Going through my clothes and shoe wardrobe weeding out what has, by now, become way too big has left me in a strange twilight zone of indecision emotionally.
On the one hand, I have enough replacements in my current size to ensure that I would be properly clad even if I were to throw all of the "fat" stuff out.
On the other hand is the fear of regaining. What if I won´t be able to maintain? I have been in that place more than once, ending up having to replace my wardrobe twice in a short time after first losing, then regaining a sizeable amount of weight.
But then again, if I keep the fat clothes, that implies I don´t believe in my ability to keep the weight off, doesn´t it?
The plain truth is, I have no guarantee whatsoever that I will not regain.
When I was younger, I used to justify the keeping of oversized clothes after a weight loss with the possibility of becoming pregnant and then needing maternity wear.
But. to get real, for one that isn´t very likely any more at my age, and also, the time span when a pregnancy would require maternity wear at all is, from what I hear, no more than the last trimester.
So, that´s not an excuse for hanging on to the oversized stuff now.
The other part is the things I cannot replace. I have, for example, several practical blouses in a wash-and-wearable fabric that come in colors which I like, but which are not very likely to come back into fashion anytime soon. And yes, apart from their being too big for me, I regret having to let them go.
But then, keeping them on top of my closet in a box means feeding the thought of fitting in there again (eeek) into my subconscious. And what than can lead to, I have seen more than once.
I think the fastest way out of that dilemma is to decide and take all that stuff to the Red Cross (they have a used clothes collection place hereabouts similar to Goodwill). I may be hankering after some of the clothes for a while, but then again, it´s not as if I ever wanted to be fat enough again to wear them.
So, this weekend, I´ll enlist the help of DH for getting the stuff out of the house. There may be another woman out there who might enjoy those clothes as much as I did.
And I might feel a bit more secure in my achievement so far if I didn´t keep provisions around for the event of failure.
Julia
2011/03/31
2011/03/30
The dreaded shoe closet
No, my name isn´t Imelda. But shoes are the one thing that you can buy as a fat person which comes in exactly the same sizes a slim person wears. So, shopping for shoes was for a long time the one kind of clothes shopping that didn´t confront me with what my body had become.
Or so I thought.
Only now that I am shrinking back into my former sizes again I realize that shrinking back also applies to shoe sizes.
I put on shoes that have been favourites for many fat years, and I find my feet sliding around in way too much shoe for way too little foot to fill it. As most of my shoes can´t be laced any tighter, that means I need smaller shoes. Putting extra insoles in there only takes you so far.
That is good and bad news.
Good news because I got to buy myself new shoes. I am, by now, able again to wear a little heel and not have my feet hurt like whatnot halfway through the day. So, I have been splurging (taking advantage of end-of-season sales) on three pairs of ankle boots, with a moderate heel. I couldn´t wear these for years unless I wanted to be limping badly by noon. And I want to be able to change between pairs, to allow the shoes to breathe.
The bad news is that there were still several favourite pairs of flats in my shoe closet that are comfy and, unfortunately, well-worn.
So, I have been digging into that closet after work yesterday, pulling out everything that was inside including a bunch of freewheeling shoe trees (I´m notoriously bad about putting those back in, mostly just taking them out and dumping them into the closet).
The result? I discovered I had another four pairs of boots that fit me again, which I had stashed in the back of the closet because wearing them hurt at my top weight, and plain forgotten about.
I also had two pairs of flats I hadn´t worn any more because they had become too tight. Now they fit again.
I put the shoe trees back inside the shoes I kept, ending up with two right side ones left over. I haven´t been able to locate the two missing left ones yet....
And there are four pairs of well-worn shoes sitting besides the exit door, waiting for my decision whether to toss or keep them. The athletic shoe part of the closet is what I´ll do tonight.There ought to be several candidates for eviction there, too.
There are also several pairs of shoes that did turn out to be not so comfortable even when weighing less.
Now, I have more than one real dilemma.
Shall I have the heels on my preferred wine red flats redone or shall I tell them goodbye? They have latex soles, which makes them great to walk in but a b***h to have heeled.
And shall I toss these other four pairs of uncomfortable flats that are almost brand-new because I have rarely worn them?
Perhaps I should try to wear them for a day and then decide who goes and who stays.
Decisions, decisions.
I must remind myself that any shoe I do not wear any more is clutter. Even if the shoe closet were big enough to hold that shoe, too.
And that it is better to have only as many shoes as I can put in the front part of the closet, lined up so they´re visible. That way, I won´t forget about any of them again, and every one of them gets a fair chance at being worn, too.
Julia
Or so I thought.
Only now that I am shrinking back into my former sizes again I realize that shrinking back also applies to shoe sizes.
I put on shoes that have been favourites for many fat years, and I find my feet sliding around in way too much shoe for way too little foot to fill it. As most of my shoes can´t be laced any tighter, that means I need smaller shoes. Putting extra insoles in there only takes you so far.
That is good and bad news.
Good news because I got to buy myself new shoes. I am, by now, able again to wear a little heel and not have my feet hurt like whatnot halfway through the day. So, I have been splurging (taking advantage of end-of-season sales) on three pairs of ankle boots, with a moderate heel. I couldn´t wear these for years unless I wanted to be limping badly by noon. And I want to be able to change between pairs, to allow the shoes to breathe.
The bad news is that there were still several favourite pairs of flats in my shoe closet that are comfy and, unfortunately, well-worn.
So, I have been digging into that closet after work yesterday, pulling out everything that was inside including a bunch of freewheeling shoe trees (I´m notoriously bad about putting those back in, mostly just taking them out and dumping them into the closet).
The result? I discovered I had another four pairs of boots that fit me again, which I had stashed in the back of the closet because wearing them hurt at my top weight, and plain forgotten about.
I also had two pairs of flats I hadn´t worn any more because they had become too tight. Now they fit again.
I put the shoe trees back inside the shoes I kept, ending up with two right side ones left over. I haven´t been able to locate the two missing left ones yet....
And there are four pairs of well-worn shoes sitting besides the exit door, waiting for my decision whether to toss or keep them. The athletic shoe part of the closet is what I´ll do tonight.There ought to be several candidates for eviction there, too.
There are also several pairs of shoes that did turn out to be not so comfortable even when weighing less.
Now, I have more than one real dilemma.
Shall I have the heels on my preferred wine red flats redone or shall I tell them goodbye? They have latex soles, which makes them great to walk in but a b***h to have heeled.
And shall I toss these other four pairs of uncomfortable flats that are almost brand-new because I have rarely worn them?
Perhaps I should try to wear them for a day and then decide who goes and who stays.
Decisions, decisions.
I must remind myself that any shoe I do not wear any more is clutter. Even if the shoe closet were big enough to hold that shoe, too.
And that it is better to have only as many shoes as I can put in the front part of the closet, lined up so they´re visible. That way, I won´t forget about any of them again, and every one of them gets a fair chance at being worn, too.
Julia
2011/03/24
Spring fever
The crocus season is upon us, once more.
Even though the roofs still wear a thin powdering of frost every morning, it´s the sun shining through the shutters that wakes us up every morning, with a musical background of birds twittering. The buds on the trees are getting ready to burst open at any minute now.
And the heavy sweaters I´ve been wearing all winter are starting to become uncomfortably warm by noon.
So, it´s wardrobe rollover time again.
My closet isn´t big enough to hold all the summer and winter clothes at once, so anything out-of-season gets boxed up for the duration. When seasons change,so does the content of these boxes.
Twice a year, thus, I am forced to go through every garment I own.
That can be an astonishing experience, as in "what´s that?" or "I distinctly disremember buying this".
And it is a great chance to decide if what you pull from the box, or what you are about to put into it, really deserves to take up real estate in that closet.
For me, this spring will be a very special rollover time. When I started on my serious weight loss journey last August, the end of the warm season was approaching already, so, before I could shrink too far out of them, my warm-weather clothes went into storage.
As I had, for many years, preferred my summer clothes to be "airy" (read: loose and fluttering) , there are many things there that were actually oversized even for the bigger me.
That means that I will, this year, not only check for signs of wear and tear on the clothes as I take them out of the box, I will have to put on every single garment.
Then again, I probably won´t. Most of what went into these boxes last year may be too big at first sight. Which means I´ll end up, perhaps, with a lot more closet space than before. And the local equivalent to Goodwill with several bags full of plus-sized clothing.
It would be, to me, dangerous to keep the big stuff around. When I know I have a full wardrobe somewhere in the big sizes, there´s no reason to restrain myself because I wouldn´t fit into my clothes any more.
So, it´s the same thing as with my wedding ring.
I never again want the pounds to be able to sneak up on me almost unnoticed. If regaining causes really noticeable effects, such as not being able to wear my ring or having to buy bigger pants, I stand a better chance of avoiding it.
Maintaining is a lot about vigilance. As is further condensing myself, which I am still intending to do.
Weeding out the oversized contents of my wardrobe is also a great chance at deciding how many pieces of each I really need. Wearing a different size gives me a chance there that women who remain the same weight all their lives never get.
Most closet clutter does, after all, have something to do with buying more pieces of an item than you really need. Or, with keeping all the barely-worn shirts or blouses or whatever because they are still "theoretically wearable" even though you never would, because you have newer things that are not so out of fashion.
I have a real reason now to evict those offenders, too.
One that satisfies even the packrat in me who cringes at removing anything still in working condition.
I can, now, say "but not for me" and let go.
It feels great.
Julia
Even though the roofs still wear a thin powdering of frost every morning, it´s the sun shining through the shutters that wakes us up every morning, with a musical background of birds twittering. The buds on the trees are getting ready to burst open at any minute now.
And the heavy sweaters I´ve been wearing all winter are starting to become uncomfortably warm by noon.
So, it´s wardrobe rollover time again.
My closet isn´t big enough to hold all the summer and winter clothes at once, so anything out-of-season gets boxed up for the duration. When seasons change,so does the content of these boxes.
Twice a year, thus, I am forced to go through every garment I own.
That can be an astonishing experience, as in "what´s that?" or "I distinctly disremember buying this".
And it is a great chance to decide if what you pull from the box, or what you are about to put into it, really deserves to take up real estate in that closet.
For me, this spring will be a very special rollover time. When I started on my serious weight loss journey last August, the end of the warm season was approaching already, so, before I could shrink too far out of them, my warm-weather clothes went into storage.
As I had, for many years, preferred my summer clothes to be "airy" (read: loose and fluttering) , there are many things there that were actually oversized even for the bigger me.
That means that I will, this year, not only check for signs of wear and tear on the clothes as I take them out of the box, I will have to put on every single garment.
Then again, I probably won´t. Most of what went into these boxes last year may be too big at first sight. Which means I´ll end up, perhaps, with a lot more closet space than before. And the local equivalent to Goodwill with several bags full of plus-sized clothing.
It would be, to me, dangerous to keep the big stuff around. When I know I have a full wardrobe somewhere in the big sizes, there´s no reason to restrain myself because I wouldn´t fit into my clothes any more.
So, it´s the same thing as with my wedding ring.
I never again want the pounds to be able to sneak up on me almost unnoticed. If regaining causes really noticeable effects, such as not being able to wear my ring or having to buy bigger pants, I stand a better chance of avoiding it.
Maintaining is a lot about vigilance. As is further condensing myself, which I am still intending to do.
Weeding out the oversized contents of my wardrobe is also a great chance at deciding how many pieces of each I really need. Wearing a different size gives me a chance there that women who remain the same weight all their lives never get.
Most closet clutter does, after all, have something to do with buying more pieces of an item than you really need. Or, with keeping all the barely-worn shirts or blouses or whatever because they are still "theoretically wearable" even though you never would, because you have newer things that are not so out of fashion.
I have a real reason now to evict those offenders, too.
One that satisfies even the packrat in me who cringes at removing anything still in working condition.
I can, now, say "but not for me" and let go.
It feels great.
Julia
2011/03/23
Trusty garments
There´s one thing about losing weight that is not entirely positive, to say the least.
Having a favorite garment, one that you liked to wear, perhaps even practically lived in, become too loose to wear any more.
That´s what happened to me. I have, for several years, owned a very practical man´s leather vest I wore most of the time. It had several zippered pockets on the inside, and I could forgo dragging around a handbag when wearing it. Apart from that, having my wallet, phone and keys close to my body just makes me feel safer when using public transport, which I do often.
Unfortunately, I bought it at my top weight.
By now, it´s painfully obvious that it was made for a much bigger person.
I had already resigned myself to a sad farewell.
The insidious thing is that there even was that little voice that said "slow down your weight loss, you´ll be able to wear that vest even longer that way".
I believe that a lot of what makes weight loss is going on inside one´s head, and such thoughts can set up an unconscious blockage.
So, what was a girl to do?
Last week, I had a chance to visit the very outlet store my original vest came from. I didn´t have much hope of it happening, but they really still sold the same style of vest, and - they had one in my exact (present) size that is cut just like the old one, even in the same colour!
So, I have the "same" vest now I am used to having.
And the other one goes to DH (on whom it is also loose, but he´s taller than I am and wears it better).
I just love a story with a happy ending!
Julia
Having a favorite garment, one that you liked to wear, perhaps even practically lived in, become too loose to wear any more.
That´s what happened to me. I have, for several years, owned a very practical man´s leather vest I wore most of the time. It had several zippered pockets on the inside, and I could forgo dragging around a handbag when wearing it. Apart from that, having my wallet, phone and keys close to my body just makes me feel safer when using public transport, which I do often.
Unfortunately, I bought it at my top weight.
By now, it´s painfully obvious that it was made for a much bigger person.
I had already resigned myself to a sad farewell.
The insidious thing is that there even was that little voice that said "slow down your weight loss, you´ll be able to wear that vest even longer that way".
I believe that a lot of what makes weight loss is going on inside one´s head, and such thoughts can set up an unconscious blockage.
So, what was a girl to do?
Last week, I had a chance to visit the very outlet store my original vest came from. I didn´t have much hope of it happening, but they really still sold the same style of vest, and - they had one in my exact (present) size that is cut just like the old one, even in the same colour!
So, I have the "same" vest now I am used to having.
And the other one goes to DH (on whom it is also loose, but he´s taller than I am and wears it better).
I just love a story with a happy ending!
Julia
2011/03/22
Junk mail
It´s that time of the year again.
Almost every day, another catalogue featuring spring and summer wardrobe for "plus size" women hits my letter box.
On leafing through those catalogues, there are two things that immediately catch the eye.
One is the size of the models.
Here they are, trying to sell fashion to big women, and the models they present it on look like - well, models. Thin ones, tall ones.
I´m almost certain they make "standard-size" versions in something like the infamous size zero just for those pictures- no plus-size garment would fit any of these young ladies.
Of course, they look gorgeous.
The only thing one should not assume is that the clothes would look anything like that on a live plus-size female body.
Because that´s the second thing to catch the eye.
It seems that there are a lot of designers around who must really hate fat women.
What other explanation is there for them designing clothes that make even the models in the catalogues look, well, overweight. Or elderly. Nothing against old ladies, but these catalogues have stuff in them so drab that even a twentysomething looks like some senior citizen in them.
Most of the other stuff is of the "even a slim person shouldn´t wear this on pain of adding at least ten visual pounds"-variety. Horizontally striped shirts, sleeveless tops (let´s face it, there are just not that many overweight women with perfect upper arms), and, my pet peeve, those abominable 7/8 pants that visually bisect the legs at midcalf, making them appear even shorter than they probably are.
Did you ever notice that these of all pants (or trouser) styles are what is most often offered in plus sizes for summer?
Actually, the most-offered combination for summer in plus sizes is 7/8 pants with an extra large t-shirt and something like flipflops. The kicker is that almost every overweight person wearing that looks a lot heavier than they are. For most of us, that´s not the look we want.
This year, it´s even worse. The culprit this time? Those sausage-skin-like things called, depending on their color, leggings, jeggings, or whatever. These used to be made of opaque materials and were bad enough back then. Nowadays, they are made of the same stretchy stuff that is used for pantyhose. And this material stretches, especially over the biggest parts of the leg. So, anyone who would like to have smaller thighs will find exactly the offending portion of said limbs literally highlighted by skin shining through the fabric, unless they are fortunate enough to find a pair of leggings that matches their skintone exactly. Not so easy with so-called jeggings- they come in shades of blue, after all :). And that´s what sticks out from under the big t-shirts.
So, this year´s look is a real classic. Classic shlumpadinka, as Oprah likes to call it. Who, by the way, certainly even at her heaviest didn´t order from those catalogues.
And I won´t, either.
Even at my heaviest, I wanted clothes to fit the body I had, not clothes to make me look bigger than I was.
I have a a receptacle ready for that mail junk. It´s round and has "recycling" written on it. I just pity the poor trees that were cut down to make the paper they printed it on.
-rant over and out-
Julia
Almost every day, another catalogue featuring spring and summer wardrobe for "plus size" women hits my letter box.
On leafing through those catalogues, there are two things that immediately catch the eye.
One is the size of the models.
Here they are, trying to sell fashion to big women, and the models they present it on look like - well, models. Thin ones, tall ones.
I´m almost certain they make "standard-size" versions in something like the infamous size zero just for those pictures- no plus-size garment would fit any of these young ladies.
Of course, they look gorgeous.
The only thing one should not assume is that the clothes would look anything like that on a live plus-size female body.
Because that´s the second thing to catch the eye.
It seems that there are a lot of designers around who must really hate fat women.
What other explanation is there for them designing clothes that make even the models in the catalogues look, well, overweight. Or elderly. Nothing against old ladies, but these catalogues have stuff in them so drab that even a twentysomething looks like some senior citizen in them.
Most of the other stuff is of the "even a slim person shouldn´t wear this on pain of adding at least ten visual pounds"-variety. Horizontally striped shirts, sleeveless tops (let´s face it, there are just not that many overweight women with perfect upper arms), and, my pet peeve, those abominable 7/8 pants that visually bisect the legs at midcalf, making them appear even shorter than they probably are.
Did you ever notice that these of all pants (or trouser) styles are what is most often offered in plus sizes for summer?
Actually, the most-offered combination for summer in plus sizes is 7/8 pants with an extra large t-shirt and something like flipflops. The kicker is that almost every overweight person wearing that looks a lot heavier than they are. For most of us, that´s not the look we want.
This year, it´s even worse. The culprit this time? Those sausage-skin-like things called, depending on their color, leggings, jeggings, or whatever. These used to be made of opaque materials and were bad enough back then. Nowadays, they are made of the same stretchy stuff that is used for pantyhose. And this material stretches, especially over the biggest parts of the leg. So, anyone who would like to have smaller thighs will find exactly the offending portion of said limbs literally highlighted by skin shining through the fabric, unless they are fortunate enough to find a pair of leggings that matches their skintone exactly. Not so easy with so-called jeggings- they come in shades of blue, after all :). And that´s what sticks out from under the big t-shirts.
So, this year´s look is a real classic. Classic shlumpadinka, as Oprah likes to call it. Who, by the way, certainly even at her heaviest didn´t order from those catalogues.
And I won´t, either.
Even at my heaviest, I wanted clothes to fit the body I had, not clothes to make me look bigger than I was.
I have a a receptacle ready for that mail junk. It´s round and has "recycling" written on it. I just pity the poor trees that were cut down to make the paper they printed it on.
-rant over and out-
Julia
2011/03/21
Son of a gun!
I have reached a major milestone on my weight loss journey this week.
20 kilograms off my highest recorded weight.(That´s 44 pounds for the metrically challenged).
DH, when I told him about it, tried to think of something to compare that weight to. What he came up with was a memory from his time in the army: "That´s more than the weight of a machine gun", which, if memory serves him right, weighs some 16 kilos. He then proceeded to tell me about how difficult it had been to have to carry that thing all day during maneuvres (sp?). And I could only tell him that he´d been lucky- he could, after all, put the weight down at the end of a day, and not have it put down on his chest when laying down to sleep.
For me, as an "also housewife", the thing to compare 20 kilos to is two full buckets of water.Big ones.
And that´s what I had to drag around every day, from morning till night.
When buying a suitcase, or a laptop, I look for even a single kilo less to drag around.
It´s hard to realize that I have been, for a long time, less careful about my body than about my luggage. Actually, I had given up all hope of ever getting my body back into the shape it used to be, a long time ago.
And I know I´m not even halfway back there.
But this time, I believe I can do this. And that makes all the difference in the world.
Julia
20 kilograms off my highest recorded weight.(That´s 44 pounds for the metrically challenged).
DH, when I told him about it, tried to think of something to compare that weight to. What he came up with was a memory from his time in the army: "That´s more than the weight of a machine gun", which, if memory serves him right, weighs some 16 kilos. He then proceeded to tell me about how difficult it had been to have to carry that thing all day during maneuvres (sp?). And I could only tell him that he´d been lucky- he could, after all, put the weight down at the end of a day, and not have it put down on his chest when laying down to sleep.
For me, as an "also housewife", the thing to compare 20 kilos to is two full buckets of water.Big ones.
And that´s what I had to drag around every day, from morning till night.
When buying a suitcase, or a laptop, I look for even a single kilo less to drag around.
It´s hard to realize that I have been, for a long time, less careful about my body than about my luggage. Actually, I had given up all hope of ever getting my body back into the shape it used to be, a long time ago.
And I know I´m not even halfway back there.
But this time, I believe I can do this. And that makes all the difference in the world.
Julia
2011/03/18
No more slipping and no more sliding!
I just got back from the jewellers where I picked up my wedding band after having it resized.
It´s simply perfect. They even managed to keep the engraving inside intact, and it´s impossible to tell where they cut through it. And, it´s as shiny as on our wedding day again!
When I saw it lying on the jeweller´s table, my first reaction was, oh, it´s too small, that can´t fit me.It looked quite tiny compared to the size it used to have. But guess what- it fits exactly. I´m sitting here, keeping looking at my hand with the ring on it, probably with a big silly grin on my face.
Of course, I did make a commitment by having that ring altered. If I were to regain any substantial portion of the weight I have lost, the ring would very soon cease to fit me.
So, the ring as it is now symbolizes commitment in two ways. First, to my DH, of course. And, now, also to myself. I owe it to my husband and I owe it to myself not to let myself slide back to where I come from, ever.
Julia
It´s simply perfect. They even managed to keep the engraving inside intact, and it´s impossible to tell where they cut through it. And, it´s as shiny as on our wedding day again!
When I saw it lying on the jeweller´s table, my first reaction was, oh, it´s too small, that can´t fit me.It looked quite tiny compared to the size it used to have. But guess what- it fits exactly. I´m sitting here, keeping looking at my hand with the ring on it, probably with a big silly grin on my face.
Of course, I did make a commitment by having that ring altered. If I were to regain any substantial portion of the weight I have lost, the ring would very soon cease to fit me.
So, the ring as it is now symbolizes commitment in two ways. First, to my DH, of course. And, now, also to myself. I owe it to my husband and I owe it to myself not to let myself slide back to where I come from, ever.
Julia
2011/03/17
The freezer, my friend
The best investment I ever made in my kitchen?
It´s a large, upright freezer. I buy vegetables and fruit frozen and in bulk, and that way, I always have something nutritious and low in calories on hand.
Actually, using that freezer has helped me with portion control in more than one way.
First of all, I can take as much or as little as I want out of those bags of frozen produce, and leave the rest frozen.
BF (before freezer) I often took home fresh produce in packages or portions bigger than what I actually needed, simply because there wasn´t any other size.
This led to one of two possible outcomes: either I cooked all of it because, well, wasn´t it a pity to throw it away?, or I left part of what I bought to rot in the veggie drawer of my fridge because it spoiled faster than we could eat it.
If I cooked too much food, it was very likely eaten, too. After all, one doesn´t waste good food, does one?
(You can see I was brought up as a member of the clean-plate-club).
And this, of course, added unwanted pounds and cost unnecessary expenses.Both of which were vexing and led to buying vegetables more and more infrequently.
The big freezer changed all that.
I can take out exactly measured portions of produce, and leave the rest in to use at a later time. That also means I can, on a whim, take a handful of some veggie and drop it into what I am cooking. I do that quite often when using store-bought sauces or soups, which I sometimes have to resort to for convenience´s sake, being a full-time employee with somewhat irregular hours. The addidtional produce ups the nutritional value of our meals and lowers the caloric content. So, win-win.
And I don´t have to throw away leftovers that weren´t eaten fast enough any more, but instead I just re-freeze them immediately to use at a later date.
That means having self-cooked meals ready to eat at any time, and it means not having to stuff ourselves just because it would be a pity to throw away any part of a tasty meal.
And it saves lots of money, too. Paradoxically, the frozen produce, which is pre-prepared, peeled, whatever you do to the veggie in question, and therefore one hundred percent edible, is, because it doesn´t spoil so fast, cheaper by weight than the so-called fresh stuff where you have to pay for parts of the plant that get thrown away.
So, in the contest of kitchen appliances, the prize goes to the freezer alright. It´s, apart the cooking appliances themselves, the one thing in my kitchen that I would not want to miss.
Julia
It´s a large, upright freezer. I buy vegetables and fruit frozen and in bulk, and that way, I always have something nutritious and low in calories on hand.
Actually, using that freezer has helped me with portion control in more than one way.
First of all, I can take as much or as little as I want out of those bags of frozen produce, and leave the rest frozen.
BF (before freezer) I often took home fresh produce in packages or portions bigger than what I actually needed, simply because there wasn´t any other size.
This led to one of two possible outcomes: either I cooked all of it because, well, wasn´t it a pity to throw it away?, or I left part of what I bought to rot in the veggie drawer of my fridge because it spoiled faster than we could eat it.
If I cooked too much food, it was very likely eaten, too. After all, one doesn´t waste good food, does one?
(You can see I was brought up as a member of the clean-plate-club).
And this, of course, added unwanted pounds and cost unnecessary expenses.Both of which were vexing and led to buying vegetables more and more infrequently.
The big freezer changed all that.
I can take out exactly measured portions of produce, and leave the rest in to use at a later time. That also means I can, on a whim, take a handful of some veggie and drop it into what I am cooking. I do that quite often when using store-bought sauces or soups, which I sometimes have to resort to for convenience´s sake, being a full-time employee with somewhat irregular hours. The addidtional produce ups the nutritional value of our meals and lowers the caloric content. So, win-win.
And I don´t have to throw away leftovers that weren´t eaten fast enough any more, but instead I just re-freeze them immediately to use at a later date.
That means having self-cooked meals ready to eat at any time, and it means not having to stuff ourselves just because it would be a pity to throw away any part of a tasty meal.
And it saves lots of money, too. Paradoxically, the frozen produce, which is pre-prepared, peeled, whatever you do to the veggie in question, and therefore one hundred percent edible, is, because it doesn´t spoil so fast, cheaper by weight than the so-called fresh stuff where you have to pay for parts of the plant that get thrown away.
So, in the contest of kitchen appliances, the prize goes to the freezer alright. It´s, apart the cooking appliances themselves, the one thing in my kitchen that I would not want to miss.
Julia
2011/03/16
Hanging on by numbers
Two lousy pounds.
That´s the total of what I lost during the last four weeks.
And it almost gets lost under the day-to-day variations. Luckily, I have kept daily records of my weight, and they prove that my weight is, indeed, still edging downwards, even though it moves slowly.
I have mostly stuck to my eating plan, but stopped exercising, which explains a lot.
I usually go Nordic walking for half an hour before breakfast, but during the winter months stopped doing so because it was too dark (the route I take isn´t well-lit, so, there´s real danger there) and too cold.
Now that spring is approaching again, I´ll have to get started again- not so easy because it´s still quite cold in the mornings.
Meanwhile, I have to take the losses as they come.
Two pounds in four weeks would mean, at that going rate, 24 pounds in a year.
Doesn´t sound so lousy at all, does it?
It´s the same thing that makes us miss our weights rising when they do so in small increments. You keep telling yourself it´s just half a pound from week to week, and suddenly you wake up to the fact that you have some thirty or forty pounds extra on your bones that you weren´t *really* aware of gaining.
I had to travel by train several times in the last months, and, having to change trains several times during those trips, I did, of course, try to have as little baggage as possible. And, out of curiosity, I weighed my bags before the trip.
So, I had that big red bag sitting on my trusty scales. It felt really heavy. And then the number- and I was flabbergasted to see that it weighed *less* than the weight I had lost already.
I stood there with my mouth open, staring at that bag with the realization that I had been dragging along more than its weight every day, every step of the way.
It was a really educating experience, seeing that bag.
Oh, and I would get rid of more than that bag were I to go on losing two pounds a month for a year.
So, I will keep hanging on. Little things do add up.
Julia
That´s the total of what I lost during the last four weeks.
And it almost gets lost under the day-to-day variations. Luckily, I have kept daily records of my weight, and they prove that my weight is, indeed, still edging downwards, even though it moves slowly.
I have mostly stuck to my eating plan, but stopped exercising, which explains a lot.
I usually go Nordic walking for half an hour before breakfast, but during the winter months stopped doing so because it was too dark (the route I take isn´t well-lit, so, there´s real danger there) and too cold.
Now that spring is approaching again, I´ll have to get started again- not so easy because it´s still quite cold in the mornings.
Meanwhile, I have to take the losses as they come.
Two pounds in four weeks would mean, at that going rate, 24 pounds in a year.
Doesn´t sound so lousy at all, does it?
It´s the same thing that makes us miss our weights rising when they do so in small increments. You keep telling yourself it´s just half a pound from week to week, and suddenly you wake up to the fact that you have some thirty or forty pounds extra on your bones that you weren´t *really* aware of gaining.
I had to travel by train several times in the last months, and, having to change trains several times during those trips, I did, of course, try to have as little baggage as possible. And, out of curiosity, I weighed my bags before the trip.
So, I had that big red bag sitting on my trusty scales. It felt really heavy. And then the number- and I was flabbergasted to see that it weighed *less* than the weight I had lost already.
I stood there with my mouth open, staring at that bag with the realization that I had been dragging along more than its weight every day, every step of the way.
It was a really educating experience, seeing that bag.
Oh, and I would get rid of more than that bag were I to go on losing two pounds a month for a year.
So, I will keep hanging on. Little things do add up.
Julia
2011/03/15
Mirror mirror...
I did go on that shopping expedition for fitting clothes last weekend, as I had some gift cards which I noticed just in time were about to expire.
As I need to be dressed for business, mostly, I found some blazers (that were on sale, too), some blouses (same), and then I went on the search for pants.
I found a pair I thought might fit, and then...
...I went into the visual torture chamber, aka the dressing room. Equipped with full-length mirrors, set up so you can see your backside, too, and lit with a merciless fluorescent light that makes every imperfection look twice as bad.
To be in such a room is bad enough if you stand still. To try on pants, you have to take off the pants you came in, and then bend over to climb into the ones you´re trying on. So, you have to move.
I always try not to look at my uncovered legs, but this time, there was no looking past it.
I am getting loose skin. Not as bad as it might be (maybe the protein shakes helped there), but still, visible. And jiggly, worse than when I was at my fattest.
It would be so nice if my body had the same shape on reaching a certain weight on the way down as it had at that weight when going up.
But then, I have stretched that skin with fat for several years. No wonder it won´t bounce back.
So, back to the good old brush massage, hoping for the best.
Still, why can´t they put different lighting in those dressing rooms? Feeling lousy isn´t such a great selling argument,is it?
The one thing I may not do now is regain the weight so my skin is well-filled up again. The loose folds will or won´t go away, but they are the price I pay for success.
And, on the up side, the clothes I bought did come from a "normal size" store, so, I am back in the land of standard-sized fashion. So, while the sight of my legs was a downer alright, I can celebrate being able to shop outside the fat-girl stores again.
Julia
As I need to be dressed for business, mostly, I found some blazers (that were on sale, too), some blouses (same), and then I went on the search for pants.
I found a pair I thought might fit, and then...
...I went into the visual torture chamber, aka the dressing room. Equipped with full-length mirrors, set up so you can see your backside, too, and lit with a merciless fluorescent light that makes every imperfection look twice as bad.
To be in such a room is bad enough if you stand still. To try on pants, you have to take off the pants you came in, and then bend over to climb into the ones you´re trying on. So, you have to move.
I always try not to look at my uncovered legs, but this time, there was no looking past it.
I am getting loose skin. Not as bad as it might be (maybe the protein shakes helped there), but still, visible. And jiggly, worse than when I was at my fattest.
It would be so nice if my body had the same shape on reaching a certain weight on the way down as it had at that weight when going up.
But then, I have stretched that skin with fat for several years. No wonder it won´t bounce back.
So, back to the good old brush massage, hoping for the best.
Still, why can´t they put different lighting in those dressing rooms? Feeling lousy isn´t such a great selling argument,is it?
The one thing I may not do now is regain the weight so my skin is well-filled up again. The loose folds will or won´t go away, but they are the price I pay for success.
And, on the up side, the clothes I bought did come from a "normal size" store, so, I am back in the land of standard-sized fashion. So, while the sight of my legs was a downer alright, I can celebrate being able to shop outside the fat-girl stores again.
Julia
Ouch!
Cleanliness can be a real danger....
Clumsiness, too.
To support my weight loss effort, I have been replacing my lunch with a protein shake. I also keep a thermos pot of hot water at my desk so I don´t have to make the run to the tea kitchen too often.
For the shakes, I have, naturally, a shaker. Made of plastic, with a tight lid.
I use that, and rinse it afterwards before the last drops of protein shake dry on..
Today, I wanted to be especially cleanly and put some of the hot water from the thermos in there. I thought I would shake that a bit and pour it in the sink next door. But no sooner had I closed the lid, it exploded upwards and I had the whole load in my face...
Luckily, the water wasn´t quite boiling any more. Still, I look as if I had been in the sun for too long, and the right half of my face is burning and red. Putting some lotion I have in my desk on it has helped a bit, still, this is probably what they call a first-degree burn, anyway. No blistering yet, fortunately. I´ll be dropping by the pharmacy on my way home for a topical ointment for burns.
So, next time, cold water for rinsing out my shaker.
And I am glad the water didn´t hit my computer array. And that I wear glasses and didn´t get the hot water in my eyes.
Still, I am mad at myself for not thinking that putting hot water in there could be dangerous. Call me doofus...
Julia
Clumsiness, too.
To support my weight loss effort, I have been replacing my lunch with a protein shake. I also keep a thermos pot of hot water at my desk so I don´t have to make the run to the tea kitchen too often.
For the shakes, I have, naturally, a shaker. Made of plastic, with a tight lid.
I use that, and rinse it afterwards before the last drops of protein shake dry on..
Today, I wanted to be especially cleanly and put some of the hot water from the thermos in there. I thought I would shake that a bit and pour it in the sink next door. But no sooner had I closed the lid, it exploded upwards and I had the whole load in my face...
Luckily, the water wasn´t quite boiling any more. Still, I look as if I had been in the sun for too long, and the right half of my face is burning and red. Putting some lotion I have in my desk on it has helped a bit, still, this is probably what they call a first-degree burn, anyway. No blistering yet, fortunately. I´ll be dropping by the pharmacy on my way home for a topical ointment for burns.
So, next time, cold water for rinsing out my shaker.
And I am glad the water didn´t hit my computer array. And that I wear glasses and didn´t get the hot water in my eyes.
Still, I am mad at myself for not thinking that putting hot water in there could be dangerous. Call me doofus...
Julia
Slipping off my fingers...
Everybody who has ever gained a lot of weight knows about the dangers of elastic waistbands and sweatpants. You gain and gain, and the friendly elastic gives and gives, allowing you to ignore the damage for a very long time. Belts, too, usually have some extra notches you can use before you have to discard them.
The only thing that is truly merciless in showing a weight change is rings.
Of course, on the way "up", when I noticed that my rings were starting to cut into my fingers, I attributed that to water retention. After all, it was summer, wasn´t it, and my hands always swell up in summer. Or it was "that time".
And then the rings I used to wear suddenly didn´t fit at all any more, to the point where I had to use soapy water to pry them off my hands. One I even had to cut through with a pair of pliers before it cut off the circulation in my finger completely.
So, I stopped wearing rings, mostly. Only a few family heirlooms, from great-aunts who had had stronger bones than I have, still fit, and some rings that I wore on my middle fingers when I first bought them. Now they barely fit on the ring finger.
Buying a ring had become a major embarassment, so, I didn´t.
Then my now DH and I decided to get married.
And that meant getting wedding rings.
I had actually contemplated postponing the wedding until after I had lost that weight. Or, marrying without rings and getting these only after I had lost that weight.
After all, I was at my highest ever weight.
But my fiancé wanted nothing of that.
He insisted that our lifetime, our time together, was too precious to spend it waiting for something that might or might not happen. (Boy, was he right!) And he wanted a proper wedding, with me in a white dress, and , of course, rings.
I was lucky and found a white dress on clearance that fit me, and then we went to get our wedding rings.
While they were beautiful rings, mine was the widest ring I had ever owned.
Hearing the jeweller tell me what ring size I needed was a big embarassment, after all, I used to be so proud of my slim fingers when I was at school, and now I had to have a ring that was, size-wise, a man´s ring.
When my weight, finally, started to go down again, I soon had to put my ring on the middle finger to keep it from slipping off.
And that was where it mostly stayed for the next years.
It´s been half a year now that I have truly been meaning business with my weightloss, and I have watched that ring getting more and more loose along with my clothes. For some time already, I have been wearing a somewhat smaller in diameter ring as a stopper, to keep my wedding band where it was.
And now the stopper, too, has become loose.
I have decided to take the plunge and have my wedding band resized so that it fits my ring finger again.
That also means I am commiting myself to not regaining the weight I have lost. That ring is going to be so tight that it will not fit me any more if I regain more than a bit.
It´s a strange feeling not to have that ring on my hand- I am one of those people who *always* wear their wedding rings.
But, I am looking forward to the end of the week (when I´ll get it back from the jeweller´s) and seeing it where it belongs again.
Oh, and what if I continue to condense myself? well, I´ll put it on my middle finger again. So, this is not the end of my weightloss journey by any means.
to be continued....
Julia
The only thing that is truly merciless in showing a weight change is rings.
Of course, on the way "up", when I noticed that my rings were starting to cut into my fingers, I attributed that to water retention. After all, it was summer, wasn´t it, and my hands always swell up in summer. Or it was "that time".
And then the rings I used to wear suddenly didn´t fit at all any more, to the point where I had to use soapy water to pry them off my hands. One I even had to cut through with a pair of pliers before it cut off the circulation in my finger completely.
So, I stopped wearing rings, mostly. Only a few family heirlooms, from great-aunts who had had stronger bones than I have, still fit, and some rings that I wore on my middle fingers when I first bought them. Now they barely fit on the ring finger.
Buying a ring had become a major embarassment, so, I didn´t.
Then my now DH and I decided to get married.
And that meant getting wedding rings.
I had actually contemplated postponing the wedding until after I had lost that weight. Or, marrying without rings and getting these only after I had lost that weight.
After all, I was at my highest ever weight.
But my fiancé wanted nothing of that.
He insisted that our lifetime, our time together, was too precious to spend it waiting for something that might or might not happen. (Boy, was he right!) And he wanted a proper wedding, with me in a white dress, and , of course, rings.
I was lucky and found a white dress on clearance that fit me, and then we went to get our wedding rings.
While they were beautiful rings, mine was the widest ring I had ever owned.
Hearing the jeweller tell me what ring size I needed was a big embarassment, after all, I used to be so proud of my slim fingers when I was at school, and now I had to have a ring that was, size-wise, a man´s ring.
When my weight, finally, started to go down again, I soon had to put my ring on the middle finger to keep it from slipping off.
And that was where it mostly stayed for the next years.
It´s been half a year now that I have truly been meaning business with my weightloss, and I have watched that ring getting more and more loose along with my clothes. For some time already, I have been wearing a somewhat smaller in diameter ring as a stopper, to keep my wedding band where it was.
And now the stopper, too, has become loose.
I have decided to take the plunge and have my wedding band resized so that it fits my ring finger again.
That also means I am commiting myself to not regaining the weight I have lost. That ring is going to be so tight that it will not fit me any more if I regain more than a bit.
It´s a strange feeling not to have that ring on my hand- I am one of those people who *always* wear their wedding rings.
But, I am looking forward to the end of the week (when I´ll get it back from the jeweller´s) and seeing it where it belongs again.
Oh, and what if I continue to condense myself? well, I´ll put it on my middle finger again. So, this is not the end of my weightloss journey by any means.
to be continued....
Julia
2011/03/11
Why being pestered was good for me (kind of a love letter to DH)
First a clarification: I love my husband, no end.
But sometimes he can be a royal pain in the posterior.
Case in point: The weight I am trying to get rid of now I accumulated after moving in with him, over an extremely short period of time.
While there may be some people out there who got obese slowly, thus growing the muscles required to move the fat, along with the fat, I gained some forty-plus pounds over a period of three months.
All of it fat.
Suddenly, my muscles and bones had to carry the weight equivalent of two big full water buckets wherever I went.
Suddenly, even a few steps left me completely breathless.
Suddenly, even a short walk caused my feet to hurt like hell.
It would have been incredibly easy, at that point, to literally settle for an existence in oversized sweatpants and Birkenstock sandals, sitting on the sofa and spending my time surfing on the computer and eating. It would have been incredibly easy to just stop leaving the house, to just stop walking, to resign myself to watching life from the sidelines, instead of taking part in it.
Whenever I see pictures on the web of another poor soul unable to leave their house any more because of their weight, I know that this could, very easily, have been me. I know how close I was to the point of losing my mobility.
I had given up, almost.
My husband, who had been watching his wife turn from a companion on his excursions into an immobile, whining blob, kept pestering me.
He insisted we go out, and he coaxed me on to accompany him on his walks and excursions. We both love sightseeing in historical places, and he picked out places that did not allow driving there all the way by car.
So, I had to walk.
It hurt.
On several occasions, I just plunked down by the wayside and started to cry because my feet hurt so badly I literally couldn´t take another step.
After that, I got myself a pair of trekking sticks. And a pair of even bigger sneakers with cushioned insoles.
And I dragged myself on.
It was humiliating. Seeing old ladies passing me, walking faster than I was, without crutches, and realizing that I, without using some kind of crutch or other walking aid, wasn´t able to walk any more at all.
More than once, I wanted to give up.
There are plenty of pictures (did I mention Hubs is also the family paparazzo?) of me, clad in tentlike apparel, on crutches, and with an unhappy countenance, trying to make my way up some flight of stairs to a castle. I was so frustrated sometimes I ended up cussing at my dear husband, calling him names whereof "insensitive oaf" or "slavedriver" were the least.
But my husband, bless his soul, kept pestering me to go out and move, and when we were outside, he encouraged me, cheering me on every labored step of the way.
And slowly, my muscles grew. I did not lose any weight yet, as I was still overeating, but I stopped gaining, and I found that I could move better. I still needed those sticks, as my feet just weren´t build for carrying that weight, but with them, I walked.
I stayed mobile.
Of course, I got my fair share of teasing and hurtful remarks from strangers. For some people it´s irresistible to poke fun at a fat person on crutches.
But I knew I had a choice of being a fat person on crutches, walking, or a fat person who soon wouldn´t have been walking at all any more. And that made those crutches seem half as bad.
Only much later did I read an article on the web on weight loss surgery, and the doctor who wrote it described the case of a patient of whom he said "at a weight of x the patient had become immobilized and it would have been impossible for him to lose any weight on his own". The number where I have put the x was just 20 pounds higher than my top weight, and I know it would have been very easy for me to gain another twenty had I stopped moving around the way I do.
And that is why it was so good for me that my DH can be such a pain in the posterior. By making me move my fat a**, he kept me from that fate.
He never allowed me to give up. And that is why I owe a big part of where I am today to him.
He´s the most wonderful cheerleader I could imagine, and he is supporting me every step of the way.
Did I mention I love him?
And yes, I owe it to him as well as to myself to hang in. Promised.
Julia
But sometimes he can be a royal pain in the posterior.
Case in point: The weight I am trying to get rid of now I accumulated after moving in with him, over an extremely short period of time.
While there may be some people out there who got obese slowly, thus growing the muscles required to move the fat, along with the fat, I gained some forty-plus pounds over a period of three months.
All of it fat.
Suddenly, my muscles and bones had to carry the weight equivalent of two big full water buckets wherever I went.
Suddenly, even a few steps left me completely breathless.
Suddenly, even a short walk caused my feet to hurt like hell.
It would have been incredibly easy, at that point, to literally settle for an existence in oversized sweatpants and Birkenstock sandals, sitting on the sofa and spending my time surfing on the computer and eating. It would have been incredibly easy to just stop leaving the house, to just stop walking, to resign myself to watching life from the sidelines, instead of taking part in it.
Whenever I see pictures on the web of another poor soul unable to leave their house any more because of their weight, I know that this could, very easily, have been me. I know how close I was to the point of losing my mobility.
I had given up, almost.
My husband, who had been watching his wife turn from a companion on his excursions into an immobile, whining blob, kept pestering me.
He insisted we go out, and he coaxed me on to accompany him on his walks and excursions. We both love sightseeing in historical places, and he picked out places that did not allow driving there all the way by car.
So, I had to walk.
It hurt.
On several occasions, I just plunked down by the wayside and started to cry because my feet hurt so badly I literally couldn´t take another step.
After that, I got myself a pair of trekking sticks. And a pair of even bigger sneakers with cushioned insoles.
And I dragged myself on.
It was humiliating. Seeing old ladies passing me, walking faster than I was, without crutches, and realizing that I, without using some kind of crutch or other walking aid, wasn´t able to walk any more at all.
More than once, I wanted to give up.
There are plenty of pictures (did I mention Hubs is also the family paparazzo?) of me, clad in tentlike apparel, on crutches, and with an unhappy countenance, trying to make my way up some flight of stairs to a castle. I was so frustrated sometimes I ended up cussing at my dear husband, calling him names whereof "insensitive oaf" or "slavedriver" were the least.
But my husband, bless his soul, kept pestering me to go out and move, and when we were outside, he encouraged me, cheering me on every labored step of the way.
And slowly, my muscles grew. I did not lose any weight yet, as I was still overeating, but I stopped gaining, and I found that I could move better. I still needed those sticks, as my feet just weren´t build for carrying that weight, but with them, I walked.
I stayed mobile.
Of course, I got my fair share of teasing and hurtful remarks from strangers. For some people it´s irresistible to poke fun at a fat person on crutches.
But I knew I had a choice of being a fat person on crutches, walking, or a fat person who soon wouldn´t have been walking at all any more. And that made those crutches seem half as bad.
Only much later did I read an article on the web on weight loss surgery, and the doctor who wrote it described the case of a patient of whom he said "at a weight of x the patient had become immobilized and it would have been impossible for him to lose any weight on his own". The number where I have put the x was just 20 pounds higher than my top weight, and I know it would have been very easy for me to gain another twenty had I stopped moving around the way I do.
And that is why it was so good for me that my DH can be such a pain in the posterior. By making me move my fat a**, he kept me from that fate.
He never allowed me to give up. And that is why I owe a big part of where I am today to him.
He´s the most wonderful cheerleader I could imagine, and he is supporting me every step of the way.
Did I mention I love him?
And yes, I owe it to him as well as to myself to hang in. Promised.
Julia
2011/03/10
The medical explanations fallacy
Do you, too, regularly read the newest findings on obesity?
I do, and there are things in there that sound like the perfect solace for our little wounded souls. Things like scientists having found out that different people have different metabolisms, or, that there may be hormonal differences that explain why some people get fat while others don´t. Or the so-called fidget factor. Or so-called obesity genes that get turned on or off by some mysterious agency.
There are more explanations out there than I care to count.
And they are dangerous.
The danger is that every explanation may be used as an excuse. I´m fat because ... and I can´t help it.
So, you settle down for a long conversation with a gallon of Ben and Jerry´s because ...you can´t help it anyway and denying yourself would not change a thing.
Or would it?
There is one thing that is conspicuously absent from those medical excuse stories.
It is the fact, that, while we all may be medically different as to our metabolisms, nobody, repeat nobody, can generate fat from thin air.
Only by putting in 3500 extra calories can you grow a pound of fat.
The one place where the differences in metabolism or whatever matter is the amount of calories one may ingest before the body decides they are extra calories and should be put into storage as fat.
Even if you have a completely messed-up metabolism, if you never eat beyond that point you cannot get fatter.
And if you eat less than that, you will lose. Maybe less than what you hoped for, but in the long run you will lose.
So, what it boils down to is the "p" word.
In a society that is hooked on instant gratification not a very popular word. Perseverance.
Find a plan that works for you and stick with it.
Even if your weight, which includes everything that you have inside your body, seems stuck for ages. Even if after a salty meal you find yourself three pounds heavier the next morning. If you didn´t eat 10000 calories the day before, that´s likely part water and will come off again.
But if you say "this is hopeless" and continue to overeat, that´s when you make certain you won´t lose, but keep on gaining.
And the step from " I am different in this or that way, that´s why my body gains fat faster than somebody else´s" to "I might as well give up completely" is often a too-small one.
Don´t take it.
Julia
I do, and there are things in there that sound like the perfect solace for our little wounded souls. Things like scientists having found out that different people have different metabolisms, or, that there may be hormonal differences that explain why some people get fat while others don´t. Or the so-called fidget factor. Or so-called obesity genes that get turned on or off by some mysterious agency.
There are more explanations out there than I care to count.
And they are dangerous.
The danger is that every explanation may be used as an excuse. I´m fat because ... and I can´t help it.
So, you settle down for a long conversation with a gallon of Ben and Jerry´s because ...you can´t help it anyway and denying yourself would not change a thing.
Or would it?
There is one thing that is conspicuously absent from those medical excuse stories.
It is the fact, that, while we all may be medically different as to our metabolisms, nobody, repeat nobody, can generate fat from thin air.
Only by putting in 3500 extra calories can you grow a pound of fat.
The one place where the differences in metabolism or whatever matter is the amount of calories one may ingest before the body decides they are extra calories and should be put into storage as fat.
Even if you have a completely messed-up metabolism, if you never eat beyond that point you cannot get fatter.
And if you eat less than that, you will lose. Maybe less than what you hoped for, but in the long run you will lose.
So, what it boils down to is the "p" word.
In a society that is hooked on instant gratification not a very popular word. Perseverance.
Find a plan that works for you and stick with it.
Even if your weight, which includes everything that you have inside your body, seems stuck for ages. Even if after a salty meal you find yourself three pounds heavier the next morning. If you didn´t eat 10000 calories the day before, that´s likely part water and will come off again.
But if you say "this is hopeless" and continue to overeat, that´s when you make certain you won´t lose, but keep on gaining.
And the step from " I am different in this or that way, that´s why my body gains fat faster than somebody else´s" to "I might as well give up completely" is often a too-small one.
Don´t take it.
Julia
2011/03/09
Giving up giving in
...to the lure of even more stuff: It´s a common theme in minimalist blogs to try and have things like a "no-spend-month" or a "shopping fast".
Today being the first day of lent, the christian fasting period, has started me musing about what such a shopping fast really entails.
The common denominator of such endeavours is that people decide to curb all and any unnecessary spending for a set period of time.
And the difficult part is finding out what this little word "unnecessary" means, and then applying it to the decision of whether the thing before you, under that definition, could and should be bought.
A dictionary-style definition would run something like "not needed". Which begs the same question- what do we need?
Or, what do we not need?
There is no general rule for that, as far as the possession of things as such is concerned. Every person needs different things according to their lifestyle and personal preferences.
But.
No matter what your lifestyle is, no matter your preferences, the list of possessions you need to accomodate them is, by definition, a finite one.
There will be a point where you already own everything you really need.
And this point- unless you have just moved out from home, moved to a different climate, lost or gained a lot of weight or sustained another life-changing cataclysm- has, for most of us, been reached
now.
How can I be so certain of that? Well, you are here and alive, aren´t you? And whatever it is you like to do, you are (hopefully) doing it already. You have been eating, dressing yourself, inhabiting wherever your digs are, and you have managed to get around to wherever you really needed to go.
So, in the past you have obviously had what was absolutely needed then.
I am, of course, not talking about people who are destitute or homeless. I´m talking about those of us who could buy ourselves even more stuff, those for whom a spending fast makes sense at all. There is a lot of misery on this planet, and I am certainly not meaning to belittle those who suffer from it.
And I don´t miss out on the fact that some things need to be replaced regularly when worn out or broken, either. Or that some things simply get used up, and replacing them is a necessity.
But apart from these, you probably own all the necessary things for living your life.
Think of that for a moment.
All the necessary things.
And there´s the answer to what is, strictly, unnecessary.
Everything that does not replace something worn out, broken, or used up.
Now, I am not saying that you can´t sometimes improve on what you already have. I do that, too. But then I have to decide what to do with the old stuff. If I decide to keep it, or if I decide to not decide what to do with it (which also means I´ll keep it), the result is clutter. Stuff I don´t use and, because I have a better replacement, don´t need any more.
The fight against clutter, thus, is a double one.
What goes in, and what comes out.
It´s exactly the same thing as with weight loss. You´ll never get ahead with cleaning up your life or your body as long as you don´t control what you let into them.
And that´s what fasting is about. Asking yourself what you want to allow into your body, into your life, and then making a conscious decision.
Isn´t it interesting that a lot of religions know periods of ritualized fasting? Most of those that do were founded a long time before our age of abundance and overabundance, by people who probably would never have imagined that human beings could live in an environment where there is practically no scarcity. When they imagined such a place they called it paradise.
So, by their standards, we are already living in paradise, at least where the material things are concerned.
Can you imagine a cluttered paradise? Probably not.
I can´t, either.
And that´s why a no-spend month is such a good idea. Find out what you really need, and buy only that.
Maybe you`ll even have something left to give to those who do not have everything they need.
Julia
Today being the first day of lent, the christian fasting period, has started me musing about what such a shopping fast really entails.
The common denominator of such endeavours is that people decide to curb all and any unnecessary spending for a set period of time.
And the difficult part is finding out what this little word "unnecessary" means, and then applying it to the decision of whether the thing before you, under that definition, could and should be bought.
A dictionary-style definition would run something like "not needed". Which begs the same question- what do we need?
Or, what do we not need?
There is no general rule for that, as far as the possession of things as such is concerned. Every person needs different things according to their lifestyle and personal preferences.
But.
No matter what your lifestyle is, no matter your preferences, the list of possessions you need to accomodate them is, by definition, a finite one.
There will be a point where you already own everything you really need.
And this point- unless you have just moved out from home, moved to a different climate, lost or gained a lot of weight or sustained another life-changing cataclysm- has, for most of us, been reached
now.
How can I be so certain of that? Well, you are here and alive, aren´t you? And whatever it is you like to do, you are (hopefully) doing it already. You have been eating, dressing yourself, inhabiting wherever your digs are, and you have managed to get around to wherever you really needed to go.
So, in the past you have obviously had what was absolutely needed then.
I am, of course, not talking about people who are destitute or homeless. I´m talking about those of us who could buy ourselves even more stuff, those for whom a spending fast makes sense at all. There is a lot of misery on this planet, and I am certainly not meaning to belittle those who suffer from it.
And I don´t miss out on the fact that some things need to be replaced regularly when worn out or broken, either. Or that some things simply get used up, and replacing them is a necessity.
But apart from these, you probably own all the necessary things for living your life.
Think of that for a moment.
All the necessary things.
And there´s the answer to what is, strictly, unnecessary.
Everything that does not replace something worn out, broken, or used up.
Now, I am not saying that you can´t sometimes improve on what you already have. I do that, too. But then I have to decide what to do with the old stuff. If I decide to keep it, or if I decide to not decide what to do with it (which also means I´ll keep it), the result is clutter. Stuff I don´t use and, because I have a better replacement, don´t need any more.
The fight against clutter, thus, is a double one.
What goes in, and what comes out.
It´s exactly the same thing as with weight loss. You´ll never get ahead with cleaning up your life or your body as long as you don´t control what you let into them.
And that´s what fasting is about. Asking yourself what you want to allow into your body, into your life, and then making a conscious decision.
Isn´t it interesting that a lot of religions know periods of ritualized fasting? Most of those that do were founded a long time before our age of abundance and overabundance, by people who probably would never have imagined that human beings could live in an environment where there is practically no scarcity. When they imagined such a place they called it paradise.
So, by their standards, we are already living in paradise, at least where the material things are concerned.
Can you imagine a cluttered paradise? Probably not.
I can´t, either.
And that´s why a no-spend month is such a good idea. Find out what you really need, and buy only that.
Maybe you`ll even have something left to give to those who do not have everything they need.
Julia
2011/03/07
Calculating my gains...
Hello everyone,
when rummaging through my closet this weekend I happened on a box of papers I had stashed in there (bad habit, I know), and on inspecting the contents I discovered among them several old weight lists I had kept some twenty years ago. These were, actually, documenting some of my first attempts to get rid of what I did, then, perceive as my horrible weight problem.
Eye opener number one: The weight I had been trying to get down from back then was what is today my target weight. I´d be dancing with joy were I to weigh today what at that time the younger me thought meant that I was ugly and fat.
Eye opener number two was something I had completely forgotten about until I saw the numbers again.
The first time my weight really exploded upwards was over a period of eighteen months during which my life pretty much was turned upside down by circumstances mostly beyond my control. My reaction to that was a bout with binge eating, so bad I gained 66 pounds in those 18 months, ending up well outside of onederland and for the first time entering the land of morbid obesity.
And this is where the pocket calculator comes in.
66 pounds divided by 18 months makes 3.6 pounds a month. Divide that by thirty days, means 0.12 pounds a day.Times 3500 calories in a pound of fat is 427 calories.
A paltry 427 calories.
One burger, or one serving of fries with mayonnaise, or one single bar of chocolate, or even just a second helping of an ordinary dinner a day.
That was, statistically, how much I had overeaten during that time.
For me, that is the most striking realization to come from those numbers.
The excuse-making games I played with myself didn´t work out. Neither the one where I promised to "be good tomorrow and eat nothing" nor the one where I tried to convince myself that there had to be something wrong with my body because it was suddenly growing all that fat, in spite of all the days I ate "almost nothing".
There was nothing wrong with my body. It was, as everyone else´s, a wonderful, perfect machine. And one of its functions is that it is, in a way, an accountability machine, and an especially merciless and very exact one at that.
It holds me accountable for whatever I do to it. How I feed it, how I hydrate it, whether I move it or not, sooner or later my body will tally it up and present the bill.
When I remember that, the piece of cake or the box of chocolates or the second helping of dinner doesn´t look half as attractive any more.
Julia
when rummaging through my closet this weekend I happened on a box of papers I had stashed in there (bad habit, I know), and on inspecting the contents I discovered among them several old weight lists I had kept some twenty years ago. These were, actually, documenting some of my first attempts to get rid of what I did, then, perceive as my horrible weight problem.
Eye opener number one: The weight I had been trying to get down from back then was what is today my target weight. I´d be dancing with joy were I to weigh today what at that time the younger me thought meant that I was ugly and fat.
Eye opener number two was something I had completely forgotten about until I saw the numbers again.
The first time my weight really exploded upwards was over a period of eighteen months during which my life pretty much was turned upside down by circumstances mostly beyond my control. My reaction to that was a bout with binge eating, so bad I gained 66 pounds in those 18 months, ending up well outside of onederland and for the first time entering the land of morbid obesity.
And this is where the pocket calculator comes in.
66 pounds divided by 18 months makes 3.6 pounds a month. Divide that by thirty days, means 0.12 pounds a day.Times 3500 calories in a pound of fat is 427 calories.
A paltry 427 calories.
One burger, or one serving of fries with mayonnaise, or one single bar of chocolate, or even just a second helping of an ordinary dinner a day.
That was, statistically, how much I had overeaten during that time.
For me, that is the most striking realization to come from those numbers.
The excuse-making games I played with myself didn´t work out. Neither the one where I promised to "be good tomorrow and eat nothing" nor the one where I tried to convince myself that there had to be something wrong with my body because it was suddenly growing all that fat, in spite of all the days I ate "almost nothing".
There was nothing wrong with my body. It was, as everyone else´s, a wonderful, perfect machine. And one of its functions is that it is, in a way, an accountability machine, and an especially merciless and very exact one at that.
It holds me accountable for whatever I do to it. How I feed it, how I hydrate it, whether I move it or not, sooner or later my body will tally it up and present the bill.
When I remember that, the piece of cake or the box of chocolates or the second helping of dinner doesn´t look half as attractive any more.
Julia
2011/03/05
Wardrobe, intermediarily
Weekends are the perfect time for sorting through things, and today, I´ve been hitting the contents of my closet. As I´ve been fat for over seven years, most of the things inside are by now several sizes too big.
On the up side that means I´ve been decluttering my wardrobe regularly, on the down side it means that the number of things that still fit is dwindling along with my weight.
There has been a time when I had given up on the hope of ever getting rid of any of that fat. So, I donated almost all of the smaller size pieces because I didn´t believe I would ever fit in there again, and resigned myself to living in a tent.
Today, I have been taking those oversized clothes out of the closet, leaving only the things that fit me right now. It´s enough to get me through another couple of pounds´ loss, and I´m determined to avoid shopping for new clothes as long as possible, with the exception of pants. A blouse or a blazer may look intentionally oversized (think "boyfriend style"), but a pair of pants with a too-droopy bottom is what I, personally, draw the line at. But, I found out that I can get along on two pairs of pants if they are washable, so, right now, that´s what I have in my current size.
Actually, I am nervous about this emerging body. It´s been hidden under a big layer of fat for so long that I don´t know what to best clothe it with. After all, the last time I was at my target weight or anywhere in the vicinity thereof was when I was at the university, the infamous freshman five that were, in my case, rather the freshman twenty never having left me. Let´s just say big shoulder pads were all the rage then, and you´ll know that, unless I kick myself into a fashion time warp, I´ll have to find a completely new style of dressing myself. Add to that the fact that I am by now (ouch) approaching middle age (I refuse to admit I´m probably already there), and don´t want to look like the proverbial hen playing chicken, that means I have a very interesting shopping expedition in my future.
Still, putting all those big clothes in storage boxes and then seeing what I get along on right now has made me realize how desperately I had hoped to find a clothes style that would make the extra pounds invisible. Of course, that didn´t work. Instead, I had a closet full of things that were, in reality, calling attention to my shape, instead of hiding it.
When I look at myself today in some old photographs, I cringe. The sad fact ist that today, I can see I looked worst in the clothes I told myself I looked best in. Back then, I had looked at those pictures, too, but, somehow, managed to not notice that I was looking like the marshmallow man in a tent.
I have noticed it now, and I have a list of items that will never again enter my closet. Wide linen kaftans, for one. Or knee-length sweaters that hug the widest part of the, er, hips. Or anything with big colorful flowers on it. Or the "they won´t see I´m fat if I wear a long shawl on top of everything else"- look. Or any of the "it doesn´t matter this was too big when I bought it, it will fit anytime soon"-squad.
The existence of the latter was due to the fact that I did my clothes shopping at a big size factory outlet store that had last year´s collection leftovers at an amazing price, but the hitch was that they did not have the items in all sizes. Thus, when I found a piece I liked, but they didn´t have my exact size, I had gotten into the habit of telling myself the next bigger size was "just a little loose" and buying that instead. I didn´t realize then that I was setting myself up for gaining until those got tight, too.
Those offenders won´t be boxed up, they are bagged up to take to charity. Never again!
What I know for sure is that I will, before buying any new clothes, look at those old photographs to warn me off such items. And perhaps I´ll take along my DH and have him take some pictures when trying on things. Especially the rear views. A mirror just doesn´t cut it like a picture.
And this time, I know what I´m looking for to avoid.
Julia
On the up side that means I´ve been decluttering my wardrobe regularly, on the down side it means that the number of things that still fit is dwindling along with my weight.
There has been a time when I had given up on the hope of ever getting rid of any of that fat. So, I donated almost all of the smaller size pieces because I didn´t believe I would ever fit in there again, and resigned myself to living in a tent.
Today, I have been taking those oversized clothes out of the closet, leaving only the things that fit me right now. It´s enough to get me through another couple of pounds´ loss, and I´m determined to avoid shopping for new clothes as long as possible, with the exception of pants. A blouse or a blazer may look intentionally oversized (think "boyfriend style"), but a pair of pants with a too-droopy bottom is what I, personally, draw the line at. But, I found out that I can get along on two pairs of pants if they are washable, so, right now, that´s what I have in my current size.
Actually, I am nervous about this emerging body. It´s been hidden under a big layer of fat for so long that I don´t know what to best clothe it with. After all, the last time I was at my target weight or anywhere in the vicinity thereof was when I was at the university, the infamous freshman five that were, in my case, rather the freshman twenty never having left me. Let´s just say big shoulder pads were all the rage then, and you´ll know that, unless I kick myself into a fashion time warp, I´ll have to find a completely new style of dressing myself. Add to that the fact that I am by now (ouch) approaching middle age (I refuse to admit I´m probably already there), and don´t want to look like the proverbial hen playing chicken, that means I have a very interesting shopping expedition in my future.
Still, putting all those big clothes in storage boxes and then seeing what I get along on right now has made me realize how desperately I had hoped to find a clothes style that would make the extra pounds invisible. Of course, that didn´t work. Instead, I had a closet full of things that were, in reality, calling attention to my shape, instead of hiding it.
When I look at myself today in some old photographs, I cringe. The sad fact ist that today, I can see I looked worst in the clothes I told myself I looked best in. Back then, I had looked at those pictures, too, but, somehow, managed to not notice that I was looking like the marshmallow man in a tent.
I have noticed it now, and I have a list of items that will never again enter my closet. Wide linen kaftans, for one. Or knee-length sweaters that hug the widest part of the, er, hips. Or anything with big colorful flowers on it. Or the "they won´t see I´m fat if I wear a long shawl on top of everything else"- look. Or any of the "it doesn´t matter this was too big when I bought it, it will fit anytime soon"-squad.
The existence of the latter was due to the fact that I did my clothes shopping at a big size factory outlet store that had last year´s collection leftovers at an amazing price, but the hitch was that they did not have the items in all sizes. Thus, when I found a piece I liked, but they didn´t have my exact size, I had gotten into the habit of telling myself the next bigger size was "just a little loose" and buying that instead. I didn´t realize then that I was setting myself up for gaining until those got tight, too.
Those offenders won´t be boxed up, they are bagged up to take to charity. Never again!
What I know for sure is that I will, before buying any new clothes, look at those old photographs to warn me off such items. And perhaps I´ll take along my DH and have him take some pictures when trying on things. Especially the rear views. A mirror just doesn´t cut it like a picture.
And this time, I know what I´m looking for to avoid.
Julia
2011/03/04
Getting unstuck
Seems my recently restarted water habit is really making a difference weightwise, I´m down another pound from yesterday. And, I was not repeat not hungry all day. The water/tea cup is sitting next to me while I write this, and it`s been refilled twice already.
One advantage this cup has is that I use it for different beverages, just rinsing and reusing it.
This has already made a difference in my office, where I used to keep different drinking vessels for tea, coffee, and water. As I am notoriously bad about putting those away after use, that meant all three of them sat out on the sideboard nearly all the time. And, as they were open cups, I had to get up away from my desk if I wanted to drink something, or risk dumping the contents on the keyboard. In a place where business can be quite hectic and you sometimes end up with several (paper) files open at the same time, the latter is a real danger. Thus, I ended up not drinking enough most of the time, having just one cup of coffee over lunch break which ended up getting cold a lot of times because of interruptions.
Today, the only cup outside is the new one. It´s sitting on my desk, out of harm´s way but close enough to grab and have a sip of what´s in it. The old cups have gone home with me, and I am seriously considering tossing at least some of them.
And I am finally hydrating myself regularly.
Isn´t it amazing how changing your surroundings can solve several problems at once?
What keeps amazing me, though, is how fast stuff can accumulate just by trying to find the ideal solution for a given problem.
I know that a lot of problems can be solved by using what you already have.
For someone who has a lot of clutter, it is relatively likely that they might already have a solution. The catch is that you must remember that you already have the item, and then you must be able to locate it within a reasonable amount of time. So, what happens usually is that you give up and purchase another one of the item in question, while the old one continues to languish in whatever clutter limbo it finds itself in.
I used to call that the "198 nails"-paradox.
Suppose you need one nail for hanging a picture. At the hardware store, you find only a box with 100 nails in it. But that doesn´t matter, after all, there will be more pictures to hang in the future.
So, you have your picture up on the wall and a box with 99 nails left.
The next time you need a nail, perhaps a year later, you absolutely can´t remember where that box is, or that it is there at all. You make another trip to the hardware store, and in the end, there are 198 unused nails somewhere in your household, if you could only find them. But, guess who will be taking another trip to the hardware store when there is the next picture to be hung?
One other clutter culprit is trying out different solutions for a problem. There´s nothing wrong with that, in my opinion, as long as you can afford the different models of whatever you´re trying to find the perfect solution for. I have, for example, tried out several different kind of bags, totes, and knapsacks for carrying around my netbook. Some of them proved to be a real hassle to drag around, with straps that kept sliding off my shoulders, or were cutting into them, or they were just a nuisance to carry if I wanted my hands free.
So, I have in my possession several laptop bags that are not likely to ever get used again by me.
And, instead of discarding or donating them, I have allowed them to take up precios closet space-because they are almost new, and one doesn´t discard things that are new, or does one?
In economics, that´s what they call the sunk cost fallacy.
And it is something that I have to keep in mind when decluttering. If an item has outlived its usefulness for me, there is no reason to keep it (veritable keepsakes and heirloom pieces excepted, of course). And that holds especially true if the item outlived its usefulness because I have acquired something that is more suited to the task at hand.
I´ll have to watch what I do with those cups I´ve taken home....
Julia
One advantage this cup has is that I use it for different beverages, just rinsing and reusing it.
This has already made a difference in my office, where I used to keep different drinking vessels for tea, coffee, and water. As I am notoriously bad about putting those away after use, that meant all three of them sat out on the sideboard nearly all the time. And, as they were open cups, I had to get up away from my desk if I wanted to drink something, or risk dumping the contents on the keyboard. In a place where business can be quite hectic and you sometimes end up with several (paper) files open at the same time, the latter is a real danger. Thus, I ended up not drinking enough most of the time, having just one cup of coffee over lunch break which ended up getting cold a lot of times because of interruptions.
Today, the only cup outside is the new one. It´s sitting on my desk, out of harm´s way but close enough to grab and have a sip of what´s in it. The old cups have gone home with me, and I am seriously considering tossing at least some of them.
And I am finally hydrating myself regularly.
Isn´t it amazing how changing your surroundings can solve several problems at once?
What keeps amazing me, though, is how fast stuff can accumulate just by trying to find the ideal solution for a given problem.
I know that a lot of problems can be solved by using what you already have.
For someone who has a lot of clutter, it is relatively likely that they might already have a solution. The catch is that you must remember that you already have the item, and then you must be able to locate it within a reasonable amount of time. So, what happens usually is that you give up and purchase another one of the item in question, while the old one continues to languish in whatever clutter limbo it finds itself in.
I used to call that the "198 nails"-paradox.
Suppose you need one nail for hanging a picture. At the hardware store, you find only a box with 100 nails in it. But that doesn´t matter, after all, there will be more pictures to hang in the future.
So, you have your picture up on the wall and a box with 99 nails left.
The next time you need a nail, perhaps a year later, you absolutely can´t remember where that box is, or that it is there at all. You make another trip to the hardware store, and in the end, there are 198 unused nails somewhere in your household, if you could only find them. But, guess who will be taking another trip to the hardware store when there is the next picture to be hung?
One other clutter culprit is trying out different solutions for a problem. There´s nothing wrong with that, in my opinion, as long as you can afford the different models of whatever you´re trying to find the perfect solution for. I have, for example, tried out several different kind of bags, totes, and knapsacks for carrying around my netbook. Some of them proved to be a real hassle to drag around, with straps that kept sliding off my shoulders, or were cutting into them, or they were just a nuisance to carry if I wanted my hands free.
So, I have in my possession several laptop bags that are not likely to ever get used again by me.
And, instead of discarding or donating them, I have allowed them to take up precios closet space-because they are almost new, and one doesn´t discard things that are new, or does one?
In economics, that´s what they call the sunk cost fallacy.
And it is something that I have to keep in mind when decluttering. If an item has outlived its usefulness for me, there is no reason to keep it (veritable keepsakes and heirloom pieces excepted, of course). And that holds especially true if the item outlived its usefulness because I have acquired something that is more suited to the task at hand.
I´ll have to watch what I do with those cups I´ve taken home....
Julia
2011/03/03
Jumping waterfalls....
Hello everyone,
I´ve been having a reminder today of why it´s important to keep drinking.
Water, that is.
I had been stuck with a weight plateau for about a month now, which was frustrating and did, of course, make me question if I had done everything correctly.
Turns out, I hadn´t.
Two days ago, I got myself a 0.4 liters to-go drinking cup, with a lid on, and I did, on the first day, refill it three times, on the second day, five times. Of course, I was continuously running to the restroom, and this morning
-ta-da!-
the scale finally registered a three-pound loss!
So, I am keeping at it, and hope that this was the thing I could have done better.
Jumping with joy and refilling regularly now,
Julia
I´ve been having a reminder today of why it´s important to keep drinking.
Water, that is.
I had been stuck with a weight plateau for about a month now, which was frustrating and did, of course, make me question if I had done everything correctly.
Turns out, I hadn´t.
Two days ago, I got myself a 0.4 liters to-go drinking cup, with a lid on, and I did, on the first day, refill it three times, on the second day, five times. Of course, I was continuously running to the restroom, and this morning
-ta-da!-
the scale finally registered a three-pound loss!
So, I am keeping at it, and hope that this was the thing I could have done better.
Jumping with joy and refilling regularly now,
Julia
2011/03/02
What Grandma knew...
Hello everyone,
did you ever think about the way people used to eat forty years ago?
I have done so a lot during the last months, and it´s astonishing what comes back to mind.
When I was a small child, I was living with my grandparents. My Granny used to cook everything herself (no store-bought food or frozen meals for us), and we had breakfast, lunch, consisting of a main course and a dessert, and dinner in the guise of sandwiches and a salad every day.
Some time after I entered school, my parents moved in with us.
So, out of my Granny´s fridge, there were five people who had to be fed.
And just how big was that fridge? It was a tabletop-high model, plus there was a freezer in the cellar. And the fridge had enough empty room in it to allow for putting several small bowls with the dessert for the day into the fridge.Before you think we were grocery shopping every day, we went once a week, with just two bags that were small enough to carry, and after my parents moved in, my Dad drove to the farmer´s market for produce- which also fit into a single transport box- and we could, from a "mobile milkman" who came by with a big rolling shop, get our milk and yoghourt twice a week.
And everything that needed cooling went into that fridge.
It was enough food for everyone in the family. I can´t remember any occasion when someone would have had to go hungry because there wasn´t any food.
So, what we had of food was definitely enough for the five of us.
It was eaten off the low-diameter plates I mentioned in my last post, and it was served in portions that nowadays would make you say, that can´t be enough. But it was enough.
Even the dessert came in smaller sizes, as in "pudding made from 250 ml of milk divided by five bowls".
Today, we have a fridge twice the size of my Grandma´s, and until recently, it ended up stuffed to the point where the door threatened to burst open after every shopping expedition.
And there is just the two of us, my DH and myself.
So, again, twice as much space and half as many people to feed means four times as much food per person.
Some of that went to feed the trashcan- that is another post altogether- the rest we "waisted".
Come to think of it, it is not very likely that DH and myself or any other people should have a radically different genetic makeup from the generation of our grandparents.
So, why should we need to eat that much more food?
I have started to do my shopping using public transport and using a shopping-bag the size of my Granny´s again. I think she was up to something there. And there is free room in my fridge even after putting away my purchases.
There is also free room between my belt and my waistline.
I try to remember what the portions were at home. And remind myself that they were sufficient. Nobody needs to eat a pound of meat in one sitting. And my shape says thank you.
Julia
did you ever think about the way people used to eat forty years ago?
I have done so a lot during the last months, and it´s astonishing what comes back to mind.
When I was a small child, I was living with my grandparents. My Granny used to cook everything herself (no store-bought food or frozen meals for us), and we had breakfast, lunch, consisting of a main course and a dessert, and dinner in the guise of sandwiches and a salad every day.
Some time after I entered school, my parents moved in with us.
So, out of my Granny´s fridge, there were five people who had to be fed.
And just how big was that fridge? It was a tabletop-high model, plus there was a freezer in the cellar. And the fridge had enough empty room in it to allow for putting several small bowls with the dessert for the day into the fridge.Before you think we were grocery shopping every day, we went once a week, with just two bags that were small enough to carry, and after my parents moved in, my Dad drove to the farmer´s market for produce- which also fit into a single transport box- and we could, from a "mobile milkman" who came by with a big rolling shop, get our milk and yoghourt twice a week.
And everything that needed cooling went into that fridge.
It was enough food for everyone in the family. I can´t remember any occasion when someone would have had to go hungry because there wasn´t any food.
So, what we had of food was definitely enough for the five of us.
It was eaten off the low-diameter plates I mentioned in my last post, and it was served in portions that nowadays would make you say, that can´t be enough. But it was enough.
Even the dessert came in smaller sizes, as in "pudding made from 250 ml of milk divided by five bowls".
Today, we have a fridge twice the size of my Grandma´s, and until recently, it ended up stuffed to the point where the door threatened to burst open after every shopping expedition.
And there is just the two of us, my DH and myself.
So, again, twice as much space and half as many people to feed means four times as much food per person.
Some of that went to feed the trashcan- that is another post altogether- the rest we "waisted".
Come to think of it, it is not very likely that DH and myself or any other people should have a radically different genetic makeup from the generation of our grandparents.
So, why should we need to eat that much more food?
I have started to do my shopping using public transport and using a shopping-bag the size of my Granny´s again. I think she was up to something there. And there is free room in my fridge even after putting away my purchases.
There is also free room between my belt and my waistline.
I try to remember what the portions were at home. And remind myself that they were sufficient. Nobody needs to eat a pound of meat in one sitting. And my shape says thank you.
Julia
Portion creepy
Hello everyone,
The most important thing for me, when wanting to lose and maintain a loss, is to never stop being watchful.That means weighing myself daily,and watching what I eat, too.
I know that a lot of people out there think that daily weighing yourself is too frustrating in the long run, but for me, it means that I can catch a changing trend in my weight early and then compensate for it before the weight has a chance to settle back on, possibly bringing a couple of friends for company.
Of course, I have to know the usual fluctuations of my body, so these don´t put me off too much (like those two pounds that seem to come out of nowhere and then leave again once a month).
As for watching what I eat, I know that I will never be able to rely on any natural regulatory mechanisms. I messed those up too badly over the course of a lifetime of battling my weight.
So, one thing I have done in preparation for this is measuring and weighing what I used to think were "normal" portions I was eating.
This turned out to be a real waker-upper, especially after I compared them to the portion sizes that are used and recommended in restaurant handbooks (European ones, where supersizing everything hasn´t arrived yet).
So, how could that kind of portion inflation happen?
The first thing to come to mind was too-big plates.
I had, in imitation of what they use in expensive restaurants, bought us a set of plates that were originally intended to go under the real serving plates to protect the dishcloth! They were roundabout twice the size of the old dinner plates I inherited from my Grandma.
What I hadn´t counted on was that those bigger plates were an invitation to load them full to the same point of optical loadedness as I had used to load the smaller ones. So, it was a simple matter of math- the surface size of a circular plate growing square times the increase in diameter.So, on a plate with twice the diameter, you can put four times as much food on them before they look as full as the smaller one.
The really insidious part of this is that you can, consequently, load on twice as much and still believe that plate to be less full than the other one.
As insidious is what I would call optical habituation. You have a certain picture in your head of what a full plate of food has to look like, and you do, automatically, continue to pile on food until the plate looks comfortably filled.
Doing that with those restaurant-sized plates means putting on a lot more than a "real" portion.
Ever wondered about the jokes they make about how eating in a gourmet restaurant in Europe means paying a lot of money for a diminutive portion of food? Turns out the portion isn´t too small after all, it just looks that way on the big plates they use.
I am, of course, not the first person to make that discovery. That honor goes to Brian Wansink whose website can be found at www.mindlesseating.org. He´s put it all a lot better than I could have done. (Btw I am not in any way affiliated to him or his company).
But for me, part of what started me on this weight loss journey was the realization that he was right, and that I, too, had fallen into the portion size trap.
I would have sworn I wasn´t eating too much at all, not refilling my plate, putting everything I wanted to eat on the plate and then leaving the kitchen, when in reality I was eating twice as much as I needed. I vehemently denied eating too much, to the point where I started a big quarrel with a family member who confronted me about my weight gain, putting the gain down to health issues.
The sad truth- sad for almost everyone who is overweight- is that in weight mangement, as everywhere else on this planet, nothing evolves out of nothing. For my body to store 3500 calories as one pound of fat, I have to put the said 3500 calories inside my body first. So, gaining a hundred pounds- which is what I have done- means putting 350 000 calories into your body above what your body uses up.
Again, if you go and divide that by the 365 days in a year, you´ll see that it computes to less than a thousand calories a day. Less than one of those infamous big burgers. Less than a standard-sized can of salted peanuts a day.
The math of it is inescapable.
And, as it takes a lot of exercise to burn off a thousand calories, the place where I have to adjust the balance is what I put into my body, not what goes out as calories burned. Sports can be good for you, but if you continue to overeat, you´ll never get rid of that weight.
Oops, I guess I just invited a flame war from everyone who still is operating under the assumption that fat can develop out of thin air. Rest assured, it doesn´t. Until I understood what had happened, I wasn´t able to get rid of any of the accumulated fat either. And I was as violent in refuting the very idea that my eating habits had anything to do with my weight.
Only when I pulled the brakes on portion sizes I managed to get rid of part of what my eating habits had cost me in terms of weight gain.
And the other part is what I´m working on.
Julia
2011/03/01
Starting out with a new blog
Hello World,
or how does one address a potential circle of readers?
Please allow me to introduce myself- I am a European (and English is not my native language, so I beg everyone´s pardon in advance for any linguistic glitches), full-time working wife of a dear husband, and currently trying to condense myself to about two thirds my former volume.
This is the log of my journey to better health and a more streamlined existence. There´ll be musings, recipes, tips and tricks, and maybe some ideas to share.
Can you tell this introduction thing is making me nervous? I am usually not so tongue-tied, so this can only get better. So, I should perhaps get on with post Nr. 2?
That is, by the way, something I do often- if the beginning of something is difficult, I start out in the middle and fill up the beginning later.
So, on to the next post!
Greetings, Julia
or how does one address a potential circle of readers?
Please allow me to introduce myself- I am a European (and English is not my native language, so I beg everyone´s pardon in advance for any linguistic glitches), full-time working wife of a dear husband, and currently trying to condense myself to about two thirds my former volume.
This is the log of my journey to better health and a more streamlined existence. There´ll be musings, recipes, tips and tricks, and maybe some ideas to share.
Can you tell this introduction thing is making me nervous? I am usually not so tongue-tied, so this can only get better. So, I should perhaps get on with post Nr. 2?
That is, by the way, something I do often- if the beginning of something is difficult, I start out in the middle and fill up the beginning later.
So, on to the next post!
Greetings, Julia
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