Freedom

I have just read a fascinating article in Lighter Life magazine about freedom. It basically suggests that we all need freedom to thrive but it is what we do with that freedom that determines the success of us as individuals.

With freedom comes choices and limitations, which translates as respnsibility and it is how we cope with responsibility as people that matters.

Observers suggest obesity has come about through capatalist excess, and this is true. The sheer amount of food choice available to us in our developed human societies and the choices available for a lack of exercise has esculated in a rising epidemic of obesity. (I’m thinking Wall*e here, I am going to see it this weekend) This is because we are not dealing with the responsibility that comes with freedom of choice and have gotten greedy (not literally but in terms of choice we want it all).

We hear so often in our society about people not taking responsibility: men not wanting to settle down, parents not making their children go to school, teens involved in knife crime, high unemployment, junk food addicts… people want the freedom that comes from a free society but not the limitations that brings with it.

I think in order to be successful in weight loss then we need to accept we have the freedom to eat healthily or not, but know that we need to impose limitations on ourselves to help the freedom and weightloss to thrive. If we eat junk then that will hinder our success. Think of weightloss as society and food as the people within that society. In any society you have good and bad people; good people are free to come and go as they please and live their lives. Bad people need to be restrained and locked up and only released when they are under control again. Think of good people as healthy food. You are free to eat healthy food and you need to restrain and keep locked up in the supermarket junk food (bad people) until we know it is under control. Its a slightly complicated metaphor but I think it works.

According to Abraham Maslow, a renowned psychologist, there are 7 steps to freedom:

1. Physical – food, water, warmth and sleep.
2. Safety needs – protection, security and comfort.
3. Love & belonging – friendship, family and sexual intimacy.
4. Self esteem – competence, achievement, recognition and respect.
5. Cognitive – knowledge, meaning and understanding.
6. Aesthetic – symmetry, order and beauty.
7. Self-Actualisation – creativity, problem solving, personal growth and acceptance of facts.

I actually think that when we do not fulfil these needs within ourselves then we become lost in what it means to be who we are, we lose the ability to deal with choices that come with freedom in the right way and we become obese, and fail to keep ourselves happy. I think this is where the saying you need to sort the rest of your life out first and then weightloss will happen comes from. Of course I dont think it is as simple as that and you can lose weight and have that develop the self esteem to enable you to use your freedom wisely, but it certainly explains where I am coming from when I say obesity is a mental disorder.

Not So Bad For Us

I am sitting here with a glass of water revelling, nay, basking in the glory that I have the loss of weight under control again. I woke up to another pound down today – 14.6, or 202lbs. I am so happy with this. My stomach is so much flatter but I think that is in part because I came on yesterday. I am so excited for the time when I have lost enough that it becomes noticable. I think the first time around it was at about 20lbs loss but hopefully as I have less to lose now it will be more dramatic sooner. Maybe wishful thinking, though!

This time starting dieting is such a different experience for me. I was morbidly obese, very alone, agoraphobic, living at my mums in a very stressful situation and having about 20 panic attacks a day. If I can manage to lose weight in that environment then frankly there is loads of hope for me now. I live in my own place, don’t have panic attacks or agoraphobia, have a very hectic weekend social life and am only just classed as ‘obese’ (3bmi away from overweight) and I have lots of friends. There is no reason whatsoever for me not to manage it now. Weightloss is not easy, as we all know, and it is a complete battle of the mind, but we also know how rewarding the results can be. THIS is what excites me.

For the record, not that this matters to me one way or the other but is good to have a record of, I am not using Xenical this time. This weightloss is completely natural. I mean it was natural last time, it bugs me when people assume it is not because of the pills, but you just have a helping hand kicking your habits into place. Critics of weightloss pills say the weight will all go back on afterwards or you’ll always rely on the tablets or you don’t learn proper eating habits and while I would agree this is the case with Reductil (which I did try once), it certainly is not the case with Xenical. Xenical is ALL about teaching good eating habits. But even so I am not going to use it just because I can. It was there and very beneficial to me at a time when all other avenues had failed me. I am not in the desperate situation now that I was in then and in some ways that will make weightloss harder but in other ways, easier.

Some people struggle to exercise when trying to lose weight and that holds them back but with me it is food I struggle with. I love food. I am a ganit. I am not fussy, will eat almost anything and in large portions too. Portion size has been the struggler for me. But cutting out bad foods too. Cheese, bread, ice cream, cakes, crisps, chocolate… you name it! I do find it easier to cut out than have in moderation though, and I feel healthier too. So this slightly unorthodox article by Amanda Ursell informing us of bad-foods-that-can-be-good really caught my eye. She tells us the nutritional benefits of red meat, white bread, kebabs, ice cream and butter! Articles like this should come with a warning to be taken with care. It’s all good knowing these can occassionally be ‘not so bad’ for us, but I do worry that some people will take the article literally and use it as an excuse to live on those foods, which would obviously not be sound health advice. But if you read between the lines, Amanda does make this very clear. Personally, I like the idea of ice cream for dessert every night (I actually started losing weight doing this last year!) and do eat red meat for the iron, but I am going to steer clear of white bread I think…

The Future Looks Bright

Today’s weight: 15.1
Yesterday’s weight: 15.3
Points consumed yesterday: 19.5 out of 24 (4 banked)
Exercise yesterday: none

I am in sooo much pain right now. I was hoping that my sciatica would heal over night but it has gotten worse. I couldn’t exercise yesterday because it hurt so much and today is going to be no different. I am going crazy not being able to exercise!!

I digress, on to better things.

I had a fantastic first day on weightwatchers and my weigh in this morning thankfully reflects this. I do have a voice in my head telling me to now sabotage it but I am ignoring that and am going to have a fantastic second day. I am excited to see how much I will weigh on Monday as that is my weigh in day. I am already down 3lbs.

I did wake up in the night dehydrated and wanting to eat so I had 3 buttom mushrooms and went back to sleep. Yay!

If you’re anything like me you will have loads of trouble trying to consume 8 glasses of water per day. But apparently you don’t need to. According to this article on the BBC, we do not need to drink plain water to get our fluids. Yay. Good sensible news at last!

Some Thoughts

I weighed in at 14.12, or 208lbs, or 94.5kg. I didn’t end up doing a proper weigh in coz I am lazy. I will do one some time this week, possibly tomorrow or Friday. I have decided to have a proper weigh in once a month now because my rate of loss is much slower I just don’t feel I need to declare my weight on a weekly basis. I will still weigh in most days and update my sidebar accordingly.

Although my previous lowest weigh in was 14.13, I did go up to 15.3 again. The day I left for London (Friday) I weighed 15.2 so I have in fact lost 4lbs in 4 days of being in London. I only really ate my meals when I was up there but I did consume a lot of bread so I am hoping to reduce that again this week. I wish I could do without bread entirely but when I do I get obsessed with rice crackers and end up consuming more. And I am not inventive enough to come up with alternatives the whole time. I might have another go at making sushi this week.

I have just walked my son to school and I jogged half way home! Outside. In public. Heh. After how weak I felt in the gym yesterday I am taking every opportunity to raise my game. I also want to get into the low 14’s and late 13’s. It is funny, now I am in the 14’s firmly I am allowing myself to dream of the 13 stone era. I have a way to go yet but it is so much closer than it ever was and it is so exciting. I am also looking set to weigh under 200lbs by Christmas/New Year. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I am really starting to fall in love with my figure, possibly for the first time in my life. I guess because I was so big I can fully appreciate how far I have come. I love that my figure is more a straight highway than a short bumpy road with lots of twists and turns.  I love how I can do so much more with my body now I have lost a lot of the excess weight. I love how I can look so much better in clothes and wear clothes I couldn’t dream of wearing in the past. I love the attention I am getting, and how I am treated so much differently.

Colleen Nolan from Loose Women was saying yesterday that she has lost 3 stone now and people treat her so much better. But not only that she is getting more offers of work now she has lost weight. People used to tell me I was imagining it when I would say I would be treated badly for being fat. Or if I wasn’t imagining it then I was paronoid because how can I possibly know it is because I am fat? But believe me, if you are being treated badly for being fat then you know about it. And I feel completely justified in those feelings now because I am treated absolutely differently these days.

There is a guy I have known for ages, years. We met online but met in real life in 2002 once. I was pretty fat then (about 18 stone) but he was cool. We had fun for a few days (purely platonic) but the last few days he has seen pictures of me at my current weight and keeps making remarks about me in a romantic light. I am not interested in him in the slightest in that way, I never have been. But it is kind of a little bit offensive that he is only seeing me in this light now, when we have known each other 6 years. I am the same person I always was. Well up to an extent. I guess personality does change with weightloss, but it is not my personality he has been commenting on. He is not the only one. I have lots coming out of the woodwork who have strangely been rather quiet the last five years or so, and lots of newbies too. Anyone who says weight is not the be all and end all is clearly deluded.

***

I walked up the slope from Waterloo East train station yesterday over to the main station, something I haven’t done since I was at my fattest. It used to be quite an ordeal getting up there. On shows that enable people to lose weight they always use bags of sugar or lard to express how much a person loses and I always thought that was not true. While it probably was the same weight for weight, it was different carrying it. But walking up that hill and noticing just how much easier it was I realised I really have lost 58lbs of lard.

***

The governement/media have come up with yet another angle to berate obesity. Apparently, being obese drastically increases your risk of dying in childbirth. Now I know childbirth while fat is not the nicest experience as I talked about before, but the BBC article in question says that “More than half the 295 women who died [in the UK] during or after pregnancy between 2003 and 2005 were overweight or obese.” But then later on the article actually states that “Fifteen per cent of the mothers who died were morbid or super-morbidly obese.” So over 35% were”just” obese as opposed to “morbid” or “super-morbid”, which actually suggests it is more dangerous to have a BMI of 30-39 in pregnancy than 40+! At least if you are going to write an article with dramatic headlines make your piece stand up. LOL

Fat People Making Babies

According to this article moves are being made to stop fat people from conceiving through IVF. Currently people with a BMI of 35 or higher are not able to qualify. This may come as a surprise but I don’t think the BMI cut off is lower and I am in favour of lowering it to 30.

When I was younger I could fall pregnant as soon as look at someone I fancied. Okay, not quite, but it often felt like that! But when my weight crept up to 15 stones I went through a stage of trying to fall pregnant for about a year without any luck at all. I gave up trying in the end, putting it down to a couple of possible factors. It could have been the abortion I had or it could have been the fact that I was clinically obese. I didn’t really think of my weight as having that much bearing back then so blamed it on the former. But I recently read that obesity reduces fertility by as much as 78% so it is highly likely fat was the cause of my being baron.

Since then I decided that I didn’t want any more children but I think it was a defense mechanism because I didn’t think I could have them. The last year or so I have started wanting them again, it is obviously my body clock ticking away. I am not in a position for this to happen anyway as I am single but the feeling does intensify with each passing month.

I can only imagine how heart wrenching it must be to be desperate for children when you cannot conceive naturally. Especially if you do not have children. Even more so if you are obese. As if you don’t feel confident or successful enough in life, the one thing that is available to all women out there is taken away from you. But I maintain that I do not think obese people should be having IVF.

My main reasoning is that if being obese reduces fertility by 78%, then losing weight will save you a lot of financial and emotional pain – not to mention make you much healthier. But also as someone who has given birth as a fat person, I know only too well how traumatic it is.

When I fell pregnant I was 11 stone (154lbs), when I was 9 months pregnant I was 14.10 (206lbs – less than I am now but still fat!) and after I’d given birth I weighed 13 stones (182lbs). They say first births are horrific, particularly when induced, and mine was certainly that. I started feeling pain at 11am on Tuesday morning and gave birth on Wednesday morning at 03.15am, and I was pushing for the last 45 minutes. My son came out blue and almost died. My sister’s first birth six weeks later by comparison was over in 2 hours. She was normally 8 stone and 11 at her heaviest. There has to be a link there somewhere. Her muscles would have been more prepared for labour and her general fitness would have played a part too.

I have always said, and stand by, the fact that I would never get pregnant while overweight again. I just wouldn’t put myself through such a labour again. I think if you’re getting pregnant while obese you are putting yourself in unnecessary danger. Plus if you lose weight, eat healthier and exercise this is bound to have a positive impact on your fetus. It’s not even an IVF issue, it’s a pregnancy issue.

Good to be Fat

Apparently, “it is good to be fat”, according to an American study into weight issues. At least, that is what the Independent are saying.

If you are mildly overweight (which is not “fat” by any stetch, is it? Newspapers love their dramatic headlines!) you have a LESSER chance of morbidity than the underweight, obese and even the normal weight amongst us.

“The take-home message is that the relationship between fat and mortality is more complicated than we tend to think,” said Katherine Flegal, the lead researcher. “It’s not a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all situation where excess weight just increases your mortality risk for any and all causes of death.”

At last some intelligent insight into the whole issue. You can read the article in full here.

Cancer Down To Obesity

The media were always going to be critical of the obese. I think of it as an opposing political party, we – the general public – point out their flaws in promoting Size Zero and they point out that we are just a bunch of apathetic, fat, unintelligent layabouts who have nothing better to do that watch/listen/read the banality they produce. Of course, this is mass generalisation on both sides but believe me, these viewpoints do exist.

I don’t believe you can be healthy or of optimum health if you are obese. I saw a statement that said “You can be healthy at any size” and someone commented that you should add something along the lines of if you are obese/disabled whatever then ill health is not always a by product of your girth. I don’t believe you can be healthy as an obese person because you cannot move around as well as a normal weight person (although admittedly you can be fitter than a lazy slim person) and you are putting abnormal strain on all your vital organs. And while if you are ill it *may* not be down to being fat alone, there is a good chance that your recovery rate would be quicker if you do not have half your body weight floating around your midriff.

So with these viewpoints in mind it was interesting for me to be exposed to the obesity “project” the government and therefore the media have taken upon themselves. We have been told for months and months how being fat is bad. And we have to do something now before the world is destroyed by the fatties!! (Something that has been picked up by Pixar, no less.)

It was when all media channels in the UK picked up that Obesity More Risk Than Smoking for Cancer that made me stand up and take notice. Just the week before it had been reported that Obesity can shorten your life by 13 years, whereas smoking will “only” shorten it by ten years. Now this. As if telling us that the NHS will not operate on the obese or smokers until they quit their addiction, and how a 30-stone woman couldn’t go into hospital because the floor would not hold her was not scary enough. (So 2 15 stone women could not stand on the same floor of the hospital? Or four normal weight people? Please!) But now there were reports that if you over eat you are basically giving an open invite to the cancer cells to bed down and multiply. ‘Oh no!’, I thought, ‘given that the average person in the UK is a size 16 (one size smaller than my current size) that is going to be some burden for the NHS.’ But then I realised that is the point of these drama-induced reports. The NHS is bleeding (ha!) money (as I am sure are American hospitals) and needs to plaster (haha!) over the cracks in any way they can. So why not target the vulnerable? Well I guess if you are using a hospital you are vulnerable in some way or other. But still. If in doubt, blame the fatties. These reports saying nothing of who funded the reports. It doesn’t even acknowledge that if you smoke, you are directly abusing your lungs. This post explains what I am trying to say far better than I could ever hope to. It just seems to me that the obese are the last group of people it is okay to discriminate against.

But again I want to reiterate I do not think it is okay to be obese and it is certainly not physically or mentally healthy. My point is just that does not make it okay to ridicule those that struggle with their weight. I know the news reporting is not ridiculing the fatties, but their constant finger pointing is bound to lead to ridiculing by the healthy general public onto the obese out there. They should be setting an example. I guess they think they are in “tackling” obesity but there are right and wrong ways of going about things, and highlighting points made about obesity causing cancer by a research that is funded by a diet company is not really the right way of going about it. It takes me back to my first point about the media viewing fatties as “a bunch of apathetic, fat, unintelligent layabouts who have nothing better to do that watch/listen/read the banality they produce”.

Obesity More Dangerous Than Smoking

A new report has been released in the UK that says obesity is more dangerous than smoking. It reports that while smoking can reduce life by up to ten years, obesity can take 13 years off a persons life.

This is not telling me anything I did not know. Okay, so I wasn’t aware of the specific timelines but it was always very obvious just how much harm being obese does to a person. In fact, the main reason I started to lose weight was that I’d become seriously worried about my future and the fact that if I continued on the same path them I would not have one.

I’ve always likened the addiction of smoking to that of over eating. I think they are very similar addictions in terms of how hard it is to change. They both require lifestyle changes. Where a smoker can give up but may still have friends who smoke around them, an over eater cannot diminish food from their life entirely, either. And it is always going to be something they have to fight on a daily basis for the rest of their lives.

In light of this new report Sky News had two guest speakers on yesterday morning to discuss the growing obesity problem. One was a health minister type person and the other a LDN radio DJ. The minister type person was saying that this takes understanding and government action. The DJ said we live in a nanny state already and what was needed was for people to take individual responsibility. I think his words were something to the effect of fat people are greedy and lazy and need to stop eating pies and get up off their bums and start exercising. Apparently we as a nation have got fat because we dont watch what we eat. And, get this, we need to ostrisize (sp) fat people because until we do fatties won’t be motivated to do anything about it. His reasoning was that people stopped smoking when society turned smokers into social lepers and the same will happen if we do it to fat people, because they get fat too much sympathy. The minister type woman said that this will only make the problem worse and they need sympathy not discrimination.

It is a difficult one. What came to mind was that neither of them understood why people get obese. It’s because they use food as a crutch, an emotional tool. Because they know no other way of coping. Show me an obese person and I will show you emotional problems tied in with their food. I agree with both parties in some ways though. I don’t think obesity should ever be accepted. It is a strong health risk and it diminishes a persons quality of life substantially. But neither do I think fat people deserve to be ridiculed and discriminated against. They get enough of that already (being fat is the last discrimination that is accepted by society). But something has got to give. There is only so much a government can do and at some point the individual does need to take personal responsibility. I guess there should be programmes aimed at helping people to do this – like counselling. Something which in the UK is very hard to gain access to on the NHS.

Jack Osbourne on Weightloss

I was reading a magazine at the gym today where Jack Osbourne was asked if he felt proud of himself for losing weight.

He responded with ‘not really… I mean, I’d feel proud if I saved a baby from a burning building or something… but for getting off my lazy arse and getting my health back…? Not so much…’

I’m paraphrasing of course, because I don’t have the magazine with me but I liked his point that it is something we should do anyway, without self congratulation.

But on the other hand when you are fat it *is* a task and a half getting yourself back in shape and staying that way. And you deserve all the praise you get when you do this…

…

I am in the process of packing as I am moving tomorrow (if I disappear for a few days it is because I am waiting for my phone to be connected up). Whilst packing I got out a pair of jeans to box up. These are jeans I bought about two years ago but have never worn them because I couldn’t get them past my bum! Well I decided to try them on and not only did they go all the way up but I was able to do them up and sit down in them too!! They are still a tad tight but it’s something that I have come so far in such a short space of time! I am seeing changes daily now.

Benefit of Exercise

People believe the advice of ‘30 minutes gentle exercise per day’ constitutes walking to the car, according to this BBC article. How funny. While this is valuable exercise to the more mobility-challenged among us, most people need to do more than walk to the car and back.

I am renowned for being lazy. I have had small spurts of energy in the past that saw me getting out the Tae-Bo DVD, or sporadically joining the gym only to waste a membership on not attending. But then I wasn’t serious about weightloss then: I am now.

When I first started to want to lose weight this time I had it in my mind that I would eat 1500 calories per day, while doing no exercise and after a year I would be a svelte, healthy individual. But alas alack, life is not that easy. If it were I’d never have gotten fat in the first place.

I tried for a few days to manage what I was eating on its own without exercise but it just didn’t work. So I talked to myself and asked how I could get into this weightloss malarky. In the past exercise has always reduced my appitite so I knew if I started exercising, and keep it going this time, then everything else should fall into place.

I started going to a gym. I was reluctant on so many levels. I was fat and would be judged. I was agoraphobic and didn’t think I could manage a public space. I was prone to panic attacks and scared that if my heart went faster by working out then I would collapse and die from a heart attack. But I also knew that if I didn’t do something, I would collapse and die of a heart attack anyway. Eventually. And I knew that the reasons for my reluctance were not reason enough to claim back my health. So what if someone judges me for being fat? They’ve been doing that for years and I have survived it. And anyway in truth they probably respect me for making the effort… as for the agoraphobia I knew if I kept going out that it would get easier so not going out was not a sensible thing to do and I told myself many people exercise every day and do not have a heart attack so it is highly unlikely that I will. At first I was obsessed by the heart monitor but eventually I stopped looking. All the hurdles I was putting on myself in terms of going to the gym were surmountable, and I knew it.

So I went with the view that I will eat what I want as long as I work out. Within a couple of sessions I was telling myself I will eat what I want but make healthy choices and exercise and then after about 1-2 weeks I was watching everything I ate and exercising – and beginning to lose weight.

Of course it helped that I had the weightloss nurse, the Xenical and the gym instructor to be accountable to but the fact that I was soon back on track with my weightloss showed just how powerful exercise was.

Then I had a shoulder injury and had to take what turned out to be 6 days off the gym and my body started craving bad food again, so I forced myself to the gym even though I was still in pain and all cravings disappeared.

Don’t get me wrong, I too have days – weeks sometimes – where I do not want to work out, I am only human after all. Sometimes I dread the cross trainer from the time I leave the gym until the next time I arrive but I keep going. Not because I am a martyr but because I know if I don’t the only person I am hurting is myself. In addition to weightloss, going to the gym has helped me go down 2-3 dress sizes in 2 months, it has increased my confidence, cured my agoraphobia, panic attacks and mental health issues, increased my mobility and my cardiovascular health has really gone through the roof. Inside my chest feels sooooooo much better. I never thought it was an issue but as I get fitter I really feel the difference. I don’t get puffed out anywhere near as easily and can do so much more with my body. All of this makes every minute suffered in the gym (if you want to see it as suffering, I prefer to think of it as improving my health) worth it, x1000.

Rosabel pointed out the other day that we have the wrong approach to exercise. Exercise is mainly seen as a way to lose weight, not a necessity for general health. I know when I was at school I HATED exercise with a passion but I really think that is down to how it was sold to us from the teachers and school (plus my family hating it). We *had* to do 2 sessions per week because we *needed* exercise. The thought that exercise could be fun was never entertained by anyone. It became a chore and the real sport was in coming up with a good enough excuse to get out of it (I still wonder why having a period was reason enough to sit out!) And school sports were competitive, it was all about the winning and many children who would not be likely to win were encouraged to leave it to those at the top of their sport. This was esculated by the annual sports day event. The only thing I ever did was the egg and spoon race!

I agree with Rosabel that it needs to be instilled in kids – from a very young age – that exercise is good, fun and necessary for good health. I think it doesn’t help that we live in a cold climate where outdoor activities are not encouraged, I’ve always admired Australia for it’s mentality to exercise and the outdoors.

Exercise doesn’t mean you have to slave away in a gym. You can take a walk, jog in your local park, take the kids on excursions in the holidays, spring clean the house more often, hopscotch, skip, buy and use dumbells, get off the bus a stop earlier, leave the car at home when you pop to the shop… anything, you just need to be creative to get your body to move!