Shrinking Sisters

Tomorrow's annual physical day

 ... and I have pretty much nothing to show for it on the scale.

When I went last year and said "see ya next year!" I thought I'd be knocking his socks off with a total transformation.

But that didn't happen.

Yeah, sure I'm down a few pounds but it's been a year and I've been beating myself up ever since I made the appointment last week.

But I came to a few realizations:

1. I have to drop my calories down to a really unpleasant level to lose weight. I have one of "those" metabolisms. So I'm gonna have to suck it up and cut back to 1,200 a day.
2. I haven't been counting the calories of all the supplements I take. Over the weekend I realized that the 4 grams of fish oil (for anti-inflammatory and cholesterol lowering properties), the 2 tablespoons of psyllium (also cholestrerol), the packet of Emergen-C and the two Adora calcium supplements are 200 calories. (Hand slapping forehead.)
3. I need to work out more. Not necessarily hard, just more consistently.

So I'll see my doctor and insist that I can do this without any "fat person meds." You know -- statins, blood pressure meds, etc. I take enough stuff for my allergies and don't want to go there. Besides, my cholesterol is OK, just a little over normal, and my ratio is good.

I have my tools in place now -- loads of fiber, fresh produce, fewer carbs, more protein, making every single calorie count. I also discovered a kick-ass Turbo Kick class at the gym that'll burn tons of calories and a great kettlebell workout in my giant DVD mountain (Kettlenetics).

That's my plan and I'm sticking to it.

Really.

I swear.

'Do the thing you think you cannot do'

I gave the last of the Ben & Jerry's Half Baked FroYo to my husband and my son and walked out of the kitchen with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt ringing in my head.

"Do the thing you think you cannot do."

Eleanor Roosevelt as weight-loss inspiration? Definitely more creative than Megan Fox. (That's Eleanor, at right, if she was a Biggest Loser contestant.)

It's time to suck it up and stop allowing myself stuff like low-fat chips and cereal bars and diet candy and Ben & Jerry's. I had some yesterday, obsessively measuring a serving on the food scale. But Ben & Jerry's isn't going to bring me closer to my goal of losing all the weight I want to lose, a battle I've been fighting since I was a chubby 10-year-old.

I'm going to win this war.

But does losing weight mean avoiding certain foods? For me it has to. I'm way too easy on myself. I think back to something I read about five years ago, on the pioneering diet blog Skinny Daily Post, written by Juju Ridl, who lost 100 pounds nearly 10 years ago. Alas, the blog doesn't seem to be active anymore. My all-time favorite post of hers is titled "Not Right Now," which you still can find in her archives from August 2004. Here's an excerpt:

The real secret to my success over giving up foods I love for a little while? Knowing there will always be more.

I knew that I could give up those foods for a year, because at the end of the year, there they would be again. The pie, the cake, the chips. I know today that when I enjoy too many of these things, I have to say goodbye again for a while.

So goodbye Ben, and you too, Jerry (who once told me, at the factory in Vermont, that his favorite flavor was their Berry Berry Extraordinary sorbet). I can't see you right now. I'll be hanging out with the nonfat Greek yogurt for awhile, probably forever.

I usually don't attach any time frames to losing weight but I am shooting for one mini goal: FitBloggin' 10, which is this coming March (the month I turn 48 -- blaaaargh!) in Baltimore, one of my fave cities. As I write this, there are 131 days until the start of the fitness bloggers' conference, and I told FitBloggin' organizer Roni Noone (of the great blogs Roni's Weigh and GreenLiteBites) that I was going to make a public spectacle of myself to lose 20-something pounds in 20-something weeks.

So here goes:

I hereby vow to lose 20-something pounds (or more, who knows?) by the start of FitBloggin' 10 in March.

My starting weight is ...

(OMG, I'm not that brave! Suffice to say I weigh the same as Miami Dolphins fullback Lousaka Polite. You figure it out. Dude's got 7 inches on me.)

Every weekend I'm going to tell y'all how I did with the eating and the moving and the scale. And I promise I'll post more over here, even as I obsess over The Biggest Loser at Examiner.com. This is where I get to do all the "me me me" stuff.

And hey, "you you you" -- I need your support and encouragement. Tweet me, leave me comments, tell me I can do it. Losing weight sure isn't as easy as it was when I was in my 20s. But back then, when I lost 40 pounds, I did it with focus and determination and without Ben & Jerry.

I leave you today with the last verse of Coldplay's Nobody Said It Was Easy. Consider it a breakup song with Ben & Jerry:

Nobody said it was easy
Oh it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I'm going back to the start.

This is why women obsess over their bodies

I was writing about PETA's new campaign for Examiner.com and wanted to explain why showing an illustration of a large woman in a bikini with the words "Save the Whales, Lose the Blubber" might not be the best idea ever.

I've been kicking around this rant ever since Self magazine put singer Kelly Clarkson on its cover and felt the need to shave down her booty, all the while promoting "TOTAL BODY CONFIDENCE!!!" on the cover.

I thought of the TV ad from West Coast burger chain Carls Jr., which features reality "star" Audrina Patridge snarfing down a giant sloppy burger while wearing a gold lame bikini on the beach. You know damn well that all that girl ate that day was half a slice of pineapple that she seductively plucked from the grease bomb.

Then I discovered that in addition to shilling for Carls Jr., she was at the launch party for Reebok EasyTone fitness shoes -- you know, the ones that are supposed to help you burn extra calories.

And then I knew that I had found my poster child. Thank you, Audrina, for being useful for something -- for showing the disconnect between reality and fantasy.

TOTAL BODY CONFIDENCE means plastic surgery via photo editing? Hot chicks in bikinis can eat like frat boys? Said hot chicks use magical sneakers to burn off frat boy burgers? Vegetarian groups think overweight women are all whales? 

Aaack. It's making my head hurt.

What I Cannot Change -- lyrics that matter

On my way back from Jazzercise this morning I had the Today show on the radio (you can do that with Channel 6 anywhere in the country). LeAnn Rimes was on singing her very personal song What I Cannot Change. The chorus really hit home with me and probably for anyone who is working to change anything:

I will learn to let go what I cannot change

I will learn to forgive what I cannot change

I will learn to love what I cannot change

But I will change, I will change

Whatever I, whenever I can

Setting myself free

About three quarters of the way through Saturday's Jazzercise class, while I grapevined across the gym, sweat flying, I started singing along with the thumping song:

"Free, free, free. Set me free, free, free. Wanna be free, free, free. Set me free."

And I had an epiphany -- that's why I was working out so hard. I wanna be free from having to think about my weight. About planning the next meal, the next snack. About worrying whether the scale went down. About whether I can zip my jeans.

I just want to be.

The process of losing weight can be mentally taxing. Why didn't I lose weight this week? Too much this? Not enough that? Did I journal enough, exercise enough, drink enough water?

I want to dance and sweat my ass off for the sheer fun of it, not because I'm burning off 300-something calories.

The song is Be Free by Jason Antone. I doubt he ever thought it would become some sort of anthem for overweight Jazzercisers.

How to keep off the 6 pounds lost from the stomach flu

I'm finally climbing out from under the rock of my weeklong stomach virus. Fortunately, all it involved was an extreme loss of appetite -- none of those other more icky symptoms. I drank plenty of fluids, so I'm not dehydrated.

And I lost 6 pounds!

Now, to keep it off.

It helps that I wasn't dehydrated, because that weight will come right back on. So I'm easing back into solids, to keep my tummy happy as well as the scale. Today it's been nothing but Cream of Wheat made with oat milk -- bland but safe.

Nighttime eating has been my bugaboo but I haven't been doing that at all this week since I wanted my stomach good and empty before bed. Maybe I've broken myself of the habit.

I'm going to treat this as some sort of masochistic detox jumpstart plan and stay on the straight and narrow.