America the Hutt

I remember feeling like I was SO GROSS when in middle school. I was fat and unpopular. Boys in my class didn't ask me to dance at sock hops. My parents were concerned about my health and they were constantly trying to do things to get me to diet or workout. Naturally I resisted their attempts. What child wants to be told they're overweight? What pubescent girl wants to think she's the fattest/ugliest girl in her class? I didn't want to be different from the other kids who didn't belong to a gym or spend time working out after school. I wanted to go to MacDonald's after soccer practice and eat fries and a shake like everyone else. 

This is the way I remember myself.

I've spent a lot of time recounting my "success" story to people who are curious about how I got to my "rock bottom" moment (Recently I was lucky enough to share it with the awesome community at Nerd Fitness. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, give it a look-see!). Often, I start by saying that I was fat from a very young age and that I was incredibly self conscious about it. Although I participated in things like soccer and figure skating, I was never as good as the other kids. Physicality was never my strong suit. I hated my appearance and when I started to get interested in boys, I faced a string of rejections. So much of what happened during my formative elementary and middle school years contributed to my attitude towards nutrition and fitness, not to mention my self esteem. It was the bedrock upon which residency at Jabba's palace was built.

Recently, a friend posted a picture of us from middle school on Facebook. Prepare yourself to behold the behemoth female hutt, the gargantuan fatass of yesteryear. BEHOLD HER!

WHAT?!

Ok, so given the lead-up, I'm guessing you're as shocked as I was. I look like a totally normal in this picture. Curvy and Teva-clad sure, but unhealthy? No! Yet, in my head, I thought I was a troll. I was convinced I had a huge problem. 

The fact is, I might not have been working out the way I am now, but I was involved in plenty of physical activity at school and in after school sports. I rollerbladed to school a lot! I rode my bike on the weekend. The reason I couldn't keep up with kids on my soccer team was because I played with kids who went on to get soccer scholarships and play on all state teams. I was AVERAGE in terms of skill, but I was active. I just felt bad about my performance because most of my friends excelled insanely at physical stuff.

Even though I wasn't as unhealthy as I perceived myself at the time, I still developed into an unhealthy adult. I was broken just like so many obese children are today.

I'm pretty sure my parents' constant concern about staying active and eating healthy, as well as their rigid rules about what kind of foods we all ate when we were together at home, contributed to my need to act out and eat fast food, binge on ice cream, and hide candy bars in my room. I'm sure the huge gap in skill level between my friends on the soccer team and myself had a lot to do with feeling like there was no point in applying myself to getting better. 

Then again, I'm not sure how it could have been done differently. Maybe my parents pushed too hard, but if they hadn't pushed at all, then where would I have been? It's just as likely that I might have gone down the same path to the Dark Side. If they hadn't instilled in me a "no quitting" attitude, I probably would have dropped out of all my sports after they lost the glow of "newness" and I was faced with the fact that I just wasn't very good at them.  

For about two months I've been meaning to write about how I feel about childhood obesity and its relationship to parenting, but I haven't because I'm not sure I have anything useful to add to the dialogue. It's a huge problem in this country. We are 100% failing our youth in a huge way. I don't think the answer is telling them they can't ever have any cookies or candy, but at the same time I don't think we should continue to let people stay as ignorant of the content of their food and the processes it goes through before it gets to the table. I wrote a post a while ago about how much I love the fact that NYC restaurants are required to post calorie counts on their menus. Sure, not all calories are created equal, but seeing that number does help me make better choices from time to time, even when it comes to treats. There are parts of the country that don't do that. Hell, there are parts of the country that practically build shrines to butter (mmm butter). We think that's normal! If you ask the countries in the world who don't have this same issue, you'll find that it's not.

My friend Dani just visited me from Brazil. She said she was shocked by our portion sizes and by the fact that everything comes fried and with some sort of starch. I started to notice that too when I first started Nutrisystem and now that I order Paleo when I'm out, it takes a lot of effort to sort of rewrite the menu. Most of the time I overpay for what I get because it costs more to replace fries with something healthier or I have to remove so many elements from my meal that I end up with a tiny portion.  It costs more money and it takes more effort to eat right- even though I'd wager it's totally worth it.

America builds it's foods to make us fat by habit. Sandwiches come with fries naturally. On menus, you hardly ever see "Choose your sandwich and one side." They just assume you want to put fries in your face (and it's a fairly good assumption... cause they are delicious devil food). There are places that list potato salad  and pasta salad as vegetables. You can see why our youth is confused. We're hardly helping them. 

Changing our national habits seems like a huge challenge. I'm not sure where to start, but I know we have to do something. I've spent the last few months asking parents I know about how they approach health in their own homes. There doesn't seem to be a formula from success. Some had kids who more naturally adapted to healthy lifestyles even though they did nothing special to encourage them and others have kids who continually struggle in adulthood despite having a childhood where every meal was planned.

I haven't written about what I think we should do to assuage our obesity problems in this country because I only know what works for me. My friends have gotten healthier and I've gotten healthier, but we've all done it in completely different ways. Weight Watchers, Keto, Paleo- you name it! We've all found something that spoke to us and that we could do for long enough to see results. I guess the only thing I can definitively say is that we have to somehow figure out how to heal apathy when it comes to health. Gorging ourselves and eating the "wrong" things has become so normalized in our country that it's the healthy choices that seem to exist on the fringe. If someone works out every morning before work, that person "must be crazy." If someone orders a salad at lunch with friends, we all say, "Oh you're so good." Those things should be fairly normal in a healthy country- but for us, they're not because we've poisoned our collective national mind but making unhealthy treats the "norm."

We have to figure out how to make people care, but so many people don't- or they just care more about pizza than they do about not getting diabetes. Plus, the more normal these obesity-caused-ailments become, the more our kids accept them as a natural part of life. The whole reason my "transformation" has been maintained so far is because I've directly linked health to the things I enjoy in my life. I run... from zombies. I do HIIT workouts... watching Xena. I lose weight... to cosplay. You get the point.

If you're one of those people (and I know they're out there because I used to be one) who feels like they have tried to lose weight, but they've just failed time after time, then find something you love that's directly affected in a negative way by your weight and think about how much more fulfilling your life would be if you could participate in it. It might be different for everyone, but becoming personally invested in getting a better a life might be the key. Yeah it's more work than some simple answer that would solve our country's weight problems, but I'm not sure that even exists.

If a kid loves sports, then great! Tell them how much better they'll perform if they fuel their body properly. If they love video games or action movies, encourage their interests and show them what it takes to get big and strong (like this 300 workout used by the actors to prep for the film). If they hate working out, but they love to cook, teach them about food! Let them take a cooking class that specializes in nutritious dishes so that they can learn a skill that will help them their whole life. Start small and they may see the benefit of working on the things that don't come naturally when they realize it will affect the skills they're already interested in improving.

There's one thing my parents did absolutely right (and I wish every kid was as lucky!). They encouraged me to follow my passions. Had I figured out how to bring my passions and my deficits into alignment earlier on, I might not be struggling as much with my health today.

I'm interested to hear how you all feel about "the obesity epidemic" in this country and what can be done to help heal it. It's something I think about a lot because I don't want anyone to have to suffer like I did. I don't have the answers, just an inkling. I think one of the most important things is to just get people talking! So talk, Slayers! Maybe we can start to untangle this Gorgon's knot together. 

Things I Don't Miss

 Changing my nutrition and exercise habits have had a profound effect on me both inside and out. Even though I've had some success, when times get tough (I hit a plateau, I'm constantly surrounded by temptation, I get distracted by emotional stuff in my life, etc), I sometimes find myself drifting back to my old way of thinking. Sure, when my friends are eating delicious New York pizza, I want some. I wish it was in the cards that I could eat a slice or two like I used to. When it's late at night and I get a craving for ice cream, I start remembering what it was like to load up on my favorite flavors whenever I felt like it. When I make my boyfriend a bacon cheeseburger I FRAKIN' WANT ONE TOO. Who wouldn't? My choice to not give into that overwhelming urge to throw in the towel and go hog wild with food is what makes me strong. Willpower is a muscle and the more you flex it, the easier it gets. However, when I'm teetering on the edge of disaster, I start to think of what I don't miss about my "old" life. It's like the Star Wars prequels. Sometimes you really wish you didn't sit through those years of pain, but it's there forever and no matter how hard you try, you can't imagine it away so you might as well do your best to glean what you can from it. 

That's why I made this list of "Things I Don't Miss." Thinking about the negative things in my past and how they've changed helps me to focus on a brighter future that as of now, isn't so far, far away anymore.

• I don't miss getting winded just by walking from the subway to my destination.
• I don't miss sweating like crazy all the time.
• I don't miss getting hit on by guys who only want me because I'm a "BBW" fetish.
• I don't miss only being able to sit on the subway if there are two adjacent seats available.
• I don't miss my feet feeling like they were breaking after being on them for hours at a time.
• I don't miss my feet and ankles swelling up like sausages a few times a month.
• I don't miss slowly having to accept that I'm getting too big for my clothes.
• I don't miss binging on a whole pizza from Pappa John's and feeling like crap afterwards for willingly destroying my body day after day.
• I don't miss calling to order food from one of my favorite restaurants and having them recognize my voice and fill in my order before I can finish my sentence.
• I don't miss that guy at Dunkin' Donuts who saw my State ID from when I was thinner while I was paying and said, "Wow. When did you get fat?"
• I don't miss going to the doctor and having to get poked and prodded a billion times for them to even find a vein to take blood.
• I don't miss people feeling they need to console me by telling me, "But you have a beautiful face."
• I don't miss my family repeatedly telling me I'm going to get diabetes.
• I don't miss approaching a roller coaster with apprehension because I might not fit in the seat. 
• I don't miss putting myself down with a joke so that no one else has a chance to do it first.
• I don't miss feeling like I'm holding my friends back because of my weight.
• I don't miss letting myself get pushed around because I don't feel I deserve to take up any space.
• I don't miss looking at my beautiful friends and feeling like I don't even deserve to be around them. 
• I don't miss  being jealous of other people's beauty and success in healthy endeavors and subsequently hating myself for it.
• I don't miss promising myself that "I'll start tomorrow" but already knowing I won't.
• I don't miss making a million excuses for not trying something because I was afraid to fail due to my weight.
• I don't miss looking in the mirror, being unhappy with what I see, and not being able to temper that with an affirmation that I'm working hard to become a better person.

Last night, a friend asked me how it "felt" to have lost all this weight. I was flooded with a mixture of emotions because I know at my core I'm the same person in a lot of ways, but in that moment I was struggling to capture the result of leaving all that negativity in my past. In the end I decided on, "I'm not afraid anymore."

Find Your Fellowship

Quests for better health can be a lonely process, but they don't have to be. 

Every time I have failed at getting healthy it's because I made the process a secret. I was so ashamed that I even had to put myself through such drastic change to my exercise and diet that I didn't want to let anyone see me at my most vulnerable. I also removed a lot of the things I liked from my life under the pretense that "old me" was broken. I stopped playing video games because I connected them to binge eating and constant snacking. I stopped going to movies because I didn't feel like I could go and not eat candy. I stopped going out to dinner with friends because I hated the idea of not being able to partake in what other people were eating. My social life dwindled into near non-existence with very few exceptions. I'm an only child and I'm used to being on my own- it's even comfortable for me, but when I stopped hanging out with my friends as much, I really lost my perspective on my place in the world and began letting some of the negativity that can be a part of a challenging physical process take over in a very damaging way.

"I'm too fat to even exercise like a normal person."

"I didn't lose as much weight as I wanted to this week."

"I've lost a ton of weight but I'm still gigantic. It'll never be enough."

"Food is bad. Food is the enemy."

"I love food. I miss food."

"Why even try? This is impossible. It's going to take over  a year to lose all this weight anyways."

"I hate myself."

I didn't have any friends around to snap me out of my downward spiral because in my version of "focusing" on my health, I had to shut them out until I was worthy to be a part of the world in all my unattainable skinny splendor.

This method of getting healthy wasn't healthy at all, let alone the fact that it was completely unsustainable. I would habitually push myself till I broke and then binge eat all the weight back on. I was afraid the doctor, of scales, of anything that would make me face what I was putting myself through. I went through long periods of trying to eat less than 600 calories a day with my hair falling out in droves every time I showered. I can remember hating myself for "binging" on five chicken fingers after I lost my willpower to stick to that malnourished diet and sticking my fingers down my throat for the first time to erase the mistake. 

If I had been brave enough to face the world and to let my friends see what was going on, I probably would have gotten the help I needed a lot sooner and I would have had people to set me straight and support me as I picked myself up and got back to being healthy.

My point is that you need at least one person aside from yourself that you can be accountable to. You're going on a long quest and you need your Fellowship so you can toss your fat into the fires of Mount Doom! Your Fellowship should be people you trust. They should be people you see in person often and I would venture that you might want to make sure that some of them know a little bit about health and fitness, though that's not essential. The biggest factor is that they should love you unconditionally and you should feel comfortable succeeding and failing in front of them. These are people who you should chat with regularly about your process. They should make you want to develop your fitness around what you love in your life instead of shutting all the joy out till the turkey's done and ready to come out of the oven. Your Fellowship is there to reflect all the positive stuff back at you, help you find new ways to enjoy the healthier you, and speak up if it seems like you're derailing your progress somehow. 

The next level isn't for everyone, but I've found it very rewarding to use social media like Facebook, Twitter, and this blog (SURPRISE!) to share my trials, tribulations, progress, and goals. It makes me feel good when someone I haven't seen in a while makes a comment about how great I look or when someone whose fitness regime I've always admired shares some great advice. 

I'm not ashamed of what I'm doing anymore. I love it- and not just for the end goal, but because it's brought me closer to the people in my life, expanded my interests, and allowed me to participate in the things I love in ways I didn't think were possible before. I'm getting out and running three times a week (something I thought I'd never do!). I'm taking two or three yoga classes a week and today I caught myself in the mirror during the class and realized how graceful I'd become. Me? Graceful! INCONCEIVABLE! I get excited when I'm about to debut a costume instead of nervous about how I'm going to look next to everyone else. I treat myself to the special indulgences when I'm out with friends without going overboard because I've learned how! 

None of those breakthroughs would have been possible without my Fellowship. I'm sort of tearing up thinking about it because I'm super sappy and I don't even think they know how much it means that I've been able to bypass the pain and suffering I put myself through in the past in order to make real progress that will last my whole life all because they supported me through this quest. So if you're reading this, you know who you are. Thank you!