Reality ~ as in scales, weighing...AGH!!!

I am more than my weight. Yes, I am more than a number, more than my obesity summed up as a number that chills my spirit. But ignoring that number diminishes me. I am today able to admit that I've been hiding my head in the sand like an ostrich. That's why I am looking forward (sort of, in a way, reluctantly) to having scales that can let me know first thing each day that I am committed to "owning" my full weight.

Weight is the first thing strangers see as they meet me. First impressions are an important part of how we find friends and keep a circle of acquaintances - and I am learning how important it can be to have people in a support network. Folks are afraid of how my weight might affect them - if I topple over and cannot get up or if I need help in any way that might be inconvenient for anyone near me.

I'll have a better life when weight is not a primary and overwhelming factor to consider as far as finding seating and avoiding difficult terrain and stairs. Sigh.

That is why I started a new topic at my BLOG: Realty ~ as in scales, weighing...AGH! I did right. I can feel how right it is, to own scales and to truly "own" my body's weight, to face facts daily. This is a new way to live!

Yes, stepping on that scale can definitely make our hearts start pumping with adrenaline...in anticipation of whether that number is going to help us have a good day or a bad day! But those of us who have ignored our weight for many years have to start facing some serious reality and stay accountable...just like the rest of the world!

I hope I can accept a weight reading as simply a fact and not as an evaluation of my worth - or lack of worth - in a world that seems to esteem outward appearance over any other virtue. I am doing LC for health, the only true wealth. At 64, I'm in real trouble if I get caught up in slimming down to be in vogue or to get dates. Old tarts are absurd! They dress young and act the coquette, to no avail. I can feel myself hoping that loss of weight will bring me what I missed during my fat decades. Sigh.

Rudyard Kipling alluded to mutton dressed as lamb, to describe an older woman who forgot the dignity of age in trying to capture - or recapture - her youth. I hope I can avoid making a spectacle of myself as I become slimmer.

Good for you for buying scales, Zer! You are heading down the right road by taking charge like you are. You are blossoming before our very eyes!

Blossoming? Oh, I hope so! I truly hope a flutterby emerges.

From your fingertips...to god's ears...and thanks!

432.4 on 2/9/08 (midnight 2/8/08, I found box delivery).

Scales arrived. Allows 8 seconds before power cuts off, so I am not fast enough to get aboard after tapping the scale to alert it to turn on power. What fun! NOT! Three tries to get aboard to see my initial weight. Will try again in ayem.

Alas, not willing to face weighing myself this ayem. Why? Bathroom is busy with people getting ready for work, all in a rush - as I used to rush myself, in and out of shower. Clearly I cannot weigh undressed, in a public place. Take the scales into shower stall with me? It warns against wet as being dangerous, with battery and all at ground level.

And what COMPETENT person weighs 432.4#? That huge number wipes out my sense of being anywhere near as COMPETENT as my morning intake of 40g of protein - and 500calories - makes me feel. I'm fat. Feel foolish. Fat and foolish. Sigh. This is not a great feeling. It may be real, but it is not a great feeling.

Okay, maybe I will be a weekly weigher, finding a time when the facility is less crowded and I can ease myself up on the scales in the 8-seconds allotted before the device cuts off power. I do my finances weekly, so maybe I can justify doing my weight weekly, as a tracking device and not as a measure of my worth as a person. BIG SIGH.

Today's food? I'm finishing up fishy-mayo, eggy-mayo. I'm sticking to bran-rye crackers for fiber - and will enter them into FitDay so I can track their carbs. Also will put data for sugar-free mayo into FitDay today. I can do this. Just need to stay calm and regard it as merely data, even the weight, as data; not as a measure of my COMPETENCE as a human being. I so like my feelings of COMPETENCE, as I slurp my morning hot slosh and feel the protein all over my body. Tummy likes the hot warmth too!

Have not gotten back on the scales since the rude shock of seeing 432.4# on 2/8/08. Am working up carb/calorie count for some of my daily items on FitDay, so I can make better choices when I am driven by the Feast Beast to eat eat eat! Will weigh on Friday, if not before. At least a weekly weight to help me stay on track. I've been fiddling too long. I'm 64 and do not have a lot of time to waste if I want to get some living in my life. Lying in bed 24/7 is a drag, even with a fertile imagination and a computer. I'm wanting more in my life. That's a good impetus to get on with building a truly solid LC/Atkins plan to meet goals I've added to my signature at LCFriends site. I see how it is a help to see that list of goals on a daily basis. Can hardly wait until my own list shows me MO-O-OVING DOWN at a fair pace, reaching 10# mini-goals a month at a time - or better, since we all know that BIG FOLKS can lose more!

Climbed aboard the scales this ayem, in hopes seeing my weight - 426.8 - will help me avoid playing with my plan as I go out today to run the fast-food gauntlet to get my mail and accomplish some errands. My Feast Beast is pretty good at bending my will and convincing me that fast food is not THAT bad, once in a while, that a double meat patty is protein and the stuff on a burger is vegies, and it's not THAT bad a carb blowout, as long as I tell them to hold the ketchup/mayo/mustard. Yeah, wicked wily Feast Beast! So I weighed myself today. Nice surprise to see a downward shift in a few days of moderately rigorous LC/Atkins eating: 426.8 is a beginning. I'm stoked!

What I plan is focusing on fish and eggs as I push to take off weight that is so painful on my hip that I simply dread having to stand up at all. Fish and eggs. Canned fish is a staple for me. I'm not much of a cook and I still use a canopener as my primary kitchen tool. Just too tired to do much standing, cooking, so it's canned fish for me!

All in all, I'm pleased about my choice to gift myself with my own scales.

I've set up a line in my LCFriends signature that shows 10# minigoals from 430# all the way down to 199# and I'm using a to show where I am, what goal is next.

First time I have set up a goal listing like this. I think I am serious this time. At 64, it's past time to pare down!

Slow and steady wins the race. Tortoise talk!

While I want fast results, I know that simply working an effective LC program will result in permanent weight loss and better health for the golden years ahead of me at 64.

Plateaus are a fact of weight loss efforts. A big body drops weight, then drops inches as it gets less flabby, more taut, takes up the empty space that empty fat cells create in our personal space. Wow!

Even folks with solid LC plans try occasional spurts of Fat Fast and Fat Flush and IF (intermittent fasting) to give metabolism a jolt, to wake up fat-burning in a body that seems to have hit a set point that is higher than what we want to see. We are molding new bodies to life new lives.

Set point? That's a weight that the body seems to hang on to, return to after a good weight loss effort slacks off and we pick up old habits, familiar foods.

Resetting a set point? That seems to be what happens when a person takes up a new rhythm to living. More than cutting back on carbs to lose weight and to fit into a small size - or to look better in a bathing suit for summer. More like learning a better way to use a body that did not start out being as active as a body *WANTS* to be. Muscles love being used, stretched, stroked! Muscles change how a body looks, as muscles become curves - inward and outward curves. Faces develop concavities that show a bone structure that a fat face never showed before. Wow!

That's what I'm learning from reading the posts of successful LCFriends I've met online. That's what I think will be important as I select friends from a more-active life than I have had. Fewer eating buddies. More active buddies! That's what I see ahead of me. More activity!

Don't know what happened, but my scale's voice choked on me when I weighed the other day. Was it because my weight had gone up a bit, after a V'Day hiatus from LC sanity? Power just cut off and numbers vanished as soon as they stabilized in the flickering shifting that goes on at first. So I am glad I was watching the numbers and not depending on the audio! I caught a glimpse of a backward slip - and I am renewing my determination to use food as fuel, LC fuel, for a body that just now has more cells than I want to carry.

As I am tempted to weigh myself today (Thurs), I think I shall be happier if I wait until Saturday, as planned. But here is a confession that I posted in my favorite thread (300#, a busy monthly thread in the Century segment of this LCFriends board): Confession like this is rare for me, admitting that I still use food to 'reward' myself - as if eating anything carby is really a 'reward' for someone who can barely walk, barely get in and out of my own car!

What madness! But today - with support from my LCFriends who share their ups and downs - I made a better LC choice and I came home to enjoy a hot slosh: 40g of protein. Wow!

Ooops, above post was made on Wed (not Thurs). I must be slipping, to get a day ahead of myself like that. But now it's actually Thursday and I'm sort of thinking WHY NOT WEIGH?

But I do like the idea of marking my datebook with a BIG RED NUMBER each Saturday as I mark my path down down down!

Tempted to hop on scales today (Friday) but am telling my hopeful self that morning weigh-in weekly before I drink my 16oz (that's a pound, right?) of WPP hot slosh will be better than weighing midday today. So, it's a date: me and my talking scales, first thing Saturday morning. I'm excited! It's been a week since Valentine's Day and I've been drinking water faithfully. Whoosh???

Mona anticipates a good loss after an honest LC week and says: It makes a huge difference between just winging it like I did last month and really watching what I'm eating!

Amen to that. I just weighed at 1am, having waited since midnight like a kid at Christmas - and even though my talking scales said only ERROR (weight is up; kept shifting from 431.8 to 432.2) and I've taken the larger number as my 'reward' for 'winging it' and playing fast and loose with carbs, I'm still glad I can weigh.

Is that odd or what? Now I can move forward - adjust my eating to get better results in a week - living in certainty. No more guesstimating and acting as if I don't know that carby eating has logical results. No more!

Oh, sure, I'm back to where I was a few weeks ago, when I first got these talking scales. Funny, I don't feel bad as you'd think. After all, I ate myself up to this weight.

It feels good to know that my feeling of being heavier is accurate. I *am* heavier than I was last week and the week before. Alas. However, I know what to do! Back to basics. Back to Atkins' Induction. No more pumpkin seeds for a while. More fish and eggs. Fewer fruits and the stuff that I've been fiddling around with in full knowledge that I cannot lose weight on rhetoric alone. Yeah. I definitely know what to do. I'm okay. No more mystery about what I actually weigh. Certainty has a comfort to it.

Winging it won't work. Writing down what I eat is good, but not as good as watching what I'm eating to make sure that it all fits into a truly LC plan!

Feels so strange, being all right with knowing what my weight is, for real. Certainty beats UNcertainty, for sure!

I guess this means I'm ready to be ACCOUNTABLE, to own my part in creating a massive body by my daily choice of what to eat, how to live. Activity counts. Carbs count.

This is a whole new ballgame for me, a righteous Queen of Denial. Wow! I think I can celebrate today, even do a virtual HaPpYdance as I embrace REALITY: 432.2# today!

I'm glad you are dealing with the weight gain well. You are doing good at being in control so you do have reason for that virtual happy dance!

I really think that VCO bothers me. My weight is up and I've cut that out cause I just can't take it. I've read where others have a problem with it, too. And fruits REALLY bother my weight.

Back to the drawing board for both of us, eh? But we will find the right path only by searching and trying.

VCO? I use that in my morning hot slosh (WPP) to fatten it up to Atkins' level. I've also used VCO for swishing teeth and gums - a 20min exercise in oral hygiene I'm learning about from a thread at LCFriends. Other than that, I do not use VCO. I think my weight problem/increase is not about VCO but about casual carbs - fruit and other stuff. Aghhhh!

Still stunned...the scale is my FRIEND? Say WHAT? Yes, I'm stunned at my new attitude toward weighing. I never thought I'd be seeing scales as my friend, as a source of useful data. Is this why folks have urged me in years past to buy scales, because they enjoyed knowing for sure just what their weight is from day to day? I never 'got it', that scales can be a great tool. My mind is still blown by how excited I am, looking forward to actually KNOWING FOR SURE what I weigh - be it up or down. Bizarre!

Reality. Knowing for sure. Makes sense that it might be a relief to know for sure, rather than wishing/hoping for a miracle to appear when I happen to get weighed. I'm now taking charge of when I weigh, making scales my friend.

This is a major shift in my life. I like feeling empowered by having actual accurate data. Whoot! Watch me now!

I think the VCO is so dependent on the individual. It's like other foods... What bothers one person, doesn't even phase another. I'm trying to learn exactly what foods bother me and what ones don't. I learned a few months ago that I can not eat spicy brown mustard! I loved the stuff and added it to a lot of my foods, but it was bothering my tummy something awful! I use to love spicy foods, but now after I eat them, it bothers more, so I'm having to learn to live with things more "bland".