The surprising process of legalizing junk food

Interesting things are happening with my eating in the third trimester.  I'm almost 36 weeks now, and still weigh 260 pounds.

I'm not exactly sure when or why this started, but just over a month ago I decided to take yet another crack at changing the way I behave around sugary junk food.  It might have something to do with picking up one of my old Geneen Roth books one night; she's very "pro-legalization" and recommends things like carrying chocolate that you love in your purse at all times.  

I decided to give it a whirl.

My weight, two months before my due date

I weigh about 259 pounds right now.  My home scale has been reading between 258 and 260 for over a week.  The doctor's office scale is always within a couple of pounds of my home scale.

Back in April, just days after I conceived, I weighed 255.  So over the past (almost) seven months, my weight went from 255 down to the 240s and then back up again to where it is now, a net gain of about 5 pounds so far.  This all happened gradually and naturally, without me doing much to manipulate my weight besides making an effort to curtail binge eating behaviors.

Time management=weight management?

I want to find a lifelong solution to my eating and weight problems.  I want this to be the last time I have to lose a significant amount of weight.  Yet I know that it’s always going to take time and effort to maintain whatever lower weight I stabilize at.

If this is going to be a part of my life forever, I think I should get clear on HOW MUCH time and effort it takes to maintain a healthier lifestyle and reasonable weight.  I can then plan other parts of my life with this reality in mind.  If I don’t keep enough time free for maintaining my health (taking care of such things as meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking and kitchen cleanup, exercising, and much-needed spiritual and mental health practices), there’s a high probability I will gradually pack my life with more and more activities and responsibilities and end up dropping the ball on my health and weight maintenance.  It would be very easy to do this, especially with kids and a career in the picture.  In short order, I could regain everything and more, and this will only take a greater toll on my body as it ages.

I don’t want that to happen!  I know I will not be at my best for family or work life if I’m obese, depressed, and always fatigued.  And for me, those three things are deeply intermingled.  I’d rather scale back on the scope of what I do inside and outside the home, and do those (limited) things while feeling well and taking care of myself, than sacrifice my health to take on more and more.  I don’t want to have to fight this obesity battle throughout my entire life.  I don’t want to have to lose 125 pounds in my thirties, again in my forties, again in my fifties, again in my sixties…

I am speaking from experience here.  I lost a noticeable amount of weight my sophomore year of high school and during my fourth year of college.  (Never 125 pounds, though.  I didn’t need to lose that much back then.)  In both instances, the weight loss was facilitated by having a quieter-than-normal schedule for a decent stretch of time.  And in both cases, my schedule and commitments got ramped up again and I gained back everything I had lost and then some.  Perhaps a busier schedule didn’t make the regain inevitable, but since I didn’t have a clear idea of how much time I needed to set aside to take good care of myself, I failed to block out that amount of time.  And really, it’s not just a time issue, but an energy issue as well: I filled my schedule up with other activities, and doing so left me not only with less time, but less ENERGY to devote to working out and procuring/ preparing decent meals.  Not to mention my stress levels went up with a busier schedule, and stress depletes my willpower reserves and makes me want to eat.  What a mess!

So, to increase my odds of lasting success, I am going to start paying more attention to the time commitment aspect of this lifestyle change.  I am going to start tracking the amount of time I spend on things like kitchen work and exercise.  I’m certain there is a minimum time commitment required for achieving certain results, and I’ve got to figure out what this is for me.  After awhile, I hope to discover the most efficient yet sustainable/effective way of doing things.

Any thoughts or advice out there on time-and-weight management?

12 week ultrasound, weight loss, and swimming

Everything looked fine at my ultrasound this week.  It was beyond exciting to see a little humanoid shape moving around in there!  At last!  The baby was bouncing on his/her back repeatedly and waving little arms and legs about continuously.  I could have watched for hours, as it made everything seem very real and the baby was so fun and fascinating to observe, but the scan was over after a few minutes.  And I only got to hear the heartbeat for a few seconds.  I'm still marveling at how this mango-sized creature can be in motion without me feeling anything at all!  I should get bloodwork results back next week that, combined with the results of the nuchal translucency scan, will tell me more about risks and further testing needs.

I'm down a few pounds, though it fluctuates by a five pound margin.  I often see something in the 246-251 range on the home scale.  Tuesday the doctor's scale said 250; yesterday the gym scale said 249.  I'd have to dig through my records, but I don't think I've seen anything in the 240's on the gym scale before now.  I think my face looks a little less chubby than it used to.  It is liberating to exercise and weigh myself and moderate my food choices without all the self-imposed pressure to lose lose LOSE. 

I went swimming yesterday for the first time in over 4 years and it felt really nice.  I rediscovered how much I enjoy the brain-body challenge of thinking about all these different components of the strokes while carrying them out.  I love getting a lane to myself and tuning out the rest of the world.  Unlike the case of group exercise classes or using gym machines or even taking walks outside, I don't have to look at anyone.  There's no one to compare myself to.  There's no interaction or competition or self-consciousness, which is great for me.

I might try some aqua cardio classes to mix things up in the pool, or I may sign up for a few private lessons so I can learn to do the breaststroke and backstroke more precisely and efficiently, even if I'm only going to do them slowly.  (I read those are the two best strokes to do during pregnancy.)  I went slowly yesterday, but still got my heart pumping and I felt deliciously tired a couple hours after my swim.  I felt like I had really done something good for myself.

What you do most of the time...matters most

We had company yesterday, and I ate way too much.  I always do.  I find it stressful to host people, the stress triggers urges to overeat or to binge, and feeling overwhelmed/tired/not in touch with myself, I give in to the urges without even trying in earnest to fight them off.


It's really common for me to sit down and polish off a bunch of leftovers once guests leave my home.  Last night it was chocolate pudding.  I don't like that I do this, and I will work on changing it.  The good news, however, is that we don't host people very often.  So this particular problem doesn't present itself very often.

More and more, I'm seeing scenarios I used to worry about don't matter that much, because they don't occur that often.  I used to sit down and try to come up with grand plans and sets of rules, or maybe just one magical secret principle, that could cover ALL problematic scenarios for me.  Hosting people.  The holidays.  Traveling to my hometown and eating a bunch of meals with family, who eat very differently than I do.  Ravenous PMS days.  When I couldn't come up with solutions for everything, and when I kept tripping up at predictable times, I would get so discouraged and let my day-to-day efforts slide.  I was all-or-nothing.

That's starting to change.  Perfectionism and my all-or-nothingness is fading, finally.  I understand that what I do on a typical day--something like 300 days out of the year--is what matters most and deserves my closest attention.  And when a not-so-great eating day comes along, like yesterday, it doesn't have to lead to an out-of-control week.  Yesterday I had company and ate stupidly.  I probably won't have company for another month.  Hopefully I can do better next time, but there's likely 25 or 30 normal, non-company days between now and then to attend to.  So on some level, I'm thinking: who cares?  Let's move on.

I don't even think about balancing out the previous day's excesses.  What's done is done.  Letting go of yesterday helps me make better choices today because I'm not burdened with feelings of regret, shame, anxiety, and so on.  It's very freeing. 

This attitudinal change may be happening because I'm not trying to lose weight right now, just maintain my current weight. (Next week, I will wrap up my first trimester without having gained anything, as per my ob/gyn's instructions to gain 0-5 pounds during this period of time.)  So now when I eat too much, I don't think "I blew it.  There's no way I will have lost anything by the end of this week" because my focus isn't on losing.  It's on staying steady as much as possible, scale-wise and eating-wise.  And with less dramatic thinking in the picture, there are less dramatic behavioral swings too.

I want my new relaxed attitude to stick, though, despite the weight gain that is sure to come later and the desire for weight loss that will kick in post-pregnancy!  After fixating on individual trees for so long, it's nice to see the forest.