I make my pants look fat

Currently if my pants asked that question, the answer would be yes. Why? They are too big for me. Much too big for me.

A few years ago when I was at a fairly healthy weight, I was in size 6 pants. I didn't gain the weight overnight and as it slowly added on I slowly stretched my jeans out. I forced myself to wear the same small pants as long as they would fit me. Then I caved and bought a couple of pairs of pants. They were all size 10's. Problem was, none of them were jeans (I still wasn't willing to admit I wouldn't fit into that favorite pair tomorrow) and I didn't stop there. A few months later I caved and bought one pair of size 12 jeans. Another couple months and I bought one pair of shorts. I refused to buy more because I refused to admit I was that big. Yet I still did nothing to lose the weight.

When I started my health program, my size 12's were too small on me. I had to squeeze into them. I probably should have been in 14's.

Remember that one pair of 12's? They drown me. I have to buckle my belt 3 notches smaller than I did before and the jeans look baggy. Even the 10's I bought are getting big.

But I skipped buying size 8's on my way up, so I don't have any for my way back down.

My thighs still don't fit into my size 6's and I'm stuck trying to decide what to do. Do I walk around wearing size 10's that are too big and not wear any jeans until I lose the weight or do I cave and buy some size 8's so I feel attractive as I lose the weight?

I hate the idea of buying size 8's because I'll only be in them for a few weeks and I"m cheap. On the other hand, my once wonderfully fitting pants now hang lose on me. I don't look attractive in them. I look...wrong. Like I have no butt.

Yes me, the girl with the big butt looks like she doesn't have one in her pants.

I'm almost starting to wonder if I could healthily fit into a size 4 someday.

Don't worry, my goal is health. I will stop my weight loss journey as soon as my body is where it should be. If that's a size 6, I'll be plenty content. If it's a size 4, that's great too! Either way, I will be healthy. No more weighting for me!

No more FATigue for me!

As a woman, I am grateful I didn't live 100 years ago. I have always thought this was true, but a little while ago it really sank home. I got to wear a Victorian Era dress. It wasn't one of the crazy beautiful ones. It was more practical. More like what the rich ladies would have worn on a day to day basis--not to parties. And let me tell you something: it was HEAVY! I didn't even have all the proper under clothing, but it was heavy. I only had one petticoat and then the actual skirt and then the top. Yet I felt like I was carrying around an extra 20 lbs. (It was probably closer to 10). Don't forget the fact I burned up! It was HOT in all those layers! I thought to myself: Man, I'm lucky I live today when I can go outside in Bermuda shorts, a t-shirt, and flip flops and be considered conservative.

You may be looking at the above comic and my last paragraph and wondering what they have in common. The answer is simple. Being fat is like wearing around a lot of layers of clothes. It adds extra body heat. It weighs you down. Literally. If you had to carry around 20 lbs all day, you'd understand why you feel exhausted, yet we often forget that extra body fat is exactly that--extra weight we're just carrying around. Why do you think people who struggle with obesity end up with bad joints and feel like they have no energy? How can you have extra energy when you're carrying around all this extra weight?

My Health Coach posted this picture the other day:


This is what 1 lb of fat looks like.

Say you're only 14 lbs overweight. That means you have 14 lbs of that stuff you're carrying around every day. Just like carrying around all that extra clothes. Except not near as cool looking (and I honestly think, much grosser).

We all need a certain amount of fat to live. Matter of fact, fat holds your kidneys in place. This is one of the reasons people who are anorexic are at risk for kidney failure. We can't get rid of all fat and survive. But why carry around any more of it than we need?

This is another reason why even though I know so many people who weigh so much more than I did I stopped "weighting" around and got on the healthy bandwagon. I don't want to carry around an ounce more weight than I have to.

I've lost 14 lbs in 5 weeks on my program. And honestly, that's not the best part. I have had IBS for years. It hasn't acted up once since the first week of the diet. My bad days are where my good days used to be emotionally. And I have SOOO much more energy. For a few weeks, I was waking up by 8:30 am without an alarm clock (unheard of for me).

Just like I was relieved to pull that dress off at the end of the day, I feel so relieved to not have those extra 14 lbs. I'm not done with my "get healthy" journey, not by a long shot. But these last 5 weeks have taught me so much about my body, who I am right now, and who I want to be. No more needless weight. No more unexplainable FATigue. And no more Weighing to be healthy.

Healthy For Life--not just for the duration of my diet

The problem with a lot of weight loss programs is they are a lot like using a hairdryer on a snowman. The pounds melt away quickly, often at the cost of over all health. And then most people just put the weight back on once the diet is done (once the snowman stops using that hairdryer, another snowstorm is just gonna add it back on). That's why I've shied away from diets.

My goal is to be healthy. I can't be healthy if I'm overweight, but damaging my health to get skinny seems just as bad. And if I go through all the trouble to lose the weight and get into a healthy range, I don't want to just gain it all back again. I want it to be gone for good.

Once upon a time I was a circuit coach at a women's only gym. I tried to help ladies lose weight (all the while pretending I didn't need to). One 70 year old lady there told me she didn't lose weight. She BURNED FAT. "If I lose weight, I'm bound to find it again. If I burn fat, it's gone for good." I liked her idea. I didn't want to just lose weight to find it again somewhere down the road. Diets seemed like a system of losing weight, not burning fat.

This program I'm on is different. It's goal? Help you develop "Habits of Health". Almost immediately I was in what they call the "fat burn" state (sounds a lot like what my elderly friend said). Honestly, that part is much like many HEALTHY diets. It's the purpose behind the program and what happens when you reach your goal weight that change things.

Like I said, the purpose of the program is to help people develop healthy habits FOR LIFE. So, it doesn't end when you reach your goal weight. Really, that's just the beginning. When you reach your goal weight you enter the transition period. It helps you take the habits you've been developing on the diet and put the food you eat day to day in there--but healthily. Once you've "transitioned", you'll be eating healthy normal food instead of their program food and MAINTAINING your weight and healthy habits. It's not about losing weight, it's about getting rid of the old habits of disease and replacing them with habits of health.

Weight loss is just one of the benefits.

And I've benefited. As of Sunday I am 12 lbs lighter than when I started. I've also had to buckle my belt tighter twice. That means my waist is a good 2 inches smaller. My face looks thinner. My chest is smaller (sigh), and I'm almost ready to go down a size in pants (my thighs aren't sure they want to let that fat go away--but like it or not, there it goes!).

I have more energy than I had before I started this program and I eat better. I eat 6 small meals a day, more vegetables than I did before, and I feel great. I can't imagine going back to how I ate before. Thinking about it makes me feel sick.

The point of this post isn't to be a commercial for the program I'm on (note I never mentioned the name of it). It's to say that while I don't want to be a snow-woman who feels she has to torture herself to be skinny I'm done "weighting", and I'll never "weight" again. I'm developing healthy habits NOW, habits for life so I never have to look at myself in the mirror again and realize I'm on my way to being obese.