GTFO Winter!

I can feel it in my bones.

Spring is coming.

It's about fucking time.

Of course, I'm still bracing for another Polar Vortex to come through and freeze us all just as we're beginning to thaw.

But I can see grass! The snow is melting, the birds are chirping, I didn't wear a coat yesterday! It was actually only 40 degrees, but it's all relative. After this winter, that feels downright tropical.

And with the spring, I feel my motivation slowly coming out of hibernation. I've been aching to be outside, and tonight it's supposed to get up to the mid-50s so my girlfriend and I made plans to take a couple hour hike at the park, followed by dinner out. That sounds so magical right now.

I gained again at Weight Watchers (2.8 lbs, which puts me back at 214.8). I expected it but it still pissed me off. I was grumbling about it before all the people getting re-dressed around me (following the weekly weigh-in-public-stripping) joined a chorus of "I gained too..."

Then I didn't feel so alone and defeated. I realized that this winter has been like a huge hurdle to everyone trying to lose weight. It's so hard to eat less when every single biological instinct is screaming, "Eat more! Fatten up or you'll freeze!" Seriously, half of America has basically been hibernating for the past four or five months. We've practically turned in to bears. It's fucking nature, right? We've been forced inside, in the dark. We all hurry to our cars after work, then shuffle inside as fast as we can while wearing snow boots and puffy coats. No one has shown any skin for ages. We've been bundled up in sweaters and arm warmers. We're filling ourselves with warm food, and sleeping in on the weekends because there's nothing left to watch on Netflix except the "Random Picks".

**Side bar: that's not entirely true. Netflix Streaming is a bottomless pit of potentially wasted time. But one thing I'm so glad I found was "The Best Worst Movie" and, by extension, Troll 2. How did I not know about this before?! I just watched both for the first time on Monday and now I can't stop watching Troll 2. It's so fucking awesome. Totally my kind of movie. I've seriously watched it 10 times already this week. It's like when I first watched "An Idiot Abroad" last month and then spent the rest of the month obsessively searching for Karl Pilkington YouTube clips. The man is incredible. Anyway...if you needed an idea of something to watch, you're welcome!**

So we've all been trying to push a boulder up a hill all winter, and the sudden sunshine and growing warmth means we're close to the top of the hill already. Or maybe we've rolled back to the bottom? Either way, we can stop pushing soon. Spring is coming. We can breathe again.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what I can achieve once the obstacle that is winter is finally out of my way.

Come on, spring! We're ready for you!

Gobble, Gobble

No matter how much weight I lose, I am still a fat girl at heart.

I think I always will be.

31 years of overeating can't be reversed by one year of Weight Watchers. Sure, I undid a lot of damage. I shed almost 100 pounds. I've learned portion control and built healthy eating habits.

But my brain is the brain of a fat girl. Nothing reinforces that more than food-centered events like Thanksgiving.

This year, like last year, I spent the few weeks leading up to Thanksgiving slowly panicking about food. What I would eat, how much I would eat, how much I would gain from eating. I pre-tracked my food in the Weight Watchers app and kept going back to balance out my Points. "Okay, maybe I can change the serving of mashed potatoes to a half serving so I can increase my dinner roll from a half to a full...and maybe I can only have a quarter of a slice of pumpkin pie (haha, yeah right, a quarter of a slice) so I can have a teaspoon of real butter instead of a spray butter..."

I had to eat twice again this year, once at my parents' and once at my girlfriend's family's. I must have gone into the WW app 25 times to change what I planned to eat. Luckily, the pre-tracking kind of worked for me. I knew what I could and couldn't have, and I didn't end up freaking out at the end of the day after accidentally going over my Points. I'm also aware now of just how much my family influences me to overeat, and I swallowed a couple Xanax to help cope with all of the food and emotional landmines my parents put in front of me. I came armed with a fruit salad I whipped up, made entirely of fresh fruit (pomegranate, pineapple, cranberries, apple, lime juice) topped with stevia and some pumpkin pie spice. Zero Points, so I had something to snack on whenever the cream puffs and cheese ball started calling my name. I felt really prepared.

I did face a somewhat unexpected hurdle, however: some CRAZY intense guilt over eating so much. Even though I tracked and knew exactly what I was eating, and I'd planned it all so meticulously, I still just felt incredibly gross and guilty for eating as much as I did. I was stuffed. Really stuffed. My family thinks it's funny that a vegetarian can get so full at a meat-centric feast, but I completely gorged myself. I was careful to be realistic about measuring my food and eyeballing what I couldn't measure, but even eating the small portions didn't make me feel better. After my meal, I felt the same sort of shame that I used to feel as a child after touching myself...like, dirty and embarrassed and ashamed and worried that my palms would grow hair. Or, well, in this case worried that I would gain 10 pounds overnight (which does totally happen to me, as scientifically impossible as that may seem).

Really, it was a terrible, sickening, and stomach-churning guilt. Maybe some of the churning was from the four deviled eggs I ate, or the mound of green bean casserole, but most of it was from a very uncomfortable inner monologue that went something like, "Gross. Why are you eating all of this? Ugh, why is it so so delicious? Seriously though, what are you doing? You're going to derail and defeat yourself. You've been making progress and here you go, throwing it all away from some toasted marshmallows baked on top of sweet potatoes...mmm sweet potatoes...stop it! Stop eating! Oh but it's so good..." I started to feel a little crazy and obsessive by the end of the day. And as I predicted, I still gained about five pounds this morning. And, naturally, that weight gain justified my shame and guilt, so now I feel even worse about eating so much.

That didn't stop me from bringing home some leftovers, though, or from polishing off the pecan tassies before I even went to bed last night (and subsequently using up the very last of my weekly Points allowance only ONE DAY into my Weight Watchers week...meaning I won't get more weekly Points until next Wednesday...). This food shaming is a new development for me, and I hate it. I hate it almost as much as I hate being hungry all the time.

But I'm still truckin' along. I'm too close to being under 200 pounds to even think about quitting. I may still be a fat girl inside but, on the outside, that fat girl is melting away, slowly but surely.

Another Hungry Day

At this point, I've lost a little more than 85 pounds on Weight Watchers. I'm actually smaller right now than I was all through college. In fact, I can only remember weighing this amount or less two times since middle school: once was the summer between high school and college when I went on Atkins pretty religiously for a couple months and got down to 211 pounds for a day (before shooting back up to 215...but still. And then I started eating like a human again and gained it all back.). The second time was the summer after college when I was super poor and had to choose between food and vodka and I chose vodka for a month or so...I starved myself down to 216 pounds. Again, that was only for about a week before my grandparents took pity on me and started buying me food.

The rest of the time since middle school, my weight has swung wildly from 225 pounds up to my highest (recorded) weight of 304 pounds. Now my scale has been fluctuating 213 pounds and 219 pounds. Not bad.

Buuuut...I am STILL OBSESSED WITH FOOD.

I wish things had changed. I wish I could live like a normal person and eat when I'm hungry, socialize without thinking about food the entire time, plan my day without thinking first about what I'll eat that day. But that's not me. That's not my life. Instead, I think about food when I wake up in the morning. Hell, sometimes I dream about food. Yeah. Some weekends when I have nothing going on and can sleep in as late as I want to, I get up ONLY because I want to eat.

There are all those little tricks people tell you about, like doing something else for 15 minutes and then eating only if you still really want the food after 15 minutes. Or having a little nibble of whatever you're craving and then stopping because your body doesn't care how much it gets, only that it gets something. Well...that's bullshit. When I try to do something else and reevaluate if I want the food in 15 minutes, I just spend a full 15 minutes thinking entirely about food. And if I just have a nibble, then it's even worse and I can't think about anything else in the world until all of the food is gone. Nibbles do not work for me. I am too obsessed with eating and with being full.

Weight Watchers has been amazing in helping me lose weight, and it kind of works with my food obsession. I can track and pre-track and plan my meals well in advance and, you know, it takes a certain kind of person to weigh and measure every morsel of food that you consume. But it also means that I can never just 'let go' and eat without thinking about it. That's a good thing, but it's also incredibly frustrating.

Like today, for instance. I am HUNGRY. Or that's the message my brain is getting. I know I'm not actually, literally hungry. I have food in my stomach. I am eating roasted new potatoes and onions and zucchini with vegetable broth and barbecue and shaved parmesan and it's spicy and warm and delicious, but I still want more. More of anything. I want to cram food into my mouth until I feel sick.

You know that scene in Matilda? Where the Trunchbull makes that kid Bruce eat the whole chocolate cake and he's all sweating and everything thinks he's going to pass out and die? Yeah, I could totally eat that cake. Not a question. There is no doubt in my mind that I could take a fork, settle myself in front of it, and just devour the entire freaking thing. Totally. And I'd love it. And I would ask for milk to wash it down.

Of course, a single slice of cake is something like 14 Points Plus on Weight Watchers. I get 34 Points per day and I am stingy as hell with them, so there's no way Cook's chocolate cake is coming anywhere near my lips. But I could do it. And it would be fucking awesome.

So when does this food obsession go away? Does it ever? Will I ever be able to see an office email about cupcakes without spending the rest of the day eyeing the cupcakes, weighing the pros and cons of eating a cupcake, wondering how good the cupcake is, getting panicky that too many people are eating cupcakes before I decide whether or not I want one? Or is this my life now? Where every food commercial makes me start to drool, and just driving past KFC gives me thoroughly un-vegetarian-like cravings?

When my best friend died two years ago, I thought the pain would never go away. I thought that every day would be a gray haze and I would never be okay again. Slowly, somehow, the pain receded. Instead of thinking about him every minute, I thought about him maybe every 15 minutes. And then maybe every hour. And then a couple times a day. Now, I love him and miss him and think about him at random wonderful and heartbreaking times, but it's not constant. I think of him when his favorite song comes on, or when I read a CNN article that would have gotten his attention. The point is, it got better. It took awhile, but it did definitely get better.

My food cravings though? Not better. It's been more than a year since I started Weight Watchers, and I'm thinking about food just as much as every. WHEN WILL IT END?!

For now...fuck it all, I'm getting that cupcake they emailed about. There are only three left and it's driving me fucking crazy. At least it's a mini cupcake.

Over The Hill! Or Plateau, Whatever

FINALLY! Seriously, FINAL-FUCKING-LY. I got over it. I broke through the plateau. I thought I was going to give up. I really thought about moving to Canada and living as an Inuit under layers of fur and hide. I didn't think it was going to happen. I didn't think I was going to make it.

But I did.

My Wednesday Weight Watchers weigh-in outcome: down 3.8 pounds, for a grand total of 56.8 pounds lost and a current weight of 247.2. This is the smallest I've been in 5 years. That's a big deal for me. But breaking through that fucking plateau feels like an even more remarkable victory.

I was really feeling crazy. Seven weeks without losing weight, when you're really working hard at it, is so devastating. Incredibly discouraging. I for real thought about quitting, but I had some kind friends and strangers (including randoms from the Weight Watchers community board, who somehow saw my surrender flag and rushed in to give me advice and support) who helped me put things into perspective. Like the fact that I had already lost over 50 pounds--did I really want to go back to weighing more than 300 pounds? That answer is a clear NO FUCKING WAY. I don't want to go back. But I just psychologically could not continue following Weight Watchers without losing weight. I couldn't keep passing up second helpings and limiting my delicious cheese intake without seeing some results. I was ready to go fucking crazy.

And the weirdest part is that I think I figured out what was causing my plateau, and completely preventing me from losing weight. The culprit: Fiber One 90 Calorie Bars. Seriously!

After pretty consistently shedding weight from August through mid-February, I abruptly stopped losing weight. Everyone said to stick with it and the plateau would break. I waited a week, two weeks, three weeks...oh my god, every weigh-in was so horrible. I couldn't figure it out. I was weighing and measuring all my food, I was drinking enough water, I was moving more and being active and even doing stuff I don't normally do, like playing on playgrounds with my niece and nephew and hiking down to the creek to take pictures. That scale was not budging. I tried all of the little tips people gave me: switch up my breakfasts, try alternating high- and low-Point days, take a walk, drink more water.

When nothing was working, last Thursday I tried thinking of anything that had changed at the end of February to make me stop losing weight. I had already wracked my brain for changes in activity, medication, whatever. Then it struck me: late February was when my girlfriend discovered Fiber One bars and I LOVED them! I started eating those Fiber One brownie things (they're only 2 Points) and then the Fiber One 90 Calorie Bars (the caramel pretzel is amazing). I was eating them every day, sometimes one of each every day. I was counting the Points and everything, but somehow I guess my body just went nuts. I stopped eating them last Thursday just to see if it made a difference, and I lost a pound overnight. That hasn't happened in months. Then I kept them out of my diet all week until weigh-in just to see, and I was down 3.8 pounds.

Amazing.

Oh, and I'm, uh, having my 'monthly cycle'...which means I will hopefully/probably lose next week too.

It feels really good to be back on track, but even better knowing that I stuck with it even when I was discouraged and really pissed off. I've never stuck with anything that gave me SEVEN WEEKS of failure. The fact that I continued to eat right, continued to track my food, and continued to make good food choices instead of falling completely off the wagon means that maybe something has changed that's more than a scale victory. Maybe my brain is changing. It feels like everything's coming together right now--I'm finally losing weight, which has been my dream and fantasy for so many years without me ever making much progress. I also got promoted at work, so now I'm a department manager overseeing two creative teams. I have my dream job at a magazine, I have an amazing girlfriend who puts up with my tantrums, I feel pretty hot right now, I'm getting compliments from everyone about my weight loss, my skin looks fabulous thanks to all of the cool products I'm trying (blame that one on my serious subscription box addition), my hair is my favorite color of Cotton Candy Pink (a happy accident--apparently bleaching purple hair makes it turn pink and all you can do is add more pink), the birds are singing, flowers are growing, and the weather is turning nice so I can finally put the top down on the convertible.

I think this is going to be a good spring.

Healthy Surprise Subscription Box

I got a Healthy Surprise in the mail.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a very good surprise. Not for me, anyway.

I've been a little, um, obsessed with subscription boxes lately. It started with BarkBox. Then I signed up for Loot Crate. Then Healthy Surprise. I'm currently waiting for BirchBox.

But the one I was TOTALLY MOST EXCITED ABOUT was Healthy Surprise. I loved the idea of getting a big box of snacks every month, full of things I'd never think to try at the store but I just might love. I was looking forward to sampling new things, branching out of my snack rut, and filling my cabinets with organic/vegan/gluten free goodies.

Sadly, it just wasn't for me. At least not on Weight Watchers.

I mean, one of the granola snacks was 9 Points! That's a whole meal for me. Most of the snacks were full of seeds and nuts--super healthy stuff, but also really high in Points.

I love that there were only a few ingredients in each product. And if I was, say, a hiker, I would be totally thrilled to fill my backpack with the chewy energy bars and dehydrated raw foods. For me, though, I just don't need to consume that many Points for a snack.

I'm pretty bummed about it. It's such a good idea, and for anyone looking for high-calorie, nutrient-rich, all-natural food, I would HIGHLY recommend it. The box came within days of me placing my first order, there was a wide variety of products, and the things I did try were totally delicious (like the almonds! YUM!).

The insert that came with my first box said to count ingredients, not calories. I definitely understand that. For people looking to eat healthier, that's always a good thing. But for someone who is still trying to lose more than 100 pounds, it's just not going to work for me.

I was hoping it would be a good addition to my weekly food delivery service but I'm going to have to cancel. Boo.

Now I need a new subscription box to sign up for! :)

Daddy

I can blame my weight on a lot of things. I know most of the fault is my own. No one held a gun to my head and made me gorge myself on cheese and chocolate for 30 years.

Still, like a lot of heavy people, I believe that a great deal of my weight issues have been tied to my parents. Between the bad genes, setting bad examples, rewarding us with food, forcing me to clear my plate but rarely making me eat vegetables...it's no wonder I was chubby by the time I was in kindergarten. 

My mom is the one who cooked dinner every night loaded with carbs and butter. She's the one who gave us Poptarts for breakfast and Lunchables, Capri Suns, fruit snacks, Cheetos, and Little Debbies in our lunches. She's the one who is overweight and who everyone says I look just like. She's the one who eats stacks of chocolate chip cookies for breakfast every single morning (not kidding) and then wonders why she can't control her diabetes.

But my dad is responsible for more emotional baggage than my mother could ever dream of inflicting.

I called this blog "My Weird Luck" for a number of reasons. I do have weird luck--not necessarily bad all the time, just strange. My life has taken many unexpected turns over the years. I've come through raging fires where I should have burned in my bed, and heart issues that no one expected me to survive. I've lost those closest to me in tragic and mysterious ways. I've been faced with bizarre obstacles and managed to get through one way or another. I would attribute much of it to weird luck. Maybe the stars were aligned strangely the day I was born.

But mostly, the name of this blog is an homage to Sylvia Plath, one of many poets whom I adore and admire. The line comes from her well-known poem, Daddy.

(Go ahead and read it. I'll wait.) That poem sums up a lot of my feelings for my father. He's in my life and still with my mother, but sometimes (okay, most of the time) I think we'd be better off without him. I KNOW my mom would be. 

I think he does love me. I just think his cruelty far outweighs his capacity to love.

Take this as an example: My parents have been married for 31 years. One of my earlier memories is of my dad telling me (around 5 years old) and my sister (2 or 3 years old) that my mother was like a vacuum cleaner because she would eat anything in the house. What kind of man makes comments like that to his children about their mother? That's when I started to learn how highly my father prized physical beauty and despised weakness. Fat, to him, is one of the most disgusting forms of weakness. To elaborate on the scene I just mentioned: this was when my mother was around 26 years old and weighed maybe 140 pounds. He constantly commented on her weight, and she was a third of the size she is now. Now, he doesn't even touch her. He won't divorce her, but chooses instead to keep her with him under his constant judgement. He doesn't even bother to hide his disgust of her.

When my parents were dating, my dad apparently used to sing Meatloaf's "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" to my mother. He told her every day that it was how he felt. "I want you, I need you, but there ain't no way I'm ever going to love you." I cry every time I hear that song on the radio, because it makes me think about just how shitty it would be to live with that kind of emotional abuse for 31 years. My poor mom. No wonder she loves chocolate so much.

My dad's judgement definitely doesn't end at my mom.

When I was younger, he was more direct in his scorn and derision. He would comment on my weight, on the food I was eating, on how I was dressed. He was cruel. He was violent. He scared the shit out of me. But mostly, he was just kind of a dick. Of course, I never stopped starving for his attention and approval, and I foolishly thought that if I tried hard enough, he'd eventually magically become a good guy. That obviously never happened. Like, true story: when I was 10 or so I was looking for a Father's Day present. He's a terrible person to shop for because he just buys himself anything he sees that he wants (and he still makes my mom beg for enough money to fill up the car with gas, or to pay for her doctor's bills--as sick as she is, he limits how many doctors she's allowed to see and he cancels appointments if they're going to be expensive). Anyway, I couldn't find anything for him so I bought him a t-shirt for Father's Day that said "World's Greatest Dad." I really though that I couldn't go wrong with a gift like that. HA! Not only did he make a point to tell me that it was a dumb present, but he actually returned it and used the money to buy himself a big can of cashews. Not even joking. Ugh, that's a bad memory. So his cruel comments don't stop at my mom, and they don't stop at even my weight. He can make me feel like shit about pretty much anything in the world.

Now that I've learned to assert myself, he makes more passive aggressive remarks about strangers. "Look at that fat pig over there!" or "God, I can't believe that woman is going to eat that whole meal--I'm getting sick just looking at her!" (Oh, yeah, he's fucking racist too. That's a lovely combination, right?) I've stopped even trying to keep my mouth shut--when he's being nasty and rude, I tell him so. But that doesn't stop him, and it never will.

As disgusting as his thoughts and actions are, it's his attitude about weight that's had the most impact on me personally. Everything else I can deal with in my own way--I'm proud to support equal rights for everyone, I loved how depressed he got when Obama won TWICE (!!!!), and I crushed him by pursuing a Women's Studies degree. I've marched on Washington, I came out as a lesbian at age 18, and I never back down now when he tries to pick a fight about anything.

Except my weight. Partially because I know he's right--I am a fat failure--and partially because it's embarrassing to have anyone call me out about it. At least everyone else is polite enough to quietly ignore my skyrocketing weight. But not him.

My dad has always faced his own struggles with weight. When he was in high school, he was fat. According to him, though, he basically 'willed' all the weight off. Determination, willpower, and a jump rope--he claims that's all you need to drop 100 pounds. Well, maybe for him.

When he was older, maybe in his 30s, he started gaining weight again. He had bushy facial hair and looked like a mountain man. Our neighbor called him "Big Daddy" because he looked like a large reproduction of her own dad.

Then, he got self conscious and started working out again, cut back his portions, and lost weight. Now he wears an XL shirt where before he was pushing XXXL--and he loves to remind everyone about it any chance he gets. He never misses an opportunity to talk about how little he eats, how much energy he has, how long his bike rides are.

That just pisses me off. I don't want to hear about how awesome he is or how I just need to have the determination to lose weight. I fucking hate self-righteous people, and even more so when they're such dicks about everything else.

My dad, though, really knows how to jab the knife in.

Listen, this is a person I would hate if I met him on the street. He's obsessed with Nazi propaganda, he's an unabashed racist, he's heartless and cold and cruel. But he's still my dad, and in the way that all little fat girls do, I still seek his approval more than I seek anything else in my life. It's shameful to me how proud I am when he recognizes me when I get promoted at work, and when he brags about my professional accomplishments. I feel incredible guilt every time I smile at his compliments.

He knows how much his approval means, and he knows how much he hurts me. I think in his sick way he thinks he's helping...but he's not. Not at all.

Here Comes Trouble

I did it. I bought a scale.

I feel like I could be opening Pandora's Box.

It turns out that my fears about normal scales not being able to weigh me were unjustified. Maybe the cheapest analog scales I was looking at when I bought my last scale (which was at Walmart probably ten years ago) didn't go over 250 pounds, but apparently standard digital scales (which were probably out of my $10-$15 budget at the time) go up to 400 pounds. I ordered one on Amazon and it should be here next Wednesday, which also happens to be my next Weight Watchers meeting--this is fortunate because I'll be able to see precisely how different the two scales register.

I tend to be a little obsessive about certain things, and I find it very easy to become obsessive about my weight. When I start a new diet or workout plan, I tend to overdo it and this usually causes me to end it just as quickly as I began. As one of my favorite poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay, wrote, "My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--it gives a lovely light!" After a lifetime of being a Fat Girl, I know all of the rules. Only weigh yourself once a day or once a week and always at the same time; don't eat after 6pm; your plate should consist of mostly vegetables; you need to drink at least eight cups of water a day; etc etc etc ad infinitum. But knowing and doing are two different things, and I always slip into the habit of skipping meals, weighing myself twenty times a day, enjoying the feeling of hunger a little too much, and generally replacing unhealthy habits with different, equally unhealthy habits.

So having a nice scale in the house is going to come with its own set of challenges. Besides my own tendency toward obsessiveness, I'm also anxious about my girlfriend weighing herself and seeing results. I don't want to hear how much she's lost. And I don't want her to become so enamored with losing weight that she begins actively trying--she's losing enough just by eating the healthier suppers I've been making. I know I've already talked about my own issues with her losing weight, and I'm trying to just not think about it and focus on myself, but I can't help it.

Having a scale WILL help me see when I've started to veer off course after a bingeful weekend, and it'll help me get through times like this week when my meeting was cancelled. Not knowing where I stand the week after Christmas is stressing me out, and I won't know exactly what I weigh as I ring in the New Year and make my resolutions. But the shiny new scale should be here on Wednesday, so I have a whole year of healthy living and body changes to look forward to :)

Oh, and the scale comes with a body tape measure...not sure how I feel about that...but I know I better save enough Points for a shot or two of whiskey after I measure myself for the first time!

I Work Out (No I Don't)

There's something I'd like to share: I am lazy.

Seriously, I'm super lazy. Always have been. When I was in third grade, I would sit down in the middle of the soccer field and search for four leaf clovers. When I was in softball through elementary and middle school, I was the catcher so I wouldn't have to walk anywhere (I was a terrible catcher. I don't know why they let me do it. I would squat there, chewing sunflower seeds, halfheartedly tossing the ball back to the pitcher. By the end of the inning, the pitcher was always worn out from retrieving my errant balls and my sweaty face mask would be dotted with sunflower shells. Oy.)

My favorite part about any of the sports my parents forced me into was always, ALWAYS the snacks. Little Debbies, fruit snacks, Hi-C, Squeeze-its...they totally made it worth suffering through one crappy game after another. The entire time I was shuffling up and down the basketball court or relaxing in the dugout, I was fantisizing about the candy the parents would pass out when we were done. Working out was awful, but the candy reward got me through.

As an adult, I am even lazier. I ask my girlfriend to get everything for me. I have to sit down if I walk more than half a block. At Disney World, I had to have the next bench or low wall in sight before I waddled any further. Last year, I had to leave a haunted house through the emergency exit, not because I was scared but because I was so out of breath I thought I was going to pass out. Between my non-functioning heart valve and the chronic lung problems that began when I got sick in 2007, I have a good excuse to be lazy, and I pull the "heart problem card" all the time. I have my employees pick up papers from the printer for me, I make excuses to get out of meetings on the third floor because I don't want to climb the stairs, and I have even put off going to the bathroom because I didn't want to walk that far.

Seriously. So lazy.

Yes, the sloth is my spirit animal.

So one of the things that makes me nervous about Weight Watchers is the activity portion. I know that one of the major components of staying on Plan is to add activity to my life, but I have avoided it at all costs. I feel like I can't work out. I self-diagnosed myself as exercise intolerant. It's just laziness, but I don't trust myself to do too much.

One major scare a few years ago, the year after my open heart surgery, really made me never want to work out or increase my heart rate again. I had taken a tour of Mammoth Cave and we were on our way out. The exit required a trek up exactly 440 stairs--before we even hit the stairs, I was already out of breath, heart racing, and the very last person in the group except for the guide who was turning off lights behind me. I started up the stairs and barely made it a quarter of the way before I stopped, my legs quivering, pouring sweat. I began having my first true asthma attack...and guess who hadn't brought an inhaler? The asthma attack was bad enough, but looking up the remaining stairs made me want to die. The group slowly disappeared out into the sunlight and I was left with my nervous girlfriend and a guide urging me on. I got up another quarter of the way and then stopped and truly started to freak out. There was no other way out but up, and those two were NOT going to be able to carry me. Sooo...my asthma attack turned into a panic attack, and I was then convinced I was having an actual heart attack. I was so scared.

I was crying by then, shaking, and absolutely humiliated. I eventually made it up the stairs, one at a time, and had to make the ultimate walk of shame to the bus where the entire tour group was staring at me. Of course, I had to shoehorn myself down the bus aisle and I knew my face was a gross combination of green, gray, white, and bright red. I can't think of a time I was more embarrassed. That experience left me terrified of having another episode like it, so from that moment on I avoided all physical activity at all costs, particularly activity where I knew I'd be stuck if I couldn't go on (like hiking, which I love). And the longer I avoided moving, the less I began to move. By the time I started Weight Watchers, I was coming home and sitting on the couch for an hour before cooking supper, and then sitting on the couch for several more hours while my girlfriend got me drinks, food, and whatever else I needed. I pretty much only stood up to go to work or use the bathroom.

I'm extremely happy to say that things are changing.

It started when I was on the steroids--I had insomnia for several days, and instead of watching the television all night, I started cleaning. I organized cabinets, folded laundry, collected items to donate, sorted through junk drawers, and did everything I'd been putting off for years. I figured it was only because of the steroids but...well...I haven't stopped. I'm sleeping normally again and I've been off the steroids for a week, but instead of coming home and turning on the television, I'm straighting up the house, playing with the dog, or finding something to tidy up or repair.

This weekend, we went to an outdoor Christmas event and I didn't sit down once. I wandered along the canal and went into stores, when just months before I would have preferred to sit on a bench while my girlfriend walked around. On Sunday, I suggested we go to a Christmas display at the art museum and I walked so quickly through the grounds that my girlfriend struggled to keep up. Tonight, I went downtown and actually walked three blocks to meet up with my family, and then walked around for a little while, and then walked back to my truck--I NEVER would have agreed to do that before! I guess it's true what the commercial says: a body in motion stays in motion (yes, I realize that's a law of physics and not just a commercial). I'm definitely in motion.

And possibly even cooler? I haven't used my inhaler for weeks. I usually take a daily inhaler and then carry another one for emergencies--I stopped using both. I carry them in case I need them, but I have been walking around like a normal, healthy person and I haven't used an inhaler! Do you know how huge that is for me?!

Even though I don't see myself ever joining a gym (just the thought makes me anxious) or jogging around outside, I don't think I need traditional exercise to move more. I AM moving more. I'm walking, I'm going to events, I'm doing more now than I ever thought I would again. I had almost resigned myself to a life like the mom in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (I do need to talk about my grandmother at some point...I love her so much but ending up like her is my worst nightmare) so it feels incredible to finally get out and enjoy life. By the spring, maybe I'll even feel confident enough in myself to go for a hike--that would make me so extremely happy. No matter what the scale says tomorrow at weigh in, I am proud of myself. I feel like I'm slowly reclaiming my life, and it's awesome.

Plus, it doesn't hurt that the house is finally clean!