Freedom from Food Taboos - Weight Loss Journey Series

What did I learn in the three years I did not diet or weigh myself?  I stopped obsessing about food.  It was perhaps the best and most liberating thing I could have done for my long term health.  My first diet was at 8, so I figure that I'd been on a diet or watching my weight for the better part of 37 years.  I had all sorts of "red light foods", these were foods that I could not have in the house because I would eat them until they were gone - so I brought them in the house and ate them.  Don't get me wrong, I am not a binger and I am not an overeater but I let myself enjoy previously considered "taboo foods".

I ate whole avocados.  I bought dry roasted peanuts every time I went to the store.  I ate the skin off the chicken.  I ate the fat off the rib eye steak.  I ate pork rinds.  I ate homemade bread with salted butter.  I melted cheese and butter on broccoli.  I ate all the high-fat foods I loved and had denied myself my entire life - I ate as much of them as I wanted and you know what?  Now they are just food.  They are no longer the forbidden fruit and have lost their power over me.  I can take them or leave them.

As a matter of fact, the biggest "red light" food I had was dry roasted peanuts.  After three years of allowing myself to eat them, I don't even like them much anymore.  They make me feel weird, so I avoid them.

Going three years without diet or weighing myself erased any kind of food issues I was carrying around.  When an orange stops becoming punishment it becomes glorious.  When a roasted Brussels sprout is the best part of the meal and not part of a strict regime, it is savored and enjoyed for what it is.

So perhaps if you are following along on this journey, you should contemplate if there are specific foods you have "issues" with.  Do you have "taboo foods"?  Do you look on healthy foods with a healthy attitude or are they tainted with years of dieting?

By giving myself the freedom to stop punishing myself with endless deprivation and diets - I freed myself from lifelong bondage.  This adult journey I am undertaking is without the hang-ups and the baggage - I'm a grown ass woman and ain't nobody got time for that.  Perhaps you can do the same.

Hitting the Bottom and the Start of a Journey Back - Weight Loss Journey - Part 1

Abigail and Dolley readers as social creatures we tend to share our success and our triumphs and hide our failures in the closet.  I've written before about my struggle with my weight but always about the success stories, never about the failures, never about the frustration, and ultimately never about the misery of having a lifelong weight struggle.

As a writer and a thinker, it helps me to share.  So perhaps over the course of the next several months, we will share a journey, no doubt one we've undertaken thirty times but perhaps this time, with time, persistence, and a lifetime of experience under our belts it will be different.  I am not going to post workouts, I am not going to post pictures - this isn't about making a show of me.  This isn't about glorifying the AFTER, this is about the journey and the pain and the frustration of living with chronic weight problems.

There are a lot of things I want to write about in this series, subjects I have been researching and studying for months, like DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness), Insulin Resistance, Epigenetic Triggers, and the Psychological differences between the fat and the skinny people living inside us.  I'd also like to write about the complexities of the human body and how each of us knows what works for us and what doesn't.  Those are just a few of the subjects swirling around my brain but today I need to tell you about hitting rock bottom.

Where I Fell From

After a lifetime of ups and downs, my most recent transformation came in 2008 when I lost 45 lbs.  I went from a size 14 to a size 4.  I kept it off through 2009 but it started creeping back and by the end of 2010, I'd regained about 15 lbs.  Inexplicably in 2011, no matter what I did (extreme diet, exercise running 4 miles a day x 5 days a week) I could not lose a pound.  I was gaining a 1/2 lb a month.  I am not an over eater, I don't binge.  I don't eat out.  I don't eat junk.  I eat whole, fresh, homemade food.  I don't drink soda or much alcohol.  

I hired a personal trainer in 2012, worked out 5 days a week, ate fish, salad, water for 30 days and did not lose a pound.  I lifted weights and worked out religiously for 9 months with not a single pound lost.  I was now 22 lbs over my initial weight loss.

In 2013, my health went off the rails and I ended up in the ER a couple times and had three surgeries in 8 weeks.  I was a wreck and regained all the weight, all 45 lbs.

By 2014, I had regained all of my 2008 weight loss plus 5 pounds.  I was desperate and went to a holistic doctor.  He put me on the hardest diet I'd ever been on, it was awful.  Full of rules and deprivation and no coffee.  I lost 4 lbs the first week, 1/2 lb the second week, zero lbs the third week, and the fourth week I regained the 4 lbs I'd lost the first week.  I quit.

I quit it all.  I was done.  The 2014 diet had proven in my mind that no matter what I did I could not lose weight.  Complications from my surgery immobilized my back, scar tissue developed all through my abdomen and I gave up.  I'd take a stroll here and there.  I work in the garden.  I'd watch what I ate but I would not diet and I would not weigh.  I got on the scale backward at the doctor's office and told them not to tell me.  I was finished with the whole damn thing.

My Journey to the Bottom

The sad part is that I continued to gain that pesky 1/2 lb per month.  It's not noticeable from month to month,  I started seeing signs though that this was getting out of control.  In April of last year, I bought a dress for a client visit.  I caught a glimpse of myself in the restaurant glass door - I had a fat girl's leg.  Instead of going on a diet, I stopped wearing dresses.

In October, my son snapped a picture of me at an unflattering angle, I was enormous.  Instead of going on a diet, I deleted the picture.  In November, I had to give my measurements for a bridesmaid's dress, I nearly fell over.  I started seriously considering a diet then.  In February, my wedding ring stopped fitting and I had to take it off after 26 years.  Last week, the bridesmaid's dress arrived and it is the hugest most hideous thing I will ever wear, yards and yards and yards of sleeveless rose gold sequins.  I look like a sparkly naked cow.  I was done.

I went and saw the doctor that had helped me take off the weight in 2007/2008.  I was ashamed when I rolled in there.  She was shocked.  Instead of making excuses and telling her my tale of woe, I told her my plan.  I've got the meds, I've got the plan, I've got the motivation, and now I am ready.

My Plea to You

There is beauty in rock bottom.  A cleansing and a self-examination that does not come when you are in denial.  Rock Bottom is a place to stop and a place to start again.  We all get there in our own time but I would encourage you if you are in an avoidance situation, face it sooner rather than later.

Why I Stopped Dieting for a Year

Abigail and Dolley readers I have been on a diet since I was 7.  On and off, of course, but for the vast majority of my life I have either been dieting or contemplating the next diet.  The weight struggle is never ending.  Like a gambling addict, I have had some great successes but most have been great failures; the great successes kept me going back for more. I have starved myself, given up entire food groups, counted calories, counted fat, counted carbs, counted fiber, counted points.  I have cleansed and fasted, I have taken medication, and in the last diet gave up wheat, corn, dairy, soy, and even my beloved coffee.  I have punished my body and my mind for not conforming to an ideal it was never made to comfortably be.  So this year, in April, after a particularly grueling diet (for which I lost 3 pounds that I regained while on the diet) I said enough is enough.

I declared that I was not going to diet or get on the scale for a full year.  A full year of not counting anything and not letting the scale determine my self worth.  I began going to a naturalistic doctor who is helping me heal.  I was a bit afraid, all chronic dieters have learned to not trust their own bodies, minds, and instincts.  Would I binge on every cookie and eat a quart of ice cream in one sitting?  I'd done that after a particular "elimination" diet.  To my surprise, I did none of that.