Last night I was watching the Week 13 episode of The Biggest Loser: Couples online. To make a long story short, this season has been different from all the others. Instead of eliminating people by the week, they immediately sent half of the contestants home after the FIRST week – basically to prove to the viewers that they could do it from home too.
Eventually most of the contestants made their way back onto the ranch in Week 5. The three that didn’t return were given a chance to come back in last week’s episode.
Let me digress for a second. I don’t ever like to compare my weight loss to the results on TBL. The contestants have Bob and Jillian riding their asses on a daily basis and their only real purpose in life is to lose weight for 18 weeks straight. You can’t compete with that. Or maybe you can.
Upon returning to the show, the contestant named Nicole revealed that she had lost a total of 87 pounds in the 12 weeks – mostly from home. In case you were wondering, that is a 7.25 lbs. per week. She has the 2nd largest percentage of weight loss in the entire group. This is from dieting and exercising – AT HOME! I haven’t seen that kind of dramatic weight loss since the early 90′s when my coworker was constantly doing crystal meth! And no, I am not implying that she is on crystal meth.
Considering that I have lost 13 lbs. in 14 weeks (this week was another “zero” … but I blame the big bloat from PMS). I totally feel like I can step it up a notch. In fact, I feel like I can step it up a big notch. Why prolong the agony of posting my nominal weight loss every week? Why not kick myself in the butt a little more, get up a little earlier, work out a little longer? It’s time to get serious. Summer is just around the corner and I want to wear a dress. Or at least shorts for goodness sakes.
In other weight loss news, Bernie from Yo-yo No More asks the question:
“You’ve got a big event coming up, and your still not at a “happy weight”, how do you combat those feelings of self doubt and have a good time without getting caught up in the “I’m so fat, I look so bad” crazy talk running around in your head?”
I know, I know, this post is a bit late. I had to crawl out of the blog cave I’ve been hiding in after coming to the realization that I just announced on the The Oprah Winfrey Show that I am not having sex. I believe my direct quote from the show was, “Sex? What sex? Next question!” It’s times like these that I am sure my family is really glad they immigrated to the United States. You know, just so their kids can freely go around telling OPRAH that they are not having sex.
To make matters worse, I have been walking down the streets of downtown Seattle thinking that people are going to start shouting out, “Hey look! That’s the girl from Oprah who’s not having sex!” Which is almost as bad as thinking that people are walking down the street on the verge of shouting out, “Hey look! That’s the fat girl from CNN!” Seriously, it’s taken me a couple of days to think about what else to talk about. Everyone now knows that I am not having sex and how much I weigh … really, what else is there?
In addition to not knowing what to talk about, I have been deferring the weight loss update because I have been obsessed with creating a new blog theme. I am proud to say that the site that you are looking at now was hand coded by yours truly – with the help of Chris Coyier’s CSS Tricks blog and Elliot Jay Stock’s Starkers WordPress theme. Don’t tell me you hate the new digs – it might just make cause my brain to spontaneously explode. I pretty much dove into this project like I do when I assemble IKEA furniture – throw out the directions, attempt to make it work and then realize that I should have read the directions in the first place.
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my shoulders, I guess I have to talk about my weight again. I am a one trick pony.
I have to say, for a complete slacker in the weight loss department (if you can call 2 deaths in the family “slacker”), I think I am doing pretty good. It’s been 13 weeks and I have lost 13 lbs. I told myself in the beginning that if I just stayed on course with at least a cumulative 1 lb a week loss, I would feel good about my progress and eventually get to my goal by year’s end. I still think that it’s doable, despite the ups and downs. I am as determined as ever.
And of course, I have you and this blog (and CNN) to remind me of all the reasons why I am doing this in the first place. The last thing I want to happen is that people start pointing fingers and saying, “Hey there’s that girl who failed at losing weight even though CNN was keeping an ever watchful eye and she blogged about it all year.”
That would just about kill me.
PS. Thank you for reading this blog.
PPS. I’ve been so out of sorts that I had to quit my bloggers weight loss group. I had so much going on that I felt as though I was failing them miserably with late posts and forgetting to send stuff. I am a complete toad sometimes.
If you are wondering how they are doing (like I am), you can find their latest posts about weight loss here – Nurit, Sunny, Joie de Vivre and new addition Bernie!
When I turned the corner into 2009 I had this fantasy running around in my head that this would finally be my “banner year” and that great things were destined to happen just because I willed it to. I seriously thought that if I was earnest enough, my life would suddenly be inundated with so much happiness and abundance that I would need a shovel and wheelbarrow to scoop up the fistfuls of money and gifts that the universe would bestow up me. The truth is, the essence of what I have been trying to achieve has actually started to come true. Things are slowly happening for me. My life has a different horizon now and I stand at a different reference point from which I make decisions. This change is not being taken for granted and I feel incredibly lucky right now.
However, the transition from having a complacent life to being drawn towards the light of day has been a bit rough. Nearly three months into the new year there have been twodeaths, a birth of a baby (not mine), a birth of a different kind of baby (my writing career), a decidedly marginal amount of fame, turning the big 3-5, a parenting crisis, travel, a look into the future, my first brush with flirting in a long time, a struggle with depression and lastly the discovery of a good pastrami sandwich (which is a milestone).
One thing that I didn’t anticipate (or just forgot) was that when you open your heart up to feeling great passion and happiness and goodness, it also means you’re opening your heart to the whole gamut of other feelings that are out there like heartbreak, sadness, regret. Basically when you expose yourself to feeling anything, you do just that – you feel everything. For better or for worse, it’s been a bit of a shock to my system and there are definitely days that make me feel as though I should crawl back into that box of mine.
Looking back, when I wasn’t happy (but not admitting it), it was completely obvious. It’s clear that my weight has been (is) a barometer of my happiness over the years. I used to think that I was self assured when I was thinner, but now I think it was the opposite. I was thin because I was self assured. When I don’t deal with the things that are hard in my life, it manifests itself in weight gain. I store all my emotions in the cushions of fat that have insulated me from feeling anything too deeply. I have decidedly made the weight the source of my issues … because that’s more tangible than dealing with issues about me.
Over the last couple of weeks, my weight has been hovering around 180, with moments that are above and below that number. This morning? 179. I worked out for the first time in nearly two weeks yesterday and I’ve got to say that was a challenge. It’s hard to take care of myself at a time when sleeping feels like my only objective in life.
But the universe works in mysterious ways. In the thick of grieving and feeling like I don’t have the personal resolve to keep going with this weight loss endeavor, I received an email from a rep for General Mills (GM) telling me about the Pound for Pound Challenge. (Basically, for every pound you lose, GM will donate 10 cents to Feeding America). And for whatever reason, this email was the exact kick in the pants that I needed to start getting back on track. It made me realize that things are not that bad for me. There are people who are truly struggling out there. I am okay. I can do this. Even if it does take a long time.
P.S. So while there’s only a month left or so left to go and 10 cents really doesn’t sound like that much money, there are over 2.7 million pounds that have been pledged so far. In these economic times, $270,000 can make or break an organization. Signing up is easy to do and I promise, they are not going to come to your door and make you step on the scale if you sign up.
P.P.S. Photo/weight stats being posted later this afternoon Tuesday.
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