Talking fat Some More

I’ve been keeping up with this happy blog for over a year now. Considering I have major commitment issues, I would say that is pretty good! If you have been reading for any length of time, you might know that it was meant to chronicle my days in Banbury, England – however short they may have been.

Time out for a moment. I’m at my regular coffee watering hole, but I can’t concentrate. Thanks to a recent upgrade to my laptop, earphones are no longer recognized by the system. Part of my “blogging zone” includes listening to music. Instead I am now forced to listen to the girls on my right side talking about kidney dialysis and how stupid physiologists are (assumed med students), and the table of girls to my left discussing how fantastically awesome they are (oh to be young and full of ego!).

Needless to say, this isn’t going far.

Alright, so this blog started as my testimonials for life in Banbury. It has kind of adapted into a chronicle of my disaster zone and weight loss goals. I guess the weight loss thing is sort of relevant at the moment; it has kind of consumed my life for the past 16 months, and prevents me from seizing a life that I desperately want. Mainly I blog about the weight thing to help others struggling with the challenge; it’s not something I talk too much about in the “real world”.

Recently I was asked if loosing weight has made me happier. If I had to evaluate my happiness, from a year ago compared to today, I would have to say that I am far more unhappy (does that make sense?). Ok, yes, a large part of that has to do with the mass uncertainty surrounding many aspects of my life at the moment. But…But… Here’s the big but…the weight loss has made me far from happy.

The true confession is that I see myself far fatter today than I did in 2007. I look at my body and keep thinking… “God, that’s gross!”

Maybe I spent so long ignoring my size, that now I’m making up for it.

But then there is the notion of the 30 pounds – I can’t kick start my weight loss again. Even with cutting meat, and moving to a largely fruit and veggie diet, my body is in a “f*ck you” mode. And even once the 30 pounds is gone, will I really be satisfied?

Now here is the other side of weight loss…
I’ve worked so hard to get to this point – to be able to see muscle definition, bones, etc that it makes me fearful. As much as I want to go back to London, I live in fear that it could undo that work; that the muscles will go mushy, and the fat will return. That fear is justified – when I started piling on weight, it happened literally overnight. It can’t be the reason for living in fear, can it? Yet the fear doesn’t go away – I could never replicate my home workout in London, the hills that I climb every day do not exist in the metropolitan environment.

The most amazing thing is how I have managed to reach this point with the zero willpower that I have. I am still unable to control myself around my primary comfort foods. Wave chocolate in front of my face, and watch out! Throw in bread, beer battered chicken strips, wings, etc and it is a cataclysmic breakdown.

Now, if you are doing the weight fight, I can’t say that it is all bad. But loosing weight won’t change your life (unless you were on the Biggest Loser and happen to sign T.V. and book deals as a result. Or if you are Jared and you went to Subway to loose your weight. Neither apply to me). I would love to say that I had more direction, or some sort of stability thanks to the weight loss. I don’t.

The only really cool thing is my anonymity – people don’t recognize me now. And that’s a really positive affirmation. The encouragement and support that I receive are awesome. Initially when an individual begins to have noticeable weight loss changes, people are afraid to ask about it. Now, I have lost enough weight that friends, family, neighbours, etc, ask me about the process and want to talk about it. Consistently I am told that I must feel so much better; but in reality I do not. I’ve always been active, the only difference is that I eat
better.

Alright, so I’m running out of time for today, and too be honest, my head is swirling. I’m not sure if it is because I am getting sick or because I am hung over. It could be both.







Pictures: LEFT - Ottawa, March 2008 - side profile pic that made me cry ;p (I had already been on "diet" for four months and thought I was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay thinner!); RIGHT - Thunder Bay, April 17, 2009 (first side profile pic that I was actually moderately OK with!)

Talking Fat and Cutting the Bull...meat..whatever...

So, 15 months (or so) of healthy living and I feel like I am starting from scratch. As I’ve mentioned, I never once read a guide to healthy living, dieting, etc. I didn’t jump on the bandwagon of a fad diet. Basically I just did what seemed right – and apparently it was mostly right, because it was mostly successful.

Recently I read a book “The Master Cleanse”. While the majority of this book was hooey (good use of my university vocabulary) and I disagree with major segments of this book, it did get me thinking. First off, I will never likely do a master cleanse. When the author forewarned of advanced yeast problems from doing the cleanse, I was sort of turned off by the idea. Seriously – who actually pursues a yeast infection? I’m sure the makers of Canasten and Monistat are pleased.
And contrary to the author’s belief, I do actually believe in the co-dependent relationship my intestinal bacteria and I have. Let’s face it – it’s really the most successful relationship that I have at the moment (or at least the easiest to maintain). Why ruin it?
The same friend who recommended the Master Cleanse (and the Martha’s Vineyard Diet) also recommended another book. “Skinny Bitch”. I was sceptical, but what the heck – I’m not doing anything productive with my time. Why not read it?

And it made sense.

Let’s get something clear first:
- I believe that humans should eat meat. I was technically trained as an evolutionary scientist; I believe that our evolution has hardwired us to be omnivores. In other words, I have no problems with humans consuming meat.
- I believe that there is something horrendously wrong with our culture, in terms of nutrition and lifestyle, and that has resulted in obesity.
- I believe that cows, sheep, pigs, etc, living on meat-farms were meant to be meat. That does not mean that I believe in animal cruelty, and does not mean that I like how these animals are destroyed. I can accept that if I were to walk into a slaughter house, I would likely be an instant vegetarian.
- Contrary to this, I am an advocate of the seal hunt. From the perspective of a person with an environmental science background, I can understand that the seal population has surpassed the natural carrying capacity of the environment; sometimes to maintain healthy and genetically viable populations, it is necessary to do a cull. I believe that there are other animal populations that have surpassed their carrying capacity as well. The Canada Goose and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) are two populations that are heading for disaster in some localized areas. They need a cull. PETA will hate me.
- When a population surpasses the natural carrying capacity of the environment, natural pathogens materialize that systematically wipe out the population. That’s death. Or severely compromised animals cannot sustain themselves and then pass their problems on to other members. More death.
- I believe that when an animal population develops these pathogens, eventually, over time, these same pathogens (or whatever you want to call them) can modify themselves on a cellular level to infect humans. More disease. More death. But do you understand the survival of the fittest idea?
- To me it is better to have a small population of genetically viable, happy animals then starving, diseased, unhappy animals. I also don’t want avian flu. Or Mad Cow Disease. Or HIV. Selfish me. Make sense?
- I believe that human population has surpassed (or nearly) the environmental carrying capacity – pandemics and epidemics are the environment’s way of dealing with this. Luckily humans aren’t that bright, and have a habit of destroying themselves.
- All that being said, I don’t know why seals are clubbed. That guy I see in England – who is coincidently English (and we know what the English think of the seal hunt), argues with me about the seal hunt. While I am touched that the English think about us little Ole Canadians, I can’t explain why we partake in cruelly beating on the noggins of happy little seal pups. This really has nothing to do with anything, but I just want to say that I don’t actually like seal clubbing per se, I just agree with the seal hunt. I wanted to clear that up. PETA still hates me.
- Where was I heading with this??
- Oh ya…meat eating…sorry PETA
- Ok….so the decision to be a vegan, vegetarian, herbivore, or whatever – I really do believe that humans were meant to eat meat. That doesn’t mean I like how cows, pigs, etc, are killed. Bessy the cow isn’t particularly cute to me. The sheep that head butts Kobalt every summer, while out in the herding ring – I would like to see her become mutton. But in a humane way of course.
- For the record, every time I step into a herding ring, I do it with the knowledge that there is the chance that my dog or the livestock could be severely injured. In all honesty, I have had a sheep die in the ring. It was entirely accidental, and altogether traumatizing. You can’t always predict what animals will do. But it didn’t stop me from herding, training a dog to herd, or kept me from eating meat. Life happens.

So you get it, right?
I do believe that humans should eat meat.

I told my friend this the other day – she too has a background in evolutionary science.

And her response?
“What if we could evolve beyond meat? What if we are? Who says we keep having to eat meat?”

Hmmm…I don’t have an answer to this; no argument. Nothing.

We are geeks.

With my background in bones I do have moderate understanding as to what the evolution of bones tells us. Here is what I know. Humans are loosing their third molars – wisdom teeth. Yep – that’s right – not every single person gets them anymore (much to the chagrin of dentists who like to pull them out at a nifty fortune). But why are we loosing them?
Do you want to see other examples of evolution?
The dew claw on a dog’s legs? That’s evolution – it used to be a full fledged toe. Now it’s a middle-of-the-leg useless appendage.
The fusion of the leg bones in large ungulates. Evolution.


So “Skinny Bitch”. Again, I don’t necessarily agree with everything the authors argued. That would be silly. But there are things that they pointed out that I have heard more than once…and in journal articles. This was just a simplified version – and I understand it. I like things written in clear, concise language. I should learn to do that.

Unlike the authors, I don’t actually mind eating dead animal – likening it to decaying flesh is a little troubling…but…I can get over it.

I think it was the realization of just how gross our North American meat really is. And just how disgusting our meat industry truly is – and maybe I don’t want to support that anymore.

I don’t know if I could every truly become a vegan. A couple of weeks ago I consciously decided to cut out red meat. That really wasn’t an issue; I wasn’t a big red meat eater to start with. I just disturbed by what I was learning about our red meat products (including luncheon processed meats). Now I am looking at cutting out white meat – that poses more of a challenge. I don’t particularly like white meat, but it is sort of nice to dress it up.

Every day we inhale carcinogens, lather them on our skin, and ingest them. At almost 29 years old, maybe I don’t want to consume them anymore. I don’t like genetically modified animals in my belly; I don’t like knowing that genetically modified animals are eating the remains of other genetically modified animals. I also dislike that nobody really knows the long term consequences of eating the genetically modified crap, or the hormonally infused animal that we consume…except that these things contain carcinogenic elements.

Thanks to England, I made a conscious decision to start eating only raw sugar because of the health benefits (as opposed to eating processed). Seems stupid to keep eating cancer-causing agents, doesn’t it?

No, it’s not just that that I want to stop playing Russian Roulette with my food – what’s the point of life, if you can’t incorporate a bit of a gamble? Cancer is a gamble.

I still want to finish loosing weight. That means another diet shake up to go along with my recent workout shake up.

But, maybe it is time to wise up too.

No, I’ll never be entirely carcinogen free. Wave a cigarette in front of my face, and I’m more than willing to smoke it. I’m sure my makeup has a ton of chemicals in it – I use Clinique; who knows what is in it? But I will still use it. I drive and subsequently inhale exhaust. And even so, there is something about an industry that quietly modifies products that are directly ingested, that seems – hmmm…corrupt.

Giving up proper meat isn’t that big of an issue for me – it’s giving up on dairy that makes me a little sad. I love cheese – errr…pizza. But really? Would you breast feed from the woman sitting next to you? No?!?!?! Then why would you breast feed from a cow? Or a goat?

So – “Skinny Bitch” – ya, it is targeted at women. But I think I think men should read it too. It might open your eyes. Or at least make you think…and PETA is likely still unimpressed with me.

Talking Fat #7: Part 2

Admittedly, some days I hate this. The past couple of weeks have been really hard again. I am an emotional eater – the more stressed I am, the more sugar I like. And the past few weeks have been stressful…Plus the inundation of Valentine’s Day chocolate has been difficult to ignore. Needless to say I have been calorie splurging for the past couple of days – ok, for the majority of the past week. And as it turns out, the “weight maintenance” porridge/oatmeal I have been eating, isn’t the healthiest of options. So yes, the scale has gone up a couple of pounds, and I am not pleased, but I'm not overly worried.

I have consistently had weight declines (minus the normal fluctuations that a woman experiences at certain times of the month), so having an increase is a bit disheartening. I had basically stopped calorie splurging because of that nagging mentality “every day that I take off, is two extra days tacked on”. Doesn’t it suck that calories are so easy to accumulate, but take double the effort to burn? Unfortunately, there comes a point that your body needs a break from the hardcore diet insanity.

Even with the gain, I do recognize the necessity that I am coming to a point that I need to stop obsessing. My body is kind of telling me to f*ck off (ya, I said it), and there is a point that you need to let it adjust.

Now for the educational portion of this drivel. The one thing that drives me crazy is seeing the number of people who have become dependent on places like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, etc. While a lot of fast food places claim to have become “healthy”, people really need to take a closer look at the caloric intakes of their favourite items. A lot of those meal combos contain the majority of calories that a person should consume for a day - in a single meal! The reality is, most individuals have a combo for lunch and then a full dinner; meaning they have exceeded their daily caloric necessities. Combine fast food with our sedentary lifestyles, and you can begin to understand why so many North Americans and Europeans are heading towards obesity.

I have worked in a school since 1999. In that time, I have been shocked by what I have seen students consuming as apart of their daily meals. It is now common to see kids eating a fast food over the lunch hour. Then combine this with chocolate, candy, icing, etc and the perception of a well-rounded lunch is achieved. I am actually a huge advocate for banning junk food in schools, and was quite in favour of banning items like Mr. Noodles. To read more about schools that have successfully banned bad foods, click on the following link http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/11/sugar.free.school/index.html.

My present gripe is with Starbucks. I was fairly shocked by the calorie content of a lot of the food items at Starbucks. My favourite item is the ginger molasses cookie; it tips the scale with 400 calories. My favourite beverage is a strawberries and crème blended cream – with whip it is a mere 500 calories. Combined, these two items though a tasty treat, are about half of my daily caloric intake!! And these two items certainly don’t fill me up for any length of time. I also like the blueberry muffins – they are only 450 calories…ha! Luckily my Café Americano is only around 20 calories. It has to balance somewhere...

So my advice to anyone who is dieting, is to go online and do a nutritional check. Some times it is difficult to find out caloric values (for instance, Starbucks is a pain in the butt; they leave it to their individual stores to post nutritional data for food – which means it doesn’t get done; I have had to use Google to find out the truth!). Again, I recommend fitday.com to find out caloric values.

One way to tell whether the food you are consuming is good or not is based on the consistency of your excrement (poop, crap, etc). Yup. That’s right. Unless you have other health issues that impact your bowels, your poop is a good indicator of your diet. As I am not into the habit of discussing poop, you can Google it (though I’ve never tried). Or you can try a simple experiment – tomorrow, eat a ton of junk…see what happens the next morning. The following couple of days, eat healthy – and notice the difference. I took a Medical Anthropology course a few years ago; we discussed the consistency of poop – highly entertaining.

Anyways, if you don’t mind, I am going to finish chugging my double chocolately chip blended cream, eat my ginger molasses cookie, and wallow in my guilt.

Talking Fat #7: More Calories Part 1

**This is another split entry**

Pic: Europe 2004**


This “dieting” thing has gone on far longer than I ever expected. As mentioned, I had seriously underestimated my starting weight. An ordeal that I expected to be over within ten months, has now dragged into month fifteen. I anticipate that I still have another five (plus) months to go. The deceptive part, is that even if I am “finished” in six months, I am not truly finished. This is a permanent lifestyle change; six months down the road I will have to start worrying about maintaining the weight loss – not just about how to kick start it.

The problem with weight loss for the clinically obese, is that there is always a substantial risk that the weight will pack back on. I don’t really understand the reasons for this. It is almost like our bodies suddenly became programmed to store additional fat; as soon as the opportunity materializes, our bodies become highly opportunistic. The larger problem is that the weight gain is never equivalent to the loss; it is usually accompanied by an additional 50 or more pounds. I have already realized that I have sluggish metabolism – at 30, a woman’s metabolism declines even more – so in 2 years my metabolism will clinically dead.

Unfortunately I have been down this road before. As a teenager I was fat – after my dad died of an apparent heart attack (he was obese, with high blood pressure), I had a wake up call. During my last two years of high-school, I went through a substantial period of weight loss, just by cleaning up my eating habits and working out constantly. I think I was more hardcore back then – cleaning up my eating habits was actually a literal period of starvation. I started this present ordeal by cutting back to 1000 calories a day. In high school I was eating far less than that on a daily basis. I worked out a lot, and it became a sickness. I really had no idea what I was doing, but it worked (or so I thought). The weight was pouring off, and I was finally getting the body that I had wanted. I didn’t matter how I did it, just as long as I got it done. Let’s face it though – 13 years ago, I don’t think we knew as much about eating healthy as we do now. Most people really did believe that low calorie diets were the only way to loose weight. That’s why the mentality is so engrained in us now.

At around the same time I knew several others who were going through the same ordeal. I had a co-worker who was using Weight Watchers, a friend who was using weight loss pills, another friend who was using starvation…and so it goes…It was all about getting to the end goal the fastest way possible. We each considered it healthier to be thin, with little consideration as to the unhealthy ways that we were achieving our goals.

Now here is the thing: we all gained our weight back. And then some…

None of us considered the long term aspects of weight loss. Basically speaking, which ever method you use to loose weight, is the method that you will use for the rest of your life in order to maintain that weight loss. Maybe there is a point at which you can splurge for prolonged periods; maybe your body does hit homeostasis after awhile; mine never did.

This is one of my biggest fears; I wake up daily with that gnawing fear of weight gain. I would love to go back to the freedom with which I used to eat. I would love to not work out tomorrow and maybe the next. Or get up in the morning, and not have to plan out my caloric intake for the day. Oh, and I would love to not feel guilty if I decide to not work out, or eat chocolate....TBC...

Talking Fat #6: A Tale of Two Scales

As I’ve mentioned, I spent nearly eight months in complete ignorance of my weight. In retrospect that was probably a good thing. Had I known my starting weight, I likely would have driven myself crazy. I guess I am still shocked by what I likely weighed when I started. I never felt that overwhelmingly obese. Actually, about a week ago I found out the BMI of a 5’5 female weighing 300 pounds – I was politely told by a website that I was “extremely obese”. Thanks. Ok, so it hurts to hear, but it’s true – I was.

Having been active, and unimpeded by my weight, I just never felt like an ‘extremely obese’ person. Except on a plane – in a plane seat, I felt like a beached whale. In order to avoid embarrassment, I sucked it in so I never had to ask for a seat belt extension. I was riding dangerously close to extension territory though. Other than those ill fated plane trips, I was a thin person stuck in the body of an ‘extremely obese’ person.
During the initial weight loss, I actually took guidance from my clothes to the degree of my success. Starting at a size 24-26, it seemed to take no time at all to get down to a size 18. When I hit 18, it was like a mini party – I swore (and still do) that I would never cross that 20 threshold again.

Ignorant bliss can only last for so long. In July 2008, I finally had to let the walls come *shattering* down. After a heated discussion with the guy I am presently seeing, I knew I had to find out the real number (don’t worry, he’s supportive – I was being the difficult one!). But here is the problem – weight loss, especially extreme weight loss, is a highly emotional battle. There are times that you feel as though you are going nowhere. There are the moments that the fight is just too much to deal with, and the body and mind enter into a state of emotional exhaustion. In July I really thought I was well below 200 pounds. I had to be. I figured I was close to my initial goal of 180 pounds (which was actually supposed to have been crossed in April 2008).

I hated our bathroom scale – a relic that is actually ten years away from being classified as an archaeological artefact. So the following day I stumbled into Walmart (good old Walmart). Apparently scales have changed in the forty years – I was confronted by a number of models, each with fancy gadgets and various programmable features. Since my goal was strictly to weigh myself, and not to program it to play movies, make margaritas, or reach lunar orbit, I finally settled on a basic digital model. Hell, I thought digital was pretty high-tech.

So that night was the grand unveiling – finally finding out the result of 8 months of hard work and emotional upheaval….
And then there was the shock that followed…
Ya. So as it turned out I didn’t weigh 180 pounds. I didn’t weight 200 pounds. Noooo…I was still over 210 pounds (and I’m not saying by how much). Now by July, I had already gone down a bunch of sizes….huh…surely it had to be wrong.
So I tried our old, archaeological specimen scale. And it had the exact same weight. huh. Not good.
I’m not going to claim that the fallout from this discovery was pretty. I’m also not going to claim that I handled it like a trooper. Oh no. I certainly did not handle it well. But that is when I knew that my starting weight had been well over what I had expected. WELL OVER (with emphasis). There were tears. There was stress and anxiety, and that nagging voice in the back of my mind that kept saying “You aren’t finished yet, not by a long shot!”
I am the first one to tell people not to live by the scale while they are dieting. You can’t. It’s too much of a mind game. For instance, I know that my weight naturally fluctuates by at least 10 pounds on a monthly basis. One day you step on the scale, and it reads 5 pounds heavier than it did the previous day. That little shock is then followed by an emotional breakdown. The longer you are on this path, the harder it is to accept those moments.

As a result of that initial weigh-in shock, I did live by the scale for quite awhile. Every day, multiple times a day, I would check the number. There was method to my madness though – the whole reason my weight got out of control was because I had quit weighing myself in 1999. Now I must never let my nerves get the better of me. Even if the reality is too difficult to deal with, it is better to know than to return to blissful ignorance. While in London, my one splurge purchase was a scale – I had to know that my weight wasn’t going back up (especially since I was living off sandwiches, and Tesco sandwiches are like the holy Mecca of unhealthy – thanks mayo)

A couple of nights ago, I was again confronted by the stress of a weight fluctuation. I cross referenced the two scales and realized there was a five pound discrepancy. Granted, five pounds isn’t a lot. But when you are working towards moving down, watching it go up is really disconcerting. So basically it is the battle of the scales- the old relic versus the newer digital one. The newer digital one is reading a lower weight, and it is the one that I will favour. And you know what? I’m ok not knowing which one is right – just as long as the number starts moving downwards again.

I have been praised for my conviction to this process, and the changes that I’ve made. Unfortunately you also reach a point that it doesn’t matter what you’ve done – all that matters is how far you have to go. Right now I am in one of those lulls. It is so close, and I could care less that I have gotten here – all I care about is the moment that I finally arrive. I know that I stand in a relatively tumultuous place. I fear the day that I return to London, and am too tired to work out on a routine basis. I won’t have a grill, so I won’t be able to cook as healthy as I have been. The fear of returning to the Old Leanne, is overwhelming, and yet I haven’t fully arrived at the New Leanne. Oh if only this was somehow simple!

The day after I weighed myself for the first time in nearly 10 years...I wasn't a happy camper :-p