Re-setting the mind

Last night, the womanchild asked my help with an English paper. What she wanted from me was a sounding board where she could clarify her thoughts before putting them into print. She's reached the age where parental stupidity seems paramount, so it's been a long time since she asked for my help with anything other then laundry, cooking and transportation. I was honored, touched and glad to help.

I've always been one to have fun with collaborative work, and seeing that sharp mind of hers in action has always been a delight. She'd tell me me her thoughts. I'd make a suggestion or ask a question. She'd challenge or clarify my thinking. Sometimes, she'd add one of my suggestions. More often, she'd go her own route of putting her mind down on paper. It was work for her but fun for me.

After she printed her final copy, she said, "This was more like you used to be. I miss the way you used to write."

My response was basically, "Huh?" After all, my processes for writing are still the same. I still give it roughly the same amount of time, though I haven't been pleased with my results for months now.

She added, "You've changed. I haven't wanted to bring it up because I didn't want you to think it was all about your diet, but that's all you seem to think about now."

Well, talk about 'from the mouths of babes'. She laid right out in front of me what's been nagging me for quite some time now. I am obsessed, and despite liking the results and some of the processes of my diet, I don't like that aspect of it.

There's no denying that I needed to lose weight. These were not vanity pounds. My weight was affecting my ability to live life the way I wanted. Losing weight has meant that I had to make a serious commitment to re-engaging with my body, to eating in a more mindful, conscious, respectful way and to moving. These are all good things, but any good thing, whether it's the voluptuous savoring of a delicious meal or a diet, carried to excess is dangerous. I know this quite literally. The days when the womanchild was starving and purging to poor health and near death are not that far behind us.

I weigh every day, despite knowing that's stupid. I know that the human body can fluctuate pounds within hours. Tracking my food intake has been a major component of my success, yet I want more things in my mind than how many points are in each bite of food that I take. I'm spending too much time thinking about what to do with my hair to best flatter my now more obvious cheekbones or what clothing I ought to buy to look better. Am I becoming a superficial twit? Or it that buying into another stereotype that an attractive woman can't be a serious woman?

I know that I want to continue losing weight, but I'm also seeing that I have to develop a new discipline. I have to keep this in perspective. Everything we do comes with an opportunity cost. (If I remember nothing else from Economics, I've got that principle locked in.) So then what is the opportunity cost of my diet? What am I giving up to focus more on my food, exercise and health? It must be worth it. It can not subtract something of true value from my life. I cannot let this diet change more than habits and size, because what and who I am is pretty darn fantastic.

I often find my answers within my own words. I've long seen that as one of the delightful, tricky and mysterious graces of God/dess that what we seek often seems to come from within. In reading back a paragraph or two, I think I found the key to my answer. This is about how I want to live my life. I don't want to live it under the burden of pounds that hurt my joints, impact my ability to breathe and force my heart into a racing pace. I also don't want to live my life under the burden of thoughts that won't escape a severely limited range of allowable ideas. I am more than than the quantifiable measure of a body. Living with respect for the totality of me, mind, body and spirit, must be the true discipline, not just the monitoring of my food and exercise.

attitudes

In the kitchen

One of my favorite southern dishes has always been fried green tomatoes. (It's more than a chick flick, y'all.) These are just good eating, and summer without fried green tomatoes just doesn't feel right. However, frying isn't the healthiest way to cook anything. Inspired by The Hungry Girl's recipes for Cheese Sticks and Onion Rings, I decided to experiment and got lucky. These had the crispy crust and tender, juicy interior of the traditional version and a clearer, brighter tomato tanginess.

Oven Fried Green Tomatoes

1 large green tomato
1/8 cup Fiber One cereal
1/8 cup corn meal
1/4 cup fat-free Eggbeaters
Cooking Spray
Salt and Pepper to taste

Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees. In your food processor or blender, grind the Fiber One cereal to the consistency of bread crumbs. (I used a thoroughly clean coffee bean grinder.) Mix the cereal with the corn meal and set aside. Slice your tomato into 1/2 inch slices. Dip each tomato slice into the Eggbeaters, making sure to lightly coat each side. Then gently roll each tomato slice in the cereal/ corn meal mixture. Place the tomato slices on a baking sheet which has been sprayed with cooking spray, then lightly mist the tops of the tomatoes with additional cooking spray. Bake for 25 minutes. Turn the tomato slices over once about halfway through. This made six slices and the entire dish had 2 points.

I have to admit that I was just thrilled with the way this dish turned out. I feel like I've earned both my drawl and my waistline.

recipe

The weekly weigh in, week 50

Weekly summary: Weekly change, gained one pound. Total weight loss, 76.6 pounds. Average weekly loss, 1.56 pounds.

It's official. I am on yet another plateau. For the last four weeks, I've been hovering around the same weight. I know I lost eight pounds last week, but since I'd gained 7.2 pounds the week before that, it's still hovering.

It's time to ramp up the exercise again, and in this heat, that's not terribly appealing. Today, the time and temperature clock in town registered 107 degrees when I was heading down to my early evening Weight Watchers meeting. Short of increasing my exercise, all I can really do is gut this out until my body adjusts to its new size. Knowing my weight history with the accuracy only a lifelong unhealthy obsession can mean, I know that I weighed roughly this amount for years. This is a size that my body likes. It's comfortable here, and it's going to have to get used to being here before it can accept changing. When I was younger, I was healthy at this weight. I can't say that now. I need medication to keep my blood pressure at a healthy level, and I have neither the muscle tone, the stamina nor the flexibility that are signs of true health. Those are the things that my body has to realize without the conscious interference of my brain.

That may sound odd, but it's the only way I can describe it. We are complex creatures with multiple forms of intelligence. People recognize the existence of muscle memory, where through training and repetition, the body learns and performs a function with greater power, ease and fluidity and less conscious mental engagement. The body has actually learned a pattern of behavior. Weight changes in a yo-yo dieter are merely longer, more subtle patterns, but in my experience and opinion, they have been learned as well.

In taking on this diet, I haven't so much learned a new way of eating. There is nothing in the Weight Watchers program, other than a specific way of tracking, that was new to me. It is good, sound nutritional advice that I have received from multiple sources over the years. What I am doing is "unlearning" a self-destructive way of engaging with food and unhealthy thought processes about my body. That's what makes this so damn hard. Adding new information is easy. Getting rid of old information and habits is worse than scraping off multiple layers of wallpaper. The stuff just wants to stick.

My big motivation this week came during my meeting. Plateaus are frustrating. I look better than I have since I was in my twenties. I'm not close to the pounds lost goal I wanted to reach by now. It would be very, very easy to call it quits and say that I've done enough. Tonight, discussing the little obstacles we face, one of the ladies mentioned that she had been coming for a year and had lost around 25 pounds. 25 pounds in a year. I'd be pulling my hair out. I'm quickly approaching my one year anniversary, and if I'd only lost that much, I'd be even more frustrated than I am now. Yet she has had the persistence to keep on trying, regardless of how long it's taken.

I needed that reminder that this is supposed to be slow going weight loss. This is supposed to be about learning to sustain a healthy body at a stable weight. This is not about racing to some imaginary goal line where I can revert back to another way of eating once it's been reached. That particular lesson is one I'm going to have to repeat and repeat and repeat, but it will continue to sink through this thick skin and thicker skull.

health and wellness, diets, Weight Watchers, weight loss

Seeming contradictions

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday that I can't get off my mind. She basically asked me how I have become an enthusiastic supporter of a diet program after years of railing about the weight loss industry and prejudice against fat people. Now, this was a friend who has known me several years but has never seen me at this size. She told me that over the years I had made her think a lot about the pressure on women to fit a certain image, the toll that takes on a person and how people, all people, should be treated. She thinks my position now is a bit hypocritical, and she also complimented me for never looking better since she's known me. She acknowledged that alone was hypocritical on her part.

All I could say was that my position is seemingly contradictory like so many other areas of my life. Compared to being a liberal, pro-choice, pro-homosexual, pro-religious diversity Christian in the Bible Belt, this one is, well, a piece of cake. I am not anti-diet because simply everyone has a diet. The primary definition of diet is the usual food and drink of a person or animal. Everything else we've piled on top of that word is basically manipulative bullshit. What I am against is stupidity, cruelty and self-destruction.

Diets where the foods you eat are so limited that you live in hunger and deprivation are stupid and cruel. Diets where you choke your arteries with fat, deny yourself vitamins, minerals and natural nutrition by subsisting on tummy filling junk are stupid and cruel. Selling useless and dangerous products and services is manipulative, selfish and cruel. Not revealing the funding behind a scientific study on obesity comes from a group that stands to make money when the results of that study can enhance or endorse the profitability of a service or product is deceitful and manipulative.

I am against prejudice, period. If you're judging someone based on appearances, you're prejudiced. It doesn't matter if you're making assumptions about a person based on race, ethnicity, size, culture, sexual preference, choice of religion, if you categorize people into us and them, you're prejudiced. I am not free of prejudice, and I know it. I also know that I'm working on it, and that means speaking up. I will speak up for the rights of people, period. People often don't even recognize the ways in which they're prejudiced, and especially when it comes to body size, which is often misconstrued as being solely under an individual's control, those prejudicial thought patterns need to be pointed out. If you don't see them and recognize them, you can't change them.

I am for healthy eating, and the best way a person can learn this is up to them. If that means a diet program, so be it. If that means avoiding commercial diets, dandy. Live a healthy life. Love yourself. Take care of yourself. I don't have to approve of the way you learn healthy eating. Wouldn't it be great if we all learned this as a natural process of just growing up?

What works for me may not work for anybody else. I think diet programs where you buy prepackaged food would be disastrous for me. I don't think I'd learn what I need to know to get in my kitchen after I'd lost the weight and prepare healthy foods that would help me keep the excess weight off. It might be the perfect ticket for someone else though. Regardless of nutritional content, I could never see a liquid diet as a healthy way of providing the body with sustenance. We have teeth for a reason, and as long as we have them, let's use them. I can never see a diet which permanently bans certain foods unless an allergy or chemical intolerance exists as healthy. It's a denial of the bounty and abundance of God/dess' creation, a rejection of the gifts we've been given.

I am rabidly against anything which tells a person she is unacceptable unless she looks a certain way. This is a denial of the value of human life. It's dangerous. Since this sort of marketing behavior is primarily directed at women, it's deeply sexist. It objectifies women. It encourages them to literally minimize themselves to the point where illness and death are seen as preferable to a body that didn't come out of a cookie cutter mold. It's a great way of oppressing women and getting them to ignore their talents. If all a woman's energy is spent on what she eats and how she looks, there will be a lot books that aren't written, business deals that are never made, political and government policy that is never put into effect, scientific discoveries that will never be made. If that makes me pro- fat acceptance, yay!

I think my position is really about personal freedom and personal responsibility. We have the right to live the way we best see fit as long as that does not endanger others. We all have value, thus both the right and responsibility to treat ourselves with respect. That includes caring for the body we're in. It also includes recognizing that people who are different from you have their own dignity.

fat acceptance, diets

Wellness not illness

During an insomnia induced round of net surfing, I came across this bit of information at The Obesity Society Newsletter. It stated, "Last year TennCare, the Tennessee Medicaid provider, completed a pilot program for 1,400 Medicaid recipients who paid nominal fees to participate in Weight Watchers. According to TennCare, the participants lost a total of more than 8,000 pounds." That's a whole lot of fat, but it is estimated that one in seven Tennesseans is obese.

In Memphis Medical News, Marilyn Elam of Tenncare stated, "The partnership works fairly simply. TennCare enrollees who are technically considered obese can walk into any Weight Watchers office in the state and sign up for a 12-week program. They pay $1 per meeting and agree to attend at least 10 of the 12 meetings and to meet the initial minimum weight loss goal of four pounds. TennCare, in return, pays the $10 per meeting co-payment. Weight Watchers provides TennCare with a $1 per meeting discount and waives the $35 enrollment fee. If the enrollees meet these criteria, they can reenroll for another 12 weeks."

"From TennCare's perspective, for one 12-week program it's costing us $120 per enrollee, a minimal investment for proven results," Elam said. "If an enrollee sustains some modest weight loss, it will actually reduce an overweight person's lifetime medical costs up to $5,300 and that's by lowering the cost of treatment for things like hypertension, diabetes and heart disease."

In the same article, Carolyn Kalil, vice president of Weight Watchers of Middle and East Tennessee added, "In a lot of the cases, this is not about losing vanity weight. It's not about losing 20 to 30 pounds for a class reunion. The people I'm talking to, it's now or never."

This was of particular interest to me because I am one of those 1400 people and as of December 30, 2006, 31.4 of those 8000 pounds were mine. This year, my weight loss through the Tenncare Weight Watchers cooperative program, is now 77.6 pounds. I am covered by Tenncare because I have been denied insurance everywhere else I turned because of my weight.

In the two years prior to joining Weight Watchers, I had decided to live a more healthy life and had gradually lost 50 pounds on my own. Despite those changes, I needed a more dedicated effort. What finally convinced me to start seriously dieting was waking up on the floor of my bathroom after passing out from high blood pressure. Getting healthy for me was pretty literally at that now or never point, and I needed help to do it. I was at my physician's office a couple of weeks ago to have maintenance medications for my blood pressure reviewed prior to obtaining refills. For the first time since August of last year, my blood pressure was in the normal range, and if it stays that way, I'll soon be off the two prescriptions I take to manage it. More than my size is changing here.

Tenncare may have its problems, but this is one program that's working. The budget for Tenncare is $7 billion dollars to cover 1.2 million people. According to the Tennessee State Budget, the projected cost for the Weight Watchers program for 2007 is $756,200, less than one tenth of one percent of the total Tenncare budget. By participating in this pro-active program that actually does something about building wellness, not just treating illness, I'll be off the Tenncare rolls one of these days because I'll be able to get insurance on my own.

In the meantime, Tennessee and Weight Watchers, I thank you.

Tenncare, Weight Watchers, obesity

Seeing myself

Wenda wrote a great entry about her first week on the Weight Watchers program. In it, she says, "... I was surprised by how easy it was to imagine myself in a lighter stronger body and how much less difficult it was to eat less and move more."

This is something I still struggle with every day. You wouldn't think I would by now. I've lost close to eighty pounds, nearly a quarter of my starting weight. I've dropped five, almost six clothing sizes. If I felt like getting up from the computer, I could find the record of how many inches I've lost off different parts of my body. This is all great.

Here's the catch; I still don't really see it. When I look in the mirror, I'm surprised. Those cheekbones couldn't belong to me. I know I used to have cheekbones like that, but I was a different person back then. That young woman, almost a girl, had the whole world in front of her. Same with those collarbones. I'm supposed to have a huge double chin that basically obscures my neck, not just a little one. Wait a minute, that can't be a waistline. There's no way in hell I have a waistline. OK, big, fat, round, scarred and sagging belly and breasts, that's me all right. Whew, I thought I'd gone nuts.

Don't get me wrong. I know it's me. I haven't lost my grip on reality. It just doesn't seem like me. It's almost more like a distorted memory of me. These wrinkles and scars weren't there the last time I looked like this. I haven't been this size since before my daughter, the high school junior, was born.

My mental perception of myself is how I looked before I began losing weight, and I haven't caught up to the reality of what my body is now. I also can't really picture myself anywhere in the weight range recommended for my height. I'm having to rely on external measurements and feedback to reassure myself that my body really is changing, because I don't trust my own perception of my appearance.

This has pretty much always been a problem for me. My body always appeared grotesque to me. There was almost no difference between how I saw myself when as a teenager I was told I was 20 pounds overweight or last year when I weighed over 300 pounds. I can see the difference in pictures. I'm not totally blind to the changes, except when it comes to my mirror.

I'm quick to recognize the flaws as belonging to myself. Scars, sags, folds all fit in with my image of who I am. Accepting myself as beautiful, well, that's taking some work. I've still got a whole lot of unlearning to do. I know that it won't matter how much weight I lose or how toned I become if I can't learn to see and accept myself the way I am. I won't be truly healthy until my mind and body both agree that this is me, and that is good.

I also have to accept that I still have possibilities in my life. I've felt like I had no choices for so long now. For years, it has been what I had to do to handle ____________. Fill in the blank. It could have been the responsibilities of care giving for an elderly parent, a sick child or husband, or doing whatever it took to have any sort of gainful employment in an economically challenged rural area. My responsibilities outweighed my freedoms, and I'm relearning that I can decide for myself what will be in my life. Having that freedom is linked mentally to being a more acceptable size, and that's pretty fucked up thinking. It's a complete buy in to the prejudice many hold against fat people, and I've got to lose that as well as the pounds.

I want to see myself as I am, and I want to love myself as I am. I get glimpses every now and then of that woman, and during those glimpses, I adore myself. I'm one heck of a woman. This is going to become a more constant thing.

body image

The weekly weigh in, week 49

Weekly Summary: Weekly change -- Lost 8 pounds. Total weight loss -- 77.6 pounds. Average weekly weigh loss -- 1.58 pounds

I finally got back to my regular Thursday night meeting. I love this group. We're loud, open, outspoken, funny, realistic about our weight, size, appearance, eating and the crap we take from others about all of the above in a very genteel over the hill Southern Lady type of way. At 47, I'm one of the younger members of the group, though the age range goes from 20-something to 90.

The sad news is that we've lost our favorite instructor, the one who was the draw for the Thursday night meeting. She had lost 110 pounds, kept it off for several years, and transformed herself from physically inactive to a marathon runner, despite having some comparatively serious problems with her back and arthritis. Her sense of humor is wonderful. She's incredibly supportive if you have over 100 pounds to lose or only 10, and I'm really going to miss her. She is one of the reasons why I've had the success I've had so far. She helped me believe this was truly achievable despite all the yo-yo dieting I've gone through and the intimidating reality of my size.

She made meetings fun. Every meeting started off with food that she either prepared or bought herself and a recipe with the WW points attached. It was never just any old food though. It always tied in to what we'd discuss that night. When we talked about the discomfort of changing, new attitudes, changing how we relate with other people and ourselves, she brought sushi, something with not too high a place on a typical Southern menu. When we talked about food as comfort and how that has a legitimate place in a healthy life, there was beef stew and cake. I adored the thoughtfulness that she poured into every meeting.

I've found that a Weight Watchers group leader can make or break the attitude the group members bring to their diet. I took my daughter to one meeting because our schedules meant she had to be inconvenienced to do her running around. She described my meeting as an eating disorder convention, and she was right. Everything I heard that night could have come off a pro-anorexia web site. It was all about how wonderful being skinny is, and well,frankly that's just bullshit. It's dangerous. I nearly lost my daughter to anorexia and bulimia, and I know the dangers of putting value on a small body size. I've been to meetings where we were just scolded, and well, no thank you. I've got to put up with enough bs in the rest of my life to deal with that. In others, I was so bored, I was dying to hit the door the minute it was over. For the most part though, I like going to meetings. Connecting with people who are going through this too is helpful.

Since I had missed meeting the previous week, my big gain wasn't reflected when I got on the scale. According to Weight Watchers records, over the last two weeks, I lost .8 pounds. Since I had gained 7.2 pounds the week I missed, I actually lost 8 pounds last week. A lot of that was water. I felt like I couldn't stay out of the restroom this last week. Since I don't remember the last day the temperature was under 100, I certainly sweated my fair share as well. That big gain was nothing more than a frustrating fluctuation, and my big loss this week was my body finding its balance again. I'll take that .8 pound loss with satisfaction.

The spreadsheet and chart tracking my weight loss is available here.

health and wellness, diets, Weight Watchers, weight loss

The weekly weight in, week 48

The craziness of this week meant that I needed to go to Weight Watchers today. It's also meant that my normal sleeplessness has kicked up a few notches to nearly killer insomnia. I've been averaging about one solid hour a night and those scary minutes when you wake with a jerk because you're asleep when and where you shouldn't be. I was literally too tired to drive this morning. I would have been a danger on the road, so I missed my meeting.

I didn't miss stepping on my scales though I sincerely wish I had. With the little ups and downs I've had over the last few weeks, I buckled down this week. The womanchild has once again given up meat after an experiment of several months of eating meat again. That's meant I've buckled down and really cooked. Our kitchen has been filled with rice, beans, fruits, greens. She hasn't wanted any of it. I ate what looked like the healthiest week of eating I've had in a long time. I didn't plan enough fun stuff in the menu this week. It was all too earnest, serious and good for you. I need sexy, silly, fun for you food as well. I did feel deprived this week for the first time since I started this diet. It was my fault for poor planning.

The kicker is that after a week that felt like punishment, I gained 7.2 pounds. ARRGH! How the fuck does that happen? I've done this before. I know it happens. I've upped and downed my way through losing this weight. I know this was the lag week between my prescription refills and missing a few days of blood pressure and diuretic medicine always means a little gain.

Reason number two: It's been 65 hours since I had a cigarette. Other than baby carrots and cucumber slices, I haven't binged, but I know that stopping smoking causes temporary changes in my body. Yes, I feel like I could go homocidal maniac if pushed the wrong direction. I've got all the intestinal distress, the headaches, the excess saliva that go with withdrawal. If I can believe the research, it's only another 7 hours before my body is no longer physically addicted. Then I just have to deal with the psychological effects of no longer having an activity that has filled a good chunk of the last 29 years of my life.

I've said all along that this is about getting healthy again, and it's time I made this commitment as well. Anyway, who can afford to smoke anymore? I'm going to use that money for travel next year.

This gain has been driving me crazier than it should, and I do think I know why. I'm getting close to the first anniversary of this diet. One. Whole. Year. As far as my health, it's been the best year I've had in a long time, but I still feel like I should be closer to a 100 pound loss. That's been lurking pretty deep in my mind since I realized that I actually could do this thing with changing habits and re-educating myself. "In one year, I'll be a hundred pounds lighter." It sounds good, doesn't it. It's still within the recommended range of -.5 to -2 pounds per week for healthy loss, and they're such nice round numbers -- 100 pounds in one year. Well, it's not going to happen. There's no way I can safely lose that much weight in the next four weeks, but I am losing at a good healthy rate, and I need to be proud of what I've done. I am proud of what I've done.

I've planned my menu for the week. It's got more chocolate and less brown rice, a few more (baked) onion rings and a few less greens. It does have a whole lot of tomatoes, pluots, bananas, cucumbers, blueberries, red peppers and more watermelon granitas. (I've got coffee granitas freezing now.) I'm going to eat well this week. I'm going to take my medicine. I'm going to do whatever it takes to get enough sleep. That will screw up your metabolism worse than no exercise. I'm going to remind myself that the numbers and timelines are artificial goals and that what matters is not what my scale says but how I live. Yeah, I can do that.

Weekly summary: Weekly change, gained 7.2 pounds. Total loss, 69.6 pounds. Average weekly loss, 1.48 pounds.

health and wellness, diets, Weight Watchers, weight loss

Quote of the day

"The truth is that loving oneself -- and one's body -- is a discipline all its own. It means challenging the images that the fashion industry has foisted on us. It means ignoring the voices that tell us that being healthy is a distant second to being thin. It means celebrating female ambitions -- our own, and other women's -- instead of downplaying or deriding them." ~ Anne Ream

A little more on stigma

Tonight as I was sitting down to update my blog, I checked my Sitemeter because I like to see who's been reading my blog. Because I got started blogging in a community oriented forum, reciprocal blog reading has become a habit. My first thought when I saw my referrals was, "Why am I getting so many people coming from Slate?" It turns out that William Saletan linked the entry I wrote in response to Fat Lies.

In Saletan's words, he was trying to say something important, and he botched it. I'll certainly agree to that. He did make things a little better with this article, even though it included some tap dancing around the dumping friends issue. Apparently, one is supposed to help their friends, he was just calling the researchers on the carpet for ignoring the opportunity cost of acquiring new friends, and he didn't write it as well as he should have. I'll cut him some slack for that, even though I'm still not convinced. It happens even to the best writers, and I give him serious credit for re-examining and clarifying his thoughts by writing a second article on a complex and confusing subject.

Where I can't offer the same generosity is here:

"You can't tell from looking at a chubby guy whether he's cursed with bad metabolism or just watches too much television. So, stigma could do more harm than good. Somehow, we need to reinforce norms against "psychosocial" weight gain without blaming people who have been dealt a bad hand."

Mr. Saletan has decided that there are now two kinds of fat people -- the suffering, righteous victims who get tarred by the same brush that deservedly belongs to the blatantly sinful bums. Living in the South where people handle how they deal with prejudice overtly, whether it's working against it or for it, I've heard this kind of statement before, "Well, you see, there are good, honest, hard working, respectable African-American people, and then there are (insert offensive racial epithet which I will not allow in my presence.)

It's bullshit however you say it.

The truth of the matter is that there are good people and bad people in every race, creed, ethnicity, religion, gender, skin color, body shape and size or whatever designation you want to use to separate people into groups. Beyond that, there is good and bad in every single person, not just every single group, and you can't tell by just by looking who leans more heavily to the good or the bad. Until you can, a "cultural erosion of the norms against fat" isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can be another form of accepting people as they are.

What about unhealthy behaviors though? Don't they need to be stigmatized? Well, people often need to learn how to be healthy. It's what I'm doing now, and having the support of my friends has been wonderful. If supporting your friends means reminding them every time you see them doing something less than healthy, go ahead. Remind them of the fat content in that cheesecake, and tsk, tsk whenever you see someone drink something beyond one daily glass of red wine. Speak up whenever you see someone take an elevator or cruise for the parking place nearest the door. Ask for documentation verifiable by a third party regarding how much exercise they've done that week. Pluck that cigarette from your friend's mouth. I'm sure they'll love you for it. After all, doesn't everybody need another mother?

This was originally posted at Sorting The Pieces.

prejudice, fat,stigma

The weekly weigh in, week 47

I felt like I got back on track with good eating this week. Honestly, the first day of my diet week (Friday, just because I go to meetings on Thursday) was another day of emotional eating, but I stopped it there. Considering that it's been a rather emotional week, I'm really proud of myself for that. I actually listened to my body's hunger signals and heard them. This feels like a real accomplishment to me. And I dealt with the emotions. Whether that was a success or not is still up in the air.

This is just my own personal pet theory, but I think that at least some people who constantly struggle with their weight don't receive as strong a fullness signal as other people. I know a lot of people who claim never to get really hungry. I have a friend who has to be reminded to eat every other day or so, and then I know people who just don't fill up, even at meals like Thanksgiving. Hunger and fullness are a form of sensory feedback. It just makes sense to me that some people could have a more acute or less fully developed sense of hunger than others, just like some people can see better or hear better than others.

I only lost .4 pounds this week. That's right -- not even half a pound, but getting my eating back under control was victory enough, and it's still headway.

Weekly summary: Weekly change, lost .4 pounds. Total weight loss, 76.8 pounds. Average weekly weight loss, 1.71 pounds.

health and wellness, diets, Weight Watchers, weight loss