Groovybabe

I’ve been going through some old blog entries (on another blog) and looking at how I felt when I first decided to lose weight. Here is an interest excerp that I came across and something I should keep in mind.

I saw a bit of Oprah yesterday and they had a woman on there who they’d been following for 18 years. When she started out she weighed 500lbs, so that must be in the range of almost 40stone! :-0 And she was now about 15 stones I think. She’d written a book about maintaining and she talked about how she felt as a fat person versus how she feels as a normal person. And everything I feel, she said she felt. People tell me its in my head when I think things in relation to being fat but I know it’s not. Ask anyone who has been overweight, even if they no longer are, and they will tell you how it is. I think people just say its in your head to make you feel better but it doesn’t, they just make you feel like you’re going mad!

But anyway, I am feeling very strong in terms of my weightloss and exercise plan now. That woman did say something that helped me. She said, ‘one binge does not make a fat person, continuous binging is what makes a fat person.’ She went on that with this in mind if you binge eat just wipe it off as if it didn’t happen and start the next meal as normal. Anyone with a binging problem will know that if they binge they will write off the rest of that day and the damage then done is far worse.Yesterday, I didn’t binge as such (in fact I kept largely to my meals yesterday) but I did have an ice cream for breakfast (!) and I very easily might have written the whole day off but I kept what this woman had in mind and went to my next meal with a fresh perspective and ended up with a very successful day!

I remember reading a magazine called Lighterlife and getting so much from it. I read it while on the cardio equipment in one of my first workouts at my current gym, five months ago:

In the editorial some things stood out:

“We’ve all heard the mantra, ‘Your body is a temple’. Many of us, however, treat our bodies more like dustbins, filling them with all kinds of unhealthy stuff until they are overflowing. We know we are doing it but often can’t find the power within us to stop.

As we continue, we feel helpless and angry. We take out that fustration on our bodies and minds, simultaneously punishing ourselves and seeking comfort by eating more - piling on the pounds and compounding our misery.”

How interesting. Probably one of the closest insights I’ve witnessed yet. For me this is true but there is also an element of feeling like the problem is soo massive, too. And also a physiological urge (I don’t doubt, that is triggered emotionally) to eat.

There is also a feature on sleeping problems. Apparently obesity can vastly increase sleeping problems and it talks through different disorders. Night Sleeping Disorder (NES) sounds like something I might have:

“Affected individuals typically wake in the morning with no appitite, eat a large meal later in the day and are starving by bedtime.

‘A lot of them will say they are not hungry but feel they have to eat’, explains Professor Albert Stunkard.”

Did you know that by getting adequate Vitamin D through sunshine you can overt osteoporosis, depression, prostate cancer, breast cancer and type 2 diabetes?

The Future
BMI, as we know, is on it’s way out. BVI is on its way in. Body Volume Index is where a computer scans you from many angles and assesses your volume mass rather than body mass so it can ascertain how much is muscle/fat etc and given where your fat deposits are can give you more detailed health warnings. Sounds good to me!

In the future other medical ways forward will be Brain ‘pacemakers’ where implantss can switch on or off the brain activity to control the psychological and physical factors that may make us overeat. And wafer-thin silicon chips that detect signs of disease from your genes years before you would feel any initial symptoms. Soon there will be no reason to die!

A Quote

“If no one had seen me eat, I kidded myself that I hadn’t.” - A slimmer in the magazine.

Consciously I know that if I eat it then it counts but I do think there is a part of my sub-conscious that works on this rule.

I read any interesting article called ‘Taking Drastic Gastric Action’. Obviously refering to weightloss surgery. It talks about whether it is the right thing to do. I am starting to come around to the idea of Gastric banding. Basically I am giving myself a year to lose with this gym membership and if I am the same size or bigger in a year then I will get the Dr to put me on a waiting list. This is not something I have decided lightly and is definitely not something I want to resort to but I will if necessary. I was thinking that 1 in 100 die from it after that is what a surgeon said on that programme of the 34-stone teenager but I read today that it is actually 1 in 5000, which is a bit better although not fantastic. However, it also said banding is keyhole surgery which relaxes me a bit more. I’m just over letting my weight rule my life and one way or another I am not going to continue to let it be a problem. (I wrote this 5 months ago and have lost almost 50lbs since then!)

“If you are obese you are up to 78% less likely to ovulate.”

How messed up is that? It just goes to show how badly weight does affect your health and body.

“Being obese is worse for you health-wise than being a smoker.”

This is something I did not realise and something that has shocked me. Mainly because I am so anti smoking and always go on at my mum for killing herself. That is just what I do when I eat crap, which I am aware of. Kind of.

I just wanted to look back and help me to gain some perspective. I’ve been eating like it is going out of fashion while I’ve been ill. I’ve told myself it is because it soothes my throat but it is just excuses. Hopefully I have reigned myself in and reading all of this helps. It might help you too.

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