I will do this. I will lose these last annoying 12 lbs.
It is a choice and I have chosen; I have decided; I have declared.
I will do it. I will it.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
oof
I've been gaining weight, back up to where I was a month ago. 162. Bleh.
Yesterday I wasn't hungry at all and my stomach actually hurt every time I ate something... and I kept eating anyway. It was a weird kind of eating as self-punishment. I do feel that my relationship with food has improved but it has a long way to go yet.
I changed the blog title a while ago to "fasting my way to me" because I believe it has brought a lot of clarity about who I am and how I need to relate to my loved ones. It really is helping me to grow up and make tough choices responsibly. As they say, time heals all wounds -- but in the meanwhile the wounds hurt.
Yesterday I wasn't hungry at all and my stomach actually hurt every time I ate something... and I kept eating anyway. It was a weird kind of eating as self-punishment. I do feel that my relationship with food has improved but it has a long way to go yet.
I changed the blog title a while ago to "fasting my way to me" because I believe it has brought a lot of clarity about who I am and how I need to relate to my loved ones. It really is helping me to grow up and make tough choices responsibly. As they say, time heals all wounds -- but in the meanwhile the wounds hurt.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
not for everyone
Someone I have talked with about Fast5 recently tried it for a couple of weeks.
She decided it wasn't for her.
Food preparation is her main hobby and avoiding it during the day left her without one of her favorite pleasures. She was happy to see that she is strong enough to fast all day with no ill effects and she's planning to skip lunch on days she doesn't feel like packing one. She would like to lose a little weight but that isn't a strong enough motivator at the moment to keep up with Fast5 when she's really not enjoying it.
I, on the other hand, love being released from dealing with food for most of the day. To each their own.
She decided it wasn't for her.
Food preparation is her main hobby and avoiding it during the day left her without one of her favorite pleasures. She was happy to see that she is strong enough to fast all day with no ill effects and she's planning to skip lunch on days she doesn't feel like packing one. She would like to lose a little weight but that isn't a strong enough motivator at the moment to keep up with Fast5 when she's really not enjoying it.
I, on the other hand, love being released from dealing with food for most of the day. To each their own.
gremlin
I feel like there's a part of me that's terrified of success, a little voice that urges a life of sloth and cake. I need to sooth that little gremlin, convince her to join me in this journey rather than fighting me the whole way. My gremlin is like some loudmouth high school bully, all hot air and attitude hiding a bad home life and need for love. The hard part is to engage with her rather than just shutting her out. The gremlin can learn and change, and I can learn and change, and I must let go of my fear so I'll be strong enough to love even this horrible little gremlin, this fearful part of myself.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
positive
24 weeks of Fast5... and at the risk of seeming smug, I'm happy with how things are going.
I'm not craving sweets/bread. They've passed to the "do not eat" list, along with furniture, plastic fruit and animals.
I'm enjoying exercise. I get annoyed if I have to skip more than a day or two.
I wake up with energy.
I think about food only during my evening eating window.
I'm losing that emotional connection to junkfood. It looks plain nasty, not like a guilty pleasure.
I'm so confident I'll reach my weight goal that I'll say what it is: 150 lbs. I don't think I've ever written that down; I was hedging my bets in case I didn't make it.
Wow, I've come a long way!
I'm not craving sweets/bread. They've passed to the "do not eat" list, along with furniture, plastic fruit and animals.
I'm enjoying exercise. I get annoyed if I have to skip more than a day or two.
I wake up with energy.
I think about food only during my evening eating window.
I'm losing that emotional connection to junkfood. It looks plain nasty, not like a guilty pleasure.
I'm so confident I'll reach my weight goal that I'll say what it is: 150 lbs. I don't think I've ever written that down; I was hedging my bets in case I didn't make it.
Wow, I've come a long way!
Monday, September 27, 2010
Milestone
I'm traveling again with no access to a scale but I think I hit another milestone, 23 lbs lost. I thought I would be ecstatic when I reached this goal but instead I'm focused on how much more I have to lose! I'm feeling much more comfortable in my body now -- can curl up on a chair without my tummy getting in the way, for example.
I'm starting to get some blowback from my boyfriend, who thinks I'm being too strict with my diet (no refined sugar/flour and Fast5) and losing too much weight. I think he's wrong, of course, but I'll get a personal trainer friend to calculate my body fat percentage just in case. I believe a normal range is 18-25% bodyfat for women. My BMI is 22.3; I'd like it to be 20-ish, for which I'll have to drop another 10 or 15 lbs.
Slow and steady...
I'm on a high-stress business trip now and I am amazed by how much my colleagues eat. I informed everyone at the beginning of the trip that I don't eat lunch, which is a blessing as we're spending an unfortunate number of meals at crappy midwestern buffets. Seeing plate after plate piled to the angle of repose with chunks of meat and fried things is enough to make food abstinence seem positively attractive! And the places are full of fat people. I wish they could have the same experience I'm having of feeling clean and empty and calm.
In my last post I mentioned some social aspects of being thinner that are new to me. Another distasteful issue is men staring. It's not much of an issue in the well-educated, liberal north-eastern city where I live but in the midwest and the south it's a problem. These yokels never learned about how long you can appropriately look at a woman before it becomes offensive. Sometimes I'll catch their eye and give a nasty look but, given that they don't seem to think women are sentient, I don't imagine they really care what I think. It makes me so glad to be surrounded in my regular life by men who treat women like the human beings we are.
Good luck to everyone out there trying this! How are your experiences going?
I'm starting to get some blowback from my boyfriend, who thinks I'm being too strict with my diet (no refined sugar/flour and Fast5) and losing too much weight. I think he's wrong, of course, but I'll get a personal trainer friend to calculate my body fat percentage just in case. I believe a normal range is 18-25% bodyfat for women. My BMI is 22.3; I'd like it to be 20-ish, for which I'll have to drop another 10 or 15 lbs.
Slow and steady...
I'm on a high-stress business trip now and I am amazed by how much my colleagues eat. I informed everyone at the beginning of the trip that I don't eat lunch, which is a blessing as we're spending an unfortunate number of meals at crappy midwestern buffets. Seeing plate after plate piled to the angle of repose with chunks of meat and fried things is enough to make food abstinence seem positively attractive! And the places are full of fat people. I wish they could have the same experience I'm having of feeling clean and empty and calm.
In my last post I mentioned some social aspects of being thinner that are new to me. Another distasteful issue is men staring. It's not much of an issue in the well-educated, liberal north-eastern city where I live but in the midwest and the south it's a problem. These yokels never learned about how long you can appropriately look at a woman before it becomes offensive. Sometimes I'll catch their eye and give a nasty look but, given that they don't seem to think women are sentient, I don't imagine they really care what I think. It makes me so glad to be surrounded in my regular life by men who treat women like the human beings we are.
Good luck to everyone out there trying this! How are your experiences going?
Saturday, September 11, 2010
plateau? what plateau?
I recently met up with some friends who haven't seen me since I started Fast Five and they were gratifyingly surprised and complimentary about my new weight. Nice that they can see the difference even if I can't! Sometimes it feels like one long plateau.
One friend in particular started in immediately with subtle sabotage about how unhealthy fasting is and that I shouldn't follow society's beauty standards, etc. She's always been the thin one of the group (and still is much thinner than I am!) and I'm wondering if she was feeling threatened. She pressed breakfast and lunch on me at every opportunity and pointed out how weird it was each time I joined the table to socialize without eating. Made me realize that I'm very lucky to have an extremely supportive boyfriend and friends who refrain from undermining my efforts. This is new for me -- I've never really had to deal with that type of cattiness among women because I was never attractive enough to be a threat.
My darling boyfriend, in contrast, supports me completely and is starting to experiment with his own fasts. He chose the GM diet (or cabbage soup diet - editorial here, recipes here). It's a 7-day very low calorie diet meant to cleanse and jump-start a new eating style. I didn't feel that I especially needed to do it but I joined him for moral support -- and I'm so glad I did! It has blown my most recent plateau to bits! I really recommend the GM diet to anyone who needs a motivation boost. It provides much more instant scale gratification than FF.
Has anyone else tried the GM diet? What was your experience?
One friend in particular started in immediately with subtle sabotage about how unhealthy fasting is and that I shouldn't follow society's beauty standards, etc. She's always been the thin one of the group (and still is much thinner than I am!) and I'm wondering if she was feeling threatened. She pressed breakfast and lunch on me at every opportunity and pointed out how weird it was each time I joined the table to socialize without eating. Made me realize that I'm very lucky to have an extremely supportive boyfriend and friends who refrain from undermining my efforts. This is new for me -- I've never really had to deal with that type of cattiness among women because I was never attractive enough to be a threat.
My darling boyfriend, in contrast, supports me completely and is starting to experiment with his own fasts. He chose the GM diet (or cabbage soup diet - editorial here, recipes here). It's a 7-day very low calorie diet meant to cleanse and jump-start a new eating style. I didn't feel that I especially needed to do it but I joined him for moral support -- and I'm so glad I did! It has blown my most recent plateau to bits! I really recommend the GM diet to anyone who needs a motivation boost. It provides much more instant scale gratification than FF.
Has anyone else tried the GM diet? What was your experience?
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