Dieting

I'm on a diet.

I don't like it.

Who does? I seriously cannot imagine a single human being enjoying depriving themselves of food.

I want to write about this topic a little bit. First of all, I am not a disgusting pig. I don't overeat or binge habitually. I am overweight right now. Here's why: when I am pregnant, I get a horribly ill sensation in my entire body - my head aches, my belly groans, I feel miserable, cramps, just the worst, really, I feel like I'm going to die - unless I eat something small, and then that takes the edge off of that feeling.

Second of all, I am not a tiny person. I wish that I were, but those are not the genes I was born with. There is a long history of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other fun stuff on all sides of my family. We are not skinny minis. It's just not part of the program.

Danny has totally different genes. The women in his family are tall and skinny. They didn't die for generation after generation from heart attacks and complications with diabetes. Danny doesn't have to exert any effort at being skinny; actually, the opposite is true. There's this family story that his mom likes to tell about how she had a box of candy bars for him to keep in his bedroom, in the hopes that he would get fatter. He would eat one every night, brush his teeth, go to bed, and stay exactly his 135 lb almost 6 foot self.

That is a foreign country to me.

It would never have happened like that in my house growing up. There were so many "food" issues that when I made a list of the ideal person who I wanted to marry, after funny, smart, faithful, and kind, I put "I can eat around this person comfortably." Meaning, I don't have to feel like he's watching and judging every bite that I take. Danny has always been easy for me to eat around. Around Danny, food is just - well, food. It's not all tied into emotions and deeper meaning. There's nobody in his family who struggles with eating disorders - I guess, if they struggle with anything, it's coming at their body image from the other side of things. I'd so take vanity over negative body image, any day of the week, personally. But then, negative body image essentially ruined my childhood, threw my sister into a loooooooooong cycle of self-destruction/treatment facilities for her eating disorder, and it is a constant worry that I have about my diabetic dad. I know the negative side of things really intimately. It's a nightmare.

I became my size and shape around middle school. Basically, a normal weight for my 5'6" self is 143 lbs. I say 143 without rounding down or up because that is literally what the scale said for many, many years, from around the age of 15 until the time I had my first baby. It's on the high end for "ideal weight." Most of my weight is in my hips and chest. I would never have chosen it to be there, either. My weight didn't vary.

Until I started having children.

Then it varied. A lot.

Our first three children were so close together that there was basically no possibility of me losing the weight again. I think I only gained like 30 pounds with Jane, but then I got pregnant when she was only 9 months old. 30 pounds in 9 months is not really very easy, even if 15 of those pounds were baby, placenta, and increased blood. Basically, I am really bad with details, but over 3 years I crept up to a post-third-child weight of about 180 pounds?

I got down to 150 before Cora, my fourth child. Then I had her, and gained like 50 pounds with her. My mother in law was horrified because I was over 200 pounds.

After Cora, I lost all the weight, getting back to my pre-first-pregnancy weight and size. Sort of. I tried on my wedding dress. It fit, but differently. My belly is never going to be as flat as it was before. But my arms and legs are smaller and stronger, too. So that's weird.

Our fifth baby took me right back up to 210 pounds, which was really awful, but again, there was not much way to avoid it. I was tired all the time. I felt so physically ill if I didn't eat. After he was born, I didn't lose 20 pounds like I had with Cora, either, even though Joey was my biggest baby at 8.5 pounds. I was basically at 200 pounds, and that was no fun.

I also felt ravenously hungry while breastfeeding. It's not something you can really explain without experiencing. It's like - a constant thirst, a belly that is always wanting to be filled and never quite satisfied, no matter what.

As soon as I stopped breastfeeding, that hunger went away! I could tolerate feeling hungry without feeling physically ill. That meant it was time to start dieting. I was at 190 pounds, with a huge goal of losing something like 50. So daunting.

Again, I'm not a sick, disgusting person. I don't stuff my face. I eat healthy foods. It's just that, in order to lose weight, you need a calorie deficit. And it really needs be a calorie input deficit, not just an activity deficit. Being active, getting exercise - that's for my mental health, and long-term health. It's not really about the weight loss very much. I have to run in order to not tear my hair out from worry and anxiety.

So yeah. Dieting time. Yay. I am basically following the first phase of this diet because it seems reasonable, doesn't involve calorie counting (which I can't handle), and it was successful. In two weeks I had lost something like 10 pounds. After another two weeks, I passed over a huge plateau barrier to 179.8 pounds. Well, I haven't seen that number in over a year - a 7 in the ten's place. It felt great.

And simultaneously PATHETIC.

But that's not helping, the self-sabotage. I am where I am and that's how it has to be, even if it's not exactly what I'd like. It goes so slowly. It requires so much patience and diligence. Hating myself isn't helpful - it just makes me feel miserable.

Here is what my diet involves:
- write down a daily goal that you CAN accomplish each day
- avoid sugar except what's naturally found in fruit
- limit yourself to 3 total servings of meat and dairy per day
- only snack on fruits and vegetables
- don't look at electronic devices while eating (I am really bad at this)
- record what you eat (not necessarily amounts)
- work out for 30 minutes each day (like, running)
- be active for 60 minutes each day (like, not sitting)
- record your activity
- make the food on your plate fit these physical proportions 50% fruits/vegetables, 25% protein, 25% carbs
- eat fruits and vegetables every day (easy)
- eat at least two healthy fats per day
- eat whole, unprocessed foods every day

Basically, it's trying to do all of these goals every day. When I get to my goal weight, I will probably stop tracking them. But honestly, most of these things are pretty much just good ideas in general. I swear that sugar causes me to have heartburn. I don't understand why. Sugar is everywhere, by the way. It's a little frightening what a hold it has on my culture's diet.

The hardest parts for me are writing down what I eat. I guess there's some interesting studies that showed that this habit was really important for weight loss, across many different kinds of diets. I can handle writing down what I ate, just not down to the last calorie. I get obsessive and that leads to horrible mental anguish.

Meh, who are we kidding. It's all hard. I don't like it. But it's necessary, and I can stand this. I can't handle the thought of cooking separate meals for me and the rest of the family. I can't handle calorie counting at all (I've tried). There are limits to my patience. This is about at the ends of it, but it's within reason. Also, it's not too extreme.

Yay.