Body image realization: I don't feel one way, all the time

Photo from the Walt Whitman archive

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
-- Walt Whitman

 I realize that a lot of my posts have been dancing around the idea of body image and how I feel, think I should feel, or how people seem to be telling me to feel, about my body. You can see a bunch of them if you click on the body image label.

There was yesterday's post about the friend who brushed off my suggestion that losing weight might make me feel better.  There were the posts about HAES and the idea that weight loss is not a good goal. There is the eternal question of how self-love fits in with a desire to change.  It's not just me -- this is one of the central issues, if not the central issue of weight-loss blogland.

All of this discussion about how we feel, how people think we should feel, how we should feel, etc., are missing one big major thing: we don't feel one way all of the time. The other thing that seems to get left out of body image discussions is that we don't feel a certain way because we decide to feel that way.  Emotions aren't logical. As humans our "feeling brain" is a completely separate system from our "reasoning brain," one that is not accessible to it.

I guess I shouldn't drag everyone else into this, because I can only definitively talk about myself. I don't feel one way all of the time. I can be feeling great about the way I look, and seeing an unflattering photo can throw me into self-doubt. I can be feeling bad about myself and someone can compliment me and brighten my outlook.  What doesn't seem to work well for me is telling myself how I should feel.  I can try to look for evidence that my gloomy outlook is unrealistic, but I can't change my body image by sheer force of will.

I'm sure I've quoted this before, but I was deeply delighted when I read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life and realized I wasn't the only one listening to the kind of craziness she calls "KFKD:"

f you are not careful, station KFKD (K-F*****) will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime.

 I think it's wrong to expect that a perfectly consistent rosy self-image is the norm and the rest of us are all screwed up.  I would really be uncomfortable around a person who never, ever experienced a moment of self-doubt. I would probably suspect that person of being a psychopath. Or at least, it would make it hard for me to be my real, flawed, human self around them.

Meatless Monday

This is partially a test post to see if BlogPress is behaving, but have you given Meatless Monday a try yet?

I'm not a vegetarian, but there are a Lot of great reasons to eat less meat:

Going meatless once a week may reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. It can also help reduce your carbon footprint and save precious resources like fresh water and fossil fuel.

And the food can be quick, easy, and delicious. Below are some veggies I put on our indoor grill, some quinoa, and a little sauce made from puréed hot and sweet peppers and olive oil.





Now let's see if this one posts....

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Weekly update: The power of numbers

As I said, I knew I did some backsliding this week. I was "rewarded" with a 1.6 pound gain.
Not so fast, though. LoseIt is set for me to lose 1 pound per week by cutting 3,500 calories from the amount I need to maintain for the week. That would mean that to really have gained 1.6 pounds of fat, I would have had to consume almost 10,000 extra calories. Even if I inaccurately tracked a few meals, I was not that far off-course. At worst, I should have stayed the same.
When I was on track with Weight Watchers, I would have two weeks of small losses, an uptick, and a bigger loss. Interesting, no?
I plan to be very on-track this week just in case so that I see a loss next week. Since next week is also the first weigh-in of a new month, I will do my measurements too.

Backsliding and Body Image

Photo by pchow98 via flickr

I did really well for the first couple of weeks with my new food plan, but I have definitely noticed some backsliding this week. I have been getting a little looser on tracking, planning ahead a little less, and letting my portions creep up. Time to readjust and recommit. I have been doing well on the exercise front, at least.

I think a big problem is that I have been feeling frustrated with some things at work.  I have been feeling like there is something wrong with me, because I have my "dream job," but haven't been feeling very happy with it lately, and that makes me feel guilty.  There are some real reasons that this can be difficult.  Our terms are short and intense.  Teaching at night (my classes are four hours long and I sometimes don't get home until 10 if a student stays after to talk) is a real drag.  It's hard to wind down to get to sleep afterward.  My husband gets up early to teach high school so that means I find myself short on sleep.  I only teach two nights a week, but because the classes fall across the dinner hour, it does make it tougher for me.  I also have to be on campus a lot during the day for meetings, office hours, and more meetings.  I need to plan what I am going to eat and bring it with me.  I have to also realize that I need to get my grading and other work done earlier in the week so I'm not stressing out about it.  I find that I tend to stress-snack when I'm under the gun.  I think I need to manage my time and energy better.

Going back to the basics will help on the food front: Tracking, planning, slowing down to decide if I'm really hungry or just want to distract myself.  It's just a course correction.

In other news: I have noticed that being matter-of-fact and honest about wanting to lose weight makes people uncomfortable. Maybe it's just weight talk in general that makes people uncomfortable, but I think there might be more to it in this case.

A [much thinner] friend of mine seems to be obsessed with trying to figure out what is wrong with my foot.  I have explained that I am seeing a podiatrist for it but she keeps bringing up weird, unlikely possibilities. I explained to her the biomechanical explanation that my podiatrist gave me, I said, "I also think that it will help to take some of this extra weight off.  If I drop 20-30 pounds, I would be putting a lot less stress on my foot." She quickly said, "But, who wants to be a toothpick? It's good to have curves." I said, "I think there's a difference between trying to be stick-skinny and wanting to get to a healthier, more comfortable weight." I let it drop, but I thought the whole thing was a little weird.  Maybe she was trying to reassure me, and didn't see it the way I saw it: A matter-of-fact statement that I want to make a change. Maybe she thought I was being mean to myself or thought I was fishing for compliments.

I really think it's possible to honestly want to lose weight without hating myself now. I had plenty of curves and was far from a toothpick when I weighed a lot less.  I actually feel less "curvy" at this weight, because my waist is thicker. I think I will look more shapely when I'm not carrying so much weight around my middle.  I think I am being realistic in my goals, that they are achievable but will just take some work.

But I definitely do feel some distress and despair about my body sometimes, so maybe it's not surprising that she felt the need to jump in and "fix" how I was feeling, just like she was trying to fix my foot problems.  I think that since this kind of talk is distressing to her, I will just save it for my blog.

Maybe that isn't even safe. Kim recently posted an honest question about why she felt the need to compare herself to other people after being unhappy about a photo of herself, and all of her commenters (including me) felt the need to jump in and say that the photo looked good. I could see what she was saying, though, and tried to acknowledge that too.

This stuff is so hard. A fundamental question I continue to wrestle with is, "How do I accept reality and work toward change while still respecting the person I am today?"

I love my Group Cycling class

Since I can't run right now, I have been going to Group Cycling two or three days a week instead. I am really enjoying it and I can feel myself getting stronger. The instructor of most of these classes has us doing pyramids -- either keeping revolutions per minute (rpms) steady and bumping up the resistance gradually, or keeping the resistance the same and doing one minute at 80 rpms, one at 90, one at 100, one at 110. It makes me feel cool and hardcore. I didn't like it, though, when we had a substitute instructor who had a playlist completely made up of Disney soundtrack songs. It's hard to feel hardcore and cool when you're hearing cutesy music from "The Lion King." And without the cartoons as a distraction, I was struck by just how lousy the music in those movies really was. I found it hard to stay focused and push myself. I plan to stick to a cycling emphasis even after I get my orthotics. I haven't been running in the cold this winter, and I don't think jumping right into it in February is going to work well for me. In previous years, I was able to gradually get used to running in the cold from fall through winter. But we have been having a mild winter so far, so maybe I can get a few outdoor sessions in. What I am thinking is focusing on cycling through late February or early March, and then, once it starts warming up, cutting back on my Spin classes and adding in more running. Once summer comes, I will be doing a lot more swimming. Signing up for the triathlon club has me thinking more and more about how I want to be ready to at least do a tri or two this summer, if my foot allows it. But yes, before anyone comments, I plan to take it very slow (using the "Ease into 5K" app) and listen to how I'm feeling. If nothing else, I can do relays or an Aquabike.

Tracking fail

I felt like I had eaten too many snacks yesterday, but my calorie-counting app showed I was still under my calories for the day. "Wow," I thought, "This is really getting easier."

Then I realized I had completely skipped tracking breakfast. Oops.

I have to get better at planning for long teaching days like yesterday, so I don't snack all day long.

On a lighter note, this portion control expert takes me back to my Weight Watcher days:

Portion Control Freak

Weekly weigh-in: Lost a pound, probably didn't deserve it

I lost another pound despite some serious misbehavior on Saturday. I got loosey-goosey with tracking that day and didn't realize how far I was in the weeds until I calculated my calories the next day.

I just caught up with tracking for today. It's so easy to get behind. I know I have to stay on top of this if I'm going to continue losing.

Still, 3 weeks, 3.6 pounds and no deprivation. Seems like pretty good progress to me. I have less than 30 pounds to go now. I need to lose 2.8 to get back in the 170s. Hoping to reach that mini-goal by Valentine's Day.




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