Pigassus? Calling Pigassus!

Yes, I am rubbing your nose in it, but only to get you fired up. I've already lost five of the 10 pounds I gained. Nanner, nanner, whatever in the !#!$?#!! that means.

I wish I could say I have been saintly and stopped drinking Coca-Cola, but then I would be lying. I never lie on purpose; only accidentally, to make things more wonderful or more terrible than they really are, but you already know this about me. Anyway, come on, Pigassus! Get back on the bandwagon, but do it carefully. I wouldn't want it tilting precipitously over to your side, you know.

Snigger.

Planet Fat Cat
Now back in orbit

I'm Back, Too...Kinda Sorta

My favorite commenter read the post of Pigassus...(hmm, The Post of Pigassus...that sounds like a book title) and wrote to inquire about my current weight. Until two months ago, I had been maintaining right at 162 pounds and a size 12, then I injured my shoulder. I didn't realize how much the injury had impacted my activity level until I stepped on a scale this week and saw that it read 172 pounds.

No panic. I am still a size 12 and 10 pounds is not an insurmountable obstacle. I started watching what I was eating a bit more closely, stepped up my activity level a bit, and I am already down to 171, so I will do the work and get it done. Who knows? This time around I may even get below 160. That was one goal I never did reach. I was pretty happy once I was able to zip up a size 12 pair of jeans with no struggles, and I found myself content with where I was.

Not any more. I can't let this 10 pound gain turn into a 20 or 30 pound gain, because then all my hard work to lose the weight to begin with would be for naught, so FatCat is back, too!

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

Okay, Now I'm Really Going to Kill Myself

Sometimes I do things that are just inexplicable. For example, if you were an overweight older woman, trying desperately (and unsuccessfully...) to lose weight, would you willingly torture yourself by watching The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show?

Probably not, right? So you're already much healthier mentally than I am. But everyone expects writers to be a little loopy anyway, and I sure would hate to disappoint my fans. So I watched it.

But see, I didn't set out to watch it. I dutifully watched this week's edition of The Biggest Loser and then cast about for something different to put on. If it sounds like I watch too much television at night, you're right, but I don't just watch television. I watch television and write, or pay bills or yack on the phone, or wash dishes or cook, or walk on my treadmill. So see? I'm a real multi-tasker.

Okay, the real truth is I don't watch TV so much as listen to it. After years raising my children in a house full of activity, and more years spent in newpaper and television newsrooms, the noisiest places on the planet, my quiet, quiet, empty house seems strange. So I turn on the TV to provide my accustomed level of background noise and forget I am alone.

Back to the topic at hand. All my male friends are always going on and on about Victoria's Secret models. I have a special pair of earplugs I keep just for when this happens. I can nod and look interested when in fact I am on the verge of slipping into a coma. So I never knew what the fuss was about until I turned on that TV. Did you know there existed anywhere in the human genome DNA for women with 14-foot-long legs? I didn't. Did you know there were women with skin that looked like molten honey? I didn't know that either.


Now, I've never really watched a fashion show except for the mini shows on Project Runway, so I wasn't prepared for the full blast of music, style and color the highly produced Victoria's Secret show provided. I've never seen women stomping down a catwalk like they did, keeping perfect rhythm with the music while wearing these wildly elaborate but still stunningly skimpy outfits that no woman I know would wear under any circumstances. I mean, I don't care how festive you're feeling; would you dress up like a Christmas tree complete with floor length cape covered with fake needles and nothing but a teeny bikini underneath?

Of course you would, if you looked like these girls. Once again I must make a note to talk to God about where I was standing in the pulchritude line. Yes, he gave me brains and a kind heart, two wonderful children and a wonderful family and friends, and that's a lot of blessings for anyone, so I feel bad complaining. But in the beauty department, um, I was not close to the front of the line for anything except maybe my eyes, and before childbirth ruined it, my navel.

But my body? Let's just say I am Sophia Loren struggling through the age of Twiggy. I am zoftig, with big, curvy hips, big thighs, and a relatively small waist...the classic hourglass. Nobody seems to like hourglass figures anymore, especially not after they go soft. I am most definitely NOT a Victoria's Secret model type. My legs are only 12-feet long, way too stubby for the runway. And my skin is a splotchy, pasty shade of blue-white, not molten honey.

Here's another funny thing about the fashion show. The camera kept cutting back over and over again to three celebs in the audience: Neil Patrick Harris, Ryan Seacrest and Joey Fatone. I kept asking myself, "Are these really the only three recognizable faces in the whole audience?" If so, and I'd been producing that show, I wouldn't have had my cameras cut to them at all. First of all, except for Ryan Seacrest, they're not exactly A list. Second, there seems to be this conceit in TV Land that all Americans breathlessly wait to see what their favorite stars do before making a move, but I think a conceit is all it is. I personally get tired of seeing the same names shoved into my face, as if what they thought was important to me and could actually influence how I live my life.

Anyway, back to the show again...there were some interesting outfits; well, actually they were more like costumes. But even though the costumes were skimpy and outrageous, they weren't cheesy or skanky, quite an accomplishment.

I watched for the full hour, my hands never once touching the keyboard of the computer on my lap. I didn't get up, I didn't talk on the phone, I just watched dumbly, the little green monster of envy growing in my heart. Why couldn't I look like that? If I looked like that, wouldn't I have a great boyfriend, or several great boyfriends?

Well, not necessarily, but probably. More than likely. Alright, yes. Who am I kidding? I'd have my pick of great boyfriends.

After seeing those models, I really had to struggle with my self esteem for days. Even in the bloom of my youth when I had a perfect figure, I never looked like those girls. They were all teeth and legs and massive heads of billowy hair they kept flipping over their shoulders. If I was a man, I imagine I would have had to take several cold showers during the show. But I'm a woman so I felt a different kind of cold...the cold, green fingers of envy that were squeezing tight around my little jealous heart.

So briefly, I thought, "What's the use?" Then I remembered I have a different mission in my life than tromping up and down some runway in 7 inch heals and acting like I was enjoying it. And sometime before I retire, I truly hope I figure out what that is.

At least I know what it isn't.

Planet Fat Cat

Figuring it Out

Any regular reader knows I have a habit of complaining about my nefarious, back-stabbing body that always contrives to lose weight during the week, only to gain it back and then some just in time for Monday weigh-in. This week was no exception; I made it through Thanksgiving weighing in at 201.8 pounds, only varying up or down by a few ounces every day last week.

Knowing my history of weight gain just prior to weigh-in, I doubled my walking time on Saturday and Sunday to one hour instead of 30 minutes...and was especially careful about what I ate. I was so happy to have made it through Thanksgiving without a weight gain that I felt pretty good about the upcoming weigh-in. No such luck. Despite eating very lightly on Sunday and walking almost 5 miles over the previous two days, when I weighed in yesterday morning, I had gained two full pounds. I wasn't bloated or swollen so it wasn't water weight; it was just pure stubbornness on the part of my body; it's undying refusal to cooperate at all with my weight loss and fitness program.

Then I started thinking about it scientifically. I looked over my weight loss and exercise logs and realized that every single week, I weigh the least on Tuesday. For the 70 days I've been on this program, Tuesday is consistently the day of my lowest weight.

So I did what any right-thinking dieter would so...I changed my weigh-in day.

Now, as for why I always seem to gain weight over the weekend...I think it's because my Saturday and Sunday schedule is so radically different from my weekday norm. Monday through Friday, I wake up, walk on my treadmill, eat breakfast and get to work, which means I walk to my computer and start writing. I also do phone interviews and run a bit of laundry, wash a few dishes, go outside and pull a few weeds, rake some leaves, anything to keep the creative juices flowing. Writing is not a linear process. I don't get writer's block, (thank goodness), but over the years I have figured out ways not to get bored as I write. Sometimes that means a quick phone call to a family member or friend; sometimes that means a walk to the mailbox to see if the check really is in the mail (freelance writers live for mail delivery); sometimes it means a run to the grocery or the post office, or another 20 minutes of walking or exercise to get the old brain jump-started again.

Now, contrast that interesting, self-directed schedule to what happens on the weekend with my part time job. First I pack a dinner, then get in my car around 12:30 pm, and proceed to battle traffic over 42 miles of hideous major city Interstates. I'm surrounded by insane , enraged or chemically impaired drivers, drivers on the road with no citizenship papers, no knowledge of or respect for the English language or the laws and customs of this country, no legal drivers' license (they buy theirs at flea markets for $50.00), no drivers' training, no concept what a blind spot is, drivers who have 8 unrestrained children and 4 dogs bouncing around the bed of their pick-ups.

I can feel my blood pressure racheting up over the hour to hour and a half of the drive. I am sitting totally immobile, strapped into a seat as I fight to get to my job alive and in one piece. Sometimes I see horrible things. On Sunday, the Interstate was totally shut down. I called to work and they told me there was a major accident...a pickup driving wildly and at high speed on rain slick roads, weaving in and out of lanes, hit a puddle, lost control and flipped over.

I jumped off onto the service road. It was like swimming through molasses in January, but at least I was moving. The Interstate had been turned into a parking lot, full of police cars, two fire engines, wreckers...a real mess.

What I didn't know and the people at work didn't know since the police were being tight-lipped, was that when the pickup flipped over, the two unrestrained children in the back were ejected over the wall of the overpass down to the pavement 25 feet below. First of all, who makes their children ride in the back of a truck during a rainstorm? Secondly, as we learned later, who puts their children in their truck and then gets behind the wheel dead drunk in the middle of the day? The answer is, the guy who was driving this truck.

As I saw later on the tape at work, he was sitting hand-cuffed in the back of a police cruiser. But his children? Let's just say it was the most awful thing I have ever seen. As I crept up to the intersection, I began to see pieces of truck scattered all over the service road, and then I saw the blood. There was blood everywhere, dripping down the walls of the overpass, down the curbs, puddled in sickening circles on the pavement. It was a scene from a nightmare, one that is forever burned into my brain, one I would never have chosen to see in my lifetime.

By the time I got to work, I am sure my blood pressure was through the roof. But unlike at home where I can check it instantly and take some medication, do some breathing exercises or hop on the treadmill to bring it down, I was locked into an eight hour shift at a highly stressful job, producing the same amount of deadline work that just two years ago, they had three employees to do. Now there's just one...me, because after all, the multi-billion dollar international conglomerate I work for needs to make even more money.

Mark my words: unbridled corporate and personal greed will be the downfall of this country.

While at work, I don't sit there knoshing all day or guzzling Coca-Cola. I drink water and eat the healthy dinner I packed and snack on an apple or pear or grapes.

When I get to work, I sit at my desk, close my eyes, do some deep breathing, try to recenter, refocus and calm myself, and plunge in. I sit unmoving for the next eight hours while news breaks all around me, the producer reorders the show and stories change. I write about murders, rapes, robberies, beatings, attacks on the homeless, and this past weekend, about a heartless 19-year-old mother and her Internet boyfriend who beat her 2-year-old daughter to death over a period of a few days, then stuffed her body into a tackle box in their storage shed just feet from their door, and then tossed the box into the Gulf of Mexico a few months later where a fisherman discovered her. Baby Grace. I couldn't sleep last night because of Baby Grace, and the terrifying, disheartening knowledge there are people like her mother and stepfather in this world.

There's hardly any time to eat at work, much less go to the bathroom. You're bombarded for eight hours with the worst of humanity, the violent, seamy bottom of the barrel dregs of awfulness. When it's all over at 10 pm, I am totally collapsed emotionally...a bleeding psychological wreck of a human being, my normal happy-go-lucky self completely turned inside out.

I still face the hour or more drive home, frequently in blinding rain (got to love these coastal climates) with a highway full of Saturday night drunks, thugs, gang members out to show how macho they are, rapists, robbers, and the odd, frightened older woman like me, just trying to get home.

Then on Sunday, a traditional day of rest, I get to do it all over again. It's no wonder I weigh so much on Monday morning. I've just been through two incredibly stressful days, driving through horrible traffic, (which I hate) and driving myself mercilessly to get my job done accurately and well before that red light goes on and we hit the air.

I need the entire week just to recover.

So, now that I have all that figured out, I have set some new goals. Within one year, I want to be well enough established as a free lance writer that I can give up my stressful weekend job. I am changing my weigh-in day to Tuesday, which may seem like a cheat to some, but to me, it seems a cheat to myself to weigh on Monday when my weight always spikes on that day.

Finally, despite my less than stellar results, despite the fact that my legs hurt all the time from the walking, despite not losing any more weight or inches even though I am faithfully sticking to my walking program and nutritional plan, I am going to keep walking and keep exercising and keep trying to lose weight. I am on Day 70 of my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program, and I am not about to give up now. I sometimes struggle to finish things but I will finish this program. I will get all 90 check marks in my journal.

And I will probably still weigh 206.4 pounds.

Bleh.

Planet Fat Cat