Elizabeth wrote:

> > Oy, what a week it's been. A lot of ups and downs, it > > seems like. I think that means the therapy's working, > > because I've started to really notice what goes on in > > my head a lot more. I had a pretty serious (but short- > > lived) breakdown about my singleness after a conversation > > with my friend Kim (Kay in the journal), who met a guy > > at a singles party in Chicago, just like that. I think > > it's also a result of the fact that I'm really starting > > to face my weight and deal with it head on, and that's > > been hard, because I've been lying to myself about it > > for a while now. Liz wrote :

I'm right there with you, Elizabeth! I switch between lying to myself about my weight and deciding that it doesn't matter as "long as I'm happy." Of course, whenever I gain too much weight, I'm never happy, so that tactic doesn't work for too long!

But if you ever need to just vent, feel free to dump on me! I understand totally! Good luck with your walking, too!

-- Anonymous, October 06, 1999

Answers

Melissa wrote...

I don't weigh too much, but I'd be lying if I said I was happy with my body. I dress primarily so that people don't notice, but the area of my body between my stomach and my knees is untoned, flabby, cellulitey and spider veiny. My butt has dimples. How gross. Why weren't we warned as children? I hate to wear a bathing suit, and I feel heavy a lot. I know all four of us have issues with this, whether mental or physical, so this is definitely the place to bring them. I wonder if we could get some sort of mutual diet tips or "exercise club" together or something.

I too tend to reward myself with food or cheer myself up with food and then spend a lot of time beating myself up for it afterwards. And people say that the American lifestyle isn't harmful for young girls. Then where did we get all these crappy food habits and ideas about our bodies??

-- Anonymous, October 06, 1999

Oh, the four of us are SO much alike. I ate half a pint of Ben and Jerrys yesterday just because I felt kind of depressed. My mother taught me these habits -- that yummy food was a treat for good behavior or a haven for depression.

I finally joined a gym and I'm going to a class tonight. It's so much money every month that I have to go or I'm going to kill myself. Maybe there is some sort of exercise/diet club we can form to support each other. Let's brainstorm about this when we get together and figure out what would help each of us the most. I'm lucky to have found a woman at work that is willing to go to the gym with me. Same thing Elizabeth was saying about going for walks with her friend. If I'm letting someone else down besides myself I'm much more willing to do it. I'll let you all know how the first workout goes tonight.

-- Anonymous, October 06, 1999

Elizabeth wrote...

It really is a cycle. I get depressed about my weight, I eat because I'm depressed. Yikes. But I started walking this morning (we were going to go yesterday but it was thunderstorming) and yesterday Oprah had a show about carb addicts, and I saw myself all over that show. The program they were discussing is less rigid than Atkins... you can have all the carbs you want during one meal, as long as they're balanced with protein and fat. I'm going to see if I can't find the book and take a look at it further. I just don't handle "You can't have that" well at all.

-- Anonymous, October 06, 1999

Elizabeth wrote..

God, this is SO true. No matter what we look like, we find something we think is horrid. And she wrote... God, this is SO true. No matter what we look like, we find something we think is horrid.

-- Anonymous, October 06, 1999

The Atkinds diet is very hard. I did it last year and lost a whole bunch of weight, but I've only be able to do it a few days at a time since then. I don't do well with "you can't have that" either, but i do better with that than starvation diets.

At least on the Atkins diet I didn't starve. There were things I could eat, but I just got bored of them.

I hate hate hate going to the gym by myself too. I just joined again and I went the other night with Eileen. It was good and I'm glad I did it. I just hope I keep it up.

I need to eat right and exercise at the same time for me to lose any weight. And after being on that Atkins diet I can see what a carb addict I am.

Can you give me more info on this Oprah diet? It sounds very interesting. And why does she say I have to cut out diet soda? I just finally got myself completely off regular soda and onto diet instead. I drink water too and also other sugar free drinks. Does she say the nutrasweet is really bad for us?

-- Anonymous, October 06, 1999

Yes, I know that's what I need to do too. I need to make my lifestyle one in which I eat healthier a whole lot more often and I get to the gym on a regular basis.

When I'm on my diet it's all I think about too.

Knowing what to do is at least half the battle. Now you can take whatever steps you need to do to get there. Even if it's just one little thing at a time. Each little thing will add up to the right thing.

And what I need to focus on is that when I mess up (and we know it's going to happen) I need to get back up and keep trying rather than go into a spiral of badness.

I've been trying to learn to cook foods that I like to eat that are also good for me. Grilled things is one of them.

-- Anonymous, October 08, 1999

Count me in that group too. I'm doing the Atkins thing again. I've been doing it since tuesday and I'm down a few pounds already.

I've gotta drop the rest of this weight before I buy a wedding dress. I looked at some pictures dave took of me on vacation and I said, "FAT!"

I haven't checked into this Oprah diet yet, but I must be doing some version of it. I have as little carbs as possible during the day and at dinner I allow myself some small amount of them -- like breaded chicken or something. I don't have potatoes, bread, or pasta or any extra sugar. But I'm not fanatical about all the breading or condiments or anything. It seems to be working so I'm going to do it for as long as I can.

I'm also going to get into a regular gym schedule, at least twice a week and three times if I can swing it.

I'm rooting for you Elizabeth! And if you decide to try it too, Liz, I'll suppport you too! We could have success meetings and give each other recipes and stuff.

-- Anonymous, October 28, 1999

Yay Elizabeth! 6.5 pounds is really great!

I'm down about 4 and I'd be doing much better if I didn't have a total binge last weekend. The weekend is the hardest time for me. If I'm home I want to eat bad things and if I'm out I have a very hard time eating right. I'm going to do my best this weekend to get it right.

It helps that Dave is trying to do it too. He's doing fairly well, but I don't yet know if he's lost any weight. I was going to get him to wait a while before he got on the scale, cause like you, if he hasn't lost any weight yet he might want to give up trying. I try to get on the scale every day, but sometimes I forget or I'm scared of what it will tell me.

The cooking really is a pain! That's why I'm glad I can have some carbs with dinner because it's easier to cook that way. I can make a chicken patty and green beans and be fine.

For breakfast I eat hard boiled eggs sometimes. You can make up a whole bunch on Sunday and have them all week. Or I eat Jello too, but I often forget to make it. And I'm sick and tired of the sugar free flavors you can buy pre-made. I need my Orange jello, as that's my favorite. I also sometimes just eat some American cheese. I know that sounds gross, but I really like white American cheese.

For lunch I have salads too. Our cafeteria has a decent salad bar and I just make a big salad. And for snacks I usually have a small amount of nuts (peanuts, cashews or pistachios). I do fine at my desk all ay without any other food.

I sometimes have trouble when I get home from work, as my body is quite tired from the lack of carbs. Last night I had just a handful of potatoe chips and I was feeling a million times better. And the carbs at dinner really help keep me going.

Keep up the good work, and keep us updating on your progress. The success is inspiring!

And what was the name of that book you're doing again? I want to check out the differences from Atkins.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

I know what you mean about being busy all the time. I tend to eat bad then too. And I have been on and off diets for the last year. I'm only so dedicated now because of the impending wedding. I want to be at least 10 more pounds thinner before I have to order my dress.

And I've been having a lot of trouble with the exercise thing too. I have so many things that need to get done in the evening and it's hard to get to the gym. And I just can't get up in the morning and do it, as I can barely get myself to work on time.

You could probably do the carbo addict diet on your schedule. You could do like I'm doing. Bring some sort of breakfast to work, eat salad for lunch, and then if you have to eat fast food for dinner just eat chicken nuggets or a chicken sandwich without the bread, or a salad with chicken on it.

I skimmed the whole atkins book before I did it. They do give you food plans in that book and I would suspect the other book does as well. I just look at the labels on everything for how many carbs are in it.

Walking during lunch is a great idea. I used to go to the gym here at work at lunch but it got very boring and I stopped going.

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999

The Atkins Diet is hard. I lost 12 pounds the first time I did it but tried it again and got sick. Now I just try and be careful, but what I really need to do is exercise. I hate my thighs, enough that it can bring me to tears. Being happy with my actual weight number doesn't matter as long as I'm miserable about how out of shape my body is. I just have so little time and I hate to spend it exercising; doesn't that sound awful?? But nonetheless it is true. I should find out if Matt plays tennis. Michael and I were doing that and we were terrible but it was fun and a good way to exercise. I have a gym membership but I never go because I hate to go alone. Loathe it. I'd love to take classes but I honestly feel so stupid when I go by myself. I don't know why. I feel totally self conscious. It doesn't matter what we have, we always want something different. It's that crappy way we were all taught to think by the media.

-- Anonymous, October 06, 1999

Ohmygod! I am such a carb addict! And a fat addict! And a sugar addict! And a protein addict! Oh, hell, I'm a food addict! And, you know, I don't handle "You can't have that" very well, either. I do okay for a few days and then I get all defiant and rebellious and end up binging.

I just find it amazing that people refuse to recognize that food can be as much of an addiction as alcohol or drugs or cigarettes. And that it's a harder habit to break than all of that stuff, because you can never completely eliminate food from your life. Seth and I argue about this all the time. It's really frustrating when most people around you seem to think that dieting is more a question of willpower than of actually conquering an addiction.

Why isn't there a methadone for food addicts? ;)

That's exactly it. If you're unhappy with how you look, it doesn't matter what the actual numbers on the scale are.

Not at all. I think it's very true. I mean, currently, I'm out of the house all day until late at night, at least 3 days a week now. And I just hate to spend the few hours I do have at home doing Tae-Bo when there are a million other things that need to be done as well -- like my journal, or my writing or even just spending time with friends or with Seth. And on weekends, I like to be out doing things, so it's hard to set aside an hour or two on both of those days to exercise.

Tennis would be good because then you guys would be doing something together AND getting exercise. I totally understand about the gym. When I was actually in good shape and a lot thinner, I had a membership to a gym. And even though it was one of those all female places, I still felt totally out of place. I think that even though we try not to, women have been trained by society to constantly compare ourselves to each other, so I was constantly trying to see how I measured up to these other women. Not fun.

-- Anonymous, October 06, 1999

I had a minor breakthrough in therapy (God, do I really sound like that?) this week. I had been trying to figure out why I was avoiding dieting this past year, when I knew my weight was going up but was denying it to myself. In the past, whenever I dieted, it became my WHOLE LIFE. Every minute of every day was spent thinking about what I could have and what I couldn't have. And if you spend all day thinking about food, how can you possibly succeed? So we discussed the idea of changing that thinking, of looking at it as a lifestyle change rather than a process with a beginning and an end. To eat healthy all the time, continue with my exercise, and let the weight fix itself.

I'm not saying I can DO it, mind you. I'm just taking it under advisement.

-- Anonymous, October 08, 1999

I ordered the carbo-addicts diet book from Amazon, because it's selling out everywhere since they've been on Oprah so much. It should be here in a couple of days, and we'll take a look at it.

The only thing about it is this: I've been reading the reviews at Amazon and a common thread seems to be that the weight comes back on really quickly if you go off the diet. One person wrote that they lost 45 pounds in seven months and gained it all back in one month. My guess is that this person thought they could go back to their old ways of eating, which I know isn't true. Has anyone found that you gained really easily when you started eating carbs again?

-- Anonymous, October 16, 1999

I think you're right Elizabeth -- the person that gained those 45 lbs. back in one month when right back to all of their bad habits and then some!

I once lost a significant amount of weight and then ended up putting it all back on in a year and a half. The problem was that my lifestyle changed and my eating/exercising habits changed for the worse. When I lost the weight, I was unemployed, I had TIME to do 2 hours of aerobics a day, and I was broke so I ended up eating only one meal per day too. Then I got a full time job so the two hours of aerobics per day fell by the wayside -- I didn't gain too much of the weight back then because I was still broke and still eating very little. But then 8 months later, I moved back in with my parents and picked up all the really bad food habits that I had left behind and within a year of moving home, I was back up to my old weight.

I think the idea behind the carbo addicts diet is that it's not so much a diet as a way of life. Although, I have a feeling that if you go off it and continue to eat sensibily and exercise you should be able to keep the weight off.

Seth's mom just bought the book and I took a look at it. It's seems interesting. It also seems like there's a lot of work/cooking involved, which concerns me, since i don't have time to sleep let alone cook full meals for myself. ;)

Anyway, we'll see! Good luck, Elizabeth! I'm probably going to start it soon, too. We'll have to form a support group!

-- Anonymous, October 20, 1999

Okay, so, I've been at it two weeks and lost 6.5 pounds. Colleen, like I said in my e-mail, you are doing a modified version of it... on mine there are no limits as long as you're in balance, but I'm sure you're doing yourself a favor by keeping it limited.

And Liz, you're right... there's a lot of cooking involved which has become a pain for me, so I've either been skipping breakfast or eating Jello, which has been working out fine. I'm getting creative with the cafe at school for lunch... usually they have salads that I can just pick the carrots out of, or, like yesterday, the sandwich of the day was chicken salad, so I just asked for some of it on lettuce instead of in bread.

A girl wrote to me after I mentioned this plan in my journal, who said she had lost 80 pounds in 10 months (wow!) I asked her for some breakfast suggestions... I wasn't getting tired of bacon and eggs, but I was getting tired of COOKING bacon and eggs. She said that she'll make a crustless quiche/casserole type thing with eggs, cheese, peppers, onions, and crumbled bacon, and just scoops some into a bowl each morning and heats it up. She's also a big fan of the pre-cooked bacon, but I tried some last week and thought it was kind of bad.

But the best thing about it is that I don't think about food all the time anymore, and it's been really easy to quit snacking. I had the old Carbo Addict's book, and in that one they said no between-meal snacking, but I guess they figured out that it doesn't do anything bad because the new book allows it. But frankly I stay busy enough during the day that I don't really miss it.

They also say to weigh yourself every day, but I can't do that, because I get too depressed if it doesn't go down every morning, even though it really shouldn't. I picked Wednesday morning, since it's enough time to recover from any cheating, which for me is more than likely to happen on a weekend.

Yikes, it's 11:30 and I still have some Corporations to read... have a good Thursday, girls!

-- Anonymous, November 03, 1999

Way to go, Elizabeth and Colleen! You guys are putting me to shame! I keep starting diets and then go off them. It's tough right now because between the show and writing class, I'm out of the house three nights a week and that's when I tend to eat junk -- Steve (Mel's roommate and our Assistant Director) and I grab a quick dinner at Burger King or McDonald's two nights a week and then I grab more fast food on Thursdays before class. Not good. Plus, I'm never home at a decent hour so I can exercise. Actually, I think that next week, I'm going to start walking during my lunch hour. I used to walk every day during lunch before my horrific Foot of Doom episode, but then I stopped after my injury.

Once Seth and I get our 2nd television fixed it will be easier as well, b/c then I can just get up earlier and do a half hour of aerobics before work. Seth's mom has a reserve in for 2 Carbo Addict books (you can't find them down here!) and when it comes in, she said I could have one. But I'm a little confused -- Elizabeth, did you read the whole book and then start? Do they give you a sample plan or is it really up to you to plan your meals? How hard was it to work out what you were going to eat?

I need to do something though. I'm sick of my weight and I want to be thin when I start graduate school so I can wear lots of funky writer clothes!

-- Anonymous, November 04, 1999