The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size

I came across information about an unusual diet book I just had to tell you about. The Writing Diet: Write Yourself Right-Size from author Julia Cameron. Ms. Cameron is the author of several books I admire including

The Artist’s Way
Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance
The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life

Cameron is an excellent inspiration to writers and artists. She helps them find their creativity, motivate to write daily morning pages and generally take their art seriously.

So when I came across her book I was at the very least intrigued. You see, in her previous books one of the most effective techniques is the activities she suggests for getting your brain and your habits on the right track. I was interested to find what she might suggest about dieting.

If you are the creative type and need someone to guide you through the self-actualization of find your emotional triggers and why you overeat – consider this book. Be aware that there is little new information. You should already know everything she suggests – journaling, determining why you eat, walking for exercise, eating when hungry not angry, bored or to please others.




The best review I came across was on Size Ate –

http://sizeate.blogspot.com/2008/03/another-non-diet-thats-diet-sigh.html

Weight Watchers Commercial

Have you seen the Weight Watchers commercial about eating out? There is a woman who is going out to eat and socialize with her friends but she's still dieting because she is on Weight Watchers. She will succeed because their plan works and allows her to eat out, to live her life while dieting.

This is all fabulous and motivating. EXCEPT eating out and socializing isn't where my dieting fails. My problem comes when I am alone. Whether I am eating alone at home or at a restaurant doesn't really matter. I do fine for about a week, sometimes two.

Then I get a little lazy. I go home on a Sunday with little to do. I completed all my weekend errands on Saturday, I caught up on my reading, my shopping and my housework. So Sunday is pretty much aimless.

Aimless is a problem for me. And for my diet.
I don't know if boredom is just my trigger for eating or if having too much time on my hands is what causes me to think about food incessantly and then eat whatever is in the house.

So what do those commercials do for you?

Do they motivate you? Or just frustrate you?

Jenny Craig

I like Jenny Craig. The commercials are uplifting, the newsletter comes at the right time every month, just when I feel like quitting. Even the weekly meeting with my consultant wasn't bad. Although having someone look over my shoulder while I'm on the scale is not my idea of a good time.

I made 2 mistakes when I started Jenny Craig which is how I managed to NOT LOSE WEIGHT on the plan.
1. I started a diet in November. Now November is better than starting for New Years, I agree. I even managed to make it through the holiday season right on target. Lost 10 pounds during the month of December. RIGHT ON!! Then I moved to New England (from Florida). Not my brightest decision, moving in the dead of winter. But hey, we take the opportunities that come our way. So I managed to survive winter better than I expected except when it came to dieting. It wasn't even the food that was the issue. It was going into the center every Thursday night and having to strip out of my coat, heavy sweater and boots before I could weigh in. Yes I wanted the scale to show the least possible number but I didn't want to get naked first.

2. I didn't factor in the cost. Here's the thing about Jenny Craig. It is expensive. No matter how many commercials you see about $20 a week or just $30 to start, that isn't where they get you. The trouble comes when the food is costing you $100 a week plus fresh fruits and veggies. Frozen & processed food that let's be honest, has more taste than cardboard but isn't really tasty. Before that diet my grocery bill was about $40 bucks a week and that's if I was eating well. So when the cost of dieting made my food bill more than double, it became a problem. I just wasn't losing enough to justify the enormous strain on my personal budget.

Get the real numbers, the real cost of any diet upfront or you may have to quit no matter how good your results.

Start With a 10% Goal

This is another goal I'm not sure I can work with. Some say that a goal of 50 pounds or 100 pounds is just too many, too daunting to begin. Instead these same people recommend starting with a 10% goal. This means if you weigh 150, lose 15 pounds as your first goal. It sounds like a good goal, a reasonable goal that you will stay motivated enough to get to.

It sounds good. That is, until you get there.

In my own attempt to just lose 10% I did OK. It took 2 months but I got rid of the 10%. I was one step healthier, right? Now what?

I reached the 10% and had to set a new goal. But being the difficult woman that I am, I couldn't just continue on the same path I had some success with, no that's not my style. Instead I bought a pair of jeans and some new shoes to celebrate reaching my first goal. Then I went out happy with the new size. I thought great I can do this. I can lose weight.

Somewhere along the way I forgot that I had to set a new goal. I should have decided from the first what I would do once I reached the 10% mark. I didn't because in reality I didn't think I would ever get there. So a month or 2 after reaching the first goal, I still hadn't set a second goal and was starting to gain back what I'd already lost.

So now what? Set another 10% goal - 10% of what I wonder??

Look at your ass

Sorry for the swear word but seriously if you want to know the easiest way to give up on a diet, this is it. Take a look at your own rear view in a 3 way mirror. If you are at all like me the area it takes the longest to lose is the rear end. I could lose 20 pounds and 2 dress sizes and still have an ass like an elephant.

This is a deal breaker for any diet. No matter how motivated or inspired I am, one look in the mirror at my rear and I'm done. I give up. What's the point of hours of exercise and starving to stick to a diet if I pull on a pair of jeans and the view still sucks??

I happened to catch myself in a side view earlier today. I'm not a big fan of mirrors in general so I don't catch myself often. But today I guess I was a bit slow, before I had my coffee. I got a side view of my rear right out of the shower. How pleasant do you figure that was??

Don't think I'm down on myself because before this I was having a great week. I'm down 5 pounds and not starving or working out to exhaustion. I'm trying Change One - which means I am gradually cutting out my calories. So I'm mostly eating what I want just half as much as I was before. Anyway it is probably working but all day after that glimpse in the mirror I've considered quitting. I mean seriously how's a girl supposed to be motivated to walk, run, diet, lunge, squat or whatever to get toned and lean when she can't stand to look at her rear in a mirror??

So if you need motivation to QUIT a diet, to NOT lose weight - try this one. If you actually want to stay on something avoid the mirror from any and all angles. Trust me.

Christmas Holiday

A few years ago I was making excellent progress on a diet for the first time. I tried Michael Thurmond's 6 Week Body Makeover. I followed the diet and exercise plan for 8 weeks with no cheating and no deviations. I ate 6 times a day, tiny mini-meals with 2 oz. of protein and each one. I spent an 2 - 3 hours each week preparing and organizing meals so I could follow the diet while working on the road.

At the time I was working as a claims adjuster in the field. I spent 8-10 hours each day alone in my car driving from house to house and inspecting damage. I ate breakfast, lunch and 2 snacks in my car. The temptation to pull through a McDonald's or other fast food restaurant was sometimes overwhelming. Some days I would count the number of Taco Bell's I passed when working on the road. Spending so much time in the car also means that my meals were eaten cold. No microwave in the car.

My meals consisted of 2 oz of cold chicken or beef with raw veggies and cold rice or a boiled egg with a piece of fruit. For those 8 weeks I gave up my beloved soda, all caffeine, processed sugar and alcohol. I ate beef more often than I was used to and I missed bread and cheese more than I could ever have expected.

So for 2 months things were going great. I felt better, I exercised and I was energetic. During that time I lost 30 pounds and was very pleased with my success.

The trouble started when I went home for the holidays. You see my family all lives in Florida. At the time I was residing in Atlanta. I did OK on the 7 hour drive home by myself. I even took a cooler of meat and veggies so that I would be able to prepare my meals. I was determined to stick with my diet even during the holidays. I was so confident I could do it.

There were 2 problems I didn't consider
1. The stress of my family and having to divide my time to make sure I visited everyone with an equal amount of time and attention was exhausting. When I'm stressed I reach for the caffeine and sugar combo. All it took was one sip of an ice cold Coke and I remembered what I'd been missing. The rush of that first soda reminded me how I'd survived college and my teen years - fueling up on soda and putting off sleep for days at a time.

2. The same exhausting effort that caused the stress made it impossible for me to prepare the foods I brought with me. I spent no time at one single place, no time in the kitchen to cook and portion my meals. I ended up with a cooler full of food that was going bad and grabbing meals at restaurants and family dinners. While I was there I tried to keep to the mini-meals for frequency and portion size.

The drive home proved the most troublesome. After a week of constantly being around people (I'm a bit of a loner by nature) I was ready for some time alone. I turned the radio up and sang along. I also reached for a soda and a bag of cheese curls at my first stop for gas.

That was my big mistake. Cheese curls and soda are the best junk for a road trip and I caved. I caved to the craving and the emotional comfort of those foods. I never went back to the diet.



The sad thing is that I could have gotten home and gotten back on the diet without any real problem. You see even though I went back to my old habits I kept that weight off for almost 6 months. At about that time I started to feel the weight creeping back up but I let being busy and my previous failure stop me from getting my act together. 6 months after that I'd gained all the weight back plus 5 pounds. I didn't even bother to try dieting the next Christmas holiday.

Cream Cheese

Sometimes weight loss gets couched in other terms so it sounds more holistic and healthy. I once tried a system "cleanse" that involved basically fasting for three days by eating only 5 ounces of either cream cheese or ripe olives. Not both – one or the other. I think the idea was that your body would get some minimum amount of calories and fat to barely exist on for three days and it would "jump start," a favorite diet phrase, your body for the stringent plan that would follow. And you'd probably actually be looking forward to even a tightly regimented plan after eating practically nothing for the three days before. I don't remember a lot of the details of the eating plan, because I didn't make it there.

On the morning of day one of the fast, I opened up a sixteen-ounce package of cream cheese and carefully weighed out five ounces of the white gold. I cut it up into five pieces so I could spread my intake out over the day. I wrapped the rest up and put it back in the refrigerator for the next two days. It was hard eating the first piece of cream cheese. It was thick and stuck to the roof of my mouth. I actually thought that I might not be able to eat the rest of it across that day, that I'd rather just skip eating instead. Three hours later, I did have to force myself to each the next piece. I was a little hungry, but still not looking forward to eating a chunk of bagel spread. Three hours more though, and I was counting down the minutes to the next piece. This was repeated twice more the first day, including in the evening when I served dinner to the family but didn't eat any myself. Whew, it was hard, but I made it through.

On the morning of day two, I pulled the opened cream cheese package out of the fridge and considered it. There were eleven ounces left. Wouldn't it just be easier to split the remainder in half? How different were five ounces from five and a half, really? I eyeballed it, cut about half off – it might have been a bit more than half, but who was counting – divided it up into the five servings for the day and put the rest back. Serving one was immediately, no problem. Servings two and three, okay. Serving four was supposed to occur about four o'clock as I was getting ready to leave the office. I am usually in a hurry to go because I am on a deadline to pick up my kids after school, so I decided to just have that serving as I was driving home. Somehow, my car ended up in the drive-through lane at the first fast food restaurant in my path. Not for a whole meal, though, just for some chicken nuggets and a Diet Coke. As I was driving home, I told myself that it was a slip-up, they happen, but that I would get back on plan and have cream cheese number five instead of dinner. That idea lasted until I got home and started cooking. I rationalized myself into just having a salad while the family was eating - the dressing could be the fat substitute for the cream cheese and I even threw some ripe olives on there. I don't know if I even bother tried rationalizing this next part, but I know I offered to clean the table so I could eat the leftovers off everyone's plates as I was washing the dishes.

On the morning of day three, some autonomic part of my brain, the part that wants to make me happy and/or keep me from starving, took over. I got dressed, got the kids out the door to school, got in the car and drove right to Burger King for my usual breakfast. God as my witness, I did not even remember about the cream cheese diet until I was on my second croissanwich. As soon as I got to work, I looked up information on starvation diets so I could reassure myself that it was a dangerous plan and the effects on my metabolism could be very destructive. Clearly, I had dodged a bullet with that plan and was much safer on my two-fast-food-meals, one-big-home-cooked-meal plan, which I went right back to with relief.

A final note: I did not waste the remaining cream cheese. It did end up on a big, toasted, "everything" bagel the next weekend.

Noelle

Here's where the idea for this project came from: I have been dieting for 19 years, since two months before my first wedding at age 20, and I have doubled in size across about two decades. How is this possible? How can a person attempt to lose weight, a lot of times and in a lot of different ways, and yet manage to turn into the equivalent of two of herself? Let me be mostly truthful here: I weigh (about) 300 pounds. Since I am 5'5'' this means that I am at least twice what the height-weight charts and the BMI charts say I should be.

I don't have a graph for you – I'll make one if you really want – but the trend is my weight stair-stepping up across the years. The first year I was married, I gained about 40 pounds. Then I went on a high cost, we-feed-you plan and lost 50 pounds in a year. Then I got into a lousy job situation and gained back 60 in the next year. Then I stayed the same for a long time, probably six years, even while working in a restaurant. Then I got pregnant, gained 60 pounds, had the kid, lost 25 pounds, got pregnant again, gained another 60, had the second kid and never really lost any more. I stayed at the new higher weight for about eight years, went on a low carb diet, lost 35 pounds in 6 months and gained it back in 3 months, all while doing the hardest workouts of my life in the martial arts. I got divorced, gained 65 pounds due to: lack of exercise, getting a full time job for the first time since having kids, going out to eat with the new boyfriend, and acquiring sleep apnea. Last year, I tried a liquid diet, lost 30 pounds, stressed out and ate real food, and gained the 30 back.

I only hit the highlights, but in the midst of the big weight loss attempts, probably once every other month, I try a new plan and generally fizzle out. And every time I think, "Okay, my body has to stop here, this is really the most I can be," but I often manage to add some more weight. Holy cow!

And feel free to laugh, because I do. We've got to laugh at the crazy things we do to lost weight and the seeming futility of most of the plans we all have tried. Colette and I – and you if you'll share – would like to tell our stories of trying to fight the weight loss battle and (usually) losing. We'd like to commiserate about what doesn't work, so maybe we can all laugh a little and try not to worry so much about our slip-ups as we keep trying to get to our magic number, be it pounds or pants size.

I know there are people who have actually succeeded at losing weight and maintaining it. I'm sure you have advice for us. The advice probably has to do with portion control and overcoming emotional eating, right? Okay, share that advice. Let's have a discussion about what's worked for you and what hasn't, because the first diet is not the one that works. Nor is the second, third, or fourth, if I had to speculate, but maybe you finally got to your magic number and can stay there. Let us hear from you, too, because with weight loss, hope springs eternal.

Colette

Lucky me - I get to start this blog. My friend Noelle and I have decided to write this blog together. We are hoping to one day collect enough stories and viewpoints to put together a book with the same title. We are also hoping to have a laugh, find some motivation and give a kick in the pants now and then.

This post should be the only time I tell you my vital facts - including my weight. If I do it again, yell at me - LOUD.

I will call myself a 130 pound woman in a 185 pound body. (I can't believe I put that in writing.) Now 185 pounds is just not attractive on a woman who is 5'2". Trust me. 

I will say however that when I gained the weight I mostly considered that it was nice to have bigger than a B-cup bra (until I went for a fitting and letters like F & G were announced). I almost had a heart attack. I did however get a more comfortable bra & an idea that I might need to start dieting.

The problem is I HATE DIETING. I hate thinking about food and I love cherry coke. I consider it the best thing since sliced bread and pretty much use caffeine to make me a nicer person to be around. Every diet I've tried made me give up what I loved most - no wonder they didn't work. 

The thing is they didn't work for a ton of other reasons. AND I will tell you about them one day.