I don't know if you can believe it or not, but next month it will be the ninth anniversary of my six-month push to a 40-pound weight loss which took me down to a weight 52 pounds lower than my highest nonpregnant weight.
Since then I've had two babies and -- mostly -- maintained it. I say "mostly" because
- after a few months at that weight, I decided that too many people were asking me if I'd been ill, and deliberately re-gained about 6 pounds, at which point the concerned questions stopped.
- after my most recent pregnancy, not quite all of that came back off, and I stabilized at a weight that was, let's see, ten pounds heavier than that.
And that's more or less where I've been for the last two years or so, with some seasonal and vacation-related fluctuations. I did manage to get within three pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight at one point, but it proved difficult to maintain and I went up to the ten-pounds-higher one.
Still in the "normal" range, though! And that's why I feel like I can keep saying I maintained the weight loss. I maintained most of it and am pretty stable. As in, for the last two years I have not been working particularly hard, and my weight has not changed much at all, apart from some seasonal-type fluctuations.
+ + +
Let's just label as "seasonal-type" the few extra pounds I took back with me from my five weeks in the French Alps, the Italian Riviera, and London.
I knew it was coming. I had spent the last few weeks drinking a lot of pints of bitter and glasses of good red wine, and eating a good deal of cheese, pasta, and meat pies. Somewhere in there I made a deal with myself that I would stop worrying about it, enjoy myself thoroughly, and implement Austerity Measures as soon as I returned.
+ + +
Austerity Measures seemed like a better name to me than a lot of the other trendy ones burbling around these days, like Clean Eating (with which I have a word association problem) or Whole 30 (why exactly thirty?) or, uh, I don't know... Dump Dinners? Can we get rid of the phrase Dump Dinners? Just for the hell of it?
Anyway, having come so recently from France, I decided on some decidedly French Austerity Measures before I got home.
British Austerity Measures are not nearly as pleasant. Trust me, when you are in London, you want abandon, not austerity. You want three pints a day and plenty of meat pies. The same goes for Italy. You want pizza and pesto and gelato (and more gelato) and lots of wine.
But actually, French-style Austerity Measures aren't too bad. I will elaborate in upcoming posts.
+ + +
I also want to write a little bit about:
- the trap of Only One Number, and my recent goal to generate other interesting numbers to distract me from it;
- long-term (first medium, and then very long-term) thinking;
- my ever-present concern (since about 2010) that in writing about weight control at all, I'm contributing to a culture of body shaming, making an idol out of Looking Not Fat, and putting myself in a not-so-good headspace;
- and the surprising situation I'm in, of thinking about my physical self in a future that, likely will have no more babies in it.
Be patient with me, it'll probably take me a month to get all four or five or so of these posts out there. But: that's November, my goal-weight anniversary month, and I can't help but be thinking about it a lot. So I guess I might as well take you along.
Hurray! Looking forward to hearing what you have to say.
Posted by: Jamie | 28 October 2017 at 08:56 PM
Wow! The 10th year. I still think of the 2 almond snack from time to time and chuckle to myself. And boiled egg and tomatoe juice.
Am really looking forward to your writings.
So rushed right now and not enough time to comment thoughtfully but am always pleasantly reading along in the background.
Posted by: Beth | 29 October 2017 at 08:01 AM
How did you decide upon a boiled egg instead of any other kind?
Posted by: Christy P. | 30 October 2017 at 08:51 AM
I’m not following you here, ChristyP...
Posted by: bearing | 30 October 2017 at 12:48 PM