Nothing's fair in love or weight loss

Anyone who has ever lost weight, or wanted to lose weight, knows it’s a pain in the butt. (And abs, and arms, and thighs …) Furthermore, it’s about the most unjust thing in the entire world. Below, some observations made in my many trials with losing weight.

You ever notice you get on the scale every day, see a nice, steady decrease, life is good. You’re eating well, you’re exercising, all is right in the world. Then one day you get on and the number didn’t go down – in fact, it went up. But, but, you’re doing everything right, what gives? It’s frustrating. Trying to remember that you are not defined by a number when you’re trying to make those numbers decrease is a very hard thing to do. Trying to remember that you’re building muscle which will help you in the long run, is hard to swallow when you just want to see that number go down.

Side note – science content – Muscle DOES NOT weigh more than fat. It’s like the old riddle: which weighs more – a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks? Both are a ton. If you have five pounds of muscle and five pound of fat, you still have five pounds. The difference is that muscles are more tightly compacted, so you’ll have five pounds of muscle in a smaller area than you will five pounds of fat.

How about this one? Your husband loses weight faster than you do. What the hell? And he’s not even trying. Where’s the justice? Why does it have to be so hard for a woman to lose weight? Metabolism and biology blow.

Not all diets are created equal – and what works for one person won’t work for you. Honestly, only one diet plan has ever worked for me. It’s called 8 Minutes in the Morning (the newer version is called The Three Hour Diet), authored by Jorge Cruise. It’s a shame he sold his soul to the devil – to the point he has a bunch of books and is even doing a mail-order food business a la Jenny Craig and NutriSystem. Regardless of how I feel about the state of his soul, I know it works. But let’s take a look at some of the things that haven’t …

WW fail in 3 ... 2 ...

• NutriSystem – yep, I blew $300 for a month’s worth of food. Thought it was pre-portioned, it made my life easier. (Especially since I was in grad school at the time.) Um, no. It tasted like the cardboard it came in (in fact, the cardboard might have tasted better), and the portions weren’t even enough to satisfy my two-year-old, let alone a fully-grown adult. Hunger leads to binge, binge leads  to weight gain, weight gain leads to failure, failure leads to depression, depression leads to not wanting to see those damn pre-packaged meals again so they got tossed.
• Weight Watchers – I have gone to and from Weight Watchers for years. The Points system isn’t that bad. Except for that turning everything you eat into nothing more than a number. “Oh no, I can’t have that banana, it’s too many points!” (The new plan, it’s free, I know.) “OMG, I just ate five M&Ms, someone, quick, let’s do the math to figure out what percentage of the package that is so I can figure out how many Points they are.” Or even worse, my friend Meredith C.’s mentality: “If I eat nothing but asparagus all day, I can have a Blizzard.”
• South Beach – This actually works well in the first two weeks. It also turns me into the biggest bitch on the planet. Scott has actually put his foot down and said no more deprivation diets, particularly carb deprivation diets, because he doesn’t want to deal with me on them. As if my insomnia wasn’t bad enough, when I don’t eat enough carbs, it’s damn near impossible for me to sleep. No lie, I was doing the South Beach thing with a friend, and I cracked because I couldn’t sleep – I ate some crackers (okay, a whole sleeve), and I fell asleep almost instantly. That night those crackers were better than Ambien.
• Sparkpeople – I love Sparkpeople. There are a lot of great resources on there. I just have to be very careful tracking my food to make sure I don’t turn into crazy food-is-nothing-but-numbers mode. I’ve been tracking my food the last few days and I’m proud to say I haven’t done that. Yet. So far. It’ll come.

Oh, I love how this one works … the more you exercise, the more hungry you are. So you end up eating more, and you feel awful because you blew your calorie/point limit for the day. Once you blow it, you feel bad about yourself, and keep going into that downward spiral. It sort of ticks me off too … my body is saying “hey, hey, I need more food cause you’re working me so hard.” My brain is saying, “hey, hey, there’s plenty around the mid-section… eat that all gone and then we’ll talk, okay?”
 
Deprivation leads to binging. False. I deprive myself of broccoli all the time, and I do not later binge on it. I deprive myself of tofu every day. I do not go on a tofu bender on the weekends. Let’s be honest. Deprivation of great-tasting food leads to binging. There’s a reason for that. You only want it because it’s good (and most likely because it’s not good for you). No one has ever said, “I’m going to hell with myself today, I’m going to eat a huge bowl of cauliflower.” It just doesn’t work that way. So, yeah, deprivation of yummy stuff leads to binging, not deprivation in general.

If starvation doesn’t work, why are anorexics so thin?

Along those lines, I like my teeth – and despise puking – too much to be bulimic.

You ever realize that when you’re dieting, it goes one of two ways …

1. No one around you is dieting, so they are eating nothing but calorie-laden goodies and making that little sugar-monster who lives in the pit of your stomach go apeshit?
2. Everyone else around you is dieting, but they are all having way more success than you are, despite your best efforts? Yeah, well, screw you too.

You ever notice that when you fail at dieting you have this conversation with yourself? “Well, you screwed it up again. Go ahead, enjoy that Quarter Pounder, large fry, Coke, and caramel sundae. Because, you know what, you’re not as big as that woman over there. Don’t beat yourself up too much. As long as you don’t look like that, you’re okay.” God, I have had that conversation so many times. So much so, I’m quite surprised no one has had me committed for having full conversations with the voices in my head.

If you drink your eight-mandated glasses of water (which, by the way, it’s 2:14 p.m. and I’ve already completed that requirement), you end up running to the bathroom every thirty minutes. Someone needs to track how many calories that constant bathroom run is and market that as the  water diet.

The water thing brings up an interesting point … differing diets have differing numbers on the water intake. My precious 8MM diet dictates eight glasses a day, and one extra glass of water for every glass of caffeinated drink. But the old WW program only mandated six glasses of water, and then you could have two glasses of whatever you wanted so long as it wasn’t caffeinated. The new WW program only mandates six glasses of liquid – your liquid could be water, coffee, soda, milk, juice, or gasoline. So long as it’s liquid, it counts. For the love of God, can’t we all just agree on something? Even if there are some days where it’s hard to choke down eight glasses of anything, it was nice to know this was something they all agreed on. Apparently not anymore. Thanks for screwing that up WW.

Why can’t things I enjoy doing, like texting or updating my Facebook status (or blogging!) burn calories? Don’t get all smart and tell me the typing burns a calorie or two. Not what I meant. Why couldn’t updating my Facebook status give me a calorie burn like I just jogged for 15 minutes? I’d be updating my status more times a day than Charlie Sheen calls people trolls.

Why is it you can’t do some exercises because of being self-conscious? Here’s what I mean … I’m shackled to a desk a good portion of the day. I fidget and kick my feet and all – but a lot of those “office” workouts include taking a five-minute break to shadow box or do jumping jacks. Um, do you know what a fool I’d look like doing jumping jacks in my cube? Shoot, I don’t even think my cube is big enough for that. One of the girls here doesn’t use an office chair, she uses an exercise ball – do I make fun of her? Yes, yes I do. Is she super-skinny? Yes, yes she is. She claims the ball is because she slouches in a chair and this forces her to keep better posture. Still, even if that’s the truth, you aren’t going to see me giving up my chair for a ball, because I don’t want to a) answer questions b) deal with the ridicule or c) make her think she’s cool for that.

Note to WW.. Jennifer Hudson is NOT as good a spokesperson as the Hungry. Sorry. Marketing fail.

There is nothing worse than having this pair of pants you are desperately trying to fit into. You lose weight, the scale numbers are going down quite nicely. The stuff you’re wearing is getting looser. Woohoo! You figure, “Alright, I’ve got to fit in those pants now.” You can’t even pull them up past your thighs, it’s like you didn’t lose any weight at all. (Believe me, there’s a pair of jeans in my closet like this right now. They are mocking me. Mocking me, I tell you. What’s worse, they are the SAME SIZE as the pants I’m wearing now. At least that’s what the tag says, though I’m having my doubts. Screw you skinny jeans.)

You’re losing weight, you’re feeling great. You can take on the world. You can climb Mt. Everest. So you decide to tackle something new, you know, like jogging. You feel like you’re about to keel over and have a heart attack 30 seconds in. Depression sets in. You drag your ass home and sit on the couch and proceed to do arm lifts instead – lifting the spoon from the Ben & Jerry’s carton to your mouth and back again. Thus the cycle continues.

It is NOT okay to be inspired by the weight loss of celebrities and/or the people on The Biggest Loser. They have trainers. You don't. They have time to devote hours to a workout. You don't. Do not compare yourself to them, or you'll find yourself back on your couch doing the Ben & Jerry's spoon lift again.

Dieting is the only time in your life when it’s actually a good thing to be a loser. Well, that and if you’re on Glee.