What I Want

People have asked me how far I have to go till I get to my goal weight. I don’t know because I don’t exactly know what that weight is. It’ll be the weight that I can comfortably maintain without 1) starvation 2) impractical amounts of exercise and 3) white-knuckling / otherwise obsessing about food. It won’t be a number on a chart, or a clothing size that society says I “should” fit into; it’ll be where my body wants to end up when I take good care of it most of the time.

I’ve lost weight before, more times than I can count. Like many people (especially women) I’ve been a chronic dieter. I’ve dieted all the way up to over 300 lbs … twice. Most recently, in 2003-04, I dropped 125 lbs, using a combination of light-to-moderate exercise and the Atkins diet. Oh, sure, I thought it was sustainable but it wasn’t; the strictness of the Atkins diet was just another way for me to obsess about food. Either I was obsessing about it by compulsively overeating, or I was obsessing about it by compulsively counting carbs and watching everything that went in my mouth, and worrying worrying worrying that the minute I let a drop of sugar touch my lips, all my hard work was going to be for naught!

I’m approaching my lowest adult weight; I’ve got about 20 lbs to go to get to the weight I was right when I stopped doing the Atkins diet. I maintained most of that weight loss for the first year or so, then gradually put on quite a bit more weight, and bounced around for the next few years before getting on a downward trend this year.

I’d like to say that if my weight stays where it is right now, I could be happy. If this is truly my body’s set point and where it’s supposed to be, so be it. I don’t think it is, as evidenced by the fact that slowly, but surely, I continue to whittle away the pounds. I’m doing this not by dieting – I have sworn off dieting for good – but by increasing my fitness and nourishing my body at exactly the level it requires (not starving it and not over-stuffing it either) and by nourishing it with (mostly) nutritionally-dense food, (mostly) whole foods, and (mostly) foods that I make myself.

I haven’t seen as much progress in the 6-8 weeks or so, but there still has been downward progress. I’ve done that despite a lot of travel, a lot of boogies, and some relaxation on the quality/quantity of food that I’ve been eating. It feels good that I can relax without going “off the deep end” and back into compulsive overeating. It means that I’m learning to see food like someone who hasn’t had food issues all their life; like someone who knows what “normal eating” is. BTW, this is the best definition I’ve ever seen of normal eating.

Will I be able to keep this up? Damn, I hope so. My biggest fear is getting hurt or sick so that I can’t be as active as I’ve become. That worries me because then I likely will need to be more restrictive with food to maintain or increase a weight loss. But that’s only a what-if, and certainly not one that should change my behavior now, while I’m healthy and able to continue to try to meet my fitness goals.

So after all is said and done, what do I want? What I want doesn’t come with a specific goal weight … it’s a state of being:

• I want to be able to do all the activities I want to do, at a decent level of performance. I don’t have to be the best or the fastest, but I also don’t want to be the slowest or the most pathetic.
• I want to be able to invest in clothes and that means getting to and maintaining one size. I’m sick of not feeling like I can/should buy something like a cashmere sweater or suede coat because those are investment pieces and if I’m not going to fit in it six months or a year from now, it’s not a smart purchase.
• I want to fit in more clothes! This is a big frustration for me; while I seem to have fewer problems finding tops that fit, bottoms are a HUGE frustration. It seems like nothing is built for my waist/hip/tummy ratio. But, see above on the investment thing – if I get to a constant size, it can make more sense to pay to get stuff tailored.
• I want a new rig! I’ve been jumping the same used rig for five + years now, and while it’s still in great shape, I crave the comfort of something built for my body. Yet I don’t want to invest in something fit to today’s body if (as I hope) tomorrow’s body will be measurably smaller. So, investing in a custom rig is on the list of things I’ll do later.
• I want to like the shape I see in the mirror more often than not. I know I’m always going to have good days and bad days, but I think if I can keep good > bad things will be good.
• I want to be able to be happy with what I’m doing for my health even when I don’t see results in the mirror or get the positive validation that comes with people saying “Hey, you’ve lost weight since I saw you last.” Because sometimes the changes aren’t visible but they’re still pretty amazing!
• I want to be able to inspire people; not because I lost weight, but because I was able to get to a point where I was comfortable and happy in my body and wanted to take care of it to maintain that body as it was rather than try to change it any more. I’m not there yet; but I’m hoping that someday I will be.