‘The Biggest Loser’ and An Honest Look At My Struggle…

“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” Psalm 139: 14-16 (KJV)

Ok, so I have no idea how truly honest this is going to be, but it’s how I feel about it right now. I’m not sure I’ve worked to the bottom of my “stuff” Jillian Michaels style, so maybe I’m not really being honest with myself. I have no idea.

Speaking of Jillian, for the first time ever, I’ve been watching and following the entire current season. Although, since we don’t own a TV, I have to watch all the episodes on Hulu a WEEK after everyone else has seen them. But if you see tonight’s episode, please, please don’t tell me who goes home. I don’t want to know. Personally, I think it will either be O’Neal or Ashley. Or maybe Sam since he’s already so freakin’ thin. Or maybe Victoria, although probably not since, even if she’s in the bottom two, she won’t be voted off since she hasn’t been there as long as anyone else and people will want her to be able to stay. Or maybe I simply have no clue. And don’t even ask me about who will win. I have no favorites anymore- they all got voted off. Stephanie, Melissa, Lance, they’re all gone. Yes, I said Melissa. And as an extension of her, Lance as well. Yes, I know she was a total, somewhat ruthless “game player” and in the end it did come back to bite her. But she was also the one I identified with the most. For some reason. Maybe because she was a redneck from way it in the boondocks, 60 miles from a gym. Yep, that’s probably it.

My guesses for the Final Four are probably Sunshine, though she’s definitely never been a favorite of mine- something about that father/daughter relationship kinda creeps me out. Maybe Koli, even though he bugs the tar out of me with his thinking EVERYONE is a game player just because they don’t lose double digits every week like he does (Stephanie was so NOT a game player). Maybe Mike, whom I think, particularly when he gets down to his goal weight, is a total ladies man and will be really good-looking. Not that that has anything with being in the Final Four. And my last pick would probably have to be either Daris or Sam. Don’t know why. Probably just because I don’t see anyone else who has a good chance of making it these last weeks without being in the bottom two and getting voted off.

Oh well, all purely speculative guessing.

Now to me, the hard part of this post. The Biggest Loser has alternately made me feel frustrated, inspired, and depressed. Frustrated because, well, I guess I figure I could lose weight like that too if I had 24-hour access to a gym, trainers, a pool, and just myself to think about. But I don’t have any of those things. Inspired because, hey, if those folks, some of whom are much larger than I am, can lose that much so can I. Depressed for all the reasons I mentioned being frustrated over and feeling like I’m not being able to do a thing about it.

I’ve consciously thought about and struggled with my weight since the age of 8 or 9. I was never a chubby kid, though never a skinny one either, but then I hit that pre-adolescent stage where I was “wide”, the only way I can think to describe it. I think a lot of girls hit that point, right before they get their growth spurt in their height and then everything evens out after a few years. For me, though I may have evened out somewhat, I stayed pretty solid. I had stretch marks on my thighs and backside by the time I was 12. I easily weighed 125 by the time I was 13. 150 by 14. I don’t remember ever being cellulite-free from the age of 12.

When I was 13, my family moved to the farm and, since the oldest of my younger brothers was only 5ish, my sisters and I became our dad’s “boys”. I have 6 sisters and 3 brothers, by the way, just for future reference. We helped with pretty much everything. Baling hay, milking the cows, driving tractor, tearing down fences, putting up other fences (the farm was in disrepair when we moved there and we pretty much remodeled it completely), hoeing beans, chopping silage, etc., etc. None of this made me any thinner, just added to my muscle mass. I was in good shape, just not skinny. Never skinny, always soft around the edges. Story of my life.

When I speak of my teen years, I should add that I had a very, shall we say, “stressful” childhood. The “stress” only elevated as I moved further into my teens. By the time I was 15 I could cook a full meal for our entire family, clean the house, look after the younger children, and do it all at the same time. Just like an adult. Not that any of that was a bad thing, but I had many responsibilities, few privileges. I rarely got to do any teenager things. Let’s just say I grew up very quickly. I don’t want to go into too much detail or say too much about the “stress” because anyone can read this blog and I don’t want to stir up past grievances and rehash them with certain people.

But all that too say, I have to believe that all that “stress” had to something to do with the way I ate. I can’t really remember how I ate, although I do remember my mom telling me to take smaller portions, or if I was a stress eater. Really, I don’t distinctly remember too much from before the age of 17 or so. But I’m sure everything in my life did affect my eating and, in turn, my weight.

A combination of all the work on the farm and being home schooled meant that I never got into the habit or routine of working out. I remember rollerblading for a couple of weeks during the summer I was 16 because my Oma told me she would pay me $20 if I lost 10 pounds before my uncle’s wedding the end of August of that year. $20 was a fortune to me, since I rarely got paid for my work on the farm and when I did I was supposed to cover the cost of my shoes and clothes, etc. So I rollerbladed and lost the weight, though I seemed to plateau at about 11 pounds. But I got my $20 and then I quit rollerblading. Probably partly because fall and winter in Michigan aren’t conducive to good rollerblading. At least that’s my excuse, haha.

Fast forward to the age of 18 (because, really, this is getting a lot longer and much more detailed than I had planned on). I was no longer living at home. I was working on another farm, putting in 10-12 hour days, although this time I was getting paid pretty good for it. The work was somewhat different and somewhat the same as what I had been doing on my parent’s farm. It definitely wasn’t a sedentary job. By this time I had been bouncing around 200 pounds for a couple of years.

But there was something special about this job though. It’s where I met my JD Man. I met him my first day there in February, we became friends, eventually seeing each other every day when I started working full-time, and then he {finally} told me he liked me in November. We started dating and by March of the next year, 30 pounds had melted off. And I’m serious about the melting off part. It required absolutely no effort on my part. Though, I have heard from other women that this kind of easy weight loss is not unusual in an exciting new relationship. Other factors that I think helped include just plain not eating that much (hey, I was falling in love, I was so buoyed up on hormones and excitement that I didn’t really need to eat a lot to not feel hungry) and the fact that it was winter time and I worked out in the cold almost all day, 6 days a week. I burned, or rather, shivered off a ton of calories.

We got engaged in May and I managed to keep most of the weight I had lost off until the wedding in October, gaining back maybe 5 pounds, putting me at about 185 pounds on our wedding day. 185 may sound like a lot to you, but it’s an awesome weight for me. It’s my goal weight. Yeah, I’m another one of those women who wants to be back at her “wedding weight.” I ran a BMI calculation on that weight not too long ago and it gave me a 28.1, almost into the “obese” zone. Which just confirms my belief that the Body Mass Indicator is a crock since it only uses one’s height and weight to determine a number, totally ignoring muscle mass and the fact that muscle weighs more than fat.

That is me at 185, people, and I am not ashamed of it. Look how skinny I am! Sure, at the time I know I wanted to lose more, but now I wish I had just been happy with that and enjoyed looking relatively normal, opposed to the “fat lady” image I now have of myself.

So we got married and I did what I felt peer pressure to do: got on birth control. Now I wish I had never done that, but that we just had figured something else out. I took my first pill the Sunday before our wedding and a month later I had gained 10-15 pounds. I don’t fully place the blame on the BC, since some weight gain is not unusual when newlywed, but I know it played a big part. After our wedding, I also started only working half days, since we were still remodeling our house and I wanted to be able to work on that and just get settled in. Still, I was milking the 4:45-10:00 a.m. shift and that involved 5+ hours of almost constant motion, walking, stepping down, “foam” the udder, step up, walk to the next cow, step down, rinse, wipe, and test strip each tit (because no self-respecting milker would call them “teats”), put the milker on, and repeat, mixing up the steps as necessary. It wasn’t like I wasn’t getting any exercise.

I got off the Pill after only 4 or 5 cycles of use, for various reasons. It was seriously messing with my cycles and we were ok with either using condoms or getting pregnant. Even though I was actively trying to lose that 15 pounds I had gained after the wedding, I gained another 10-15 pounds when I went off the Pill, putting my weight somewhere in the 215-220 range. And then, you guessed it, within 8 weeks of going au naturale, G was conceived. I quit the milking job when I was almost through my first trimester, but kept my other part-time bridal shop job. I know I could have milked a lot longer, but JD Man just had a thing about not wanting me to milk any further than the first trimester. Milking cows can be pretty dangerous if you think about it, though we get pretty good at dodging kicks, and every pregnant couple just have “things” that they don’t feel comfortable or safe about. Milking was JD Man’s. And honestly, after having the same early morning shift for 2 years, I was sick of the hours.

So, of course, they tell you not to diet during pregnancy. Well, I often wonder if I shouldn’t have. I had minimal morning sickness, staying in bed a whole half a day out of my whole pregnancy. So obviously, I didn’t lose the 15 pounds of weight that many women lose through puking all day, every day for the first 12-20 weeks. I ballooned instead. I walked several times a weeks all summer long, honestly and truly tried to eat right. I even biked some before I got too ungainly. But, by the time G was born, I weighed in at 290 pounds, having gained 70 pounds during my pregnancy. My midwife didn’t say too much about it, just encouraged me to keep eating right, drinking my water, and getting my walks in. She serves as a home birth midwife for many Old Order Mennonite and Amish women and it just seems that we German women sure know how to gain weight during pregnancy, especially with all the Pennsylvania Dutch cooking that is done. So my weight gain was really nothing too extraordinary to her. Thank goodness- I can only imagine how I would have fared with the average OB and his/her charts.

15 months after being at such a great weight at our wedding, I weighed over 100 pounds more. Talk about depressing. Of course, I lost 15 pounds in baby and water weight at delivery. But, I’ve said it to my friends and I’ll say it here, besides that 30 pounds that melted off when JD Man and I started dating, that 15 pounds I lost after 26 hours of labor, 6 of those being transition, were the easiest 15 pounds I’ve ever lost. At least, post-delivery. Since December 2008, I’ve lost about 30 pounds, currently bouncing between 260 and 265 pounds (40.3 BMI, by the way). You have no idea how often I’ve gained and lost that blankity-blank-blank 5 pounds.

Sure, had I gained the average 30-40 pounds of pregnancy weight, I’d be feeling pretty good about that weight loss, but I don’t. In 16 months, I haven’t even lost half of what it took me 9 months to gain. I’d be extremely happy to get to my pre-pregnancy weight, never mind my wedding weight.

Which brings me to my current dilemma. Yes, finally, after hearing the story of my entire life, I’m getting to the here and now.

In case you were wondering, no, I do not take good self-portraits. Should blurred out my face or maybe my whole head as it’s just weird.

As you can see, I am a classic example of the pear-shaped female body. When I lose weight, I lose my boobs before anything else. Seriously, I’ll be down to a B cup before I lose anything off my hips. I wore an A cup bra under my wedding dress AND my bustier-suck-everything-in-strapless-longline-bra type thing, just so I could fill out the top of my dress out without getting it altered.

For the last 6-7 months I have really been struggling. People say to give yourself 9 months to lose the pregnancy weight since it took 9 months to get there. I tried. I really did. I still am. But it really feels like nothing I’ve done so far has worked.

Diet

We try to eat very healthy. No, not low-low cal and sugar-free since we feel like those kinds of foods contain more bad ingredients than they’re worth but, I try to shop mainly for whole ingredients and make almost everything from scratch. An average week’s grocery shopping will include maaaaaaaaybe 2 canned items. The only other packaged and/processed foods we eat are dairy products, salad dressing/sandwich spread, summer sausage, the occasional pepperoni, and tortillas (because I haven’t had very good luck with the homemade tortillas). I bake all of our bread, using a lot of whole wheat and oatmeal, and at the very least, unbleached, unbromenated (sp?) white flour. I try to avoid even those homemade carbs, eating very few sandwiches and a lot of salads or wraps for my lunches. Sweets and baked goods, besides bread, happens less than once a week, ice cream almost never. And I love me some ice cream. It’s literally been months since I’ve eaten anything of the type. And you should know we Mennonites (yep, even the ex-Mennonites) love our deserts. Traditionally, something sweet follows every evening meal, accompanied by coffee for the adults. Not in this house! We rarely buy sugary drinks and pop, particularly since those are one of my weaknesses, along with salad (ranch or blue cheese) dressing. Chips are limited to when we’re having company and I’m serving pizza or stromboli. We eat meat somewhere between 4 and 5 times a week, depending on the recent meat sales at the grocery store and what’s in the freezer. Rice, potatoes, or eggs (breakfast for supper) usually make up the rest of our evening meals. We go out to eat, including fast food, less than once a month.

So basically, I eat very little sugar and few carbs. I get my fruits and veggies during the day when I eat alone, not to mention any salad that accompanies our main supper dish.

But probably what really screws things up is when I eat. I don’t eat breakfast, not often at least. Generally, if I eat before 10 a.m., I feel gross and blah. So I eat a salad or leftovers as sort of an early lunch. A few hours later, maybe I’ll have a banana, a slice of bread, etc. And then JD Man comes home and we eat supper together, usually not until after 8 p.m. And that, I know, is a big no-no. But, other than the very blurred vision I see of him leaving in the morning, this is the only time I get to see him and, maybe it’s just a bad habit, but I’m not going make a nice supper and then sit and watch him eat it.

Exercise

Probably the reason I’m fat. I don’t get enough of it.

I’ve always hated to run ever since I was a kid, now particularly because I can only imagine what I must look like, all jiggly and sloppy. Never mind the fact that I feel like I’m coughing up blood.

I did ‘The 30-Day Shred’ for almost 2 weeks before succumbing to what I can only guess to be shin splints. All I know is that my shins HURT! And not just the muscles-adjusting-to-stress pain either. Like major, sore to the touch, sore-even-when-I’m-not-touching-it hurting. Yeah, yeah, I know sounds like a huge excuse, right? Well, maybe it is, but with the pain just got steadily worse and worse without getting better, I cut back to doing The Shred every other day and it still got worse. And being the all or nothing person I am, I just quit. And maybe that’s my problem- I quit too easy. But this bad experience is why I haven’t bought anymore workout DVDs to try. I was bound and determined that no mater how sore I got, no matter how hard my heart got to pounding, I was going to do The 30-Day Shred and I was gonna make a go of it and lose weight and keep doing it until I got to my goal weight. Now I feel like I can’t afford to spend the money on something that I’m not actually gonna use.

Going to the gym is out of the question since there’s only a small rec center with limited hours here in town. And I have no one to watch G. If there was a 24-hour gym and it was cheap enough, believe you me, I would be all over that. There was one within a 10 minute drive of our house in PA, but at the time, we couldn’t even spare the $10 a month for a membership. Now I think I could spare the $10, but there’s no 24 hour gym to hit at 11 p.m., after JD Man and G are in bed for the night.

Right now, my workout regimen involves a few sit-ups or crunches and walking at least 4 times a week. And power-walking, not just ambling. I set my 4 walks-a-week minimum because, as I mentioned above, I am an all or nothing person. If I told myself I was going to walk 7, or even 6, days a week, I’d never get it done. Say I got my walk in Monday, but then it was raining and ugly (remember, I have to take my baby out in whatever the weather is that I choose to walk in) on Tuesday and Wednesday, I most likely wouldn’t get myself motivated enough to go walk on Thursday. Or Friday. Or Saturday. What’s the point? There’s no chance of getting a perfect week of walking in now. I know, totally screwed up, but that’s the way my mind works.

The thing is, I don’t feel like a fat person, except for when I look in the mirror. Being heavy really hasn’t limited my life and what I can do. I can still carry two 5-gallon buckets of water without spilling a drop. I can still throw a 50-pound sack of whatever over my shoulder and take off with it. I’m not really lacking in the strength department. I just know that it’s bad for my health. It’s bad for my self-esteem and the way I see myself. It’s bad because I know it’s more than just myself thinking I’m fat- anyone who looks at me would think the same thing. They have to, there’s no getting around it.

But then there’s the other side: I don’t want my kids to remember how obsessed I was, always trying new diets, new work-out DVDs. I don’t want them ever to think, well, if Mom’s fat, will I get fat? Also, I want to remember that God created me as I am, tall and a big-boned. This is reality. It’s not an excuse. God loves me for who I am. He knows when I’m really trying and things aren’t working. I don’t know, maybe I just need to stop stressing about it and focus more on Him and the kind of shape my heart is in.

I guess when it boils down to it, I want to be truly comfortable in my own skin. I don’t want to worry about every single thing I ever put in my mouth. I want to look normal. Maybe not normal as it pertains to high-fashion models, but just plain average when it comes to regular folks. I’m not even asking for hotness, just averageness. I don’t want the fact that I’m fat and trying to figure what to do about it to engage my thought process so much of every single day.

So, that, in many, many words (almost 4000, my screen tells me) is my struggle with weight loss. I’m sorry if I rambled. I tried to keep it to the point, but this is a big huge thing in my life and it’s not going to only take 400 words to really talk about it. I’ll probably regret posting this tomorrow, but I’m hoping someone will be kind and maybe give me a few pointers or perhaps a tongue-lashing to whip my mind into shape.

I have to ask though, who do you think will leave ‘The Biggest Loser’ tonight? Who will be in the Final Four?