The Road to Wellville--health and wellness from a reluctant participant's perspective

Eesh, I only made it three days last week! I skipped out on your fashion and design posts, due to my own forgetfulness and other unforeseen circumstances, but lets forget about all that. Today we're here to talk about healthy living--but not in the boring, preachy, "making things sound easy that are actually really hard" kind of way. I just want to share with you my particular relationship with "healthiness," and all the bumps and epiphanies along that long and winding road.

I was a fat kid. I was a fat teenager. I had a brief, shining moment in my late teens when the weight took a leave of absence and I slimmed down by about 30 pounds, but for the most part I was pretty fat for the majority of my twenties, too. It was just part of who I was. I was never happy about it though, and without getting too Dr. Phil about it, it really formed a lot of my own perception of what I was worth to the world. I always knew I had a lot going on for me, and would even admit I thought I had some pretty features, but I certainly would never say I was beautiful, or heavens forbid, "hot." Which sadly, is what all 15 year old girls want.

I'm um...the fat one.

What's funny though, is I never really saw myself as unhealthy. True, I was overweight by as much as 80 pounds in high school, but I was strong. I equated that to being fit. I was raised as a vegetarian and still rarely ate meat, so despite my soda and candy addiction and my totally sedentary lifestyle, I considered my diet to be healthier than most.I'd tried on a couple of occasions to ditch the weight, but I always felt on my own, with too big of a hill to climb, and no confidence that I could climb it. To me, food was a reward, and I didn't see the payoff of abandoning my comforts for struggle and deprivation just to prove myself to the people who were all assholes to me anyway.

As I got older, I got pretty good at talking myself up and feeling positive about my appearance, taking on a "cute curvy girl" kind of attitude, I took full advantage of the fact that I was at least proportional and handsomely endowed, and could pull off an hourglass figure. I even met a guy who adored me and thought I was the most gorgeous creature on the planet, and went on to marry said guy, who has never changed his opinion. And even with the extra weight, I was a beautiful bride, and by then my confidence was a lot stronger, just based on who I'd grown to be, the love I'd seen for being who I am, and letting go of a lot of bad feelings and baseless need for approval from others. I seemed pretty much set on being a big person for life, because it's just "who I was."

You can see what I mean about the nice rack.

But about a year after I got married, my sister started going to Weight Watchers meetings, because they were free at her work. She'd struggled with her weight much of her life too--in fact, people always think we're twins, even though she's five years older. She shared her exclusive Weight Watchers literature and plans with me, even though she wasn't supposed to, and it actually seemed pretty simple--everyone has a set number of "points" they're allowed per day, based on your age, height, current weight and daily activity level. Each food you eat also has a point value, based on calories, grams of fat, and grams of fiber. The trick is, balancing the foods you eat within the points you're permitted per day (and taking advantage of the 35 BONUS points everyone got per week) and voila! You'd start to lose weight!

Of course, there was more to it than that; exercise was an important key, but I wasn't ready to go there just yet. I had a real phobia about being seen exercising, and it would have been too much to expect myself to go from 0 to 60 on all counts at the same time. So I started slow, by learning about food values, portions, how important it is to eat regularly (believe it or not, my standard first meal of the day wouldn't be until about 1 pm., then I'd fill my evenings with over the top portions and snacking.)

Having someone learning the program and trying out recipes with me was absolutely essential to me having any luck with the program. The other times I'd tried to lose weight before, I'd been on my own, making separate meals from my family and friends, relying on unsatisfying shakes and powders to replace meals. This time, I had someone other than myself to whom I was accountable.

Like I said, I had always been of the opinion that I ate "pretty healthy." But boy, was I fooling myself. I had my taste preferences, and a lot of the time I'd prefer chicken over steak, or low-fat milk over whole. But I ate SO MUCH junk food, and I had no personal restrictions of what was off limits. 7-11 burritos, king size candy bars, bags of potato chips, liters of soda. If I was going to stay within my points limits, all of that had to be totally out the window. Even one of those items would screw up my whole day. That first month was pretty crappy. I felt constantly frustrated and hyper aware of my limitations, and felt I was spending all my time tabulating points and writing them down. Plus, I wasn't really seeing results yet. I was about to give up, but my sister kept me going.

Seriously? I thought this was okay?

It was only about four weeks before I'd finally started to get comfortable with the new diet, and it's because I discovered the magic of two important tools: substitutions, and healthy snacks. The more I read in Weight Watchers cookbooks and recipe blogs, the more I realized I could have the things I wanted, or very close approximations to them, and still be satisfied. I found a great recipe for 1 point chocolate chip cookies here, discovered the value of cooking with non-stick cooking spray, using non-fat plain yogurt as a substitute for dips and sour cream, and eating fruit every time I thought I wanted something sweet. I also started to understand that my diet was severely lacking in certain important nutrients, like fiber. Fiber was all over the place in the Weight Watchers literature! And the truth is, its because it helps your body push stuff out that you don't need, stuff that could turn into stored energy, i.e. fat. If I wanted cookies or a candy bar, I would have a Fiber One chocolate or caramel bar instead, and not only did I satisfy my sweet tooth, but I gave myself an extra fat-fighting boost by ingesting food my body actually needed to work properly.

I also outright refused to go hungry, and that has been a huge part of my success. Particularly once I broke the habit of holding out on eating until the afternoon, I realized that if I let myself go more than three or four hours between meals I'd overdo it with my portions, or result to something fatty/salty/sugary to meet those ravenous hunger cravings. So I started coming to work with a ton of food at the beginning of each week, and putting lots of non-fat yogurts, baby carrots, fruit, fiber bars, popcorn, string cheeses and sugar-free drinks in my desk and the fridge in my office, and the results were amazing! Not only did I not feel like I was "dieting" because I never had to feel deprived, but my smarter food choices were actually helping to accelerate my weight loss. And each one of my snacks only equaled one or two of my weight watchers points per day, so I had a lot of room to work with more substantial meals, and even desserts at night. Once I'd started to get into the groove of more conscious eating, I was rewarded with not only clothes that fit me better, but people who actually started to take notice.

Thus concludes part one of my saga, stay tuned for more next week!