Determination, Success, and Above all Courage!

At least once a  month as I sit in my regular Weight Watchers meeting someone who is new will ask me how long it took to lose "the weight."  I usually hesitate to answer this question but then I smile and I answer like this:  The first hundred pounds came off in a year the next nearly hundred took quite a bit longer.  I resist telling this new member how long a bit longer is because I don't want them to feel that I am typical of members with sizable amounts to lose and I don't want them discouraged before they start and yet somehow I think my truth is helpful to share.

The truth is that it took me 15 years, yes years, to get to my goal weight and that weight is a number set by my doctor who did not believe it would be healthy or even safe for me to get to the Weight Watchers goal weight. If I was going to reach the Weight Watchers goal weight I would need to lose an additional thirty pounds!  The important thing to know is that I am happy where I am now and it is a lifestyle I can maintain and do maintain MOST days.

During that fifteen year period I learned many things that have helped and sustained me along the way.  The MOST important thing I learned about losing my weight and keeping it off is that I had to believe I was worth the effort.  I am worth the effort and so I persevere!  I learned that when you are as large as I was and the Weight Watcher leader stands in front of the class and says, "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels" you know immediately she has NEVER had warm chocolate chip cookies straight out of the oven or peanut butter spread on bread fresh from the toaster or even a dish of Rocky Road ice cream from Baskin Robins because I can assure you they still taste amazing and are worth the extra exercise I have to do to burn off the calories from eating them.  I know I could list you at least another fifty foods that meet the same qualifications.  Food tastes great and most of us in that meeting know that or we would not be sitting in that meeting.  I have also learned that the Weight Watchers program works great; the Lynn  program, not so well.  On the Lynn  program I would follow the WW program religiously until the FIRST meal after my weigh in at which point I would think to myself I have a whole week to recover so...the eating would begin.  I began this practice with only one "bad" meal on the day I weighed in but soon it became both meals and included snacks.  I weigh in on Saturday so Saturday then became a bust.  Soon Saturday became Sunday as well and before long what I ate Friday night couldn't possibly show up on the scale on Saturday morning, but it did!  Reality hit me smack between the eyes one week when I realized it took me three to four days of the next week to get off what I had just eaten on the weekend and I just might be much more successful if I stopped the weekend binge.  Guess what; it worked!  The Lynn  program was put aside with all of the other discarded diet attempts but I continued on with WW and I did their program.  Pound by pound, sometimes quarter pound by quarter pound the weight came off and I found myself on the scale at my meeting at goal.  I fought back the tears but know that my meeting mates would have understood because that is what we do.

My truth is there were struggles and the same pounds were gained and lost repeatedly but I kept coming.  I learned to do better and how to handle the rough times and that everyone stumbled and some even quit trying for awhile but kept coming and they too became successful.

The other day I was struggling and I came across a great quote that put things back in perspective for me:

"Some days, doing "the best we can" may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn't perfect on any front-and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else." Fred Rogers

I read it again and brushed the dirt off my knees, pulled my shoulders back, picked my chin up and started over.  I AM WORTH THE EFFORT!  "Failure is not falling down; failure is not getting up." (unknown)  The truth is that it takes courage to continue trying.

My truths are that I am determined.  I am a success but above all I am courageous!  

Be brave, you are worth the effort!

"Courage doesn't always roar.  Sometimes, courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow." Mary Anne Radmacher

Letter to my body

Dear Body,

Today I want to apologize to you for the way I have treated you.  I took you for granted far too long and ignored your cries for help. You tried to tell me when I had eaten too much by making me feel sick to my stomach, occasionally even to the point of vomiting.  You added pound after pound of weight to my body hoping I would notice how tight my clothes were getting, but I bought bigger clothes. You tried to tell me I had put on too much weight for you to carry when my knees began to hurt and I found it was more and more difficult to run and then to even walk, but I ignored you.  I made excuses to avoid going up and down the stairs and asked my family to retrieve things for me.  I even managed to ignore you when my heart would race and beat irregularly; I was certain it was too much tea and so I stopped drinking tea.  But then one day my eyes opened wide and looked in the mirror and looked at the number on the scale and I saw what you had been trying to tell me and we began the process of changing together.  Today I want to thank you for sticking with me and helping me get my life back.  It is such a gift to still be alive!

I have pounds of loose skin on my thighs and abdomen and arms.   When I stand naked and look in the mirror I look like a Shar pei puppy but I am grateful!  I promise I will not allow surgeons to cut you out of vanity.  Many people have asked me if I am going to have plastic surgery and I always answer this way, "The surgery I  need is cosmetic and is not covered by my insurance.  No one can guarantee me I will wake up from the anesthesia and they can't guarantee that I won't get an infection that could cost me my life or my arm or my leg so no, I will not have any plastic surgery."  Then I explain a bit further, this revelation that came to me.  I have two arms that work.  They bathe me and dress me and feed me.  They were the arms that embraced my husband when we were pronounced husband and wife and they were the same arms that held my babies after they were born.  They have extra skin but they are my arms and they are just right the way they are.  

Thank you body for helping me to help myself.  I promise to always do my best to care for you the way you deserve to be cared for, to respect you, and to love you even on the days I have doubts.

Here is a very moving and powerful video that is another woman's letter to her body:

Letter to my Body from Ally Marks on Vimeo.

Spreading my wings

I was five or six when I learned how to ride my bike without training wheels.  We lived in Lutherville, Maryland in a cute Cape Cod style house on a corner lot.  It was summer and I had been begging my parents to take my training wheels off my bike so I could learn to ride just like some of my friends who no longer needed training wheels.  I was so excited when my dad took them off!  My mom was the one I remember holding the back of my seat and running beside me giving instructions and helping me maintain my balance.  I tried and I tried and I tried and I fell over and over again until my mom got tired and told me we would try again another day. She went back into the house.  I was not ready to give up.  I continued trying and falling many more times before my mind and my body finally realized what they needed to do to keep me on the bike in an upright position and off the ground which resulted in a glorious fifteen to twenty second ride without a fall.  I was on my way!  I continued to practice, sometimes falling but each time gaining more and more confidence and longer and longer successful rides until I could ride with confidence. I wish I could say I never had another fall but that would not be true.  I can say when I did fall there was usually not as big of a scrape because I had learned to catch myself or even to lay the bike down in the grass where my landing would be softer, but I would continue to have the occasional spill. Did I ever think I should stop riding my bike because of those spills?  No way!  Several years ago I got a bike for Christmas.  I had not ridden for MANY years but my mind and my body remembered.  Labor Day weekend of the next year my husband and I rode our bikes thirty-four miles on a trail called the Virginia Creeper.  I fell once and scraped my arm but I didn't quit.  I would have missed out on so much if I had! 

So why am I writing about my childhood memory of learning to ride my bike? I am writing  to tell you that the experience of learning to ride a bike is no different than the experiences I have had losing my weight.  I know VERY FEW people who were able to get on a bike and pedal away without practice and falls and scraped up knees and elbows.  Many more people have memories that match mine; of a parent running beside them  holding on to the seat to steady them helping them learn to simultaneously balance and pedal.  They will tell you about falling and trying again and again and close calls where they caught themselves before they fell and they will tell you about tears and scraped elbows and knees and wounded pride.  They may even smile as they recall the experience and yet they all learned to ride a bike.

This is my experience with Weight Watchers.  I had a leader and a room full of members just like me in various stages of discovering why we eat and how to eat and portion control, and healthy choices, and even exercise.  The leader was there to help us steer and show us the way; to encourage us to pick ourselves up and get our balance back when we stumbled.  The members cheered for each other and celebrated the successes and understood and even cried when someone was lost.   Each of us had to make the decision to continue trying or to give up and go home.  Those who chose to continue to try, like me, were successful.  It was not easy and all of us stumbled and fell occasionally.  We beat ourselves up and we cried but we also laughed and cheered for the others who were becoming successful and for ourselves.  We lost weight and we made friends and we rejoiced!  A few, like me, found themselves buried under all of the extra weight and like a caterpillar came out of their cocoon to discover they had become a butterfly!

“How does one become a butterfly?” she asked. ”You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.” - Trina Paulus

On being full

The unanswered voices begging for help at the Weight Watchers meeting continue to shout in my head; "I don't know when I'm full, I don't know when I'm full!"  I hear them when I am quiet and they continue to disrupt my silence because I understand the problem and felt the frustration when the statement was ignored.  I have to DO something to try to quiet them and so I will do my best to tell you what I have learned and maybe it will help you.  I certainly hope it will quiet the voices.

• Being full is feeling satisfied but in order to feel satisfied or even able to tell if you are satisfied you have to be aware of what you are eating.  You sit at the table and eat one bite at a time and you put your fork down between bites and you chew more than twice before you swallow, and you smell the food, and you feel the food in your mouth, you notice the texture and the temperature and the flavors, you really taste the food and then you swallow.  You don't reload and shovel the food in and have your meal completed in 10 minutes.

• "Satisfied" is not an emotion any more than full is but it can be influenced by your emotions and why you are eating what you are eating.

• If you went to the kitchen cabinets or the refrigerator more than once before you picked something to eat and it is not meal time you are eating for a reason other than hunger.  Take a walk or call a friend or write a blog  :)  You will not get full from this kind of eating.  You will eat way too much and you will still be hungry because food was not what you were looking for.

• You will NEVER feel full if the reason you are eating is not from the physical need to nourish your body.  You will be medicated with your drug of choice; the "friend" who never asks questions that start with, "Are you physically hungry?"  If you had stopped and called a friend and talked you might find you were no longer hungry and the feelings that were causing you to look for something to eat will probably be gone.

• To understand what full feels like you need to get to know the feelings that arise not only in your stomach, but also in your head, your heart, and your body.

• If food was such a wonderful friend ask yourself why your friend would let you do this to your body.  A true friend would not help you dig your grave with your spoon and fork.  A true friend would say;  I value you.  You matter to me.  You are amazing just the way you are.  How can I help you?  I love you!

I hope this helps you grasp what full is.  Full is knowing you ate a healthy meal in realistic portions and even if you aren't certain how full feels you will trust that you are and that will be enough.

Two people just asked for help but the Weight Watchers leader went right on

I sat in my usual Weight Watcher’s meeting this morning and looked around at all of the new faces.  These folks were all brave enough to walk into a meeting and admit they needed to do something about their weight.  As I looked at their faces, I remembered my very first meeting.  I didn’t know what to expect.  I had heard about Weight Watchers but for some reason had never talked to anyone who had been a member.  I wondered what concerns were going through their minds.  Were they excited, nervous, determined?  Perhaps they were there because their family had urged them to do “something” about their weight.  Doctors may have sent some and others may have had the same revelation I had when I saw the scale creep closer to the 400 lb. mark.  I knew I needed to change my life if I wanted to continue living my life.  Here we all were in the same meeting.  We all have issues with food!

Today’s topic was portion control.  I smiled when I typed that because if we didn’t have issues with portion control we wouldn’t need to be at a Weight Watcher’s meeting.  We talked about how we manage portions and were given an index card and a crayon to score how well we do on a daily basis.  On a 1-10 scale, I wrote down an 8.  This surprised some folks who know how long I have been a member and how well I have done but I was being honest.  There are days and/or some foods that still cause me to have portion control problems.  Here is just a sampling of the foods I have problems with: homemade chocolate chip cookies still warm from the oven, Baskin Robins Rocky Road ice cream, a pound bag of peanut M&Ms, a full size bag of potato chips, HOT McDonald’s french fries, movie theater buttered popcorn, and pizza!  Do I know what a portion of these foods are, absolutely, but portion control is still, and probably always will be an issue for me when dealing with these foods.  Do I over indulge in them because I am hungry?  Nope!  I LOVE them and so I find myself eating them with reckless abandon until I find myself uncomfortable from eating far too much.  So you might ask, Didn’t you realize you were full?  Hmm, did I notice I was getting full; that I was full?

This is where today’s Weight Watcher’s meeting failed at least two of its members.  You see on two different occasions two different members said the exact same words; “I don’t know when I am full.”  The leader went right on with her class.  She didn't even pause.  I was sitting in my chair silently screaming, “I understand.  Me too!”-she kept going.  I have a theory as to why this happened.  My leader earned her Lifetime after losing 30 pounds.  Thirty pounds is a nice bit of weight but doesn’t compare to the weight the two who spoke up have to lose, that I had to lose.  I think she went on because she didn’t understand how someone can’t know they are full.  Tonight I want to say to those members who sat silently in that meeting feeling ignored that I heard you and I understand.  I am sorry I didn’t speak up in class and tell you that, so I am saying it now.  I am just like you.  Even after reaching my goal there are still days when I don’t know I am full until I am so full I feel sick.  Next time I will not be silent.  Next time maybe I will be the leader and we will stop and talk about it and I will understand.

What does love mean?

⁴ Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud ⁵ or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. ⁶ It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. ⁷ Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. (1Corinthians 13)

He was 16 and she was 15 when they met that July and yet something deep inside her told her this boy was different, special, worth getting to know.  She didn't have a lot of time to get to know him because he was getting ready to go to Sweden as a Rotary International exchange student for the year and yet they had enough time.  They wrote letters back and forth once, sometimes twice a week, and he called her on Christmas Day, something that had to be prearranged in those days.  They talked for just a few minutes yet it was enough.  He returned home at the end of his school year abroad and they spent the summer together and the next year until he graduated from high school and immediately headed off to college.  They continued to date and when he was home you rarely saw one without the other.  She had a moment of doubt her freshman year in college and broke off their relationship despite the fact they had already picked out an engagement ring.  Her mother was furious with her.  He was brokenhearted.  He returned the ring.  She dated other boys often calling them by "his" name.  By Christmas she realized her mistake and called him hoping to re-establish a relationship, begging for forgiveness; he was dating someone else but they talked and before long they were together again.  They married, had 2 children (a girl and a boy) and have battled the ups and downs that come with any relationship; the good times outweighing the difficult ones.  It is now 40 years since they met.  They have been married 35 years.  She has been with him for more than 70 percent of her life and yet she still loves him with her heart and soul.  Yesterday was Valentine's Day and the card she gave him could not begin to express the depth of her love for him and so she is sharing this on her blog but writing it for him.  

To my loving husband, Jay, who I love more than words can ever express.  Thank you for sharing your love and your life with me.  You continue to show me what love is in everything you do.  I am blessed to have found you but know without a shadow of a doubt that God arranged our meeting at that church paper drive 40 years ago.

Here are some profound answers from children when asked; "What does love mean?" 

'When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.
You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.'
Billy - age 4

'When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore.  So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love.'
Rebecca- age 8

'Love is what makes you smile when you're tired.' 

Terri - age 4

Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.'
Bobby - age 7

My favorite is a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, 'Nothing, I just helped him cry'   

I know the answer to what does love mean.  I hope you do too! 

The answer isn't in there

I am an elementary school nurse.  Today I got home from work two hours later than I normally do because my "kids" are coming to me in groups of two, three and even four all with similar complaints; fever, headache, and sore throat.  I believe I can say with certainty we are in the midst of the "funk."  The time it takes to document their visits is what caused me to be at school later than usual today.  I am tired!!  I walked in the door at home, played with my dog and then opened the kitchen cabinet and started looking for what I could find to eat.  Am I hungry?

When you see as many children as I did today you grab lunch when you can get it and that usually follows the first chance you have had to go to the bathroom. I chose going to the bathroom first today only because if I  waited another second my super bladder would have burst!  I ate lunch at 2:40 PM.  My breakfast this morning was at 6:30 AM.  I know that is too long to go without food or a snack but that is what happened.  

I stood looking in the kitchen cabinets, moved on to the refrigerator and then back to the cabinets when somewhere a small voice inside my head asks, "Are you hungry?"  I stopped looking.  I am not hungry; after

all I didn't eat lunch until 2:40 and it is only  a few minutes past 5.  So what am I doing in the kitchen, looking for something to eat?  I am tired.  It has been an exhausting day.  I am spent but I am not hungry.  I am looking for something to make it all better.  FOOD preferably something chocolate would cure all that is wrong with me or would it....

I stopped myself from eating something I didn't need because I wasn't hungry.  Today was the first time in a REALLY long time I was able to recognize what was happening before I ate only to feel guilty later.  So what did I do to "make it all better?"  I sat down at the keyboard and wrote this post.  :)

Oh, and the next time this happens (probably tomorrow) I hope I can remember the answer isn't in there and get out of the kitchen fast!!