quite a long ramble about the most important thing thats been happening for a while
So. i've considered making this post for a couple of months. Questioning if i was ready to place it somewhere so public, wondering if anyone still reads this, and if those were even the people id want to read it.
I've been trying to lose weight.
A month or so after my father died i decided i didn't want to have my life end in some kind of slow-death-spiral to do with complications from a heart attack or diabetes or a stroke etc. i also wanted to get healthy now, so that down the road my health wouldn't be worse for wear. i wanted to have a little preventative medicine. i started to watch what i ate. hard core calorie counter here. i lost 15 pounds. but i moved back to santa cruz and into zami; a college-loving, beer-guzzeling, black-out-inducing, drugged dirty whore of a house, and whose drama and inner politics stalled any hope i had of losing.
that was last fall. the one time i check while living at zami i weight 245 pounds. i had not gained any weight nor had i lost any. i moved back home ready to get back to getting healthy. i was ready to count calories again and watch my fats and carbs. Randomly around this time my mother informed me that her book club was going to see the silicon valley reads speaker (a reading program for the year in which the community reads the same book and events are set up year round pertaining to it)- Michael Pollan and the book"In Defense of Food". i hadn' heard of him or the book, but thought i'd pick it up and try and read a bit before the coming friday discussion with him. I read the book in 3 days and was sold. We went to the free event of him speaking in cambell, only to be met by hundreds of other people who wanted to see the guy speak- i very luckily got in the door at the last second and was able to see the discussion. Since reading the book, my views on food have completely changed. In the same way a vegetarian might notice every morsel of animal product a meat-eating friend might consume, i now notice all the extravagant, heavily processed crap my friends and family eat, and just bad dietary choices. i try my best not to tell them what to eat ...sometimes this works, sometimes it dosent. like this morning when i made my family oatmeal pancakes- contemplating if i should in fact put the "High fructose corn syrup" syrup on the table or not, and finally just announced when they sat down -" i didnt put the HFCS on the table, cuz i dont want to kill you, but if you want it its in the cupboard." yeah sometimes the "my whole foods diet is righteous" mantra just spews from my mouth , i cant help it, everything adds up...esp bad shit. i also began walking nightly and exercising on a stationary bike. i know, go me!*
point being. i've had a steady weight loss with a few plateaus. Traveling this summer stalled my loss again and i felt a bit behind..kinda stuck around 209. But when i weighed myself at my mothers on saturday (i weigh once a week) i was at 199.6 - a number i have been thinking about for a very long time. a number under 200. i know my weight is probably fluctuating around the 200 mark...but it was AMAZING. i feel so good.
and i guess maybe i had reservations about posting my weight loss efforts here until i had some kind of success story under my belt (ha no pun intended). So that in communicating such a very personal struggle, i would already have something i had achieved to share. As it seems easier to talk about my weight as i continue to lose it, to own the situation, or take control of it. I'm just about half way to my goal of 135, but i have other big goals too. 200 was one of them. but now im alot more able and open to talk about my weight and to be honest with how it has been something of an albatross for most of my life. like people yelling at me from cars kinda shit.
It's interesting because the lightest i know i have ever been in my adult life was perhaps the year i was the most happiest- a point of were i can specificly remember weighing myself -i was 177? living at san lorenzo and being a bit of a druggy. I had lost alot of weight the first year in college. Sometimes i wonder if this was because most of, (if not all of) the food i ate (minus those nights i stole some of amara's peanut butter and jelly because i was so fucking stoned...thanks meerkat) was publicly consumed in the dinning hall. if you've ever been over weight or fat, you might know if feels akward to have people, healthy-weight people, see you eat. It might sound paranoid...but its kinda that, if i eat a burger and french fries, or perhaps just alot of food...."they" will think -ahh yes that's why your fat. So yea. i ate salads alot, and to avoid the akward social interaction of finding some to share a table with, i walked straight to the patio and ate alone facing the sun. it was pretty peaceful but who am i kiding?. anyways. by sophmore year i was "skinny" - or rather just close to being "over weight" and not "obese" for my height. Then the drunken years happened. and i gained alot of weight back. I can look at lot of things from that time period and see how i gained the weight. i mean i lived a life dionysus would be fucking jealous of, and wasn't the cherrist little gal either. it didnt help that i ended up living with mr eli- i have a deep fryer shapiro and mr mick - what are we grilling tonight-benoit but i take all responsabilty for the weight i gained. and i also ignored it, ignored that being over weight and "the fat girl" had defined so much of my life and what i could and could't do and it wasnt working for me anymore. I was sick of having this be my be default position in a group of people, and not feeling beautiful...or pretty...just maybe cute. fat people can be cute....but that perhaps is the result of being somewhat disabled and pillowey...
And there were (and are times) when i know ahead of time i will being doing something physical. the whole time leading up until that momment, my mind would be focusing on the activity, and dreading it. One example would be going to a beach up highway 1 to burn our chirstmas tress on new years day. we had to walk down a cliff face to the beach. the whole time i am sweating bullets in horror about being able to get back up the cliff....that hopefully ill go last and not hold everyone up and they wont notice that i cant climb it. like no joy in the event at all, like fuck this. fuck my life. i blame these feeling and pyshcological mind fucks on middle school PE. you know were i was the fat kid who couldnt run and all of my peers got to watch my failure. yeah that was fun too. but yeah. i was sick of this. And i figured out some of my issues/problem areas with food. not to go into details of my diet..but ive really been able to change my eating habbits, have REALLY opened my mind up to new things, mainly fruits and veggys and making a variety of stuff and changing my concepts of what "food" and "meals" are. Like i was raised in a very meat carbs veggys in a very 1:1:1 eat everything kinda way. (i lament the fact that my gaucamole loving friends are all scattered and i didnt think of trying something new like tomatillos salsa so fucking good).
And im just about under 200, losing the weight slow and steady and healthy. And through a new "diet" thats actually just me trying to eat the healthiest i can, and not counting this or that. Like ive just simply changed how i eat for life. its definetly a slow road, but since about the end of feburary i've had this motivation and its still kicking. And i find myself turning girly again. If anyone reads this who knew me during those skinny days, the might remember that i actually was quite girly- wearing alot of skirts and button up shirts. Its nice to try a dress on a feel like i look good in it. hell its nice to try on anything thing and think - hey this looks good. But its an ability i have now that i can shop in most stores, or as i am getting closer to a size 16. Its actually a rather interesting social experiment to see what different stores consider an x-large to be, or rather how those sizes stack up againt each other- like target clothes run large and i can almost get away with a large itself. but forever 21...well its going to be a while fore i try and shop there again. H&M can be a hit or miss, norstroms i'm a xlarge. it feels really good to be able to go into these stores with the possabilty that ill find something and not only will it fit, but it will look good. i didnt have this oppurtunity when i weighed 260 pounds. And its nice to feel like women and wear clothes that makes me feel that way too. and i feel beautiful. and not just cute. recently two different guys have gone out of their way to say so. (and im not talking about my gay male friends who are contractialy obligated to say such things once a month due to the terms of are endearment) no. just a guy at the food bin, and a guy asking about the time. this is new, and might have something to do with the fact that now i can buy nice clothes and do what someone from the east coast might call "making an effort" to look nice. but i am new to this game...(and better learn quick) and its rather odd and i feel somewhat lame for just now getting to this point in my life. but im glad i figured out i need fix myself and make the changes i did.
i actually got alittle said thinking about my dad on my walk tonight and how i miss him and wish he could see me in better shape. i know he feared for m health after his heart attack and warned me about diabetes, but i kinda told myself to buck up, i cant be that person crying on a walk...and i bet my dad would be really proud and tell me im beautiful.
*for several several months now i walk to the same soundtrack. the first ? four sons of yeasayer's odd blood- songs that to me are about overcoming addiction (as this as all coresponded with my continuing efforts to be sober, or at least not a drunk) and the collection of passion pit songs. I'm pretty sure i will always think of michael pollan and these albums as the tools that helped me take back my life. the sweat is great.
I've been trying to lose weight.
A month or so after my father died i decided i didn't want to have my life end in some kind of slow-death-spiral to do with complications from a heart attack or diabetes or a stroke etc. i also wanted to get healthy now, so that down the road my health wouldn't be worse for wear. i wanted to have a little preventative medicine. i started to watch what i ate. hard core calorie counter here. i lost 15 pounds. but i moved back to santa cruz and into zami; a college-loving, beer-guzzeling, black-out-inducing, drugged dirty whore of a house, and whose drama and inner politics stalled any hope i had of losing.
that was last fall. the one time i check while living at zami i weight 245 pounds. i had not gained any weight nor had i lost any. i moved back home ready to get back to getting healthy. i was ready to count calories again and watch my fats and carbs. Randomly around this time my mother informed me that her book club was going to see the silicon valley reads speaker (a reading program for the year in which the community reads the same book and events are set up year round pertaining to it)- Michael Pollan and the book"In Defense of Food". i hadn' heard of him or the book, but thought i'd pick it up and try and read a bit before the coming friday discussion with him. I read the book in 3 days and was sold. We went to the free event of him speaking in cambell, only to be met by hundreds of other people who wanted to see the guy speak- i very luckily got in the door at the last second and was able to see the discussion. Since reading the book, my views on food have completely changed. In the same way a vegetarian might notice every morsel of animal product a meat-eating friend might consume, i now notice all the extravagant, heavily processed crap my friends and family eat, and just bad dietary choices. i try my best not to tell them what to eat ...sometimes this works, sometimes it dosent. like this morning when i made my family oatmeal pancakes- contemplating if i should in fact put the "High fructose corn syrup" syrup on the table or not, and finally just announced when they sat down -" i didnt put the HFCS on the table, cuz i dont want to kill you, but if you want it its in the cupboard." yeah sometimes the "my whole foods diet is righteous" mantra just spews from my mouth , i cant help it, everything adds up...esp bad shit. i also began walking nightly and exercising on a stationary bike. i know, go me!*
point being. i've had a steady weight loss with a few plateaus. Traveling this summer stalled my loss again and i felt a bit behind..kinda stuck around 209. But when i weighed myself at my mothers on saturday (i weigh once a week) i was at 199.6 - a number i have been thinking about for a very long time. a number under 200. i know my weight is probably fluctuating around the 200 mark...but it was AMAZING. i feel so good.
and i guess maybe i had reservations about posting my weight loss efforts here until i had some kind of success story under my belt (ha no pun intended). So that in communicating such a very personal struggle, i would already have something i had achieved to share. As it seems easier to talk about my weight as i continue to lose it, to own the situation, or take control of it. I'm just about half way to my goal of 135, but i have other big goals too. 200 was one of them. but now im alot more able and open to talk about my weight and to be honest with how it has been something of an albatross for most of my life. like people yelling at me from cars kinda shit.
It's interesting because the lightest i know i have ever been in my adult life was perhaps the year i was the most happiest- a point of were i can specificly remember weighing myself -i was 177? living at san lorenzo and being a bit of a druggy. I had lost alot of weight the first year in college. Sometimes i wonder if this was because most of, (if not all of) the food i ate (minus those nights i stole some of amara's peanut butter and jelly because i was so fucking stoned...thanks meerkat) was publicly consumed in the dinning hall. if you've ever been over weight or fat, you might know if feels akward to have people, healthy-weight people, see you eat. It might sound paranoid...but its kinda that, if i eat a burger and french fries, or perhaps just alot of food...."they" will think -ahh yes that's why your fat. So yea. i ate salads alot, and to avoid the akward social interaction of finding some to share a table with, i walked straight to the patio and ate alone facing the sun. it was pretty peaceful but who am i kiding?. anyways. by sophmore year i was "skinny" - or rather just close to being "over weight" and not "obese" for my height. Then the drunken years happened. and i gained alot of weight back. I can look at lot of things from that time period and see how i gained the weight. i mean i lived a life dionysus would be fucking jealous of, and wasn't the cherrist little gal either. it didnt help that i ended up living with mr eli- i have a deep fryer shapiro and mr mick - what are we grilling tonight-benoit but i take all responsabilty for the weight i gained. and i also ignored it, ignored that being over weight and "the fat girl" had defined so much of my life and what i could and could't do and it wasnt working for me anymore. I was sick of having this be my be default position in a group of people, and not feeling beautiful...or pretty...just maybe cute. fat people can be cute....but that perhaps is the result of being somewhat disabled and pillowey...
And there were (and are times) when i know ahead of time i will being doing something physical. the whole time leading up until that momment, my mind would be focusing on the activity, and dreading it. One example would be going to a beach up highway 1 to burn our chirstmas tress on new years day. we had to walk down a cliff face to the beach. the whole time i am sweating bullets in horror about being able to get back up the cliff....that hopefully ill go last and not hold everyone up and they wont notice that i cant climb it. like no joy in the event at all, like fuck this. fuck my life. i blame these feeling and pyshcological mind fucks on middle school PE. you know were i was the fat kid who couldnt run and all of my peers got to watch my failure. yeah that was fun too. but yeah. i was sick of this. And i figured out some of my issues/problem areas with food. not to go into details of my diet..but ive really been able to change my eating habbits, have REALLY opened my mind up to new things, mainly fruits and veggys and making a variety of stuff and changing my concepts of what "food" and "meals" are. Like i was raised in a very meat carbs veggys in a very 1:1:1 eat everything kinda way. (i lament the fact that my gaucamole loving friends are all scattered and i didnt think of trying something new like tomatillos salsa so fucking good).
And im just about under 200, losing the weight slow and steady and healthy. And through a new "diet" thats actually just me trying to eat the healthiest i can, and not counting this or that. Like ive just simply changed how i eat for life. its definetly a slow road, but since about the end of feburary i've had this motivation and its still kicking. And i find myself turning girly again. If anyone reads this who knew me during those skinny days, the might remember that i actually was quite girly- wearing alot of skirts and button up shirts. Its nice to try a dress on a feel like i look good in it. hell its nice to try on anything thing and think - hey this looks good. But its an ability i have now that i can shop in most stores, or as i am getting closer to a size 16. Its actually a rather interesting social experiment to see what different stores consider an x-large to be, or rather how those sizes stack up againt each other- like target clothes run large and i can almost get away with a large itself. but forever 21...well its going to be a while fore i try and shop there again. H&M can be a hit or miss, norstroms i'm a xlarge. it feels really good to be able to go into these stores with the possabilty that ill find something and not only will it fit, but it will look good. i didnt have this oppurtunity when i weighed 260 pounds. And its nice to feel like women and wear clothes that makes me feel that way too. and i feel beautiful. and not just cute. recently two different guys have gone out of their way to say so. (and im not talking about my gay male friends who are contractialy obligated to say such things once a month due to the terms of are endearment) no. just a guy at the food bin, and a guy asking about the time. this is new, and might have something to do with the fact that now i can buy nice clothes and do what someone from the east coast might call "making an effort" to look nice. but i am new to this game...(and better learn quick) and its rather odd and i feel somewhat lame for just now getting to this point in my life. but im glad i figured out i need fix myself and make the changes i did.
i actually got alittle said thinking about my dad on my walk tonight and how i miss him and wish he could see me in better shape. i know he feared for m health after his heart attack and warned me about diabetes, but i kinda told myself to buck up, i cant be that person crying on a walk...and i bet my dad would be really proud and tell me im beautiful.
*for several several months now i walk to the same soundtrack. the first ? four sons of yeasayer's odd blood- songs that to me are about overcoming addiction (as this as all coresponded with my continuing efforts to be sober, or at least not a drunk) and the collection of passion pit songs. I'm pretty sure i will always think of michael pollan and these albums as the tools that helped me take back my life. the sweat is great.