My Ob-Gyn hurried into the examining room, shuffling through my file and plopped down on the low stool, facing my body. I was wrapped in, what felt like, Bounty paper towels. She peered up at me, through her Chanel bifocals and smiled warmly. She was petite, yet very striking and was dressed like a million bucks. A cross between The Doctor Wears Prada and Nicole Kidman. She had to be right around my age or maybe a tad older. She was sporting these fabulous pink Manolos with just the tips of her perfectly pedicured rose painted toes peeking out. I glanced at my grass stained Reeboks kicked over in the corner. I felt like LuLu from HeeHaw. At that moment, with my rear end flapping naked in the wind, I would've given my last nickel to be somewhere, anywhere else.
"How are you doing? It's been a couple years, looks like almost three."
"Yes," I mumble sheepishly, "time kind of got away from me." She nodded, "There always seems to be a shortage of time...looks like you've put on some weight since your last visit----"
I remember little of what was said after that. I was totally disgusted with myself. Averting my eyes when the nurse clanked the weight marker over to the big 50 didn't make my fat magically melt off to the "number" it had been, should have been. Buying stylish J. Crew charcoal colored yoga sweats a size bigger hadn't transformed me into a hip chick without a flabby innertube around my midriff. Throwing over sized sweaters over the whole mess that had appeared around my waist didn't mean the whole mess wasn't there. The days of swallowing really hard and sticking my chin out like a chicken in an attempt to camouflage the gobbler around my neck had caught up with me.
The worst part wasn't over when Dr. I Want To Be Her So Bad left the room. I slithered off the examining table, ripped off the "quicker picker uppers" and bent over hurriedly to snatch my clothes. That was when I saw it. In all its dimpled, white, cottage cheese-ish glory. From head to toe and everything, and I do mean everything, in between. My body's full length reflection in the mirror on the back of the door. I didn't know whether to vomit or cry.
I drove home in a drizzle that day wondering what the heck had happened to me? How had I gotten here? When did I board the Amtrak at Station Cool Stylish Mom and stumble unto Platform Plump (& Frump) twenty years later. That middle aged, slightly graying woman with the cellulite thighs and flabby tummy, staring back at me in disbelief wasn't me. Couldn't be. I surely didn't see myself like THAT. I saw myself as sophisticated and sleek as the models in the Eileen Fisher ads. Who was I kidding? I wasn't anywhere near them. I looked more like John Belushi in a bee costume. The mirror doesn't fib. I needed to face reality. My husband once joked that if I laid flat on my stomach, in my birthday suit, and he rolled a box of BB shots over by backside, every BB would find a spot. I laughed. He laughed. Ha Ha. It didn't really strike a nerve because I "knew" it wasn't true. But it was true and I was literally, the butt of the joke. He was right and I needed to get real.
I knew I had put on some weight through the years. Sixteen years of carpooling kids, eating dinner from white paper bags passed through the driver's window and carrying in pizza because you can't find the gumption to throw a meal together will do that to you. I thought that if I really wanted to take off the "couple pounds that had crept on," it would be a cake walk. I had control of those six or seven pounds. No problem. I'd diet for a couple days (generally two) by drinking Tab and munching 94% fat free popcorn and then I'd go straight back to my boob tube fare of Ben & Jerry's and anything sweet I could get my paws on. The next morning I'd start the entire pathetic forty eight hour cycle over. Yep, I've always watched my weight. But I've never watched it go away. I've brainwashed myself into believing that if I ever really wanted to buckle down and take it off, I could. Just like that. Snap. But I couldn't. I've never admitted how serious it was and now, three hundred pints of Cherry Garcia and zillions of starve/stuff fasts later, I am proudly tipping the scales, at least a couple dozen pounds over my ideal weight, and the needle is still climbing .
If you keep doing what you've always done, you're gonna keep getting what you always got.
In my case, that was nowhere. I made a vow to myself, as I drove straight to Target to pick up a digital scale, that "this was it." I was dedicating the next three months of my forty seven year old life to dropping twenty pounds. Ninety days. One thousand, one hundred and sixty hours. Twelve weeks. A blip in my existence. A brief season in my life. I was fed up with how I looked, how I felt and with schlepping around in baggy, has-been duds. There was no way that a measly twenty pounds, the weight of eighty sticks of butter would keep me down any longer. Butter. Come on.
I wasn't waiting for the next Monday or the First day Of The Month, or even New Year's. I was starting right where I was, after lunch, on a Thursday, a bump over hump day, and I was going to step on that scale confidently (without shaving my legs and underarms or clipping my nails first) and begin my journey.
I didn't need Weight Watcher's, Alli, Slim Fast or Trim-SpaX32. I knew exactly what I need to do. All "20 Pound Overweighters" know what they need to do. It's just a matter of doin' it. Twenty pounds can play tricks on us. It's deceiving because it's not enough weight to spark alarm and draw stares and with a bit of creative accessorizing, that unflattering flab can be disguised fairly well. Twenty Pound Overweighters are experts at hiding fat. But, twenty pounds is just enough weight to hold us back from feeling really good about ourselves and our appearance. That twenty pounds of Penne Puttanesca distributed evenly (if you're lucky)
and not so evenly (if you're not) about our bodies impedes us from realizing our potential. The more times we gobble up the latest Zone Bar only to scarf up everything edible in the cupboard when hunger and deprivation rear their ugly heads, the more defeated we become until we are hopelessly convinced that "we will never take the weight off." And we give up or give in. I 'm no psychologist, but I know that much. And if you are a 20 Pound Overweighter, you know that too. I'm not telling you anything new.
It's inconsequential how much weight you need to shed; five pounds, ten pounds, two hundred and fifty pounds. The point is when we set out to reach a goal, achieving it gives us so much more than a new appearance. Although, that in and of itself, is pretty frickin' awesome.
I had a plan, a good old fashioned one. A plan that worked, if I stuck to it. One that always works. I was mad as hell. The rubber had met the road, er...should I say the butt had met the mirror.
So, if you've read this far, I am assuming that you're ready to take the journey, too. That you, like hundreds of thousands of women, want desperately to break free from those g-darn pounds that piled on after you had babies, those eighty sticks of butter that accumulated over your rear when you were sitting on your ergo office chair, that weight that is simply a "reward" for a harried, stressed out, fast paced lifestyle.
I am assuming that you, want to, yearn to, once and for all to, rid yourself of the extra butter and get on with the rest of living, freeing up valuable time that you wasted fretting about weight and spending it on the truly more important stuff in life.
If you are willing to devote the next 129,600 minutes of your breath to changing your life, then lace up your grungy Nikes cuz you're in for one heck of a ninety day ride, I mean, power walk.
"How are you doing? It's been a couple years, looks like almost three."
"Yes," I mumble sheepishly, "time kind of got away from me." She nodded, "There always seems to be a shortage of time...looks like you've put on some weight since your last visit----"
I remember little of what was said after that. I was totally disgusted with myself. Averting my eyes when the nurse clanked the weight marker over to the big 50 didn't make my fat magically melt off to the "number" it had been, should have been. Buying stylish J. Crew charcoal colored yoga sweats a size bigger hadn't transformed me into a hip chick without a flabby innertube around my midriff. Throwing over sized sweaters over the whole mess that had appeared around my waist didn't mean the whole mess wasn't there. The days of swallowing really hard and sticking my chin out like a chicken in an attempt to camouflage the gobbler around my neck had caught up with me.
The worst part wasn't over when Dr. I Want To Be Her So Bad left the room. I slithered off the examining table, ripped off the "quicker picker uppers" and bent over hurriedly to snatch my clothes. That was when I saw it. In all its dimpled, white, cottage cheese-ish glory. From head to toe and everything, and I do mean everything, in between. My body's full length reflection in the mirror on the back of the door. I didn't know whether to vomit or cry.
I drove home in a drizzle that day wondering what the heck had happened to me? How had I gotten here? When did I board the Amtrak at Station Cool Stylish Mom and stumble unto Platform Plump (& Frump) twenty years later. That middle aged, slightly graying woman with the cellulite thighs and flabby tummy, staring back at me in disbelief wasn't me. Couldn't be. I surely didn't see myself like THAT. I saw myself as sophisticated and sleek as the models in the Eileen Fisher ads. Who was I kidding? I wasn't anywhere near them. I looked more like John Belushi in a bee costume. The mirror doesn't fib. I needed to face reality. My husband once joked that if I laid flat on my stomach, in my birthday suit, and he rolled a box of BB shots over by backside, every BB would find a spot. I laughed. He laughed. Ha Ha. It didn't really strike a nerve because I "knew" it wasn't true. But it was true and I was literally, the butt of the joke. He was right and I needed to get real.
I knew I had put on some weight through the years. Sixteen years of carpooling kids, eating dinner from white paper bags passed through the driver's window and carrying in pizza because you can't find the gumption to throw a meal together will do that to you. I thought that if I really wanted to take off the "couple pounds that had crept on," it would be a cake walk. I had control of those six or seven pounds. No problem. I'd diet for a couple days (generally two) by drinking Tab and munching 94% fat free popcorn and then I'd go straight back to my boob tube fare of Ben & Jerry's and anything sweet I could get my paws on. The next morning I'd start the entire pathetic forty eight hour cycle over. Yep, I've always watched my weight. But I've never watched it go away. I've brainwashed myself into believing that if I ever really wanted to buckle down and take it off, I could. Just like that. Snap. But I couldn't. I've never admitted how serious it was and now, three hundred pints of Cherry Garcia and zillions of starve/stuff fasts later, I am proudly tipping the scales, at least a couple dozen pounds over my ideal weight, and the needle is still climbing .
If you keep doing what you've always done, you're gonna keep getting what you always got.
In my case, that was nowhere. I made a vow to myself, as I drove straight to Target to pick up a digital scale, that "this was it." I was dedicating the next three months of my forty seven year old life to dropping twenty pounds. Ninety days. One thousand, one hundred and sixty hours. Twelve weeks. A blip in my existence. A brief season in my life. I was fed up with how I looked, how I felt and with schlepping around in baggy, has-been duds. There was no way that a measly twenty pounds, the weight of eighty sticks of butter would keep me down any longer. Butter. Come on.
I wasn't waiting for the next Monday or the First day Of The Month, or even New Year's. I was starting right where I was, after lunch, on a Thursday, a bump over hump day, and I was going to step on that scale confidently (without shaving my legs and underarms or clipping my nails first) and begin my journey.
I didn't need Weight Watcher's, Alli, Slim Fast or Trim-SpaX32. I knew exactly what I need to do. All "20 Pound Overweighters" know what they need to do. It's just a matter of doin' it. Twenty pounds can play tricks on us. It's deceiving because it's not enough weight to spark alarm and draw stares and with a bit of creative accessorizing, that unflattering flab can be disguised fairly well. Twenty Pound Overweighters are experts at hiding fat. But, twenty pounds is just enough weight to hold us back from feeling really good about ourselves and our appearance. That twenty pounds of Penne Puttanesca distributed evenly (if you're lucky)
and not so evenly (if you're not) about our bodies impedes us from realizing our potential. The more times we gobble up the latest Zone Bar only to scarf up everything edible in the cupboard when hunger and deprivation rear their ugly heads, the more defeated we become until we are hopelessly convinced that "we will never take the weight off." And we give up or give in. I 'm no psychologist, but I know that much. And if you are a 20 Pound Overweighter, you know that too. I'm not telling you anything new.
It's inconsequential how much weight you need to shed; five pounds, ten pounds, two hundred and fifty pounds. The point is when we set out to reach a goal, achieving it gives us so much more than a new appearance. Although, that in and of itself, is pretty frickin' awesome.
I had a plan, a good old fashioned one. A plan that worked, if I stuck to it. One that always works. I was mad as hell. The rubber had met the road, er...should I say the butt had met the mirror.
So, if you've read this far, I am assuming that you're ready to take the journey, too. That you, like hundreds of thousands of women, want desperately to break free from those g-darn pounds that piled on after you had babies, those eighty sticks of butter that accumulated over your rear when you were sitting on your ergo office chair, that weight that is simply a "reward" for a harried, stressed out, fast paced lifestyle.
I am assuming that you, want to, yearn to, once and for all to, rid yourself of the extra butter and get on with the rest of living, freeing up valuable time that you wasted fretting about weight and spending it on the truly more important stuff in life.
If you are willing to devote the next 129,600 minutes of your breath to changing your life, then lace up your grungy Nikes cuz you're in for one heck of a ninety day ride, I mean, power walk.
1 comment:
Chrysa,
Last year, after talking with four men in the course of two weeks who had all become diabetics in their 50s, I decided I needed to change my eating habits to avoid their fate.
I changed to a low-glycemic diet and went from 228 pounds to 198 in just six weeks! And how much extra exercise did I need to do? None. It was all diet. And the changes I made were minimal and not at all that difficult to do or live with long term.
I feel great and look great. I weigh just a few pounds more than I did in high school. Mt target weight is 200 pounds and that is where I have been staying. I can even go off the diet now and then and come back to it when I need it. If I gain 2 or 3 pounds when off the diet, returning to it sheds them right away. It's wonderful.
You can find all sorts of low glycemic info on the Web. Plenty of books, too. I would also recommend reading the book Good Calories, Bad Calories for an eye-opening exposé on the bill of goods many of us have been sold concerning what constitutes healthy food.
Blessings.
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