Eat Less, Move More

Yesterday, I went to have my blood drawn to test for diabetes/cholesterol/thyroid problems.
  So far, my diabetes came up normal and my cholesterol came up very good.  I apparently have  very high levels of HDLS, which are apparently the "good" cholesterols that help prevent the bad cholesterols from building up in the arteries.
I attribute this to 2 years now of staying mostly away from processed foods and sugars.
I am still waiting for my thyroid test back, which is kind of the most important of the three.  A part of me is kind of hoping that there is something wrong with my thryoid so they can give me pills and i'll be thin again.
It's not that I mind eating well and working out, it just seems to be so much damn work for such little return.  There are some weeks where I don't lose any weight at all, and this is frustrating, especially when I know I've done everything right.
All of this reminds me of an old MADTV skit that pretty much sums up the general attitude to weight loss that most people have.  I love it:

The Kirstie Alley Effect

I first started this blog with the intention of it becoming a beauty products news and review site. Hence, the name, Pretty Baby, which is what I will name my very own Beauty Supply store someday when I get around to growing up and becoming self-employed.
The blog lay fallow for months and months until I finally realized that I didn't know enough about beauty products anymore to write an interesting blog about them. I've been out of the beauty biz for too long now. For fuck's sake, I still think Glycolic acid is the wave of the anti-aging future..
I also realized that it doesn't really matter what you put on or do to your face if your body is a mess. It doesn't matter how beautiful your face is, really, if you happen to be overweight.
It's not right or good or fair, but it's the truth. I call this, The Kirstie Alley Effect. In case you don't know, Kirstie Alley is the beautiful actress from Cheers in the 1980's who has gained notoriety these past few years for letting herself get very fat:

Now, you will read any number of celeb gossip blogs, news stories, or other such nonsense regarding Kirstie's ever losing battle with her weight. I often notice, however, that nobody ever talks about what an amazingly gorgeous face the woman has. Or, if they do, it's always in the context of what a shame it is that she's gotten so portly and lost her looks. As if, somehow, her face mutated into a rubber pig mask or something when she got fat.

 

But the truth of the matter is, fat or no fat, Kirstie still is an amazingly beautiful woman.  And no one cares, because she's gained tons of weight.

The reverse of the Kirstie Alley Effect is, of course, the Jamie Lee Curtis Effect, wherein you can actually look like Clint Eastwood in the face, but people will still love you and call you hot because you happen to have a bangin' body:  

Other notorious instances of the Jamie Lee Curtis Effect would be actresses like Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Aniston, and Sarah Jessica Parker.  These women are often referred to as "beautiful" "hot" and "sexy" despite the fact  that the only thing they have going for them physically is a low BMI and a great personal trainer.

Sometimes, I personally feel like I suffer from the Kirstie Alley effect.  I used to jokingly refer to myself as having the face of a porn star and the body of a housewife when i was still thin.

Ha, if only I'd known then how true that would become later on, I might have actually put down the goddamn macaroni and cheese once in a while.

Sad story of the day

Today, I came across this really sad story on Divine Caroline of a woman who struggles with severe depression and obesity:
http://www.divinecaroline.com/24133/92534-bbw
Now, I want to point out that I 100% believe that the only way to combat the things that cause you sorrow in your life is to change the way you perceive and react to them.
I also believe that Morbid Obesity (like, obesity that has reached the point where you need to ride a cart around the store)is entirely self-inflicted and that you need to take responsibility for yourself if you want to correct it.
That said, I also want to add that this is the saddest story I've read all day, and it's a good reminder for me to be patient with people who seem to be victims of themselves (the morbidly obese, addicts, etc.) because you never know what events in their lives led them up to that point.

Why am I Not Shredded Yet??

6 days ago, I started doing the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred workout DVD.
I must say, it is quite challenging, despite the fact that the workout is only 20 minutes long. You do short intervals of cardio, abs, and strength exercises focusing on getting the most benefit for the shortest amount of time. The idea is that you do this workout daily, for 30 days to see maximum results.
Ideally, you want to move up from level one through to levels two and three as you progress.
I am still on level one. I haven't found this workout to be quite the killer that I was expecting it to be, but it is still no picnic.
So far, I haven't really seen any physical changes in my body, but we'll see how things look when I am at least 15 days in to it.

In other news, as of Dec.25th, I have only lost 5 lbs and an inch and a half. Not the stellar losses I have been expecting. I have to admit that it's a little discouraging being stuck at the same scale weight for 4 weeks now, even though I know that plateaus are common, especially as you begin to work out and build muscle.
I still haven't decided if it would be wiser to eat more or less right now in order to blast through this plateau.
In the past, I have tended to give up right as I hit a plateau. This time, I will perservere, tweaking my diet and fitness routines until I see positive results.
I also have to go get my blood drawn soon to see if I have any medical problems that may be contributing to my slow weight loss.
I hate having blood drawn.

Perspective

I don't really have anything to write about at the moment.. I just wanted to share this image..

Funhouse Mirror Eyes?

I've been thinking a lot about how fat I really look. A friend of mine who is into photography pointed me at a number of reasons why we all really do look fatter in photographs, and how, one should never use a poorly taken photo from an awkward angle to take it to mean we look fat to the rest of the world:

"there are several tricks to making the camera your friend: the 2D presentation means that depth is compromised (fotags try to recreate this with backlighting and shadowing) so when you're in front of the camera, keep in mind the phenomenon of ... foreshortening -whatever is closest to the camera looks the biggest (which is why I always stick my hips back and my chest out) This transition to 2D is also why we tend to look 20lbs heavier on film - we basically flatten as dimension is lost. Next, lighting, lighting, lighting - it can make an anorexic look fat and give bone structure to jabba the hut. Sadly, lighting that makes your skin look great (beauty lighting) usually destroys any bone structure if used alone. Posing, as lame as it is, is the best way to mitigate these effects other than post-production efforts. Models do a lot of contorting to highlight certain features, low light others, clean up lines (jaw and muffin tops), so that the image captured appears to have more dimension and movement than it actually does."

That said, I realize that my self-image issues regarding my weight have been there since about puberty and I don't think they are going to go away any time soon.
I spend a fair amount of time trolling the internet for photos of women who are also 5'4 and 175lbs.. I do this to see if they look fat to me (which they seldom do, admittedly).
In one of my more recent explorations into, "Do random women on the interent look fat to me?", I stumbled across a project that an aquaintance of mine has been working on for his amazing website: http://www.cockeyed.com . (link)< It is a photographic height/weight chart using images of real people, most of whom have submitted their own photos in to him.
It reminds me a lot of Fat Acceptance Movement Blogger Kate Harding's own (link) BMI Project.
What these two projects illustrate to me is that height, weight and the appearance of such, can vary dramatically from person to person.
I still haven't figured how fat *I* look to others. I don't know if I ever will.

Irony

I've spent the last week psyching myself up for going to the gym. I went out and bought two new fitness outfits and a new combo lock.
I pep talked myself, read fitness blogs, looked at photos of fitness models and got excited about getting into working out again.
Ironically, I did something strange to my lower back yesterday and now it hurts to stand up and even walk.
I guess the pep talks will have to continue for a while longer.

Shift of focus

I'm terrible about keeping up with blogs. I have the attention span of a housefly, coupled with extreme laziness.
However, I find that my weight loss journey completely stalled right around the time I went to Burning Man.
You see, I knew that I would not be able to manage what I ate very effectively in such a hostile environment. Who wants to think about how many sodas you've consumed when you're in the middle of the desert and your whole body is busy freaking out about theheat, sun, and dust storms?
I naturally assumed that this week of hardcore living might actually be good for the waistline, seeing as how food is usually fairly spartan in preparation and availability there and you ride your bike around everywhere.
Sadly, this Burning Man was also the year that we expirmented with storing meat in the deep freezer and bringing out a portable gas grill.
I gained 8 pounds while at Burning Man.
Shortly after Burning Man, I was surprised with a trip to Paris for my birthday, which included several fine dining experiences.
I sort of gave up trying to count and monitor what I ate at that point.
Life just... you know... gets in the way, sometimes.
Keeping a regular fitness regime is even harder for me, seeing as how I've always been sort of pre-disposed to long naps and bouts of excessive laziness.
So now, it's time for me to jump back into healthy routines and goal-setting.
I don't want to be obsessed here, but I also don't want to live with the same looming beast of obesity that my mother and granmother do.
I truly, deeply want to be that super energetic woman who truly loves working out and being physically active.
It's time to catalog what worked for me in the past and what didn't and see if I can make some sense of what I'm doing here, and what will work best in the future.
In a sense, I'm fortunate.. I have a max of 50 lbs I should lose, and only 30 to be considered within the "normal" range... This is a very small number when compared with the weight loss challenges some people face.

So, let's start with what's worked for me in the past:
1. Eating Clean.. making 70% or more of my meals consist of fresh fruits and veggies and/or whole grains. Cutting dairy down to 1 serving a day and meats to less than 3 times a week. Refraining from processed foods and refined sugars whenever possible
2. Bringing lunch to work so I know exactly how much is in what I'm eating
3. Moderate working out with an emphasis on strength training at least 3x a week
4. Counting everything that goes into my mouth. Not eating it if I don't know how to count it.
5. Staying active and interested in fitness, nutrition and weight loss communities online

What hasn't worked:
1. Gluten-free, Vegan, or No carb diets
2. Hoodia
3. Telling myself that appearance doesn't matter (it may not actually matter in the great grand scheme of things, but I'm kind of shallow, and it matters to me A LOT)
4. "Intuitive" eating. Sadly, my intuition tells me that it's ok to eat pizza and cheeseburgers every day.
5. Obsessive self-recrimination. Unsurprisingly, this is demotivating.

Oh baby, it's Haute Couture!

After reading Tanya Gold's article about how, at a UK size 16 (US size 14), she was not able to find any high end designer shops that carried her size, I became a bit obsessed with the idea of whether or not I could fit into a high end designer brand, or if I was "too fat for fashion" as well.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I generally despise the body image dictates and exclusivity of high fashion. I despise anything that sets women up for hating themselves because they don't look like what they see in the magazines.
I hate this entire culture of thin is in and curves are out, and I wonder about what it says about our society and the increasing masculinization of the feminine beauty ideal.
Who was it who decided that models needed to look like 12 year-old boys, anyway? The predominantly gay male designers, perhaps? Hmmmm, or maybe it's just that Anna Wintour has a sick anorexia fetish that she wishes to foist upon the entire world.
At any rate, I found myself becoming a traitor to my own cause as I pondered whether or not I could fit into a designer brand. Any designer brand. Truth be told, I wouldn't be able to tell a Versace from a Gaultier and would feel like a shallow twit if I could.
I basically know what the Chanel logo looks like, and that Chanel perfumes smell like bitches or old ladies and that's about it.
So I decided to start my quest with Dolce & Gabbana. Why? Because of this skirt:



I know nothing about Designer sizing. 29, 24, 22? What does that mean? Does that mean inches in waist? What if my hips are bigger than my waist? Is it in Centimeters?
I decided to err on the side of caution and grab a size 29, the biggest they had available.
I nervously wandered to the fitting room and pondered what it would mean to me if I could fit into this deliciously tacky skirt. At only $300 on sale, surely I would need to have it. Surely, it was a skirt to put all rockabilly chicks and Peggy Bundy wannabes to shame.
Surely, I would never fit into a $300 size 29 Dolce & Gabbana skirt.
Wiggle up the hips, and lo and behold, it was a size too big! Did you hear me world? IT WAS A SIZE TOO BIG!!!
Sadly, the bold animal print of the skirt also made my ass look enormous, as animal prints often do. I decided not to buy the skirt, after realizing that perhaps it made my butt look just a bit too ghetto fabulous to be considered in good taste.

The moral of this story is, just because you can fit into designer clothes does not mean they will look good on you.

Eyeballing Portion Sizes

If you've ever travelled to another country, you may have noticed how much smaller the portion sizes are there.
Americans like to point to any number of factors contributing to this country's soaring obesity rates, but the simple fact remains that we simply eat too much of the wrong kind of things.
I remember, when I began watching what I ate a year ago, I was utterly shocked at what an actual serving of cheese was supposed to be.
1oz? 1oz? That tiny bit of cheese is all I'm supposed to eat all day? I used to eat half a block at a time, just as a snack.



In just 20 years, the serving sizes have doubled, if not quadrupled in size. It's no wonder we are considered the fattest nation on earth.

When you are trying to watch what you eat, every bit of food you put in your mouth becomes not just food, but a breakdown of calories, fat grams, carbs, and portion size.
Going out to eat becomes an activity fraught with anxiety because you don't know how much butter they put in something, or whether or not that amount of mashed potatoes on your plate is about a cup's worth or a half cup.

It would be nice to say that it's better to not be neurotic about it and to just go ahead and sit back and enjoy the meal, but that's near impossible when you are crying yourself to sleep because you can't see your collarbone anymore.
After all, not paying attention to how much you were eating is what got you fat in the first place.
I have friends who suffer from eating disorders such as anorexia and they will tell you that even after they've recovered, they never do quite manage to give up counting calories or examining portion sizes.
I think about what I will do once I lose this last 20 pounds, and wonder if I will forever use a tablespoon to spread my peanut butter, because then I will know exactly how much I've used.
Perhaps this obsession with weight and food has replaced corsetry as the way in which society keeps women figuratively constrained.
Regardless of the negative moral or psychological connotations portion sizing and calorie counting may imply, it still cannot be argued that doing this is the single most important part of dieting. As such, the question still remains: What do you do when you're going out to eat? Do you bring measuring cups and spoons with you everywhere you go?
I hope not. How tacky would that be?
Instead, I've found that there are many ways in which you can eyeball your portions to make a relatively accurate guess as to what exactly something like 3oz of chicken breast is supposed to look like.
This website is a great start: http://weightloss.about.com/od/eatsmart/qt/eyeportions.htm
In the end, regardless of what Dr. Atkins or anyone else tells you, it still holds true that calories in, calories out is the only formula needed for successful weight loss.
I must admit, however, that I find the calories in part far more fun than the calories out. My next blog post will be about me going to the gym for the first time ever in my life. Stay tuned. There may be tears.