more or less eat what I want" and "doing something" is "eat less than I want."  (I have only slipped into the land of underweight-must-eat-more once.)

Yes, that was the plan.  Watch the weight wiggle back and forth between the control limits, and if it creeps up too far, add "habits" until it creeps back down again.

After many months of frustrated struggling at an average weight a few pounds higher than my target, I am now officially renouncing this strategy.

It looks too much like "going on a diet" and "going off a diet" and "going on a diet again."  It messes with my head.  

On the surface it seemed like a good idea:  toggle habits on and off, to turn the balance one way or another, and keep the weight under control just exactly as if I were a manufacturing process.  But I, unlike a collection of heat exchangers and reactors, have a psychology, and you know what?  It kind of sucks to tell myself, "Well, I won't have any wine, or desserts, until I get five weight readings in a row below such-and-such a weight."  It makes me feel deprived and dejected, and do you know what?  Once I got the five weight readings in a row, and toggled my "habits" back to "maintenance level," the weight did not stay down.   I was not aware of it, but I must have been overreacting in the other direction:  indulging to pay myself back for the deprivation.

This is not the way I want to do things.

And anyway, the terminology should have been a clue.  Hello -- "toggle" habits on and off?  If you do that with a behavior, it isn't a habit!  I don't want to be in an endless cycle of deprivation and indulgence.  That's what I tried to give up.  

I want sustainable living at a sustainable weight.  

+ + +

So, right around Thanksgiving, I abandoned that approach (though I'm still making the weight chart, and it's still important, as you will see.)  And remarkably, as soon as I did, my weight returned down to the target level, and I've been maintaining it with much LESS effort since then.

+ + +

Here's my new strategy:

Watch the scale, and if the weight begins to creep out of the comfort zone, re-evaluate habits and eating behaviors, through trial and error -- one or a few at a time.  But adopt and evaluate habits as potentially permanent lifestyle adaptations.  If I do not think I could sustain a habit for the rest of my life, it probably is not a good habit for me.

No more of this "I only have to do it until my weight comes back under control."  Only:  What I do, I do from now until it doesn't make sense for me anymore.

+ + +

A caveat:  A habit "for the rest of my life" doesn't mean "every single time."  If I am in the habit of not having bedtime snacks, it doesn't mean that I never choose to have one.  It's more of an "almost always."  Let's take it as a given that occasionally I will splurge.  But not often enough to make a new, not-so-good habit.

+ + + 

Another thing that's kind of weird about this is that it requires a little bit of double think.  Because I have to be open to changing the habits if necessary.  See, my environment constantly changes:  my children are growing, the seasons are turning, my schedule is different every semester, my own body is aging from year to year.  It stands to reason that the helpful habits of today might be less helpful in a future time.  So I know that it's not really true that any given habit is being adopted "for the rest of my life."

But I cannot work with a habit that I wouldn't be okay with "for the rest of my life."  If it's too hard to do "for the rest of my life" then it's going to make me suffer, and long for release, even in the short term.

+ + + 

So what did I do back then around Thanksgiving?  Well, this sort-of-New-Year's post about the turkey roasters and the puppies is getting at the distinction:

Here is my husband's idea, which has merit: "Make a list of habits that you can add or subtract as necessary. Put them in order from the easiest and most painless to the most difficult and annoying. Then, if your weight spikes up, start adding habits in order, only one or two at a time. If that doesn't help, add more until your weight goes down again, and then you can stop the habits, starting with the most annoying ones."

The idea of ranking behaviors by annoyance level was a new one, and I thought I would give that a try. I started making a list of things like "don't eat sweets" and "keep the serving dishes in the kitchen" and "put a stick of gum by my plate at dinner" and "one egg is enough eggs for breakfast" and the like.

But as my list of former and current and potential weight-controlling strategies grew longer, I began to feel uneasy about calling them all "habits." And as I began to shuffle them around to figure out which ones I enjoy the least ("no wine with dinner" and "pre-count every calorie" are two examples of behaviors that work extremely well but that exemplify the life I do NOT want to lead), I became even more sure that "habit" is absolutely the wrong word for many of these behaviors.

What Mark is suggesting is not a ranking of habits, but a hierarchy of compensatory deprivations.

A habit is not like a toggle switch; it is more like a houseplant or a tropical fish or a puppy. It requires care. Yes-no choices do go into it, though. Choose often enough to feed it and it thrives; choose often enough to neglect it and it withers. Useful habits are habits to live with: not necessarily permanently, but for long periods. They can be tried for a while to see if they are pleasant to live with and if they have desirable effects, but this is not the same as toggling them on and off; it is more like a temporary adoption, to see if an attachment will deepen.

Compensatory deprivations are less like a companion pet and more like a spare folding table or a turkey roaster: an unwieldy, occasionally used piece of furniture or appliance that you get out of the basement from time to time when necessary. (e.g., at the holidays.)

What I've decided is that I'm done with turkey-roaster dieting, for the most part. 

Anyway, I went on the next day to spell out some of the habits I was thinking about trying on:

I think a lot of people slip up by resolving to deprive themselves permanently or indefinitely of something they really enjoy that is ordinarily harmless, or at least it is harmless in moderation. It would be better to identify habits that are really desirable, and try to set yourself up to fall into them, so to speak.

As for me, my biggest problem right now is that I have slipped into an indulge-gain-deprive-lose cycle, and I really need to get out of it and into a more balanced pattern. That calls for a look at habits I would like to re-establish for the new year: permanent changes that I really want to have.

So I made a long list of potential behaviors, and then I carefully considered each one. If I found it appealing, I put it on my list of "habits to try." If I didn't, I put it on the list of "compensatory deprivations" -- and I don't intend to touch those except on rare occasions, such as the morning after a day full of bad food, or as a needed kick start.

The three habits I started trying were very simple:

• "Half a sandwich is enough sandwich for me."  When faced with a sandwich, only eat half.
• A normal portion of sweets is a two-thumbs-sized rectangle, or (if it's scoopable) 1/3 cup.
• Have only a small portion of alcohol with dinner; have more only after I've pushed my plate away.

I quit trying to deprive myself based on the scale numbers plotted on the chart; instead it was more like, "Well, the chart shows me that my current habits aren't keeping my weight well in control; I need to adopt a different set of habits that will, indefinitely, keep my weight well in control.  When I find them, I will keep them, not quit as soon as I see happier numbers."

And when I stopped the panic, stopped depriving myself of all manner of things, and switched instead to reinforcing those three habits, I noticed, other habits became easier.  For example, it became easier to stick to one plateful at dinner, rather than helping myself to unnecessary seconds.  And the half-sandwich reminder made it easier for me to have balanced meals when I ate at restaurants.

A month later, my weight is back in control.  It's in better control than it's been in for the last YEAR, I think.  (Maybe I'll post the data later to show you.)

+ + +

Permanent, not temporary, change.  That is what it is all about.  Why do I have to keep learning this over and over again?

Is it a puppy or is it a turkey roaster?

I haven't actually made any New Year's resolutions, but 'tis the season for reflecting on good and bad habits, no? So get ready for a couple of anti-gluttony posts, starting with this one.

+ + +

As part of marking my weight goal anniversary (three years this past November -- can you believe it?) I took a step back and surveyed my eating and exercise habits: what was working? What wasn't? Were there any good habits I had abandoned out of sloth and gluttony? Had I discovered any new ones, or thought of any potential new ones that might counteract problem areas?

It is a bit hard to tell if my anxiety is ill-founded (this being the nature of anxiety), but I still feel as if I only barely can keep my weight down. Probably I have an unhealthy obsession with it -- but, to put it bluntly, I do not wish to let go of my possibly unhealthy obsession because I would rather be obsessed than put the weight back on again. The story of the last three years has been the story of trying to externalize the obsession, find ways to live and to see myself that are balanced less precariously. I think of wrapping little packages of anxiety up in my mind and transferring them somehow outside myself, one at a time, into tidy little stacks. Turning this balance into something that is maintained by things I simply do and forget about, rather than things I turn over and over in my mind. From head to hands.

+ + +

Here is my husband's idea, which has merit: "Make a list of habits that you can add or subtract as necessary. Put them in order from the easiest and most painless to the most difficult and annoying. Then, if your weight spikes up, start adding habits in order, only one or two at a time. If that doesn't help, add more until your weight goes down again, and then you can stop the habits, starting with the most annoying ones."

The idea of ranking behaviors by annoyance level was a new one, and I thought I would give that a try. I started making a list of things like "don't eat sweets" and "keep the serving dishes in the kitchen" and "put a stick of gum by my plate at dinner" and "one egg is enough eggs for breakfast" and the like.

But as my list of former and current and potential weight-controlling strategies grew longer, I began to feel uneasy about calling them all "habits." And as I began to shuffle them around to figure out which ones I enjoy the least ("no wine with dinner" and "pre-count every calorie" are two examples of behaviors that work extremely well but that exemplify the life I do NOT want to lead), I became even more sure that "habit" is absolutely the wrong word for many of these behaviors.

What Mark is suggesting is not a ranking of habits, but a hierarchy of compensatory deprivations.

A habit is not like a toggle switch; it is more like a houseplant or a tropical fish or a puppy. It requires care. Yes-no choices do go into it, though. Choose often enough to feed it and it thrives; choose often enough to neglect it and it withers. Useful habits are habits to live with: not necessarily permanently, but for long periods. They can be tried for a while to see if they are pleasant to live with and if they have desirable effects, but this is not the same as toggling them on and off; it is more like a temporary adoption, to see if an attachment will deepen.

Compensatory deprivations are less like a companion pet and more like a spare folding table or a turkey roaster: an unwieldy, occasionally used piece of furniture or appliance that you get out of the basement from time to time when necessary. (e.g., at the holidays.)

We all know some person (a lot of us seem to be married to one) who decides he needs to take off a few pounds, gives up ice cream for a couple weeks and bam, problem solved,the lucky bastard. That is the idea we are going for. A useful compensatory deprivation is something that's at least a little painful, but is temporary and effective. If it works but hurts, the working should be enough motivation to keep going just until it isn't needed anymore. If it works and doesn't hurt (or you find you get used to it eventually), maybe it should be nurtured as a long-term habit after all. If it hurts and doesn't help, then there's no point, now, is there?

One way to begin turning your life around is to temporarily foster new habits, patiently nurturing them and giving them a chance to take root and thrive. Not all will be good matches, it is true, but you must be careful not to let the trying and discarding become the habit itself; the end is adoption, the testing only the means. Compensatory deprivations don't even need to enter the picture until a number of good habits are thriving comfortably.

+ + +

After I realized the crucial distinction between potential habits and potential compensatory deprivations, it was fairly easy to sort the items into two lists: one list of behaviors that either are already habits, or that I thought I might enjoy if I adopted them permanently; and a second list of behaviors that I thought would be helpful interventions from time to time but that I didn't want to become my constant companions... something to store in my basement, so to speak.

Which behaviors are your potential puppies, and which are your potential turkey roasters? Tune in next time and I will share my lists. Just in time for the new year.

Maintenance: Will change help? (Acceptance #5)

(First post.  Second post.  Third post. Fourth post.)

In my last post I wrote about all the anxiety I've been having surrounding maintenance of my weight right now.  I decided to take my own advice, step back, and go through the process of discernment that I outlined.  The first step is to accept reality:  to look objectively at what's going on. 

As I wrote in the last post, the anxiety isn't causeless.  My habits are indeed slipping from desirable ones to undesirable ones.  My weight has changed just a bit, to a slightly higher (but still healthy) number; but it's clear that my attention is misplaced.  

• I am anxious about my weight number, even though
  •  I cannot directly control it; and 
  •  in any case it might be a perfectly healthy number for me.
• At the same time I am ignoring the slow infiltration of old habits, even though
  • I can directly control them; and
  • I already know they are not healthy habits for me.

That's the reality that I accept.  

Let's see, what's the next step in my process of discernment...  "Judge whether a change offers benefits."

Heck yeah.  I managed to gain all that willpower and lose all my weight when I concentrated my effort on the habits.  I never really did manage to stop being anxious about the number on the scale, but by emphasizing the habits rather than the numbers I was at least able to keep from getting discouraged.  I could see myself getting better at self-control, and that was incredibly heartening.  

So I'm not entirely sure whether it would benefit me to stop worrying about the numbers, but I am quite certain I would benefit by exerting effort, once again, on habits.   

I think it's interesting that when I consider making a change at this level, it's the change in attitude and focus -- not a change in eating.  I think that might have been part of the reason I've been feeling so frustrated, with so many false starts -- I've been trying to jump right back to "ZOMG must stick to my habits!!!!"  I never considered where my efforts will reap the most rewards.  And I never considered whether some of the habits that were useful in my first maintenance period might not be so useful anymore, now that I have four children including one toddler.

Maintenance blues: Acceptance, #4.

(First post.  Second post.  Third post.)

Here's something I've been wanting to write about but have been having trouble putting into words.

It's three years this week since my successful weight loss began.  And lately?  Weight maintenance has been hard.  

I feel as though I'm slipping, right on the edge.  I weigh myself every day and faithfully plot each point on a chart.  The paper charts stack up in a drawer in my bathroom, one for every month since I reached my weight loss goal in November 2008.  The zigzag lines rise up through my pregnancy and back down again after the birth of #4, not quite as low as I was pre-pregnancy but back to where I decided to be.

And lately I don't like what I see.   It's not that I'm not still at a healthy weight.  I am.  But after reaching my postpartum target, my weight crept back up, and I've been on the high side of it for months now.

Worse, I can't seem to bring it back down.  Several times since just before the baby's first birthday, I have tried to lose just one pound.  Not because I needed to but because I wanted to see if I could still do it. 

I haven't done it.  I haven't sustained the effort for more than a few days.  After about three days of sticking to my habits, I start feeling hungry and cold all the time, and shortly thereafter I find myself helping myself to a third plate of dinner, or eating all the kids' sandwich crusts.    I recognize this as classic "body defending its fat stores."  Still, it's frustrating -- I managed to overcome it once, what's wrong with me now?  Have I lost my hard-earned habits for good?

And that small gain since I reached my postpartum goal -- it's not bad in and of itself, but what if it is the beginning of a slow creep back up to where I was?  My mind races.  This is the kind of thing that, as I've said before, literally keeps me up at night.

+ + +

It's only fair I write about this.  Even though I never intended this to be a "weight loss blog," weight loss is the most popular topic I write about.  Probably every day, certainly every week, some person sits down at their computer and methodically clicks through every single post in the weight loss categories; I see it in the site statistics.  

And this is part of it.  That maintenance sometimes is frustrating and hard.

+ + +

Another reason I need to write about it is that writing helps me figure things out.  I had a draft of this post up last week when I got sidetracked by the comment about acceptance, the one where I suggested a process of accepting -- not the self, but the truth about the self; and accepting the sacrifices that are necessary to change the truth.  Then I thought -- why not take my own advice?

So let me look at the reality.  Let me figure out what's going on, and accept it.  

+ + +

First of all:  The numbers on the scale are still objectively good.  I may be feeling panicky about them right now, but that is not because of what they are, it is because I fear they may change.  If I could look into a crystal ball and learn I would be this weight indefinitely, I'd be happy, not disappointed.  I am at a healthy weight.  Or, to take the metric that Mark suggests is most useful (because it involves monetary expense), I don't need to buy new clothes in a bigger size.  

But what about my habits?  Well.  Let's take a look at the background habits that I wrote about in the series on my "failure-free habit constellation," almost exactly two years ago.  Have they changed?

• I still drink mostly water, black coffee, and black tea.  I have, however, been drinking more alcohol with dinner lately.
• I'm still eating lots of vegetables.  More often, though, since I haven't been specifying the kind on the grocery list, Mark's been bringing home more of the "lightly sauced" kinds of frozen vegetables.  The problem with this is that I lose some appreciation for real-food vegetables (plain or with real butter or olive oil).
• I'm still using small plates at home, and when I'm away I do remember to use only part of the larger plate.
• "Habitually wary of sugar and white flour?"  I have definitely been enjoying more of those.  I lost weight while sticking to a two-thumbs-sized dessert portion.  For a while there, flush with my good fortune, I was testing the limits of maintenance -- and in the meantime it seems I've gotten used to larger and more-frequent sweets.
• Only a very limited selection of snack food?  This has definitely changed.  It seems the children have been clamoring for a vast variety of packaged cookies for their afternoon snacks.  And yes, I have been joining in.  Novelty is not my friend.
• I still keep that jar of almonds in the car, and I still reach for them instead of hitting a drive-through when snacktime hits.
• And I still step on the scale every morning.  

How about that constellation of weight-loss habits?  When I was trying to drop the "just one pound," was I really using them?

• Signal breakfast:  Yes, I'm having the boiled-egg-and-tomato-juice for breakfast quite a bit.  Not every morning, but then I never had it every morning.  Today, for example, I had a boiled egg and two strawberries instead.  (The kids were having strawberries and yogurt for breakfast and the strawberries looked pretty good.)
• Eating on schedule:  Meals are still regularly spaced, and I've been having the snack at 3:30, but I've been skipping the 10:30 snack -- and I've definitely been nibbling in between.  Especially (yeah, I know) the kids' leavings.  Also, I've been having bedtime snack.  I know darn well by now that I feel better in the morning if I don't have the bedtime snack.  And yet it's hard not to join in when Mark and the kids are chowing down on ice cream.
• Control the size of the snacks:  not happening.
• No seconds?  I have been having seconds at dinner.  I admit it.  Including the second half of the sandwich.
• Control the plate.  This has always been easy:  the relative proportions of veg, starch, and protein on my plate.  No problem there.

So, clearly, not all, but some of the habits of temperance are slipping and being replaced by habits that characterize my old life.  

The summary:

•    My vegetables aren't as plain as I want.
•    I'm eating larger, more frequent portions of sweets than I want.
• There is too much variety of cookies in the house.  Especially Oreos.  Grr.
• I'm eating at times I don't intend to eat.
• I don't know how big my snacks are.  I would rather know than be ignorant.
• I am eating second servings that I don't want, and that experience taught me is in excess of what satisfies me.

But just to be fair, let's summarize the good news too:

•    I haven't gone back to big plates.
• I haven't let my almond jar run empty.
• I haven't avoided the scale, no matter how much I might worry about the number.
• I haven't been having two- and three-egg breakfasts.
• My plates still look the way they ought to.

In fact, there are lots of things I used to do in the old gluttonous days that I have not even come close to doing, not even once.  I have never again eaten a whole pizza by myself.  I have never again gone through the drive through to get a hamburger just because I suddenly wanted one.  I have never again binged on every leftover I could find in the fridge.  I have not followed any impulse to buy snacks from the vending machine.  I've practiced resistance on lots of occasions.

It is a little tempting to think that perhaps there is not really a problem.  I am, after all, at a healthy weight.  Perhaps I should not be alarmed that I am standing on a floor that is difficult to break through.  Perhaps my body is merely defending its reasonably-sized fat reserves against my unreasonable desire to prove that I can force it to a slightly smaller weight.

But if I look at the habits, it's clear that there is a problem:  a behavioral one.  Because I don't want to have those habits of gluttony, even if they don't make me gain my weight back.

So.  I have to accept -- once again -- that the number on the scale is not the problem.  My daily choices are.  And if I choose to change that, I have to accept that I must once again accept some daily sacrifice.

 

(UPDATED TO ADD:  Apropos the comments -- I have written about Gary Taubes' Why We Get Fat here, here, here, and here, and about Good Calories, Bad Calories here.

Accepting the facts and deciding to act on them.

In the last post, I replaced the vague question of "should I accept myself as I am?" with a process of discernment of a decision to change.  

It occurred to me that these decisions have long-, medium-, and short-term manifestations, so I thought I'd work through an example.  Perhaps this will become a series.

Here's what I came up with in that post:

1.  Understand and believe the relevant facts.

2.  From those facts, judge whether a change offers benefits.

3.  If a change offers benefits,  judge from the facts whether they are possible to attain.

4.  If there are benefits that are possible to attain, determine from the facts how they could be attained. 

5.  Decide whether you want to expend the effort to attain them.

  

LONG-TERM LEVEL

Understand and believe the facts:  "I wear such-and-such a dress size, or I went to the doctor and he told me I risk diabetes if I stay at my current weight."

Judge if a change is desirable:  "Yes, I want to have a smaller dress size, or avoid developing diabetes."

Judge if a change is possible:  "Yes, it must be possible because other people have permanently dropped a dress size or lost weight or changed their risk of developing diabetes.  Many of them have done it by eating less or otherwise changing their diets.  I don't yet have evidence that this approach would not work if I made a similar change in my behavior.  So it's possible that if I permanently changed my behavior, I'd permanently drop a dress size or avoid diabetes."

Judge how such a change is possible:  "Well, I could sit down and figure out what behaviors I could change most easily.  Then I could develop some strategies to remind me of my motivation.  That would take some planning time.  I'd have to practice the new behaviors.  That means learning to do something that's hard, over and over again.  I'd also have to learn how to deal with negative comments from people who notice the changes I'm making.  And I'll have to be ready to respond to setbacks by making useful adjustments instead of just giving up."

Decide:  "Do I want to do this?"

 

MEDIUM-TERM LEVEL

Understand and believe the facts: "I figured out that I habitually take second and third helpings at meals.  I don't actually know whether I could be satisfied with only one helping."

Judge if a change is desirable:  "Yes, I don't want to be ignorant about whether I can be satisfied with only one helping.  If I knew the answer to that question, I'd know whether sticking to one helping would be an easy way for me to permanently change my habits in the direction I want to go."

Judge if a change is possible:  "Yes, I could find out the answer by trying out the behavior of stopping after one plateful, and then seeing if I feel satisfied after the food has been put away."

Judge how such a change is possible:  "I'd have to resist eating second helpings after I finished my plate, and then I'd have to pay attention to how I feel for a while after the meal, and maybe write down my observations.  I'll need several strategies to resist the temptation to take seconds -- I could try eating slowly so that I don't finish my plate until it's nearly time to clear the dishes, or I could have a stick of gum ready to pop into my mouth as soon as I finish, or I could have a cup of coffee after dinner, or I could get up and leave the table as soon as my plate is empty.   I'd have to eat this way at several meals -- say, five or six dinners -- before I could really come to a conclusion. "

Decide:  "Do I want to do this?"

   SHORT-TERM LEVEL

Understand and believe the facts: "I told myself I wanted to know whether I'd be satisfied with one helping.  Now I've finished my helping and I want to eat more food.  I won't know whether one helping satisfies me unless I can get to the end of the meal to find out how I feel after only having had one helping.  But I want to eat more food and it sucks."

Judge if a change is desirable:  "Yes, I don't want to sit here any more looking at the food and wanting it and knowing I could have it if I chose."

Judge if a change is possible:  "Yes, I don't have to sit here any longer looking at the food.  I could eat it.  Or I could escape this situation.  Or I could change the situation somehow so I wouldn't want the food anymore."

Judge how such a change is possible:  "I could get up from the table and walk away. "

Decide:  Do you want to do it?

 

See how small the changes can be?  Even the long-term example needn't be "do I want to lose fifty pounds" or "do I want to drop six dress sizes," but can be a much tinier goal: "do I want to lose some weight" or "do I want a smaller dress size."   It's long-term because the intent is for it to be long-lasting, not because it'll take a long time to achieve.  The medium-term example needn't be "do I want to eat fewer helpings at dinner," but "do I want to find out whether I would be satisfied with fewer helpings at dinner?"  The short-term example is the most immediate:  shall I resist this helping? 

+ + +

I made up those examples.  Tune in next time for a real-life, real-time example from my own frustrations with maintaining my current weight loss...

What do you mean, "acceptance?"

On the post about vanity and physical fitness, Delores asked a question about weight loss:

what do you think is the sequence for losing weight? Not accepting your body, so you change it; or accepting who you are and then from that acceptance just 'loving' yourself enough to change.

I replied that I didn't think body acceptance was all that relevant:

I would say that dressing properly requires accepting the truth about your body. You should dress the body you have, not the body you wish you had or the body you fear you might have.

But for me, losing weight required accepting the truth about my behavior, not my body. Accepting or not accepting my body was sort of irrelevant.

I read that over a few times, and I am pretty sure that it's true.  But, I had to think for a while to be sure that statement wasn't reading back the story I'd like to tell into the past.  

But did you notice my vocabulary sleight-of-hand there? 

I'm not really happy with the vocabulary surrounding the debate about "acceptance."  Should people accept their bodies as they are?  Is the fat-acceptance movement healthy or not?    The reason I don't like it is that the words "accept" and "acceptance" are kind of weaselly -- they are chosen and used because they have positive connotations (who will come out against "acceptance?") but more information is needed before you can pin down the meaning precisely.   

First of all, "to accept" needs an object to make any sense at all.  One doesn't merely "accept," one accepts a thing -- or a person, or a place, or an idea.  A writer who understands this property of the verb "to accept"  won't make the error of describing a person as "very accepting."  It says nothing of substance, only imparts a glow of positivity, until the writer specifies:  Exactly what does she accept?

Second, the verb morphs its meaning depending on what the object is.  Watch this:

"I accepted the job" = "I agreed to the terms of the offer of employment."

"I accepted the gift" = "I agreed to receive the gift and I received it."

"The college accepted me" = "The college permitted me to enroll as a student."

"I accepted that fact" = "I acknowledged that fact as true."

"The restaurant accepts credit cards" = "The restaurant will receive payment in the form of credit cards"

"The employees accepted the poor working conditions" = "The employees endured the poor working conditions without complaining"

What all these threads of meaning have in common is the notion of receiving willingly or agreeably.   A thing which is "accepted" is received, along with all its consequences, whether they be good or bad, with the assent of the will in some way.   But notice the necessity of the concept of "receiving" -- something is grasped, or taken, or taken on, that was not grasped before. 

So when you're talking about "accepting a person" the meaning is perfectly clear if that person has undergone a sort of a change, has been "received."  When a college accepts a student or a team accepts an athlete, the meaning is that a person has newly become a member of a group because the group has agreed to admit him.  When a son's new bride is accepted as part of the family, that means that -- even though the other family members didn't get to choose her -- the family nevertheless willingly extends "membership privileges," treating her as they would a family member.  When we Catholics in our wedding vows agree that we "will accept children lovingly from God" we mean that we promise to welcome children that we don't yet have.  All of these cases involve an act of will, but also an act of receiving.  Even if the receiving isn't our choice (as in the case of the in-laws, or sometimes in the case of the children!), the act of will that turns it from merely "receiving" to "receiving willingly" -- to "accepting" -- is a choice.  That act of will may happen much later than the act of receiving (perhaps the in-laws take some time to "accept" the bride) but the receiving is still implied.

So -- here's a question -- how can one "accept one's body?"   "I receive my body willingly?"  That doesn't really work, unless personhood and will precede embodiment, a belief that I'm betting few or none of my readers subscribe to.    I have been embodied since my beginning.  I cannot "accept" it in any literal sense, because I never "received" it.   I can accept someone else's body (as a woman, I do, repeatedly in marriage and temporarily in pregnancy; as a Catholic, I do, repeatedly, in the Eucharist) but it's nonsense to say I accept my own.

So when we say something like "body acceptance," meaning one's own body, we must be using "body" as a euphemism or as shorthand for the real object of acceptance.  

One possibility is that we accept a physical condition that our body is in.    This has a connotation of "endure without complaining" -- in the way one might accept a privation, or a punishment, or the "poor working conditions" mentioned above, or a disease.  

But even this isn't really specific enough to say whether such "acceptance" is healthy or unhealthy.  What's going on inside?  The term doesn't specify whether the attitude is one of I'll-prove-I-can-withstand-this, or looking-on-the-bright-side, or uniting-my-suffering-to-the-suffering-of-Christ, or complaining-won't-help-so-why-bother.  Any of these will do to be described as "accepting the conditions."    But I think you'll agree that which one is meant makes a very big difference to the spirit.

Another possibility is that we accept some idea or truth or statement about our body.   This means, simply, "we believe" that idea or truth.  In that case, whether it's healthy to "accept" the truth or idea hinges on whether the truth is true!    "I accept that this morning I weighed 205 pounds" is a lot different from "I accept that I will always weigh more than 200 pounds."   "I accept that my physical condition increases my risk of developing diabetes" is a lot different from "I accept that I will develop diabetes."  "I accept that I wear a size 16" is a lot different from "I accept that I have to wear big baggy clothes to hide my ugly hips."   "I accept that it's very difficult to exercise" is a lot different from "I accept that I am not able to exercise."

So, to return to Delores's question,

what do you think is the sequence for losing weight? Not accepting your body, so you change it; or accepting who you are and then from that acceptance just 'loving' yourself enough to change.

Does she mean "enduring" a body-condition, or does she mean "believing" a body-truth?  I think the question becomes logical if we frame it as follows:

"What do you think is the sequence for losing weight? 

• First, not accepting the proposition  "Changing your body is impossible or undesirable."   (In other words, accepting the  proposition "Changing your body is possible and desirable.")  Then, you change your body.
• Or accepting the relevant facts about yourself:  that your body is in a certain condition, and that you live under certain constraints, and that you have certain tendencies and desires; and then with the power that comes from that knowledge, just willingly making sacrifices or acts of will that create good changes."

Wow!  When you phrase it that way, it's stunningly obvious that this is not an either-or choice! 

1.  Understand and believe the relevant facts.

2.  From those facts, judge whether a change offers benefits.

3.  If a change offers benefits,  judge from the facts whether they are possible to attain.

4.  If there are benefits that are possible to attain, determine from the facts how they could be attained. 

5.  Decide whether you want to expend the effort to attain them.

That's the order of operations, without using the word "acceptance."

Clean eating and a short pre-review of the new Taubes book.

I'm feeling a little less despondent this morning than I was when I wrote the last post, probably because two full days of clean eating has eliminated my weight spike.   And thank you to commenter LeeAnn for reassuring me that I probably can continue watching portions for my health, and even if that tends to exacerbate my vanity problem, I probably don't have to stop, and can look for other ways to alleviate the vanity thing.

 From 116.6 the other day, I'm now back below 112.  Yes, I am aware that a lot of that weight is probably water.  Still, I think it was worthwhile reacting quickly.

For one thing, I had lost track of portion size.  During the first nine months or so of the baby's ex utero life, I needed to eat a lot more than I do now, and so I had pretty much been eating freely -- seconds and thirds, whole sandwiches instead of halves, et cetera.   I have gotten out of the habit of starting with a small amount and then waiting to see if I needed more. 

Are you curious what "two days of clean eating" looks like for me?   I planned on avoiding white flour as much as I could and keeping the calorie load under 1400 calories (reasonable for me -- I'm quite small framed, and the baby has not been nursing heavily).  I am currently staying as a houseguest, so I have limited control over what's available, but with self-control I can keep from getting derailed.  Here's what I did for two days:

First day:

• Breakfast:  1 hardboiled egg.  15 fresh blueberries.  Lots of coffee.
• Lunch:  100% whole wheat tortilla wrapped around half a cup of chili with beans, two tablespoons shredded cheddar cheese, and a generous handful of fresh spinach, plus some chopped tomato and onion.  10 fresh cherries.
• Snack:  5 pecan halves, an ounce of cheddar cheese, and ten more blueberries.
• Dinner (from the local pizza chain):  A big lettuce salad with an unknown amount of shredded cheese and one tablespoon Italian dressing.  One-eighth of a large thin-crust pizza (bacon and veg).
• Unplanned eating:  About a half ounce of hard pretzel near bedtime.

I felt hungry between meals right away, which I took as a good sign.  Second day:

• Breakfast:  One hardboiled egg.  Fifteen fresh blueberries.  Lots of coffee.
• Lunch:  100% whole wheat tortilla wrapped around 100 calories' worth of Italian sausage, 2 tablespoons of tomato sauce, 2 tablespoons of mozzarella cheese, and a handful of fresh spinach.  Another big lettuce salad with an unknown amount of shredded cheese (left over from the night before) and one tablespoon Italian dressing.
• Snack:  Five pecan halves and one small apple.  Coffee.
• Dinner:  About two cups cooked canned green beans.  One half cup canned baked beans in a sugary sauce.  One quarter-pound hamburger patty with a teaspoon of ketchup.
• Unplanned eating:  About a quarter-ounce of hard pretzels.  One bite of sugar cookie.

Being a houseguest here, I'm free to make my own breakfasts and lunches from whatever's around, and dinner is whatever's being served.  The tortillas happen to be the most whole-grain bread in the house, so I stuck with them for lunch; on burger night, I quietly skipped the bun, and that didn't seem to cause a problem.    I enjoyed small portions of the sweet baked beans and the carryout pizza.  I measured the salad dressing and found the mixed-salad calories by looking them up on the restaurant website.

Some travel is coming up in which I'll have even less control over the types of food available, but I always have control over how much I eat of it.  So I'm feeling a lot better.

On a related note, I recently picked up Gary Taubes' new book, Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It.  You may remember that Taubes wrote the huge tome Good Calories, Bad Calories, which I reviewed in some detail here.  I will post a full review of the new Taubes book later, but the short review is this: 

 It's a shorter, more accessible version of Good Calories, Bad Calories.  So if you have been intimidated by that huge book, by all means, read the newer, sleeker version, and if you wish your doctor or spouse would read GCBC, consider lending them the new, less-frightening book instead.  It also contains dietary recommendations, basically for a paleo diet.  I have some comments about these recommendations, but I will save it for my full review.

The demon that feeds on fasting.

 

It just goes to show:  Never brag.  A couple of days ago I wrote a weight loss update in which I mentioned that when I tried to drop a pound, I hadn't been able to do it without effort, and (not really wanting to make the effort) I hadn't pushed it.  "But I'm holding pretty steady, and that's okay," I wrote. 

So, a couple of days after I'd been traveling, I suddenly saw my weight SPIKE.  Probably water, most of it; but my experience is that if I don't reverse it quickly, the water weight sticks around and becomes non-water weight.  Maybe a better way of putting this is that I suspect that the first sign I'm beginning to store some fat is a sudden episode of water retention.  Only a hypothesis, and only about me -- but still.  I was alarmed, and even more alarmed the next day when it didn't go away but was higher.

How big a spike?  Well, I've been a stable 113 pounds for about six weeks, but one morning the scale said 116, and the next 116.6 .  Yow!  I haven't seen either of those numbers for a long while.  And I have a philosophy about the scale:  don't bother too much about daily ups and downs, except when I see a number I haven't seen in a while.  I notice those.  The big ones scare me.

Like, really scare me.  Lie-awake-in-bed-sweating scared. 

And maybe here's the right time to mention a significant spiritual struggle.  Gluttony was a real problem for me, and somewhere between my asking and God answering and my work to meet Him where He wanted me to go, it's not a problem for me (much) anymore.  Yay me!  Except:  enter vanity.  I am now seriously, seriously afraid of regaining weight.  I like the way I look and feel now.  I am proud of myself -- not necessarily in a good way.  Am I diligent about getting to the gym... or obsessive?  It's hard to tell the difference. 

It's only natural to be pleased with my success so far.  There is, I am sure, a correct attitude somewhere, where I could be grateful to God for the gift of self-control, diligent in my stewardship of the health I have been graced with, pleased to adorn myself attractively for my husband and to reflect to the world my inward happiness and peace, and still unattached to the world and to my flesh.  I am not there.  I fear that I have made thinness and physical health an idol. 

Maybe it's always been an idol for me, but it was perhaps safer when I couldn't attain it.  Now it's my precious, y'know?  And I think the surest proof that it's really a problem is this:  I pray earnestly, "Please Lord, take away my vanity...." and what pops up in the mind is "...but even more than that please please please don't do it by making me fat again."   Don't make me choose between You and my body, I mean.  But I know darn well that God has already made me choose between Him and my flesh.

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple."

Oh yes, I know what THAT means.

And meanwhile I keep looking for a way around it.

+ + +

If any of my readers think of gluttony as a big spiritual problem for themselves, then maybe this sounds self-indulgent. Wish I had your spiritual struggle instead of mine, Erin!  But bear with me.  Back when I was fat, it was really obvious that food was a sort of idol for me. Looking back at those struggles back then, they seem so simple compared to these crazy mind games.   Simple, simple struggles of the flesh versus the spirit.  All I had to do was deny the flesh!  Just like it says in the Bible!  It wasn't easy to do, always, but it was easy to understand.  Such a childish little weakness, wanting more cake.  Now I struggle with spirit against spirit -- it's not myflesh that makes war against God's will, but instead my love for my flesh.  So much harder to root out cleanly.

 
Gluttony isn't that complicated to fix (it's tough, but uncomplicated), because you only have to change something visible.  Your attitude doesn't have to change right away.  You can will your fist to put down the plate, and your heart can let go later, when it sees that it is safe feeding on the Lord.  But now I have to change something invisible, while not changing the visible all that much.  Can my heart let go of the idol of health, while my decisions and actions still responsibly preserve it?  What does that look like?  Does it look like anything at all, or is it entirely within?  How?  If I could only drive this demon out by prayer and fasting -- but on fasts, this demon grows sleek and strong.

+ + +

Today, vanity or no, I'm controlling calories and experiencing hunger.  I am thankful for obedience, which relieves the heart of some of its responsibility to ferret apart good and bad intentions.  It only makes sense to follow through with my plan to respond to a weight spike with careful attention to my food intake. 

At the same time, I am troubled by the intensity of my worry, and I wonder if I can somehow find peace.  I know, rationally, that the answer is not to set my heart on thinness and health and youth and beauty -- even though these things are often rewards of a disciplined life, I must not love them.  I must love God more.  And He has not yet asked me to choose between Him and those things -- except in the tiniest possible ways, just enough to chide me, to show me where my heart lies. 

I must be willing to lose it all, cheerfully.  I am not willing.   And yet I must be willing.  And I'm not. 

Yet.

"He went away sorrowful; for he had many possessions." 

Yet.

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?