Hip Report

I saw my surgeon this morning and there's actually not much to report. My x-rays are perfect--although I know from experience often x-rays do not tell the whole story. We're going to wait and see. I have another appointment in six months (normally I see him once a year) and if I'm not better, we'll do a bone scan. The good thing is that my surgeon does take me very seriously, after all that I've been through. Whatever I want done--he will do it.

I had an interesting discussion with the radiology technician while we were doing my x-rays. She was poking at my hip bones to line up the machine and I asked her about the size of the patients she sees. She said that most people are not too heavy and that I, for instance, was relatively "thin" (yes, she actually said "thin"!) so it was easy to find the right bones. Well, she was exaggerating a tad, I think, but it sure did feel nice. She also said that she feels we have less obesity here in Canada and commented on the gigantic portion sizes she saw on a recent trip to the States. She kept asking for doggy bags because there was just too much food.

My surgeon's secretary also commented on how good I look. A few less pounds and a longer "do". Works wonders!

So, all in all, the game plan is to just keep on keeping on. I'm not going to go back to my mega-walks right away. I'll have to build up to them again. I'm also going to keep working with my yoga therapist and...we'll see.

Keep your fingers crossed, friends!

Still Starving After All These Years

Sorry Paul Simon, but I just couldn't resist.

The other day, I was reading the daily blog post of a true weight-loss warrior (WLW). WLW has set up a rigorous schedule of exercise complemented by a strict regimen of "clean", healthy food. The weight-loss results so far have been excellent. Will WLW be able to keep up this "perfect" behaviour until reaching goal weight? Will WLW be able to then maintain the loss? I don't know, but I certainly wish WLW all the best.

In the middle of a recent post, though, WLW took a moment to indulge in a bit of self-criticism. It wasn't enough to exercise faithfully and eat only good foods. No, WLW was not losing weight as fast as "this person" (TP). (I will not supply the link.) I, of course, clicked on the link to see what TP was doing. Yes, she's losing scads of weight. Why? She's starving herself. I looked at her food intake for the day and the only big number there was the number of glasses of water she's drinking. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with any of the food she's eating, there's just not enough of it.

TP is not a model for anyone to follow. After all the studies that have been done showing that starvation slows down the metabolism and leads to rapidly regaining all the weight plus more, we continue to idolize the starvation brigade.

I guess people still want quick results, even if it means destroying their metabolism and having to start over again and again until they just give up.

Nobody likes to hear that slow and steady wins the race.

Sigh.

Respect Your Body

Those who are on a weight loss journey or simply a journey towards better health usually find themselves discovering the wonders of exercise. Over a period of time, they go from huffing and puffing from the car to the sofa to the fridge and back to the sofa to walking a half a mile, five miles, treadmilling, elliptical training, running marathons, ...

It's beautiful, isn't it?

Absolutely! However...

As someone whose body forces her to make difficult decisions regarding what she can and can't do without doing herself serious harm, I would like to make a plea to you lucky people: exercise but listen to your body's signals.

When your ankle starts throbbing on your daily run, when your back suddenly seizes up while weight lifting, don't work through it. You could be setting yourself up for permanent damage down the road.

If you can, find a competent personal trainer and invest in a few private sessions. Look for someone who preferably doesn't use a whip as a training accessory, someone who recognizes that most of us are not training for the Olympics, someone who wants you to do your best, not their best. Exercise for the long run. You want your body to be working with you in twenty years, not against you.

If you are in your thirties, now's the time to learn to exercise for the long haul. You're still young but you're not invincible--much as you think you are. Exercise smart, not macho. Your body will thank you for it now and in the future.

Not Being Thankful Enough

After my second hip surgery and recovery I started getting really antsy about exercise. Unfortunately, due to arthritis in my knee, I found myself unable to do very much except very gentle yoga and walking. Well, I wasn't thankful enough about being able to do even that.

Because my operated hip has been giving me grief recently, I have had to stop walking and boy do I miss it. I have been avoiding any sort of walk that's more than 5 minutes in an effort to let my hip rest. My yoga therapist and I think that somehow I've irritated some soft tissue around the implant and the only real solution is rest. My yoga practice is so gently you practically wouldn't know it's there and what with little to no walking, I feel half-alive.

Today, I decided to give my hip a bit of a whirl. I had to go to work, followed by a dentist's appointment and then my yoga lesson. I live about 10 minutes' walk from the subway and the place I was working was maybe another 5 minutes' walk from the subway, so I decided to leave the car at home and try out the hip. My dentist is also right near the subway, so instead of going home, I just went straight to his office and had lunch before going to the appointment.

(Slight parentheses: I ordered a tuna wrap for lunch at a fast food place. It really seemed quite good--lots of veggies and not at all loaded with mayo. But I was shocked at how big it was. It probably weighed about 250 grams or more. The NewMe ate less than half, wrapped up the rest and now it's sitting in the fridge. I might not get around to ever finishing it.)

After my dentist's appointment, I walked home. It just didn't make sense to take the bus. I would have had to walk over to the bus (it wasn't right next door) and then walk a long block home once I'd gotten off the bus. So I walked another 15 minutes or so. It's 5:10 p.m. right now and I've already clocked over 10,000 steps. (My yoga teacher lives in a hard place to get to by public transit so I did take my car to get there.)

I think the jury's still out on how I feel. I can "feel" my hip joint, which is not good, but I don't feel really bad. Tonight, I'll try to take it easy. Lots of TV watching. Is anyone watching "Flashforward"? As a rule, I don't like science fiction, but this show is pretty cool. I also happen to know the man who wrote the book the show is based on.

I'm seeing my surgeon next Wednesday. Gotta rest more between now and then.

This Time I REALLY Lost It

Today I was working with that hyprocritic holy-roller I mentioned a few days ago.

"You really didn't understand me," said she and launched into the same song and dance.

And I lost it. Yes, I screamed at her, in a sound-proof booth, during the coffee break with enough ambient noise that even though the door to the booth was open, my scene probably went unnoticed.

The best and the worse part was seeing her cringe and hold her hands over her ears. "Please don't scream," she pleaded and I continued to do so. I was screaming for myself and for all my colleagues who can't stand working with her. I was screaming in frustration because I know it won't change a thing in her weird and nasty behaviour and because there is unfortunately no way that I can avoid working with her. No way whatsoever.

There are probably lots of karmic reasons why I did the wrong thing, but honestly, I had had it up to here.

This reaction was probably not good for my health and certainly not good for my blood pressure. I regret having been violent towards myself, but that's the full extent of my regret.

Headless Fatties

Why is it that fatties cut off their own heads in pictures? Is it because they want to remain anonymous and just concentrate on how shamefully fat they are?

The "headless fattie" pic is a cheap trick employed by people who want to illustrate articles on the obesity epidemic by using "horror" shots. It may also be a liability issue: If I stumble across a picture of myself (face and all!) that someone has taken without my knowledge and is using without my consent, I might have a right to sue them. But why are we doing this to ourselves?

I think it all comes down to self-loathing. Come on people! Do you really think that losing weight is going to miraculously turn you from a self-loather into a self-worshipper?

For years, I hated having my picture taken. I'm still not crazy about it. But aside from a picture of my hairy legs that I took just to see how weird they looked (and no, I'm not going to publish it), I do not have any headless fattie pictures of myself.

If you want to maintain your privacy, I can certainly understand, but please take a moment to think about your headless self and consider putting a head, a face and a personality on that body, no matter what size you are. Wherever you are on your weight-loss/self-acceptance journey, you are a person, not just a blob of fat.

Small, Important Realizations

About a month after I started blogging I wrote a whiny post about how slowly I was losing weight. It's strange looking back on those first posts that I had essentially just written to myself.

Well, I've continued to lose weight at a pace slightly slower than watching paint dry, molasses run (l0l)...you get the idea. But there has been a change: how I feel about this. Now, I'm proud.

I'm proud that despite my inability to do serious exercise (at the moment, I'm even being super careful about walking too much), those tenths of a kilo are slowly coming off.

I'm proud that despite the fact that I really hate to eat without reading the paper or a book, I have been getting better and better at hearing the physical cues my body sends me concerning fullness. I now religiously put down my sandwich or my fork between bites and wait a few moments before picking it up again. No, I don't eat particularly slowly and yes, I still read or do the crossword while I eat, but I have changed the way I eat.

I'm proud that I eat what I want and when I want. Last Sunday, my second day of bedrest, I really wasn't hungry. I had breakfast around 10 a.m. but I had barely moved and I heard my body telling me that it really didn't want to eat much. At about 2:30, I had my son bring me a toasted bagel with butter, a glass of milk and half a pear. I left about a quarter of my bagel on the plate.

Another wonderful change is that I feel less and less deprived. When I first started out in January, I still felt really resentful about not being able to eat like a "normal" person. My acupuncturist's assistant had calculated that just to maintain my weight, I would have to eat no more than 1,275 calories per day. You read that right: 1,275 calories if I didn't want to gain weight, less if I wanted to lose weight. Now, I'm eating pretty much what I want. I don't often indulge in sweets but when the sweet is worth it, yes I'll have a small piece.

I'm still often surprised to hear my "little voice" reminding me that I'm full and that I can have some more later if I really want. After a lifetime of dieting, or beating myself up because I wasn't dieting, it's still a novel experience. I suspect it will continue to be a novel experience for a long time to come. And that's OK.