I’m not losing weight anymore. Diet industry, die in a fire, and I don’t say that lightly. Of course, I don’t have any weight TO lose anymore. I used to be obese. Now I’m at the actuarially endorsed “healthy weight for my height.” My BMI is 21 and I’m at 22% body fat. I wear a size zero. I’m 40, but men turn their heads when I walk by in a bikini. I ran a marathon. I could probably run 5 miles barefoot right now if I wanted. I’m stronger and more physically fit than I was at 15 or 25. That’s important to me, because I spent so many years battling one chronic illness or another. In my life, excess body fat and physical pain go together, like a right hand and a left hand. I did not go on a brand-name diet. I did not try meal substitution shakes, bars, powders, pills, teas, juices, smoothies, coffee with butter, Paleo, gluten-free, cleanses, or whatever else the $20 billion diet industry is constantly trying to sell us. (Compare to $30 billion for the self-storage industry; this is why I talk about clutter more than I do about health and fitness). I did not eat extra protein or fewer carbohydrates or even track my macros. What I did do was to use a scale, a measuring tape, and the MyFitnessPal app. I followed the app’s recommended calorie intake and logged everything I ate for three months. Then I kept going, not because I needed to lose more weight, but because I wanted to track my micronutrient consumption. My food log could one day be a valuable source of information if I need medical attention for some complicated health problem. (Like my cancer scare or the time I got a bald patch). I learned how much, and what, I could eat to maintain my new physique. I did not lose the weight at the gym. I didn’t even GO to a gym, and I haven’t stepped foot in one in years. Over the past two decades, I have had several gym memberships, been an avid bicycle commuter, taken dance, yoga, self-defense, water aerobics, and other exercise classes several days a week, and trained for a marathon. (In between years-long periods of illness when I did nothing at all). Working out is great fun and it feels good, once you get through the first three awful weeks of pain and Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. Working out has about zero to do with weight loss. I gained 8 lbs while I trained for my marathon because I kept cramming my little chipmunk cheeks with cookies, trail mix, and stacks of waffles. Diet for short-term weight loss, work out for long-term maintenance and pleasure. I love my body, but I have a lot of anger about weight loss. It goes in two opposite directions. On the one hand, there’s the stupid diet industry that tricks people out of their money and makes them feel defeated, hopeless, and like they lack “willpower” or “motivation.” On the other hand, there are all the defensive fat people who can’t pass up an opportunity to naysay every person who tries to lose weight, fit-shame anyone who’s Not Fat Enough (an actual acronym some acquaintances use), and spend their time trying to debunk or discredit peer-reviewed clinical studies. From time to time, I am fit-shamed by someone who didn’t know me when I was fat. I explain that I used to be obese, that I had thyroid disease and a cancer scare and fibromyalgia and migraines and a parasomnia disorder (and I can keep going if you’re interested). “Oh,” they say. Nobody has ever apologized for the fit-shaming, for calling me a bitch or telling me to F off. I suppose it’s assumed that I understand, because “real” thin women deserve such treatment, and I was simply collateral damage. I’m also mad because the process is completely different for men than it is for women. My husband used to weigh 305 pounds, and he was still over 270 when we met. He taught me everything I know about weight loss. He taught me to track metrics, and he’s even helped me set up mathematical models to figure out patterns. We’ve lost 100 pounds between us, and most of it, we lost as colleagues, partners, and gym buddies. BUT. Every step of the way has been different. People constantly told me to “be careful.” Nobody said it to him. A shop clerk pantomimed vomiting, suggesting I must be bulimic to wear the size I do. “Um, I’m a marathoner,” I replied, horrified to my core. I tried to make myself vomit once, when I was 12 and accidentally ate a bug, but I couldn’t do it even then. I don’t hate my body. I’m also sane. Does anyone understand how rude it is to joke around or hint that someone is mentally ill? Men who decide to lose weight don’t get lectured by their friends about body image and anorexia and fashion and celebrity obsession. My man is “big.” He’s been a football player, a lumberjack, and a hockey player. He doesn’t get told to “be careful” – even when he’s sharpening a chainsaw or lighting stuff on fire. He’s strong enough to lose weight if he wants, to “train” – but women aren’t strong enough to be strong. I’m supposed to be passive, curvy, and feminine, not active, muscular, and sweaty. I’ve had a foot in both worlds. Incontrovertibly, being fit is better than being unfit. It’s useful and convenient and it’s far more physically comfortable. The comparison is precisely the same as having money vs. being poor and in debt. Why would anyone ever go back? At 22% body fat, why would I want to be 35% body fat again? It’s not something I would set about to do on purpose, in the same way that I would not set about accruing $20,000 of debt. Weight gain is basically something that “just happens,” and we accept it, in the same way that debt tends to “just happen.” The same way that health problems tend to “just happen.” The same way that clutter “just happens.” Fitness levels like mine don’t happen by accident. It’s intentional, the way I do most things in my life intentionally. We don’t know what we don’t know. I never knew I could be as strong as I am now. When I asked doctors what I could do differently, they replied, “I don’t know what to tell you.” There weren’t any athletes in my family. I didn’t really know any fit people. I assumed that the thin people I saw just came that way, in the same way that jays are blue and sparrows are brown. I shut down a few conversations over the years, suggesting that I try losing weight or going to the gym, because what I had been told about thyroid disease and fibromyalgia said that I couldn’t do either. I’ve heard other people say that it is “physically impossible” for them to lose weight, and in my mind, it wasn’t even a question. I just was the way I was. Past Self never would have believed a word I have to say about health, fitness, or weight loss. “Past Self, being fit feels like being a millionaire.” “F Off, Future Self.” This is what I think. I think it’s a thousand times easier to change your body than to change your body image. I think the sense of disappointment and dissatisfaction we often feel toward our bodies comes from a feeling of being physically off in some way. Maybe it’s being constantly sleep-deprived or dehydrated, having imbalanced gut flora, a micronutrient deficiency, overloading our organs with too much sugar, too many calories, too many food additives, straining joints from excess body weight, relying on pharmaceuticals to deal with the side effects of our biologically inappropriate diets. If a single one of those factors applies, why blame that off feeling on magazine photos? There is no way to objectively quantify how someone will feel when beholding a fashion model of any size or appearance. We can objectively quantify what we eat and analyze a wide range of health metrics with laboratory tests. Given our society’s mortality statistics and reliance on prescription drugs, anyone under 35 should take this under consideration. Anyone over 35 already knows that the older we get, the more we start to suffer the side effects of our lifestyle preferences. I stopped losing weight. I made a decision. “I tried being fat but I had to quit.” Nothing about being “curvy” worked for me. I chose a path, an uphill and muddy path. I shook off everything holding me back, from ignorant doctors to inherited family beliefs to expectations of appropriate female behavior to food preferences. I quit drinking soda and eating breakfast cereal. I paid attention to my habits and became more aware of my body. I quit planning my vacations around what restaurants to try. I quit insisting on ordering two appetizers and a dessert. Very little remains the same in what I eat, where I eat, how often I eat, or how much I eat. I divorced Past Self and Past Self’s destructive, short-sighted habits. I made a radical change. I decided that I wouldn’t be fat anymore, that I would be at least a little stronger every year. Two years in, I’ve maintained that. I only wish I’d known to try it sooner. Sweat is dripping out of my hair. I’m hidden from prying eyes in the back bedroom of a ranch house that has seen better days. Now would not be a good time to call. You see, I’ve just performed an exorcism. On myself. On my treadmill. There are various moods that take hold of me from time to time. Some of them are mildly amusing, such as when I talk to myself in research mode or start singing mock opera lyrics when I’m trying to resolve an argument. “What… does it mean to youuuu… when my mouth is moving and sounds are coming oouuuutttt?” Most of my moods are disagreeable, to others, but also to me. I don’t want to hang out with myself. One of these moods is “the snit.” This is when I feel irritable, like there is a stress hormone saturating my body. (This is probably true, and it’s probably cortisol). The snit is nobody’s fault, but if I don’t steer clear of other humans, some of it may splatter on them like hot grease. Another disagreeable mood is the way I feel on a cloudy day, when I’ve burned through too much unstructured time and started to feel listless and bored. Too much sitting tends to make me headachy, and thus, grouchy. One of the biggest surprises of my life was learning that exercise is a reliable mood elevator. It always works. It works in the rain, it works when I’m sleep deprived, and it’s even worked when I started out with a headache. I have gone to the gym so tired I could barely put one foot in front of the other, and emerged after a full cardio workout feeling like a million bucks. When I work out strenuously several days a week, my resting mood is about a 9 out of 10. This is why cranky people hate athletes. We’re so cheerful you want to kill us all. It’s like we’re having better sex (true) or enjoying how we look in workout clothes (probably false) or like being fit actually feels that much better (true). The trouble is that it’s easy to adjust to this super-excellent feeling. Then, if anything happens and you can’t work out for a few weeks or months, you start reverting to your baseline mood. It’s like the last third of Flowers for Algernon. Experiencing this spectrum of baseline moods is a sort of metaphysical puzzle. Which of these is the real me? Is it true what they say, that the runner’s high is just like any other drug? (One of the most absurd fallacies ever). In a sense, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that I know which behavior packages result in which states of being. If I can choose between chronic pain and fatigue with misery, acceptance with fortitude, or happiness with enthusiasm, then I can make an informed choice. I can realize that it is a choice, that I have a choice. I didn’t consciously choose chronic pain or illness, but I do choose when I am blissed out. I don’t enjoy being in a snit. I don’t enjoy feeling crabby or cranky or irritable. I don’t enjoy that restless, mopey, cabin-fever feeling. I lived alone for years, and I didn’t enjoy those feelings when I was by myself. Now I’m married, and I have to multiply my emotional environment by someone else’s. A snit is no longer just a snit; it’s a 2x snit, or more if we have guests. Negative moods become more costly, to myself and to others. I’d rather not… inflict myself on other people. The prospect is even more unnerving when I consider that other people are just as entitled to their own snits as I am to mine. It becomes a scenario of exponential growth. “Normal me” has a baseline mood of about 7 out of 10, while Workout Me hits a 9. Past Self of the fibromyalgia, four-day migraines, and thyroid disease lived at around a 4. At that time, I thought perky people were dumb and annoying. Honestly, I feel like becoming an athlete has made me smarter. I sleep better, and it may be nothing more than that. I can definitely attest to improved concentration sustained over longer periods. I’m better organized and more productive, measured by projects completed. I’ve become someone whom my own Past Self would totally hate. All I can do is look back at her and ask, “So, how’s that working out for you?” I’ve exorcised that dissatisfied, jealous, irritable, sarcastic version of myself, jettisoned in the same way I’ve eliminated my credit debt and cleared my clutter. I have everything she ever wanted, which of course is why I would annoy her so much. The best thing about a treadmill exorcism is that it only takes 30 minutes. Walk in feeling bad, walk out feeling fantastic! The endorphins are great and the natural analgesic effect is even better. The time and effort involved are pretty minimal. I went to the garage and cut out a board to put across the arms, so I can prop up a book or my laptop. Sometimes I watch true crime shows or skim Facebook. Usually I read a library book. In other words, I do exactly the same things I would have been doing if I were lounging around on the couch. The only discernible difference to me is that doing the treadmill barefoot makes your feet all black, so I have to wear shoes. Better to tie on my shoes, though, than to be in such a snit that I want to throw them at someone. Sometimes I get mad at my body. I expect all my body parts to work together as a team, but every now and then, one of them quits on me. “Traitor!” I say to my ankle. “You need to get with the program!” After over a year of rehabbing and resting and generally depriving myself of any athletic outlet, my ankle finally felt ready to run again. Almost immediately afterward, I tripped and fell on the sidewalk and ripped the skin off my knee. (Well, both knees, both hands, and an elbow). This happened five days before a hiking trip 900 miles away, for which I had already bought my plane ticket. I went on the trip, bringing a fully-stocked first aid kit for my still-bloody knee, and came home with blisters under both my big toenails. At this rate, I’ll be lucky if I’m running by Thanksgiving. I can’t even wear pants or proper shoes right now. Body, why can’t you just give me what I want all the time? Sometimes I feel panic when I consider my body. Sunburns are one of these times. I still have a brown tiger stripe across my lower back from a second-degree sunburn I got there over a year ago. (A tough area to keep covered, since it is so hard to find pants small enough to stay up where they belong). About once a year, I am careless with the sunblock, and I get a bad burn on my chest. There is a mole there where there wasn’t one ten years ago, and every morning, I examine it fretfully, afraid it will turn on me. My gums. Oh, my gums. I may be aging in reverse in many ways, but my receding gums are the bane of my life. Thirty years of grinding my teeth, chewing through four mouth guards, wearing through amalgam fillings in 18 months… I wish I could start over. I’d go through teething like a baby if only I could have a fresh new mouth. I look at myself, with my stretch marks and spider veins and my one Rasputiny chin hair, and I sigh with disappointment. Sometimes I wish I was better looking. Other times, I feel like that would be an irritating complication in my life. The dream of invisibility is more compelling for me than the dream of physical beauty. I used to be fat – significantly fatter than I thought I was. I have stretch marks on my calves, knees, thighs, hips, and butt. In some ways, I carry them as tangible proof that I used to live on an alternate timeline, in a parallel universe. In other ways, they crush my spirit. They’ll never go away. They don’t itch anymore, the way they used to when they were still stretching, and they’re not purple anymore either. Still, I’m disappointed when I see them. When I was at my heaviest, I used to play with the fat roll on my belly. I addressed it affectionately as my “jelly roll.” I would grab a handful and hang on to it. It interested me. It was comforting. I didn’t think I “looked fat” – I was smaller than most of my friends, and I thought of myself as “average.” I had seen a statistic about the proportions of the average American woman, and I was marginally taller and weighed slightly less. (Or thought I did. I hadn’t weighed in for quite a while and I know I would have been surprised if I knew the truth). I had nothing to worry about. I felt attractive to men. I never felt the body shame that so many women seem to feel. I’ve been angry with my body. I used to ride my bike around, swearing to myself. “F.U., thyroid gland! You can’t do this to me!” When I would get migraines, I would cry into my ears, in fits of rage and humiliation that my body once again insisted on being so demanding. It wanted something, I knew not what, and I felt helpless and powerless against it. I would wake up in my dining room or living room or standing in the middle of our mattress, shaking and crying, heart hammering, with no memory of how I got there. These moments were the worst: Mortification that my body ran around with screams coming out, while I was sound asleep and unable to control it. Deep fear that I had started opening doors during my night terrors, and that I would run out into traffic one night and be killed, the way others with my condition have. Disquiet that I might attack my husband and that I would have to start tying myself to the bed, the way others have. I would like a new body, please, and a new brain, too, if one is available. Fortunately, I’m on top of it. I haven’t had a pavor nocturnus episode in about a year, and it’s been longer than that since I had a migraine. My thyroid nodule went away many years ago. I’m at a healthy weight. I may not have all the skin on my knee that I want right now, and I have no idea how long it takes a blister under a nail to go away. Generally, though, my body is fit and healthy and ready to go. I would be in better shape if I had a longer attention span and if I stayed more alert to my physical parameters. I’m always pushing at the limits, trying to go farther and faster, and pushing myself 1% too far. It’s hard to miss the epic levels of shame that people are feeling toward their bodies. Someone shares an article about it nearly every day. I don’t identify with this feeling, though. When I was heavy, it was pretty obvious to me that my life wasn’t working. Fibromyalgia, migraines, mysterious hair loss… The more I learned about nutrition (and applied it), the better I slept, the more active I got, the better I felt. My annoying health problems pulled the carpet out from under me less frequently. I started to realize that significant time had elapsed since the last time I had had X or Y problem. I felt and looked stronger. I began to trust my body more. My thighs and abs look amazing. I like my body more at 40 than I have at any time in my life. I feel like what people are interpreting as a negative emotional reaction to external forces (such as “the culture”) is ineluctably tinged with an interior dismay that various internal systems are out of balance. There is a sense of rightness inside the body when it is well rested, fully hydrated, fed the proper amount of micronutrients, and allowed to move as much as it wants. I am not sure how someone could feel that rightness in a state of chronic sleep deprivation, nutritional imbalance or deficiency, dehydration, weak muscles contributing to bad posture contributing to constant aches and pains, and/or a chronic health condition. I certainly never did. When I was sick, I didn’t care how I looked; I went to the movies once in my nightgown, with my hair unbrushed, because DEAL WITH IT. I wasn’t ashamed, I was just ill. Now that I’m healthy, I wouldn’t care if I grew a tail and everyone stared at it, because I’m grateful and I feel good for once. It is possible to wake up and feel glad to start a new day. It is possible to see yourself naked in the mirror and think, “AWW YEAH!” It is possible to wrestle chronic illness to the ground and put your boot on its neck. It is possible to feel triumph rippling through your body. I believe that in many ways, I am aging in reverse, and that I will be physically stronger, faster, and more agile in ten years than I am today. I believe I will look better at 60 than I did at 30. I’m proud of my body now. I appreciate my resilience and strength and grit. When people stare at my body, as they do sometimes, I square my shoulders and hold my head up. This is what a marathoner looks like. (Well, a slow one). This is what a survivor looks like. Body, you disappoint me sometimes, but we’re still a team, and a good one. Now, about this knee… Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes change so difficult. It seems like the default setting for humans is to never change, even when the status quo is painful. Information has never been so easy to find at any point in history. It takes less than one minute to find step-by-step instructions for everything from making ink to shrunken heads, and surely the steps for quitting smoking, getting organized, losing weight, or starting a business are even easier to come by. There is even a market for various devices to help us stay focused on our intentions, from fitness trackers to a scary thing that lets you give yourself a mild shock whenever you feel the desire to step off track. If we want to change anything, anything at all, the information and support are readily available. There’s still time in these last 13 weeks of 2015 to do anything. Register for classes. Get a business license. Unclutter a house, garage, and storage unit. Lose 20 pounds. Pay off a credit card. Make that pesky doctor or dentist appointment. Learn a couple dozen healthy recipes. Learn to play a song on an instrument. A busy person could do all those things in the next 13 weeks. Probably it won’t happen, though. Almost all of us will still be procrastinating on the same stuff we were last year, next year. Why is that? I’ve come to believe that there are two main reasons why we don’t change, even when we have formed the intention to do so. The first is that we have contempt for people who do the thing, whatever it is. The second is that we are skeptical of the supposed benefits. We just don’t believe it is really as awesome as everyone says it is. We see change in terms of giving something up. We don’t change unless we want to change, but we don’t even want to want to change. Maybe other people don’t feel as contemptuous as I did, but it was huge in my life. I absolutely knew that people who go to the gym are vapid and vain. Likewise, I knew that fashionable, attractive people were not just vapid and vain, but also bullies. I knew that rich people were evil. When I would see people jogging in place at intersections, I would sneer at them, “Oh, SHUT UP!” (Now I’m the one jogging in place at intersections). I had this magical ability to read everyone’s mind and size up people’s character at a glance. It was marvelous. Have you ever noticed that, the more successful people are, the more critics they have? Olympian athletes, famous musicians, writers, actors, political figures… Why is this? Yeah, schadenfreude, I know. Where does it come from, though? Still working on this one. This is part of why we are so easily able to convince ourselves that change isn’t worth it. No need to be extreme. I’m real. I’m awesome the way I am! Wouldn’t want to get carried away, now. Other people will always back us up on this. When I was losing my weight, I got told over and over again, by people who didn’t know each other: “Be careful.” Nobody ever said to be careful when I was gaining weight, just like nobody went with me to the hospital to get my thyroid scanned and find out whether that nodule was cancerous. A little too much truth in hospitals. Change bothers everyone. Change too much and it affects the balance of power. “You’re making the rest of us look bad.” If you really want to see that effect in action, try increasing your productivity at work. Change is too hard, it doesn’t work anyway, and if it did work, well, it makes you all full of yourself and arrogant and stuff. It may have worked for you, but I’m certain it won’t work for me. I’ve checked a bunch of boxes demonstrating that I did try to change, and look at what it got me. I missed out on my routine and I have nothing to show for it. Better save your energy and just stay the same. My people have a lot of negative opinions about organization, tidiness, and cleaning. They tend to have a single image of what “clean and organized” means, and it’s always sterile and ugly. Why not a comfortable, beautiful environment that is simply missing the dirt and clutter? Surely at least a few iterations of that are possible? It turns out that my squalor clients don’t really believe in germ theory. They can’t smell bad smells anymore. They scoff at other people’s overly fussy ideas about cleanliness. Meanwhile, I’ve never worked in a squalid house in which all the occupants were not chronically coming down with one respiratory issue after another. Headaches, poor sleep, skin problems, digestion issues… Often the pets have problems, too. The humans don’t see the connections, though. The framework is that “I’m sick, therefore I can’t clean” rather than “biofilm on everything in my house is making me ill.” I’ve come home from several intensive jobs and been sick in bed for a week. Often I have sneezing fits so bad during squalor jobs that I have to step outside for a few minutes. The question of whether a squalid environment contributes to poor health could be resolved scientifically, but many people would wave off the suggestion of such a thing as “not that big a deal.” Smokers obviously know that smoking is bad for you (and expensive). The warning labels keep getting bigger and bigger, for one thing. For another, it’s not like they haven’t been nagged about it many times. It’s about rebellion as much as anything. “Every time someone told me to stop smoking, it added a year to how long I smoked.” Most smokers will say they have tried to quit – honest, committed efforts too – and they just can’t. Millions of people have quit! There are tons of ways to do it. In some areas, you can even get the patch for free. Heck, if you want to quit smoking and can’t afford the patch, PM me and I’ll pay for it. But it comes down to personal sovereignty, like most things. I’m not doing it unless it was my idea. “Don’t judge :) ” – right? They see it as giving something up; that is, until they realize how much extra money they have and how much better food tastes. They see it as a relief from stress, reverting the moment anything unusually dramatic happens, discrediting the fact that most people use a variety of coping mechanisms that are not nicotine. They haven’t seen their personal lungs or arteries, and underneath it all, they truly aren’t fazed by the purported health risks. One of the toughest ones at this cultural moment is overweight. There appears to be an inverse relationship between how heavy someone is and how much that person endorses basic concepts of physiology and nutrition. I’m afraid to even put that into print because the Body Image Mafia will show up on my lawn. On two occasions, I have overheard a conversation in which someone says, “My doctor told me I was obese!” (Once with a man and once with a woman). Everyone gasps in incredulity. “He can’t talk to you that way! You should report him!” A credentialed health expert has just given a clinical diagnosis, and everyone takes it as an appearance-based insult. “I’m afraid your leg is broken.” “*gasp* Doctor! How dare you shame my femur that way! I’m perfect just the way I am!” I know more people with sleep apnea and diabetes than I could fit in my house, and even after coping with these conditions for several years, almost none of them are even talking about thinking about losing any weight. Not even ten pounds. We can’t even buy into the concept that being able to breathe without a machine would be worth making a change. We’ve read the brochures and we are not impressed. I’m an activist for personal change because I’ve experienced so much of it. Anyone would agree that being debt-free is more fun than being in debt. Most would agree that it’s also more fun to be free of chronic pain and fatigue than to suffer it. Many would go so far as to concede that being organized makes life easier than being chronically disorganized, at least if you have the sort of attention issues I did. Few are willing to consider the idea that going from obese to athletic is even possible, much less healthier, and certainly not worth the bother of trying. All I want is to help others to struggle less than I did, with problems I found very frustrating. Once my problem goes away, though, I cease to be a sympathetic character and become the enemy. Get organized and you’re not the ADHD person anymore; you’re Martha Stewart. Get better from fibromyalgia, and you’re not ‘one of us’ anymore; you’re Jillian Michaels. “You don’t know what it’s like.” We write off the very idea that someone in our situation changed and eliminated the problem. It can’t possibly be everything it’s cracked up to be. Can it? BS per square inch is more highly concentrated in the field of diet, nutrition, and weight loss than anywhere else, and I’m including multi-level marketing and trance mediums on the list. Nobody knows anything. It’s so bad that people have stopped believing it’s possible to live a healthy lifestyle and started believing that it’s natural to need pharmaceuticals and medical appliances to survive. I know more people who need CPAP machines to breathe at night than I do people who can run 5 miles. Add in all the people I know who have had open-heart surgery or who have an insulin pump, and I know more people in the intervention group than I do who can run one mile. Humanity is planning our first mission to Mars, and we can’t figure out how to keep people using their own lungs? It’s terrifying. It doesn’t have to be this way. Our culture is funny. People are often more impressed by someone who has lost a lot of weight and kept it off than they are by someone who has a patent or who has published an article in an academic journal. Of course, we also like to choose our political leaders based on whether it would be fun to drink a beer with them, which is bonkers, because surely our president has more to do than to lounge around in a tavern, although I’ll make an exception for Grover Cleveland. In short, we’ve started thinking that losing weight is harder than anything else, for two reasons: 1. Almost everyone in our culture is overweight; 2. Misinformation is so common that accurate information is a statistical anomaly. I’m a Unicorn-American. I lost my weight even though I had a low-functioning thyroid gland and chronic fatigue. I ran a marathon even though I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I’m too small for a size zero in all but, like, three stores. I’m 40 and I’d rather share selfies of my abs than my face. Nothing I have read in the past several years about body image or healthy lifestyles makes any sense to me whatsoever. First I’m going to review all the trends and truisms I see and completely ignore. Then I’m going to share what I actually do; the things that work for my thyroid disease/chronic pain/chronic fatigue/migraineur/sleep-disordered middle-aged self. That’s not real. It’s natural to gain weight as you get older. I’ll never be thin. Having children makes you fat. I’m fat because I have an injury that keeps me from going to the gym. The only way to lose weight is the way I did it; I lost 40 pounds; I should do that again because of course I’ve gained it all back and then some. MACRONUTRIENTS! Specific individual foods with maaggggical powers! Juicing! Smoothies! Packets of powders! Bars! Shakes! Foods nobody knew about before the great 20th Century Obesity Epidemic, because that makes perfect sense! Abdominal exercisers! Anything whatsoever sold on INFOMERCIALS! Plastic wrap for your abs! PILLS! SO MANY PILLS! Motivational posters! Calorie-burning shoe soles! Caffeinated skin creams! [Full disclosure: I actually have tried acupuncture and homeopathy, though not for weight loss, but I did once buy a $35 cellulite cream, because yeah, my thighs totally needed to absorb more substances… ] Okay. I lost 35 pounds. This is what I did. 1. Googled “healthy weight for my height.” Tried to get other reputable opinions from other websites. Accepted there might be more science behind the number that came up than there was in my current method, which was NO SCIENCE. Committed to test-drive myself at that weight, at least temporarily. 2. Googled how much water someone of my height/weight should drink. Trained myself to drink it. 3. Kept a meticulous food log. Measured and weighed everything. SCIENCE! 4. Strictly limited calories – cut by about 30% for three months. 5. Weighed in every day. Took regular stats with a tape measure. (chest, waist, hips, thighs, biceps) DATA! 6. Reached my goal with a full, nuanced understanding of my previous ineffective eating habits. 7. Kept doing steps 2, 3, and 5. 8. Got rid of my fat clothes. Note that there is no step for exercise. That is because exercise has nothing to do with weight loss! Stop thinking that! You don’t ever have to go to a gym if you don’t want to. The research is pretty clear: diet for the short term, exercise for the long term. Most of my weight was lost while I sat around on the couch, feeling sorry for myself and crying because I couldn’t have a chimichanga until next month. Then I trained for a marathon and gained back 8 pounds because I kept eating so many vanilla fig bars. Then I lost it again while sitting on the couch and icing my ankle. (Wait! I know! My IKEA couch is actually a MAGICAL WEIGHT LOSS MACHINE! You can make an appointment to sit on it for just three monthly installments of only $1999.99). I don’t “juice.” I have a smoothie maybe once or twice a year, if my mom makes me one. Under no circumstances have I ever given a care about tracking macronutrients. It’s been debunked. What I do track is MICROnutrients. Fiber, people! I eat wheat, corn, and soy whenever I want. I don’t take any medications other than birth control (which people think causes weight gain, just like thyroid disease, so go figure). I take a B-12 supplement, but you should know that taking a daily multi-vitamin has been linked to greater mortality from all causes. Vitamins (see above under micronutrients) should come from food, not a jar. I don’t do crunches. I haven’t had a gym membership for five years. I’ve never worked with a personal trainer, although I plan to one day. I have muscles but I’m super lazy. Every now and then I decide I’ll do planks, and I do one for about a minute, and then that’s it for the next several months. The reason I have visible muscle definition is that I’m down to 22% body fat. I don’t lift anything heavier than a laundry basket. I haven’t even done pull-ups for several months because I got tennis elbow from my phone. I walk about .8 miles to the coffee shop where I write, maybe 2-3 days a week. Exercise is something I do as a treat, or when I’m angry or frustrated about something that makes me too restless to stay in the house. Exercise is a means to an end: the ability to carry a backpack and hike into the backcountry; local transportation; ability to “play hard” on vacation; a giant F.U. to the endocrine gland that tried to kill me and made my hair fall out. You hear that, thyroid? Yeah, I said it. To be fair, there are things I do that may make a difference besides just eating a consistent volume of food at consistent times of day. I sleep 8 hours a night, more if I can get away with it. I don’t drink sweet drinks – not juice, not soda, not diet soda, nada – and I also don’t drink coffee or alcohol. I don’t eat sugars in general. I don’t eat 95% of what you would find in a typical grocery store bakery, including bread, bagels, muffins, croissants, cookies, pies, cakes, donuts, brownies, or whatever. I also don’t eat crackers, breakfast cereal, frozen desserts, or snack foods in general. I don’t eat junk food or fast food. I might eat chips or fries at most once a month. I don’t generally eat grains, especially not pasta or white rice, unless I’m in training, but I do eat a large baked potato with lunch every day. I eat wheat bread, but only from three specific brands. I eat as much fruit as I want, whenever I want. It’s not “carbs” – how oversimplified and misleading! – but rather, over-processed industrial foods. I’m not a strict personality – if I want candy, I’ll eat it – I’ve just lost my taste for these foods. They make me feel weird when I eat them, which I sometimes do, just often enough to remind myself why I don’t eat them every day. Once I realized that I ate more desserts by volume than I did vegetables, I felt foolish and started ramping up my cruciferous vegetable consumption. To this I attribute my overall state of health, sound digestion, “young skin,” and ability to sleep well. Gut flora. Worth considering. Also take note of magnesium deficiency, its prevalence, and its symptoms. As a final note, I eat a plant-based diet. I think most people would do well to be as skeptical of dairy products as they are of grain products. I haven’t eaten dairy products since 1997, and it seems unfair not to mention it. Don’t believe anything I’ve said. I have no credentials, and that matters! The only thing I can offer is anecdotal evidence. I lost a bunch of weight and reversed my health problems, and now I’ve maintained my bikini bod for a year and a half. It’s possible I’m making false correlations and attributing my results to the wrong inputs. It’s not possible I’m some kind of genetic anomaly, since I was at least as fat and ill and sedentary as anyone else for my first 35 years, and my family tree has no athletes that I know of. All I can say is that I believe it’s possible for everyone to be lean and fit, as long as we don’t follow the Standard American Diet or live the Standard American Lifestyle. Anyone can make lifestyle experiments, track data, and chart a trend line. What have you got to lose? I think it’s pretty clear I ain’t no size two, ‘cause when I shake it shake it, my pants start falling off. I’m a nerdy, middle-aged suburban woman who wears sub-zero clothing. In my world, that ought to mean clothes that keep me warm in the winter. Au contraire, mes amis. Let me tell you what it’s like. What I want out of the fashion industry is pretty straightforward. Call it business casual. I want flat shoes, natural-waist pants, knee-length skirts, shorts that cover my entire caboose, and tops that cover my entire bra. I prefer that it be assumed I am in the practice of wearing undergarments, without displaying them for all to see. I’m not a bluestocking. As far as I’m concerned, public nudity is a-okay, as long as it’s intentional. Which my accidental flashing of my entire naked breast in a restaurant the other day most assuredly was not. I have a young friend who is probably engaging in ritual self-mutilation at this very moment, in a feeble attempt to bleach the sight of my sundress malfunction from his mind. (The label says Size 1, by the way). My narrow shoulders cannot accommodate loose straps any more than my flat marathon runner’s butt can hold up a loose waistband. All those signs reading PULL UP YOUR PANTS? I know they’re aimed at me. Despite what most people would guess, my body image is quite good. I won a lengthy battle with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease, and every day I appreciate my strength and energy level with full force. I like having visible muscle definition. I have never been “skinny” and I am definitely not “naturally lean.” I’m just… small. But not small enough. I’m at least two inches too tall to wear petites, with a long waist, long arms, narrow shoulders, short legs, big thighs, and more bust than fashion designers expect. Put it this way. For the first time in my life, I look better naked than I do dressed. Nothing fits me. You think I’m exaggerating? Let me Google some size charts for you. Target: size 0/2 bottoms. Waist 26-26.5. Hip 36-37. Sears: size 0. Waist 25 ½. Hip 35. (Same as KMart) JCPenney: size 0. Waist 25 ½. Hip 35 ½. Walmart: starts at size 2. Waist 24 ½. Hip 35. LL Bean: starts at size 4. Costco: starts at size 8. My measurements are 34-27-34. According to the size charts, I should be able to fit in a 0 at Ann Taylor (see above photo), the Gap, and Old Navy, and a 00 at Banana Republic. In practice, those size 0’s are too loose. I tried on several size 0 garments at the Banana Republic store yesterday that were too big, and a very sweet employee directed me to the website, where I found… five styles of pants. Period. They don’t carry a 00 in the store, and I guess it’s not a big seller online either. Most 00 stuff is designed for truly skinny body types, not for athletes with bulky hamstrings, adult hips, and a BMI of 20. There is a dividing line between extra-small clothing and average-size clothing that is at least as vivid as the scene change from sepia to Technicolor in The Wizard of Oz. The women’s section has everything I want: modest, classic clothes that cover my stretch marks. Their “XS” is equivalent to about a size 6. The extra-small section (see H&M, Forever 21, Macy’s, and Nordstrom) currently has biscuit-bottom shorts, racer-back baggy tank tops, miniskirts, “pants” that were called “leggings” in my day, beachwear, and a broad spectrum of completely transparent tops, mysterious cutouts, and distressed denim. Good luck finding a single item that would be suitable on an airplane or in a nice restaurant, much less anything that would meet any office dress code. I can choose between “teen character actor” or trying to duct-tape age-appropriate garments onto my body. Which I’ve considered. But this is a hot climate, yo. That gives all new meaning to the concept of “tacky outfits.” Caring friends have advised me to wear children’s clothes (because Dora the Explorer has a new business casual line) or men’s clothes (because there are so many more men who are 5’4” and weigh 120 pounds – problem solved!). Really, though, nobody gives a flying leap about my problem. I Googled “size zero” and found a Wikipedia article that indicates a 3” range in clothes labeled “size zero,” explicates “criticism” and “movement against size zero,” and then stops without indexing places one might purchase said clothing. The remaining first-page results are all about a size-zero woman who got liposuction, except for one article about size inflation called “Congratulations! You are a size zero!” I looked up “size zero fashion” on Pinterest. Much to my astonishment, what popped up was “curvy” and “plus-sized,” with a certain amount of disparagement for small women. “Does anyone really look like this?” and “Anorexia is a disease it is NOT a fashion statement”. You think people body-shame you? Evidently my clothing size gives people the right to assume I’m mentally ill. I have just as much right to buy clothes that fit as anyone else. But capitalism is failing me. There is no market for the products I want to buy; therefore, they don’t exist. I’ve been online, and I’ve only found one brand of underpants that fit me. Even on Amazon, I’m off the bottom of the size chart for almost everything. I used a tape measure, ordered a sundress that should have fit, and the smocking… didn’t stretch. My options at this point are to keep returning most of my online orders, make my own clothes, pay for someone else to do it, or wear vintage. (I’m the same height and weight as Betty Grable, although Grable’s hips were an inch bigger and I’m bigger by 4” in the waist, 3” in the thigh, 2” in the calf, and ¾” in the ankle. Nobody seems to think she had an eating disorder, even with that tiny waist and those slender legs). My long-suffering husband, who has been my companion in clothes shopping over the last decade, is threatening to take me to London, where I would be a size 6. In other parts of the world, my build is perfectly normal and average. My “size zero” issues aren’t just a First World Problem – they’re almost exclusively an American problem. Correction: a Unicorn-American problem. If you’re reading this, you probably know exactly what I mean by “spoons” and why I’m talking about them. Try as we might, when we talk about chronic illness, we generally won’t reach an audience of well people. A healthy person in a generous mood may humor us for a few minutes, long enough to pick up the sense that being sick sucks. Let’s face it, though. A healthy person’s priority is never going to be dedicating hours of time to talking and thinking about illness. For all we know, their Charitable Listening quota was already extracted by a dozen other ill people earlier this week. We can take a moment to be glad for them. If we care about them, we wouldn’t wish our conditions on them. Well people are like fuzzy little ducklings. Aren’t they adorable? Now I’ll pause and list off my chronic illness credentials. It’s like flashing a gang sign. If I were better at drawing, I’d make up hand signals for: fibromyalgia, thyroid disease, migraine, TMJ, carpal tunnel syndrome, vasovagal syncope, childhood-onset insomnia, bruxism, restless leg syndrome, confusional arousal, and pavor nocturnus. (Not a complete list). I had a cancer scare. I’ve swallowed radioactive iodine and been on beta blockers. I’ve had my thyroid scanned and had an EKG. I’ve had so many ultrasounds on so many body parts you’d think I could cash them in for a free baby. If I brought my parrot to appointments, she would definitely be able to say, “I don’t know what to tell you.” The other thing my bird would be able to say is, “You don’t know what it’s like.” Chronic illness is something of a competitive sport. Quite frankly, none of my stuff “counts.” My four-day migraine is nothing compared to so-and-so who was hospitalized for migraine. My running around the house sleep-screaming and slapping myself until I bleed is mildly interesting, but at least I don’t need a CPAP. See what I mean? I have several friends who have fibromyalgia. Only one of them is actually willing to talk with me about it. The fact that I’m not symptomatic anymore makes me some kind of poseur. A friend of mine wrote the other day that ‘healthy lifestyles’ are now an acceptable means of moral judgment. This makes me want to beat my head on the wall. So, you’re talking to someone who feels better than you do, and you don’t want to hear about it? WHAT IF THAT INFORMATION COULD HELP YOU FEEL BETTER? It's like we were both wrongfully convicted of a crime we didn't commit, and I'm offering you the business card of the lawyer who got me exonerated, and you respond as though I had just accused you of being a criminal after all. The first thing about having a limited number of spoons is to FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET MORE SPOONS. Waiter, Table 12 needs some EXTRA SPOONS please. If I only have one spoon for the day, I’m going to use it to Google information on spoon acquisition. The next day, I’m going to put my spoon toward getting a second spoon. The thing about chronic pain is that it’s a super power. Guess what? You have the ability to withstand extreme pain for incredibly long periods of time, AND LIVE TO TELL ABOUT IT. Heck yeah! Here is the order form for your cape and boots. I married a big, strong, alpha male who began participating in team sports around age 4. He played football and hockey and he was actually a lumberjack. Basically my exact opposite in every way. What I found out about big strong athletic people is that they endure chronic pain, too, but they take it for granted and they don’t let it stop them. A game I play when I meet athletic people is to ask about their sports injuries, surgeries, and chronic pain areas. These lists often sound hauntingly familiar. I started to wonder if I had it in me to be an athlete as well. Come to find out, I did. I ran my first marathon in October 2014, 16 years after being diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I couldn't walk the next day, but neither could anyone else who ran the course. Recently an acquaintance asked if I would be willing to correspond with one of his clients who has fibromyalgia. We wrote back and forth several times. She said it was encouraging for her just to know that someone with FM could run a marathon. She wanted to pick my brain about how I got better, and she had tons of questions. Many pages into our correspondence, she mentioned that she spends a lot of time in a recliner. I hate recliners because they push my head and neck forward; I find them so uncomfortable and pain-triggering that I prefer to sit on the floor. I suggested that she reconsider the recliner and experiment with other chairs for a few weeks. I never heard from her again. Whenever I hear about anyone being diagnosed with a chronic illness, I fret. Sometimes I cry. I can’t bear the thought, even if it’s someone I’ve never met. I want to come bursting through their wall with a flaming sword and defeat the foul demon that is ruining their life. I want to back up a dump truck full of spoons and start pouring them over the back fence. Spoons! Spoons for all! When I hear that there is no cure for something, I think, “Yet.” Surely we’re not going to lie back and… and… submit! We’re not going to let it win – that would be a travesty. Unfortunately, this is not the attitude that is preferred. We want sympathy. Trying to fix the problem is not considered sympathetic. From what I gather, suggesting that there is a way out of this thing is elitist, controlling, condescending, moralizing, and rude. Hey, saying I got better is not the same as saying I am better. I got better by accident. Little by little, I stumbled across information and learned what my triggers were and how to avoid them. I learned how to adjust my sleep and activity level and food intake in a way that leads to better functionality. It turns out there are dozens of different inputs. It’s complicated, but not impossible. I still have occasional bad days. I’m never going to forget that spoons come in finite quantities. But I have enough to share now. I used to be obese, but I had to quit. I was diagnosed with both a thyroid nodule and fibromyalgia when I was 23. I inadvertently managed to cure myself of the thyroid disease, and I’ve been symptom-free of FM for so long that my current doctor believes I was misdiagnosed. “People don’t get better from fibromyalgia.” (All right then; study me, I’m game). I’m turning 40 soon, and when new people meet me, they see no trace of my chronic illness years. They see me as this size zero marathon runner. Other women have asked me what I weigh and what size I wear, and then they swear at me. I hear a lot of “You don’t know what it’s like,” followed by a litany of issues, most of which I have experienced. (How do you know I don’t know what it’s like?) I have always been willing to share everything I’ve learned, because I can’t stand the thought of someone else suffering from chronic pain, or fatigue, or migraine, for the many years that I did. I’ll do anything to help. Food intake is the major factor. There is huge resistance to this concept, because it’s tied to ideas of morality and willpower and shame and psychological disorders. We prefer the idea that we can just add exercise, and we totally will, just as soon as we’re less busy or we get over this cold or the weather is more cooperative. Now, I’m an active person. My motivation for being athletically fit is so that I can go on backpacking expeditions and drag a third of my body weight uphill all day. It’s been my experience that exercise has virtually nothing to do with weight loss or gain. In fact, I steadily gained weight while training for my marathon, because I run around with a belt pouch full of cookies and trail mix. It takes me 37 miles of running to burn off one pound of body fat. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m too lazy to rely on anything that strenuous when I want to meet a goal! Everyone is on a diet all the time. We’re either maintaining a range of body weight, or losing weight, or gaining weight. Over the course of a year, we’re either going to stay the same, be leaner, or have a greater quantity of adipose tissue on our bodies. Those are the options. It was something of a shock to me to realize that I was on the Steady Weight Gain diet plan. I gained 17 pounds in a year, and my health went into a nosedive. I was getting migraines on a weekly basis. I had the first FM flare-up I’d had in years. I was having night terrors. I felt awful. I started keeping a food log. What I learned was that I was eating about 150% of what a person my height needed to eat. Over a three-month period, I meticulously measured and weighed and read labels and wrote down every single thing I put in my mouth. I lost the extra weight. I’ve “kept it off” for over a year, although I don’t really think of it that way. I think of it as “living.” I created a new normal that allowed me to stay at one size. Now I live the same way as everyone else. I eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks every day. I go to the grocery store and choose food and put it in my cart and bring it home. I go to restaurants and order stuff that looks good. The difference is that I do it as a lean, strong person, and I do it with full awareness and knowledge of the cumulative effects of my individual choices. When I see something that Past Self used to eat, I have the twin thoughts of “Yum” and “Uhoh.” Nothing tastes as good as pain-free feels. Yesterday I heard a strange jangling sound come from my bedroom. I went in to check it out. My dog was hiding under the bed. I couldn’t find anything out of order, so I chalked it up to his collar jingling. This morning, I discovered what had happened. The hook holding my race medals had pulled off the wall, dumping everything on the floor inside the closet. One of them evidently gouged the baseboard. Remind me never to drop one of these things on my foot! I took a picture and then picked up the medals and spread them out on the bed. It seems like I can still remember every step of each of those races. There is still mud on the ribbon of the Warrior Dash medal, a surprisingly small amount of mud considering the state of my clothes that day. These gaudy chunks of metal have no real purpose other than as reminders of mornings when I woke up unusually early and ran in what have been referred to as the most boring parades ever. I’ve never earned a trophy. I was 36 before I got my first medal. I was always one of the smallest kids in my class, definitely always the last picked for every team. I was awkward, uncoordinated, and seemed to have no depth perception or hand-eye coordination or ability to remember the rules of whatever sport we were playing. I’ve been hit in the head with almost every possible ball. I was once tackled in the mud by one of my own teammates. Given the choice, I would absolutely have chosen solitary confinement over a PE class. Why on earth would I set out, of my own volition, on any course of action that might result in a medal? Especially when mud might be involved? What happened was that I got thyroid disease at age 23, the same year I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. (There is probably a connection between these). I spent years trapped in chronic pain and fatigue. Gradually, I began stumbling across combinations of behavior patterns that led to some relief. I started running at age 35 and finished the first mile of my life a few weeks later. In my adult life, I have worked to build my fitness level from what I would call a zero to maybe an 8 out of 10. I can climb a fence, carry 1/3 of my body weight through the woods for four days, run a half marathon any time I feel like it, and do a full Bikram yoga session. There are no medals given for most of these things, but if there were, I would hang them on a hook in my closet and fawn over them every now and then. My husband has a whole box full of medals, ribbons, commemorative coins, and perhaps a couple of trophies from sporting events starting when he was 4 years old. He was going to throw them out. I made him keep them. It’s a pretty heavy box. It represents many years of commitment and duty and determination and teamwork and effort. It’s a monument to an ethos of perseverance and fairness. I didn’t fully understand it until I came home with a few medals of my own. |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
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