Do you know who I am?

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 16:27:44 GMT

Sane-self to binge-self: Stop ordering way too much Chinese food the night before weigh-in, all right? And stop going on a fat & sugar rampage every time I turn my back. As a matter of fact, just stop. Knock it the fuck off, okay?

Binge-self to sane-self: whaaa want nervous have can't make me stop want no good want take take take take

Sane-self to binge-self: KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF.

(Back up to 355.2, again, damn it. Why must the right actions be so hard to carry out?)

Introspection, part 1

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 23:05:16 GMT

Self-interview: It's time for the question words.

What is it you want to accomplish?

Currently, I weigh 350 pounds. I want to weigh 200 pounds.

That was... succinct.

*shrug* I've heard "make goals measurable and definable" more times than I can count.

Okay.

Anything else?

Why?

Ah. One of the difficult ones.

There's two "why" questions to answer. "Why 200 pounds?", and "Why are you doing this at all?" Let's go after the former.

Well, for starters, I'm 5'10". I have broad shoulders, wide hips, long fingers- the proverbial "big bone" structure.

This is me at the end of a camping event in July of 2005.

When I first started trying to seriously lose weight, I joined a support group that required your doctor to set your weight loss goal; you had to bring it in on letterhead or prescription pad. So I made an appointment to get my goal from my doctor of the time (whom I adored, mostly for his willingness to share both his own struggles with weight problems and his scorn for modern standards of femininity). Now, according to the BMI charts, which define a healthy BMI as being between 18.5 and 24.9, I should weigh 132-167 pounds. (Take a quick look up at that picture again, remembering that I probably weigh about 330 there. 132 pounds?? Are they freaking smoking crack??) I took those figures in to my appointment with me. After explaining what I needed, I mentioned the BMI expectations and said, "I don't know, they seem a little..." I was going to say unrealistic, but I was cut off by a loud snort.

"That's ludicrous. Give me your hand." Muttering constantly about "sticks instead of women" and "what about muscle mass, ever think of that?" he looked at the length of my fingers and the circumference of my wrist, asked me how tall I was, muttered even more darkly, and briskly wrote "200 lbs" on a pad for me.

Thus my goal was, and ever more shall be, 200 pounds.

(To be continued.)

Triumph!

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 04:11:40 GMT

This Friday I weighed in and found that I had lost about two pounds. This is the second week in a row that I've had a good weigh-in. Go me!

Welcome, and thanks again. :)

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 06:48:10 GMT

Now that I've invited you all over here, I feel obligated to create, y'know, content. Just to get things started, I'll share a funny thing. Well, at least I thought it was funny. :) We'll do the meaty WHY AM I HERE? sort of stuff tomorrow.

So, as a few of you already know, I came back from Further Confusion with what I thought was a bad case of con crud. It turned out to actually be the flu. Fever, dizziness, lethargy, weakness, coughing, aching- the whole bit. I stayed home from work Monday, should have stayed home Tuesday and Wednesday but didn't, then pretty much collapsed in bed Thursday through Sunday.

Now, I use Weight Watchers's online tools. I used to go to a different support group, but really didn't get much out of it. Weighing in on a regular basis was really good for me, though, and occasionally they had good resources. The WW website has the good info, plus a weekly weigh-in tracker thing. I weigh in on Fridays. (Mondays, the day I used to go to meetings, was way too depressing of a weigh-in day. This way, I can tell myself "hey, at least it's Friday" when I feel bad about my progress. It's a silly little thing, but there are mornings when the silly little things count.)

Last Friday I was, as previously stated, in the throes of Martian Death Flu. But some remaining neuron fizzed and triggered the bit o' brain responsible for remembering that I should weigh myself on Fridays. I hauled the scale out from under the sink, stood on it, stared at the number long enough for it to come into focus, and collapsed back in bed. A little later, when I felt up to the task of opening the laptop and typing, I actually entered said number in. I got this message back:

"Congratulations on recording a loss this week! Way to go! However, we notice that you've lost an average of more than three pounds a week. A healthy rate of weight loss is 1-2 pounds a week. Please read the following articles about the dangers of rapid weight loss and consider slowing down your weight loss efforts."

I started completely laughing- well, as much as someone with a hacking cough could laugh- and croaked back at the screen, "healthy rate? Of COURSE it's not a healthy rate! I'm not healthy! You try spending a week when all you have is tea and NyQuil and see what your scale does!" (Or, as Nic put it, "Hey, it's the virus diet!")

So. I'm amused that the canned website response could tell I wasn't healthy, even if it was for totally the wrong reasons. :)