20 Pounds To Go

A long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away, when I was sitting on top of 68 excess pounds and feeling lousy about myself, I didn't think I could change. I didn't believe there was anyway I would ever be able to lose weight. I'd tried every diet, plus faithful and religious cardiovascular exercise and strength training and got...nothing. While the muscles underneath my fat became quite shapely, the blobs of avoirdupois heaped atop those muscles wouldn't budge. Worse yet, the fat hid any attempt I made at rearranging my shape.

I don't know what happened except to say that I gave up. I stopped walking on my treadmill, stopped lifting weights, thinking, "If I'm going to be fat for the rest of my life, at least I won't have to be sore and worn out." And paradoxically, that's when I started losing weight. I also bought the BodyBugg used on The Biggest Loser and had great success with it for two months; then I developed a hideous burn underneath the sensor they told me was an allergic reaction to the metal, and said I couldn't ever wear it again.

I'd lost only eight pounds with Bodybugg when this happened, one pound a week for eight weeks. But during that eight weeks, something happened inside my head. I began to know instinctively what an 1800 calorie day should be, and what a 2300 calories burned day felt like. I knew when I hadn't been active enough, or when I'd overeaten by the way I felt. I just went with those feelings and here I am, 43 pounds lighter with no BodyBugg to guide me, and just 20 pounds to go to reach my goal weight. At the moment I am 165 pounds, less than I have weighed in almost 20 years.

I feel great, people keep giving me compliments about how I look, and all those muscles I developed lifting weights now actually show. I am wearing terrific, classic, timeless clothes from the back of my closet that I haven't been able to button or zip in more than 2 decades. And yes, I'll buy myself some new clothes...when I reach my goal weight.

So, even if you haven't been successful at losing weight, don't give up. I kept floundering around until I found something that worked for me. Even though I was only able to use the BodyBugg for eight weeks before developing a metal allergy, that was time enough to me to get the message, to take into my head and my heart what I needed to do to reach my goals. It wasn't about self-deprivation or giving up my favorite foods. It was about portion control, eating every 3 hours or so and starting to exercise again.

I was a size 18 when I started; I'm a size 12 now. Next stop: size 10!

Planet Fat Cat
Now moving in a smaller orbit

The Biggest Loser - (Hint: it's not me...)

When my dear little Piggie and I started this blog, we were both full of the fervor of the naive and deluded. We truly thought if we reduced the number of calories we took in each day, and added vigorous and sustained exercise, our bodies would follow the laws of science and slowly become smaller.

Hah! We were wrong. So much for what we thought.

My body has become smaller, but only by a miniscule amount. 4 days from now, I wrap up my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program without much to show on my body change-wise. I will have those 90 deceptively cheery little check-marks in my journal. Sorry, but that's cold comfort.

My inspiration, as I have said right from the beginning, was the contestants on The Biggest Loser. While I sweated and starved and lost 5 pounds, they sweated and starved and lost anywhere from 50 pounds to more than a hundred pounds in the same time frame. Okay, so I didn't have Jillian Michaels or Bob Harper beating my hump, but I did a decent job of beating my own hump, staying faithful to the program I had chosen. I just didn't understand the program I had chosen wasn't going to do me much good.

Hard to believe, but in 90 days of greatly increased physical activity and greatly reduced caloric intake, I have managed to shed exactly 5 pounds. Now 5 pounds is something, and I'll take it, but I was reading some ads for exercise programs last night, and one woman who started out a bit heavier than me at 215 pounds, claims she lost 41 pounds by doing nothing but this exercise for 90 days. She didn't even go on a diet and lost 21 inches and 41 pounds.

Needless to say, I ordered the DVD right away and will be reporting if it works or not. That's not such a self indulgence as it may seem. One thing I have proven to myself over the last three months is that I do have the will to stick to a program. I truly do want to change my life and remake my body; I just haven't found what works for me yet and that is frustrating. So I guess I made the wrong choice; I walked and dieted for 90 days and lost five pounds; this lady did an exercise tape for 90 days and didn't diet and lost 41 pounds. So she will go to her Christmas celebrations a new woman at 163 pounds and I will go to mine looking like the same old marshmallow in a dress.

Doesn't seem fair to me.

Anyway, on to the topic at hand...The Biggest Loser. Isabeau finally won a challenge, dragging the 73 pounds she had lost so far across the desert faster than anyone else on the team. When she dumped those pounds into a trench and raised her flag, she won $10,000. I was really happy for her. She has grown up a lot since the show began. At first, she was kind of a whiny baby, but with Jillian beating her regularly and forcing her to confront the issues that made her overeat, she finally accepted responsibility for her own health.


Tuesday's show can be summed up in two words: poetic justice. When Neil weighed in and it was revealed he had lost 10 pounds, my heart sank. I thought there was no way he was going to fall below the yellow line with that double digit weight loss. So it looked like he had made it to the finals, and from there, I think he would have been a shoo-in to win.

Then Holly weighed in and lost 5 pounds, a pretty good result for her, but still dicey. Then Bill weighed in with a loss of 9 pounds, and as a percentage of his body weight, that made him beat both Neil and Holly. Then Julie weighed in, and was told she had to lose at least 7 pounds to stay above the yellow line. I was sweating bullets because Julie usually only loses 2 to 4 pounds a week. I thought sure she would fall below the line, but she came through with a loss of 8 pounds, catapulting her to the top of the chart. Finally it was Isabeau's turn and she lost 8 pounds, too, pushing Neil and Holly below the yellow line.


The Black Team did it! Rejected and left alone in the desert, they came back with the guidance and leadership of their kick-ass trainer, Jillian Michaels, and totally eliminated both the Red and the Blue Teams, a first in Biggest Loser history. They stuck together and voted Neil out, which is where the poetic justice comes in. Neil finally paid for his cheating ways and no one could be happier about that than me. If he had ended up being this season's "Biggest Loser," I'm not sure I could ever bear to watch the show again. For once, justice triumphed!

Anyway, I have a dumb business meeting next Tuesday night so I am going to have to tape the program, but I am still anxiously awaiting two things...the arrival of my new exercise tape, and the outcome of The Biggest Loser. I will actually be happy no matter which one of the four Black Team members win, but my sentimental favorite is probably Isabeau.

Planet Fat Cat

The Biggest Loser: Hooray for Hollywood (aka: A Legend Goes Home)

It never ceases to amaze me what the makeup wizards in Tinseltown can do to an ordinary Jane or Joe with just a few pots of eyeshadow and blush. I mean, I have those items sitting on my vanity, too, but somehow, even after I slap them on, I still don't look ready for prime time. Yes, last night on The Biggest Loser, the remaining contestants were transformed into stars with nothing more than a little flick of cunningly applied powder. And the funny thing is...it worked.

Not that I claim to be any different, but as a group of human beings, this year's contestants are fairly average -looking. I don't say that to be mean but as a statement of fact. Most of us, myself included, are average-looking (still, I'll take that over being dog-butt ugly any day). But after these average people underwent their Hollywood transformations last night, they looked amazing...especially Isabeau, Nicole, Bryan and Bill. I mean, what do they put in their makeup out there in Hollywood...fairy dust?

No, wait. I forgot. It's star dust.

The makeovers were a special treat with a purpose; Prevention magazine was looking for a cover girl or guy for this month's issue. Bill looked like he could have just stepped off the cover of GQ and Isabeau's transformation was so startling I almost couldn't recognize her, but I think if I'd been doing the picking, I would have chosen Nicole. She looked completely different and so happy in her photos. But despite her success thus far, Nicole is still significantly overweight and looks it, so in the end, I was not surprised to see the editors chose Kae for their cover. At that point in the competition, she'd already lost 30 percent of her starting weight, and she looked the most "normal" among the contestants, many of whom still had a long way to go to reach a healthy weight.

They flashed a nanosecond shot of Kae's cover, which is on newsstands now, and I thought, "Wow! Aren't airbrushes great?" because she looked way smaller than what she was on the show. Turns out the picture wasn't shot then, but much later after Kae had lost a total of 88 pounds and gotten down to 137 pounds. So Prevention's offer to put a "fat" person on the cover of their magazine was a bit bogus I think.

The nice part was after the makeovers when one-by-one, the contestants checked themselves out in a three-way mirror. After they had ogled the stunning transformations for a while, the mirror opened and a significant other walked through, every one from spouses to brothers to best friends. The reunions were great and seeing the reactions of the S. O.'s to the contestants' progress was pretty cool, too,

Now on to the challenge. The contestants had to hoist themselves up on a pulley and a rope and physically hold their bodies above a line of yellow tape strung 3 feet off the ground. The winner got a $5,000 shopping spree from Prevention. It was a challenge that obviously favored lighter people. Nicole, Isabeau, Holly, Neil and surprisingly even Julie fell down pretty quickly, the first four because they had a lot of weight to keep up in the air. Julie's well under 200 pounds now so I was surprised how fast she fell down; I guess she just doesn't have much upper body strength.

That left Kae, Bill and Bryan holding on for dear life. Kae immediately hoisted herself all the way to the top of the rig, about 50 feet above the ground. Though he couldn't get himself quite as high, Bill did the same. Bryan never got himself very high up the rig but maintained where he was with sheer guts and intensity for quite a while. Finally, Bryan dropped down and slowly, slowly, Bill lost his grip, too and there was Kae, the smallest person in the competition, the heroine of the weekly weigh-ins, still hanging on doggedly way up in the air. It was nice to see her win the money.

When it came time for the weigh-in, most of the people I worry about, Bryan and Isabeau, people who have posted pretty low numbers regularly, stayed above the yellow line easily. When Nicole fell below the line, it wasn't shocking. She's been there before; she just doesn't seem to lose weight as easily as some of the other contestants. But when Kae fell below the line even though she posted her usual 3 to 4 pound weight loss, it shocked me. She's physically the strongest of the contestants, the most consistent and the biggest threat to win it all, so I knew instantly she was going home. Nicole is a threat to no one. Kae was the one to beat.

Her transformation at the live weigh-in was miraculous. Even though she only lost another 19 pounds after going home, that put Kae down to 137 pounds and she looked fabulous. Her trainer, Bob, grabbed her in a bear hug and wouldn't let go. I was afraid they were going to have to pry him off her with crow bars. I was afraid Kae's husband was going to have to call him out in a duel to the death for Kae's tiny little hand. He finally let go for a few nanoseconds so Kae could weigh in, then he grabbed her again. She probably has like three or four broken ribs this morning, but when Bob Harper's grabbing you, I guess it has to come under the heading of "hurt so good."

On a personal note, I finally quit staring with horror at the horrid pink balance ball, got it out of the box, blew it up and did the beginner's exercise routine. The good news is I didn't fall off and kill myself. The bad news is that I hurt in places where I didn't even know I had muscles. Actually, I guess that might be good news, too.

Anyway, I'll tell you all about The Big Pink Ball...tomorrow.

Planet Fat Cat

Losing the Same Pound...527 Times

I am feeling chipper this morning. Want to know why? Because today, my demon scale says I weigh 203.8 pounds. Sure, that just two-tenths of a pound less than yesterday, but it puts me down in the 203s again.

Which brings to mind this point: how many times am I going to have to lose this particular pound before it stays gone for good? How many months is it going to take me to break 200 pounds? I have this nightmare vision of hovering around 201 pounds for months, maybe even years, while my stubborn old body desperately contrives new ways to manufacture fat out of thin air.

The day I weigh 199 pounds should be joyful but it will not be, because I know no matter how hard I work to get there, my body will go into full fat panic mode and start churning out globules of fat in record fashion, just to hang on to my thunder thighs. Which means, the day after I hit 199 pounds, I will wake up and discover that I weigh 257 pounds. If thighs could smile, mine would be grinning like mad.

Today is day 30 of my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program, and I haven't missed a single check mark in my journal. I am very proud of this accomplishment, but seeing so few tangible results from my month of hard work is discouraging. I now understand why people who have a substantial amount of weight to lose, people like me, don't stay with our exercise programs. We don't see results, we bail out.

In my little pea-sized heart, I think a month is a long time to go without seeing visible results. I want to kiss my jiggly ass and flubbery thighs goodbye, but they are still there, menacing innocent knickknacks on my friends' furniture. (I specify my friends' houses because I have been forced to "butt-proof" my own house.) It makes me sad to look at myself in the rear view mirror and see the "Queen of all Butts" still leering evilly at me. Will I be dragging that thing around forever? Will it never bow to the dictates of physics and contain itself?

We have been conditioned by shows like The Biggest Loser to think that all we have to do is eat less and exercise more and the pounds will come flying off. In real life, that's just not so. 30 days ago I weighed 206.4 pounds and today, after a month of walking, a month with no Coca-Cola or ice cream or homemade Ghiardelli Chocolate Brownies or Chocolate Chip Cookies or crunchy, buttery cinnamon toast, I weigh 203.8 pounds, a loss of just 2.6 pounds.

Like I said, pretty discouraging results for a month of work. This is where most people would get off the bus. Heck, I've wanted to get off the bus for a couple of weeks now. But I'm not going to. If I accomplish one goal with this, it will be to stop requiring blood pressure medication. I don't want to have to take a pill every day for the rest of my life when my "condition" could easily be normalized with regular exercise and better fitness. And my blood pressure numbers don't lie or bounce around like my scale does. They have been coming down steadily and staying down.

Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion the medication is at least partially responsible for me suffering something called a vitreous tear in my left eye. The doctor told me it happens as you get older, particularly if you lift something heavy (I had been hefting some heavy boxes around) and...if your eyes are dry.

Duh, I've been taking a diuretic. Of course my eyes are dry. Everything on me is dry – my lips, my mouth, my throat. I drink water like I just completed a 7-day desert trek. I go through lip balm like it was Easter Candy or perhaps, considering the time of year, I should say, Halloween Candy.

So am I to believe that my poor eye just up and spontaneously ripped itself apart, sort of committed eye hari kiri?

Uh, I don't think so. But here's a multiple choice question I never thought I would have to answer:

a. Would you like to have a heart attack, stroke or kidney failure?

or:

b. Would you like to go blind from the medicine we're giving you to keep you from having a heart attack, stroke or kidney failure?

Gee, is America's pill-driven medical culture swell or what?

I choose Answer c. @#$%!!! you all!

Yes, I know that technically that answer wasn't actually on the quiz, but it was a trick quiz anyway, designed to drive frightened patients into an expensive lifetime of pill dependency when frequently, all they have to do is modify their behavior to save their own lives. And yes, crazy pill company lawyers...I realize there are some lifesaving drugs that absolutely cannot be replaced by simple dietary or lifestyle modifications...so tuck your lawsuits away inside your stuffed shirts and leave me alone.

I'm taking responsibility for my health into my own hands. I am slowly weaning myself off the blood pressure pills, taking one just every other day now, and my pressure is staying way down. Next week, I will start taking a pill every third day, and so on until I am off the things entirely.

The way I see it, a little 30-minute walk every day on my treadmill is a small price to pay to keep from having to pick either a. or b. – even if it does mean I have to keep losing the same lame pound over and over and over again.

The Genetic Lottery

I am not resigned to being a fat person, but I will say this: getting slimmer would be a lot easier if my body would cooperate with me and with science. When you eat LESS and exercise MORE, you are SUPPOSED to lose weight. It's scientific.

Unfortunately, for many older, overweight women, that just isn't how it works. (Note to self: Journal entry #488. Must talk to the Big Mysogynist in the Sky about why he hates women so much...)

On The Biggest Loser, the male contestants sweat and groan and cry like babies and lose 10 pounds a week. The female contestants sweat and groan and cry like babies and lose 1 pound, or do not lose any weight, or...drum roll please! Like yours truly, actually gain weight.

How is this fair?

It's not fair, my child.

Okay, Big Mysogynist in the Sky (hereafter known as b-mits). No one was talking to...


um, err...heh-heh-heh!

I didn't really mean that, not at all, just the old proverbial "slip of the tongue," so you can hold off on the lightning bolt, b-mits. You really can, unless you arrange it to burn just the fat off my ass and thighs.

I am just SO FRUSTRATED today. Yes, I am down .8 pounds from yesterday to a more moderate 204.0, but there were days last week when I weighed 202.0 pounds, so how and why am I back here at 204?

I'll tell you why. It's the genetic lottery. Even though I am descended from aristocracy (no kidding) it was Polish aristocracy and there has to be a field hand or two stuck in there somewhere, a little slap and tickle in the green Polish verge whilst Mamá was at prayers. Otherwise, how do explain my delicate, aristocratic turn of feature, the high cheekbones, the noble forehead creased with selfless thoughts, stacked on top of the Pillars of Hercules? How do you correlate the baby-fine blond hair with hands any NFL quarterback would be proud to own?

How do you?

You don't.

There is this woman at work. I will call her Madame X. She is not only the single most exquisitely beautiful creature I have ever laid eyes upon, she is also the nicest, the kindest, the sweetest. I want to hate her, but in good conscious, I cannot. The men all swoon around her. A friend of mine says she looks like she's carved out of cream cheese, just that luscious. I do not feel such thoughts when I see her; I feel envy.

She recently had her second baby, and three minutes later, she was back in her size one jeans. She is the same height as I am, but weighs almost a hundred pounds less. She is NOT anorexic, she is NOT scrawny or skinny, she is willowy. And why? Because she won the genetic lottery. She was standing at the front of the line for the best teeth, best eyes, best skin, best hair, best body...heck, even her toes, which are frequently on display and painted to match her outfit...even her toes are cute. And lest you be making some stereotypical assumption that all that beauty must come at a price and she is perforce, dumb, you would be wrong. She is also smart. She was also in the front of the brains line.

I know. It hardly seems fair. Couldn't I have been near the front for at least one of the lines?

Oh wait! I forgot. I was at the front of the lines for "Fat Ass" and "Thunder Thighs." I also think I was first in the "Knows the meaning of the word, 'irony' and can use it in a complete sentence" line.

Thanks, b-mits, but next time, can I please have big ta-tas, a vapid stare and a minuscule brain? Then I wouldn't have to work for a living.

Anyway, my dear little Piggie, who seems quite fussy this morning, was also at the front of several lines...looks, brains, personality. But he was so used to the world falling at his feet, at it so often does for attractive people, that he simply can't get used to the loss of adulation now that he's packing some extra pounds.

Have no fear, Pigassus. It is on, and together we will scale Mount Mashed Potato and plant the flag of skinny victory upon its summit.

Or roll down the hill inhaling as much mashed potato as we can before we crash into lardiferous heaps at the bottom, whichever comes first.

Fat Cat

Oh, It's On and Brought and Such

I think I smell a challenge.

Not the usual kind of challenge like when I try to mix bacon and spinach with tomato and lemon in a cheese soup base with sliced, grilled chicken. No. This is the bitter, disappointing scent of gym socks, tears, and carrots... the weight loss program smell. Fat Cat has, perhaps without realizing it, asked me to duel her to the DEATH in a Winner Loses All Fat Eviscerating Contest.

Okay, that's a bit dramatic. Perhaps, "Loser Wins a Something Fitness Sparing Jamboree."

Which explains the demise of my marketing career and calls into question my sense of smell.

Anywho, what better way to inspire someone than with a good old fashioned trial against a peer-like person? Even though it is commonly recognized that I am perfection and needn't lose any weight, isn't it time I showed my commitment to this site and my friend by going ahead and getting perfecter anyways? Doesn't my appetizer of humility demand a entrée of altruism with just a side of buttery graciousness?

The answer is a tasty YES.

So although friends, relatives, strangers and other ne'er-do-wells all agree that I might actually degrade my looks with a drastic weight loss, I am willing to try for Fat Cat's sake.

Therefore, let the Jamboree begin! We'll work out the rules and prizes and all that gritty, technical mumbo gumbo later.

Pigassus

Post Script 1: In a later post I'll include instructions so that anyone with the "stones" to do so can join in our Jamboree to the DEATH Fat Loss Evisceration or whatever we'll call it by then.

Post Script 2: This morning I weighed 211.5 pounds dry and by the "sc-eye-entific" method it was nearly 90% muscle. Beat that Harvard scale! The oven mitts are off!

The Dreaded Weigh-In

This morning was my fourth weekly weigh-in since I started my weight loss journey, and I can honestly say it's the first one I dreaded. As I approached the weigh day all the other weeks,I was full of joy. I had been sneaking my measurements and could see that they had gone down, and of course, my CDWIs (Constant Daily Weight-Ins) offered mostly good news, too. If my weight bumped up at all, it was only by a pound or so, and then it went right back down the next day or even lower.

But all this week my weight has been creeping higher and higher, no matter what I did. I actually upped my walks from 25 to 30 minutes this week, so I am exercising more, not less, and I increased the incline on my treadmill from 1% to 2% just to make my workout a little harder. The only thing I didn't do this week was my arm workout because I overdid it last week and pulled a muscle, so I took the week off to give it time to heal.

Yeah I know. It's damned hard to hurt yourself with three pounds weights but I managed it.

I stuck closely to my nutritional plan - no sodas, no ice cream, no cinnamon toast - just healthy food in reasonable portions consumed before 8 at night except for that one meal out on Wednesday, the night of the by now legendary Chocolate Eruption. But that one lapse was last Wednesday and the weigh-in was today, so I should have been alright, right?

Wrong.

Every day last week, the scales crept up and up. I was pulling my hair out (like I really need to add baldness to fatness). What was I doing wrong? I was exercising, I was eating right, but my stubborn body was hanging on to every fat cell like it was a pearl beyond price. The Keebler Elves of Fat were working overtime inside my Pillars of Hercules to make sure my thighs stayed properly plumped.

Now I am NOT starving myself. First of all, I like food too much to do that; secondly, as a medical reporter I know not eating enough sends your body, particularly the female body into panic fat storage mode. But despite my care to eat normal meals at normal times, my body has gone into panic fat storage mode anyway. In fact, my body is currently in panic fat manufacturing mode. If I listened closely enough (and understood thigh) I swear I could almost hear my thighs whispering to each other in their guttural, prehistoric tongue: Ugh, woman eat last of woolly mastodon this morning. Must conserve fat. Must make fat. Must make more fat. Ugh.

So anyway, here's the tragic truth of the weigh-in:

I know. MY EYES! MY EYES! That's what I said, too. But since I pledged from the beginning that I was going to be honest on this blog, that's the numbers, horrifying though they are.

Hear that, oh hott one?

I GAINED almost a pound and a half, apparently from breathing in too much air; either that or my scale's been smoking crack cocaine. I GAINED .2% in my body fat, going from 40.4% fat to 40.6%, and this after 4 weeks of walking 6 days a week. According to my fancy, Harvard-educated scale, all that exercise caused my muscle mass to fall from 28.8% of my body to 28.7%. What? How can I even stand up? It's a wonder I have enough muscle power to press the keys on this computer.

HOW CAN I STILL BE SO FAT AFTER FOUR WEEKS OF EXERCISE AND MODERATE EATING? HOW CAN I HAVE ONLY LOST BARELY A POUND IN A MONTH OF HARD WORK AND DEDICATION? WHERE IS KIM LYONS WHEN I NEED HER?

I walk on a treadmill so I know exactly how fast I am going, 3 miles per hour, so it's not like I am crawling like a slug upon the ground. But no matter. I still GAINED a half inch in each thigh this week, the same half inch it took me three weeks to lose. But before you kindly try to tell me that maybe it's muscle, let me just say...muscle doesn't jiggle.

All this goes against common sense, logic, fairness, all that's holy, and I think maybe even Robert's Rules of Order. I was robbed, I was cheated, I was kicked around by the Universe and spat upon.

But, and but...look at my blood pressure and resting heart rate. When I started, even with medication my blood pressure was 140 over 94, not terrifying like it was back in March, 217 over 107 when I took myself to the emergency room, but not great either. Now look at it: 128 over 78 (she says proudly...). And my resting heart rate has gone from 77 beats per minute down to 65. Maybe that doesn't mean much to you but to me it means I am getting more fit, even if my damned scale refuses to believe it.

My first reaction to all the bad news this morning was to go on a binge, even though I am not a binge person. I wanted to fry up a pound of bacon and roll around in it. I wanted to slather butter on a whole loaf of bread, coat each slice with sugar, then coat the sugar with cinnamon, and stick it under the broiler until the butter bubbled up through the sugar and made a luscious crunchy crust on top of each slice. I wanted to drizzle chocolate sauce all over my hands and lick it off. I wanted to suck whipped cream straight from the Lucky Whip nozzle. Why the hell not? Apparently it didn't make any difference to my body what I ate or didn't eat; it was going to stay fat even if it had to manufacture the stuff out of thin air. So why not enjoy myself?

Here's why. Because if I let this set-back defeat me, a year from now I will still be a fat person. And I don't want to be a fat person any more. So I didn't eat all that food I fancied; I just enjoyed my carefully measured one cup of raisin bran with one small sliced banana. I did allow myself the satisfaction of going into the bathroom and staring at my scale with evil intent. I resisted the urge to pick it up and smash it against the bathroom wall. I mean, I just painted. No sense ruining a perfectly good paint job in a fit of pique.

So, Round 4 goes to the scale. But I will win the match.

I will.

Fat Cat

When To Seek Help

For many of the large-ish people out there, there comes a point when they ask themselves an important question: "One dozen glazed or two?" But of course they choose two, and then they ask themselves an even more critical follow-up question: "Holy crap, do I have a problem with my weight?" Since they are carrying a few pounds of sugar-coated, deep-fried pastries and it's breakfast, the short answer is "duh".

But the odd thing is many people never get to the "duh". Like a truffle pig searching the forest floor, the clueless doughnut addict from the above example keeps nosing around from shrub to shrub looking for tasty fungus to clamp their surprisingly articulate lips around.

No, back up, that's both insensitive and not really what I meant.

What I actually mean is that most people keep endlessly searching for signs that they have a problem with their health and the behaviors that cause their weight gain. Though they are given ample clues, they dismiss the obvious and keep waiting for the one conclusive piece of evidence that will indelibly stamp a mark on their forehead that says, "Overweight Person! Seek Help!"

In the meantime, they not only endanger their health, but also the welfare of anyone they collide with on the street.

So in an effort to give people in need a sure-fire sign that they absolutely, definitely, positively should start looking for help and support for their weight problem, we here at Fat-Chat have designed an incredibly unscientific and possibly offensive test.

Please retain your answers for the analysis at the end.

1. In previous posts a dessert was mentioned by the name of "Chocolate Eruption". When you read the name, did you snicker to yourself because it sounded vaguely like a bodily function, a body part, or (depending on your level of adventure) an act between two consenting adults? Or did you think about a Snickers bar?

2.

3. (For men) Does the part of your belly under the navel sag low enough to cover from sight or, Heaven forbid, actually cover any important parts that were referenced in question one?

4. (For women) Is it difficult for people to determine exactly where your knees, calves, and ankles begin or end?

5. Do you look at a restaurant menu like other people view "adult" magazines and consider the phrase "dinner is served" naughty talk?


Scoring:

1. If you answered, "Yes, eruption is a funny word, man!" then you are a a teenage boy and you have very little problem with your weight and everyone else reading this hates you and hopes you get really fat when you get older. If your mouth watered a little when you saw the word Snickers, mark one point.

2. A trick question. If you saw the blank spot and just wondered if I was incompetent or lazy, then you are mean and judgemental. If you saw the second line and made a bet with yourself that I had gone to have a snack and forgot to write something and now you are trying to figure out what's still edible in your refrigerator so you can get a snack, mark one point. Mark a second point if you did in fact pull out three-day old mac-and-cheese and go to town.

3. Mark a point if, in reference to the question, the phrase "little snake coming out of the cave" makes any sense. Actually, mark two points.

4. If you looked confused for a second but then while looking down at your lower leg, nodded, mark a point. Mark two points if you had trouble seeing your lower leg.

5. Yes, food is an aphrodisiac? Mark a point and remind me not to invite you to dinner.


Analysis:

Okay, the obvious thing is that I probably think more than I should about food and carnal "relations". But since I am not the one with a problem, I will instead just offer this advice:

If you marked ANY points, SEEK HELP.

Now, for a change, I am serious (though not in any professional way). Think about asking someone to help you if you are struggling with your health and weight. Just telling someone you intend to lose weight or get in shape will make it ten times more likely that you will try. Disappointing yourself is easy; being a let-down to someone else is hard. I don't mean that you need to go to a private dietitian or physical therapist (unless you think you should), but maybe try getting someone else involved with your weight loss. Join a group, tell your kids to remind you to go for a jog, find someone to have regular erotic aerobic adventures with... anything that will get an external force to help support and encourage you in your difficult endeavor. ANYBODY.

Even someone hott like me.

As long as you bring the doughnuts.

Pigassus

Frustration

Tomorrow is weigh-in day and already I'm dreading it. Until now, I could look at my daily weight loss journal entries and even in the spiraling ups and downs of my weight, still see a gradual pattern of weight loss emerging. But this week, the sprials have all been up and what I see emerging, even though I am only four weeks into this thing and have really only lost three pounds or so...is a dreaded "plateau."

Now a plateau, at least in the world of dieters, is when your body basically says, "F@#$!!@!! you!" I've dropped all the pounds I care to drop. You want to lose any more? Get lipo! Get a lap band! Leave me alone. I prefer the ass just like it is now, got it?"

Yes, I know. It's appalling that my body would speak to me in such a manner. I myself was raised by a true Southern belle who had exquisite manners (Thank you, mama...). But since I am the only one who "raised" my body (grew it all by myself, with a little help from Blue Bell and Coca-Cola) it's not quite as well-mannered as I, or at least, as I pretend to be when people are looking.

Translated into plain English, this means my body has gotten used to the amount of exercise I am doing and the type and amount of food I am eating and in order to lose more, I am going to have to do more and eat less.

I HATE THIS! IT'S NOT FAIR!!!

I must take a few paragraphs to whine. Don't you think giving up guzzling Coca-Cola should count for something? By my estimate I got rid of 897 calories a day just by switching to water (3 12-ounce cans a day x 155 calories = 465 calories + one 32-ounce gut buster from any convenient drive-in a day at 432 calories = 897 empty liquid but simply divine calories a day.) Multiply that times the 28 days I have been on this program and it equals 25,116 calories. Divide that by 3,500, the number of calories you have to either burn or give up to lose one pound, and that equals 7.176 pounds. So, survey says, I should have lost 7.176 pounds from this sacrifice alone by now, but my body is saying, "Oh, hell no!"

That's not even taking into account the ice cream and chocolate I have given up, or the hot, buttery, crunchy cinnamon toast that I make so well but won't let myself make any more because I am trying to become healthy.

That's also not taking into account the fact that over the last month, by sheer dint of will, I have transformed myself from:

• a human sloth who got up and moved away from my computers (yes, there's more than one) only to eat, go to work and attend to the call of nature

into:

• a fantastic human exercise machine

Um, err, well...

into:

• a human sloth who grudgingly gets up on the treadmill every day so I can make an honest check mark in my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program journal.

So with all the calories I've burned walking this past month and all the calories I haven't taken in by giving up many of my favorite indulgences and NOT replacing them with any other indulgence, I think I should have lost 10 pounds or so by now. But once again, my body is saying, "Oh, hell no! We likes it fat! We likes it blubbery!" (I have no idea why my body is talking like Golem, but it's kind of creepy and scary...)

So this week, despite my faithfulness to the program and sticking mostly to my diet (what's one Chocolate Eruption amongst friends?) despite that...it looks like I am going to have a weight gain this week, not a weight loss, and it also looks like I am not losing any additional inches this week.

In the past, my old self would have said, "Screw this! I'm not flogging myself and depriving myself for no reason. If my body wants to stay fat, let it stay fat! I'm not working this hard for nothing. If it's a choice between lounging on my double-wide, snorkeling in Coca-Cola and weighing 204 pounds or busting my hump on the treadmill, counting every calorie and still weighing 204 pounds, then bring on the Coca-Cola! Bring it on!"

But my new self is watching the one number that does keep going down...my blood pressure. And my new self is focusing on the true reason I am on this program, which is to get fit and healthy. And fit and healthy does not always mean skinny. Apparently, at least in my case, it will NEVER mean skinny. But if I keep going as I am, I will be able to wean myself off my blood pressure medication and keep my pressure under control simply through regular cardiovascular exercise and healthy eating. Notice I didn't saying dieting, because I am not on a diet, I am on a journey.

Actually, I am on a mission. And you know what they say, there is no one more fervent than a recent convert. I am a recent convert who doesn't want to become a recent martyr.

And so...I walk.

Fat Cat

Fat Armpits Are a Bad Sign

I am a medical reporter. I've spent the last couple of decades reporting on a variety of health problems for newspapers, then magazines and finally for TV. Now I freelance, dividing my time between TV news and magazines. I am usually quite private about who I am and what I do, but I share this here because I have finally realized there's an important disconnect in my life: I write about health and wellness; I know what I should do to maintain my own health, and yet...I never do it.

You can get away with that for a while, but not forever. But I thought I was somehow immune from the consequences of my own bad choices...a sedentary lifestyle, sitting in front of my computer for hours and hours every day, guzzling Coca-Cola like it was mother's milk. I told myself because I ate an organic diet and did not generally overeat, and stayed away from trans-fats and most junk food, I was fine. Never mind that I had to keep buying larger and larger clothes and finally topped out at a size 18. Never mind the facts. I was slim. I could look in the mirror and see that. My face was still the same, no double chins or waddles, and if my face was still slim, so was the rest of me, right?

But then one day I was walking by a low table and a small box jumped off the table. I spun around, puzzled. I was the only one in the house. Who had pushed that box down?

The question should have been: "What" had pushed the box down? It was my thigh, my thunder thigh that I believed was taut and sleek, not wobbly and flobbily. (Yes, I know "flobbily" isn't a real word, but don't you think it should be?) It was the part most adjacent to what had slowly become over the years, my old double-wide. What? I was still a size 10, wasn't I? I ran to the full length mirror in the hall and looked at myself. Thank God! There, shimmering through the heavy mists of my body dysmorphia, was my sylph-like Size 10 self. There she was. Never mind that the actual me was twice that size. In my mind's eye, I was still a slender and alluring girl. But then, what had happened to that little jumping box?

Then, another day, a night actually, I ended up in the hospital in a full-blown hypertensive crisis. My EKG looked so bad they told me they were going to have to do heart surgery. I was shaken down to my bones, but then I remembered what I knew about myself: I come from a family that has NO history of heart disease; I eat a moderate fat diet, I eat primarily healthy fats and no transfats, so the diagnosis made no sense. But there was that EKG showing possibly blocked coronary arteries. I simply couldn't make myself believe that was true. Wouldn't I have had some symptoms?

They did a fancy, expensive test and, thank God! My arteries were clear and healthy. The apparent blockages shown on the EKG were the result of arterial spasms caused by raging high blood pressure.

Staring at your own mortality should have an instant sobering effect. Yet, that scare happened way back in March and here we are in October, and only now am I acting upon my trauma in a positive way. I got the blood pressure under control with medication, but the doctor told me I could go off the pills if I lost weight and exercised. I didn't quite yawn in his face but I was tempted. So sheer terror didn't do it for me. Do you want to know what did? Peeling away the layers of self-delusion and looking at myself in a cold, analytical and clear-eyed way.

I decided to do some scientific investigation. I picked up a small hand mirror and turned with my back facing the full length mirror and looked. Oh, my God! Whose ass was that? It obviously wasn't mine. Whoever had that ass couldn't walk; they could only waddle. Had I been waddling for years with no awareness that my butt rolled up and down with each step, like waves breaking on the shore? That grown men who smiled as my Size 10 self approached cringed in terror or collapsed in hysterics after my Size 18 ass passed by?

Still in a scientific frame of mind, I stripped down and faced myself in my huge bathroom mirror. I lifted my arms like Venus rising from the sea, a sea of lard, that is. And I, Venus, am a little out of breath. After all, raising your arms is hard work.

I stared at the nightmare vision in the mirror. Oh, my God, again. My armpits were fat. That can't be a good sign. My naked upper arms, usually hidden under long, flowing sleeves, looked like Virginia Hams, only not as appetizing. (See, I am always thinking about food.)

I'm sorry, but I have to go back to that arm pit thing. I didn't even know you could get fat arm pits, but there they were, right where my arms joined my body...two distinct rolls of fat. No wonder I had so much trouble putting on deodorant. No wonder I used so much deodorant.

I pulled myself up onto a small step stool, amazed that what used to be so easy was now so difficult. I was an athlete all through school. I was fast, I was strong, I was graceful. And now I was having trouble pulling my 206.4 pounds up onto an 8-inch high footstool?

I finally got up there and regarded my self, or rather, the waist-down part of myself usually unseen in the bathroom mirror, and disguised by self-delusion in the dimly lit full-length hall mirror. My thighs looked like the Pillars of Hercules and my hips looked like two marshmallows that had gotten a little too close to the fire and sort of halfway melted. Formless blobs of pasty white flesh arranged in a not-so-fetching pattern. That was me, the real me, not the slender Size 10 me I had managed to delude myself into seeing all these years.

So, two weeks ago, I started a walking program, using a book called The 90-Day Fitness Walking Program. Notice the word "diet" is not in the title. I have an allergy to the word, "diet." I break out in hives whenever I hear it.

I laughed when I dug the book out. It was copyrighted in 1995 and the pages bore the evidence of many futile starts and stops where I journaled hopeful notes when starting the program, only to peter out two days later, having garnered so much satisfaction by talking to all my friends about what I was going to do that I felt no need to continue the actual program. But this time was going to be different. This time I wasn't going to brag to my friends that I was on a diet and exercising. (I'm going to brag to strangers, instead.) I wasn't going to promise myself I would lose 500 pounds in 10 days. In fact, I honestly wasn't all that interested in weight loss; I was interested in strength gain. I didn't want to be weak anymore. I didn't want to slide down into old age getting gradually sicker and weaker, with first this part failing and then that, all because I never took care of myself.

So I didn't tell myself I was going to "try" to do better. I told myself I was going to do better. I was going to start slowly and simply with two things–things I knew I could do: give up all soft drinks and follow the 90-day program for 90 days.

I have been on the program for 2 weeks now and my results are not impressive, but I am not discouraged because, for the first time in my life, I am finally doing a fitness program for the right reasons. I have lost just 1.8 pounds, (down to 204.6) but I have also lost 4 inches, including a full inch from my hips. I haven't missed a day. Each morning I rise and walk on my treadmill, and then record what I did in the journal provided in the book. That has become a high point in my day, a point of pride, written proof that I am finally taking care of myself and my body.

Big results? Not really. But a sea change inside my own head. It may take me a year; it may take two years, but one day, I will not only be a normal weight again, I will be a strong and healthy woman again. And maybe even (heads up, gentlemen readers)...alluring.

A friend who is also battling weight and health problems will be joining me here. We invite you to come along for the ride, literally and figuratively. Maybe we can help each other see and love ourselves as we really are, and most important, love ourselves enough to actually take good care of our bodies.