Wednesday Weigh-In No. 11

Previous Weight: 166
Current Weight: 165

It's amazing what the loss of one pound will do to buoy a girl's spirits. I was sitting here pouting this morning because I was certain that it was a gain for me today. But, instead it was a loss. Not a big loss. Not a significant loss. But a loss that turned around my three-week slide and gave me hope that I could take that one pound and make it two, or three, or ten or twenty. OK, so I'm getting ahead of myself, but damn, what a mood change.

So I thought I'd give you a little example of what it's like around our office on Wednesday mornings. I usually get here right about 9 a.m. When the sales staff get out of their meeting shortly after, they'll trickle into the editorial department and mill around looking for the Scorekeeper, who often has early morning appointments that cause him to come in about an hour late on Wednesdays. I'll get first one question ("Where's the Scorekeeper?"), then another ("The Scorekeeper's not here yet, huh?"), then another ("Why isn't he here? I can feel the weight creeping back on as we speak!"). They'll mill around the cubicles and peek over the Scorekeeper's walls. They'll hug the front windows waiting for his arrival.

When the Scorekeeper finally shows up, we're all salivating to get on that scale. He's still dropping his bookbag onto a chair and flipping on his (obnoxiously loud) computer while we're forming a queue in front of his cubicle. It's a little irksome to him, to be honest. I mean, the man's a coffee drinker (have you seen that cup on his desk? It's like a science experiment testing the longevity of coffee stains on ceramic), and you don't mess with a coffee drinker who hasn't had his first cup of coffee in the morning, or even a moment to warm up his chair yet. He's been pretty good-natured about this contest, you have to admit, considering he's abstaining from participation other than to document the loss of ass around here.

During and after the weigh-in, there's a fluctuating amount of banter, cheers and moaning. Different diet busters are discussed -- from green beer on St. Patrick's Day to Cadbury eggs in anticipation of Easter -- and weight losses or gains are met with varying degrees of congratulations or sympathy. At this late stage in the game, the only person who meets with any sort of ill will is Miss Competitive, who continues to kick everyone's ass on a weekly basis (25+ pounds and counting), and the more competitive among us have a hard time taking this lightly. Add to her weight loss the fact that she's ahead in the office March Madness brackets, and you have a perfect storm for office envy. She seemingly has nothing left to lose, but continues to lose weight anyway. She looks fabulous: something like a lithe Greek goddess, if you will. But it's hard to be happy for her when you still look like a Disney's Fantasia hippopotamus in a tutu.

After the weigh-in, a small crowd usually forms around the Big Loser, who is transformed week after week. You can almost see her body tightening right in front of you. She swears she's been hit and miss on the treadmill, so it's gotta be the Zone diet that's working for her. (We're talking 35+ pounds, people.) I'm sure as hell not one to drop brand names on a whim, but she's a walking billboard so I almost feel obligated to give a shout out to the Zone. I've been reading the book and checking out the web site, but I've been reluctant to start the diet myself -- mainly because I'm really, really bad at following directions or doing what other people tell me to do, and that's what following a regimented diet always feels like to me.

I also wanted to note that we have a couple of Tortoises to the Hares on staff. A handful of us have lost right around 10 pounds each. And Boss has managed to drop 15+ pounds so far -- it's a lot if you consider that he wasn't overweight to begin with.

Weekly cumulative totals also tell an interesting story: for the first three or four weeks we were all on a roll dropping between 10 and 15 pounds total (for the whole office). On the fifth week, we had a cumulative gain of a couple of pounds, which seemed to shock us back into double digit weight loss the next week. But between week 6 and 10, we all slacked off (or plateaued out, however you want to look at it).

This week shocked us back into reality. Everyone lost weight this week. I think we are all beginning to realize we have a week left in the initial competition. One week to lose all we can before the last weigh in and the moment of truth. Those of us in places 4 and up really have no chance of taking this competition at this point. But it's anyone's game if you consider the final weigh-in is still a month off. The problem is that we'll have one whole month to ourselves. No weekly weigh-ins to motivate or scare the hell out of us. No Scorekeeper eyeballing us as he tabulates our paltry performances. No scoreboard declaring our successes and failures to the entire office to ridicule or champion.

It really feels like a T.V. show -- like what those people on NBC's Biggest Loser must feel when they leave the relative comfort of the ranch and move into the real world where work schedules and kids and carbs and alcohol and sugar threaten to undermine all the work they've done for the last three months.

But let's not think about that until we have to. Until next week. Till then, it's rabbit food and water, early morning jogs and late night crunches. Oh, who am I kidding?

Wednesday Weigh-In No. 10

Previous Weight: 165
Current Weight:166

Yeah, OK, it's been a bad week. No exercise. Pizza in times of crisis. A few glasses of wine here and there. And no exercise. One thing about gaining weight two weeks in a row: it has helped me to identify the catalysts in my life and the behaviors they cause that result in me gaining weight. Isn't the first step to recovery from any problem recognition that there's a problem? Well, that may or may not be true, but I'm thinking that in this case, knowledge is power. I know what I'm doing to myself and perhaps that'll give me the power to change it.

Whatever. I know what else I need to do: Quit having family crises!

That's one of the big reasons why I'm not getting in what little exercise I was getting in earlier in the competition. Like last night, I was on the phone most of the evening with my mother talking her down from whatever crazy conspiracies she had decided were leveled against her (this time it was the United States Postal Service that was in on it, but that story will have to wait for another day). It's not like I can hang up on her. Getting a phone call from my mother is an unusual and unavoidable event, considering she lives in the Sonoran desert of Arizona 100 miles from the nearest town and cell phone tower, and I'm not exaggerating, so taking her phone call and letting her say her piece is a necessary evil in my life because god knows when it'll happen again.

But I figured, no big deal, I'd just exercise this morning. Well, I forgot to set the alarm, and once I did wake up, there was another little problem to deal with: the cable bill came and someone ordered something they weren't supposed to on our cable pay-per-view, which required an hour on the phone with a idiot improperly monikered as a "customer service agent" who could not and would not help me resolve the problem.

I know what the bigger problem is. I have too much stress and no way to relieve it. I know what the solution is: Don't get married; never have kids; and ignore your parents.

Since the solution is, well, ridiculously impossible, I'm going to have to be creative in figuring out a way to make this work for me. Aside from divorcing my husband, shipping the kids off to California to live with distant relatives and moving to the mountains where my cell phone doesn't get reception, what can I do to make this work for me? (And trust me, all that stuff I just listed is always in the back of my head as a possibility.)

Yeah, OK, I could eat more fruits and vegetables (but, for those of you who have never moved from the breadbasket of the world - central California where all green space is taken up by fresh farms - to the backwaters of the earth where no fresh food can be found in any local supermarket for less than $3 a pound, I tell you this is harder than it sounds). I could rig an elaborate pulley and weight system that kicked my ass out of bed at 6 a.m. to do calisthenics. And I could buy a pit bull and pack some mace to go for a walk after I put the kids to bed at night. I could also start snorting crank. It's about as likely as any other plan (but guaranteed to make me lose weight ... and hair ... and teeth ... and my self respect).

So, I'm still looking for the magic cure. I'll figure it out one of these days. I really will. And then I'll blow everybody away. First and foremost, myself.

Two Days Before Wednesday Weigh-In No. 10

Current Weight: Don't Ask

I felt the need to drop a line about how terrible the contest is going for me right now. Last week I extolled the virtues and vices of eating for comfort during times of trouble. I thought it might be a little like counseling myself - perhaps cheaper than a therapist. Well, it's certainly cheaper. This blog ain't costing me anything. But it's done nothing to help the overwhelming desire I've had the last couple of weeks to consume anything and everything that crosses my path. Let's just say there was an incident with a butter-flavored cake on Sunday and leave it at that.

So here it is Monday, two days prior to the contest weigh-in, a good couple of weeks before the first leg of the contest ends, and I'm freaking. I've got so little to show for the last ten weeks of self-imposed torture. Less than ten pounds (and at this point I'm backtracking rather than moving forward). I feel like I should have taken better advantage of this opportunity -- been more competitive, made larger strides in my self improvement, seized this contest to use it as my will to power (sorry, I've been reading a lot of Nietzsche lately).

Instead I've balked (and shoved sundry foods inside my piehole at embarrassingly short-spaced intervals for no good reason) and I just needed to vent my frustration here because my will power has been woefully nonexistent. Can I turn this thing around in two weeks? Hell, didn't Big Loser drop twice my total weight loss in that amount of time? If she can do it, shouldn't I be able to? Perhaps, but let's face it. She's been a bit more dedicated than I have.

You know what worries me more than losing? What the hell am I going to do when the contest is over and I don't have anyone looking over my shoulder come feeding time?

And just so you all don't start thinking that I'm being hard on myself -- I'm not. I'm just sharing my deepest, darkest musings on this blog because I can. But before you start passing around a collection for a therapist for me, you should know that a lot of what I say is in exaggerated jest, even if it does have some twisted origins in the cognitive dissonance that is my daily life. I've just been curious if anyone else is having thoughts even remotely similar to mine. :-)

The most spiritual men, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in hardness against themselves and others, in experiments. Their joy is self-conquest. Difficult tasks are a priviledge to them; to play with burdens that crush others, a recreation. They are the most venerable kind of man: that does not preclude their being the most cheerful and the kindliest.
-Friedrich Nietzsche from Quoteland.com

Wednesday Weigh-In No. 9

Previous Weight: 164
Current Weight: 165

Before you say anything (either an "ah" in pity or a "ha" in competitiveness), let me just say that I'm still proud of myself, even if it is a gain for me this week. I've been under a crazy amount of stress lately -- personally, not professionally, sorry I'm not ready to share with the public exactly what's stressing me out. But I feel like talking about it, even if I don't want to discuss details, because, when something really big happens, I use food as a stress reliever.

For example, the last time I was close to being this stressed I baked a couple of cakes. And ate one of them. See, when I first moved to South Carolina from California, I took a job working as a girl friday for this crazy man. No, I didn't realize he was crazy at first. But things started clueing me in to that fact. Like the fact that his customers kept calling me and asking if his business was legit. It was also my first introduction to the South Carolina "country" dialect. I remember one time, he was dictating something to me and he kept saying "are sea, are sea." So I wrote that down. He said, "No, are see." So I wrote that down. He said, "No! R.C.!" So I wrote that down. I still had it wrong so I asked him to use it in a sentence (since he refused to spell it out), and only then did I realize he was saying, "Or see." We Californians say "oar" not "are."

After a couple of weeks, I'd had it. The final straw was when his senile mother called me and accused me of being with the IRS and spying on her son. So I quit. I had no clue how I was going to make ends meet without a job, but I didn't care. I was too worried that my boss was going to take me out into the woods behind the office (the door to which I was required to keep locked at all times in case any sheriff's deputies decided to call on us), and make me squeal like a pig -- hey, keep in mind I'd just moved here from California and didn't know what to expect. Let's just say that I considered the experience my very own version of "Deliverance."

Anyway, the first thing that I did was go home and bake two double-layer German chocolate cakes. Baking kept me busy, so I wouldn't sit down and start worrying about the shaky financial move I'd just made, and the chocolate smell wafting through the house really perked me up. It also put the kids in a good mood, so I didn't have to deal with the extra stress of them bickering or being surly (a good mom learns all the tricks, let me tell you).

So now that I am going through another stressful time in another part of my life, I am realizing that there's a pattern to my behavior. Last week, I snuck out for a hamburger at lunchtime (and didn't admit it, even to myself, until today after I weighed in -- honestly, it was almost like sleepwalking). Last weekend, I took the kids out on Saturday to eat, and I cooked a couple of hearty meals -- diet be damned. Yesterday, I stopped by Burger King on the way to work and -- keep in mind that it's killing me to admit this -- ordered a breakfast sandwich (fried meat on a croissant, eek!) and a tall coffee with Half and Half creamer. So it's really no wonder I gained one whole pound this week. I'm lucky it wasn't more.

The competition is the only thing keeping me from diving off the deep end into a vat of ice cream, let me tell you. And I know I'm not the only one. There were a few people just as nervous as me who were hesitant to climb that scale this morning. I was one of the very few who actually had something to fear -- most everyone else lost weight -- but still, when you know you haven't been trying as hard as you should be, that damn scale is intimidating.

And you know what else is intimidating? Miss Competitive. She's skin and bones at this point, and if you think I'm exaggerating, go peek at her over her cubicle wall. She's still dropping weight (1 and 1/2 pounds this week). And today, the one day you could actually cheat on your diet since it's a full seven days until the next weigh-in, she's still consuming rabbit food for lunch. Yes, that's intimidating. That's hard core.

As for me, unforeseen circumstances have caused me to reformulate my competition strategy, which I was never able to truly start -- and it's not to my benefit. My biggest challenge will be learning how to live in an excited state of overwhelming stress and not eat my way through it. And you know what? If I can do that, I don't give a flying rat's ass how much I weigh in the end. I will just be glad to have survived it.

As an aside, I've always wondered if anyone has ever actually seen a flying rat's ass.

Wednesday Weigh-In No. 8

Previous Weight: 164
Current Weight: 164

Good news: I'm down a size and I need a new wardrobe. Bad news: I'm down a size and I need a new wardrobe.

Yeah, it's a good feeling to have my pants hanging off of me, but it's an even better feeling to wear clothes that fit. Unfortunately, I'm not independently wealthy and I can't just buy new clothes for each size I go down.

You'd think I'd be upset at my numbers (see above). But I've said all along that it's not the weight loss so much as dropping sizes, and since I've done that, I'm happy. I mean this week I stayed even -- not surprising considering I didn't exercise or quell my drinking habits this week, which include a fondness for a new drink of choice, namely vodka cranberry -- and I'm OK with that. If I really was shooting for poundage, I'd have gotten off my ass this week and worked out. But I didn't. That's simply because non-work related issues threw me for a loop this weekend, and contributed to a certain bull-headed apathy to which I'm prone. And that translates into me saying, screw it, I'm gonna drink if I feel like it, eat if I feel like it and veg out on the couch if I feel like it, even when I know better.

I know, I know, that's hurting no one by myself, but we all need to relax and recharge on occasion, particularly when we have stressful events crowding in on our sanity. Such was the case for me this week. The fact that I didn't gain any weight from the insane topsy-turvy events that peaked for me this weekend, is a miracle in itself. And I'm grateful for it.

There's always hope for next week, though the weeks left in this competition are dwindling. I'm not the only one whose weight loss has flattened out, though. Boss was the big loser this week with a whopping (note my ironic choice of adjective) 2 pounds. Even Big Loser and Miss Competitive tied each other for a loss of 1.5 pounds each. This may, or may not, motivate the lot of us to make those numbers grow next week. We shall see.

Until then, it's Slim Fast breakfast shakes and Lean Cuisine lunches. And perhaps a few less vodka-crans for me. Oh, who am I kidding. They make fat-free cranberry juice, don't they?

Wednesday Weigh-In No. 7

Previous Weight: 166.5
Current Weight: 164

That's the biggest loss for me since the competition began. And I couldn't tell you exactly what it was that did it. It was a stressful week - I won't go into the details here, but let's just say I haven't been getting much sleep - and I didn't exercise hardly at all, except a few stolen crunches and pushups here and there.

So what's going on? I think some of it may have to do with my diet. I've moved into a new phase of dieting I think. When I first started almost two months ago, I had cravings and dreadful moments of uncontrollable desire for the things I'd cut out - sugars and fats and etc. But lately, none of that stuff, no french fries, ice cream or giant burritos, has sounded good. I can't even enjoy diet soda these days. I don't want it.

And even my cooking has changed. Last night, for the first time in at least three years, I made pad thai with tofu. Granted, I've lost my treasured recipe so it wasn't the best pad thai I've ever had (that award has to go to a great thai restaurant in the sunset district in San Francisco that's tucked into an alley next to a bicycle shop, a spot where homeless people frequently urinate and a lovely beach on the Pacific where SFSU students go to have sex in public). Anyway, it's been ages since I cooked with tofu, mainly because the five ravenous males in my home complain loudly when I do. Last night, I failed to mention that the spongy "chicken" they were eating wasn't chicken. Strange how people will like something so long as no one tells them it's bean curd.

I guess what I'm saying is that I've crested a hill and even though there's an even bigger hill on the other side (a whole 40 pounds of hill, actually), it doesn't look so high from my current vantage point.

One other interesting tidbit: I saw a pattern at this morning's weigh in that amused me. Some of the dieters who maintained their weight (didn't lose anything) or gained a pound pinpointed what it was exactly that did them in. For Bushes, who went on vacation and "cheated" on her diet while she was gone, it was some cookie dough that was simply irrestible after a night's carousing. For Thin-Girl-Who-Has-No-Weight-To-Lose, it was some girl scout cookies. Thin Girl said before her weigh in that the cookies ruined the week for her - it was a self-fufilling prophecy.

I can't help but laugh, because I have the same excuses when I don't do as well as I should have. I can pinpoint the exact bowl of ice cream or scoop of guacamole or bottle of wine (oops, did I say that out loud?) that did me in. Is it a defence mechanism that every dieter inevitably uses? Is it a way for dieters' brains to rationalize their failures, and subsequently reset by making plans for the future (i.e., "If I just stay away from those damn cookies this week, I'll be OK")? Whatever it is, it's prevalent. And interesting to note.

So, this is a good week, for me anyway. And there's hope this week that the future will be brighter and thinner and happier. I may be in a good mood, but I'm still far from following Big Loser's advice and admiring myself in the mirror (y'all may notice that I'm a hippy at heart, and I don't have the patience to stand in front of the mirror long enough to corral my rebelliously curly hair, let alone admire anything). Nonetheless, here's to hoping the big numbers keep a comin'.