A(nother) New Start!

I restarted the whole diet/exercise thing Monday. I don't know if "restarted" is the right term, but I use it because it feels like I'm recommitting myself to the process. What, you ask, happened to my previous commitment? The one I've been blogging about for the past year? The commitment I made in September of 2007 to change my lifestyle to a more healthier one and lose some weight? The commitment i originally made in January of 2000 to lose the weight I had been dragging around all my life and find some happiness? Nothing. Nothing happened to it. I just realized a few things that were blocking me from reaching my goals. Things I knew were blocking me. Things that stopped me from losing weight and gaining back weight I had already lost.......and lost.....and lost. So maybe "realized" isn't the correct term either. But its partially true.

While I haven't been perfect in my eating, I thought I wasn't doing too badly considering most of my snacking consisted of fruit, mainly grapes, apples and pineapple. Yes, I would hit Subway or the cafeteria at work here and there for a sandwich at lunch, sometimes I would even grab a couple slices of pizza, but overall I didn't think I was doing that much damage. I was hitting the gym pretty much every morning, playing in a sports league and taking dance lessons, so I wasn't just sitting. Yet my weight slowly crept back up.

In November, I was 207lb, a full 10lb heavier than i had been in August. Then I started lifting weights at the gym to try and grow some muscle in addition to the cardio. My weight immediately jumped 5lb. It never came back off. I was 213 when I went to Cuba in late February and I had stopped lifting weights due to back and shoulder issues. In mid April, I started participating in cardio type classes at the gym to give me an average of 8 gym visits a week. Since mid May, the average number of visits to the gym is 9. I now weigh as of this morning, 218lb. That's right, 218.

How can this be? Believe me, I've been asking myself this question for months now. How can I be gaining weight when most days I'm eating well, drinking tons of water, and visiting the gym regularly? Well, this is where the realization sets in. Among other things which I'll get to in a moment, I eat a shitload of grapes. When we buy groceries, we buy a lot of grapes. The grocery store has those plastic bags on the roller in the fruit and vegetable section and I fill up 2 of them, 1 with green seedless, the other with red seedless. This fills up a large size tupperware bowl at home and most of the shelf it sits on in the refridgerator. We also pick up about 3 pineapples and have them chopped and ready to eat. This is in addtion to the apples, a bag of Royal Gala and a bag of Golden Delicious usually. And don't forget the bananas. Sounds like a good healthy plan doesn't it? Well it is, in moderation.

See, I bring 4 apples to work every day and munch on them throughout the day as snacks. My lunch usually consists of a bag of that Dole Salad mix with low calorie Italian dressing and Chunky soup. So far, so good. Well, maybe I could cut back on one or two of the apples, but they're apples for chrissakes! And I workout in the mornings, I'm hungry! Sometimes, Instead of the soup and maybe even instead of the salad, I'll grab a sandwich if I'm feeling particularly hungry. No harm in that I would think. So by my measure, I'm ingesting probably anywhere from 500-900 calories during the workday depending on whether I have the sandwich or not. And more if I do Subway or slices of pizza, which I don't do very often.

But then here's where I think the problem is: the night time. We usually cook dinner and we try to be good about what we eat but I admittedly don't follow what dieticians and the like would consider a normal portion. I don't eat a 3oz. piece of meat, my portion is probably double that, sometimes more depending on what it is. And if its something like spaghetti or shepherds pie, I don't measure out a portion using a scale or anything, I just scoop myself out a nice sized plate that's probably 3 or 4 times the recommended portion and enjoy. But that's not all. Now we're into sitting in front of the TV time. And what does that mean? Grapes! Pineapple! Maybe even a banana smoothie! I think this is a lot of where I'm going wrong.

Yes, I should be more moderate in my dinner portions but most days, its the only solid meal I eat so I'd like it to be filling. But despite snacking on fruits to satiate my desire to eat, I'm mindlessly ingesting way more calories than I thought. I don't measure my food and so I can only guess as to how many grapes I eat in a sitting. But lets put it this way: those 2 bags of grapes we bought on say a Saturday are gone by Wednesday usually, maybe Thursday. And the pineapple? It usually lasts the week but not always. And the aforementioned banana smoothie? Well its not a regular thing, but maybe twice a week, sometimes more. Its usually 2 bananas, 1 and a half to 2 cups of 1% milk, ice and Splenda for a caloric total of about 400. Totalled up, how many calories is all of that?

Now add that to the indiscretions on the weekend. Pizza, while not as frequent as before, does happen. So does M&Ms or some other candy at the movies. And don't forget the beer, something I rarely drank before, now a regular part of my Friday and Saturday evenings. Also, it isn't uncommon for me to enjoy a big bowl of cereal in the mornings on the weekend, by big I mean at least 2 cups (maybe a bit more) of the cereal and probably a cup of milk. The cereal may be Corn Flakes, Special K or Rice Krispies, but its still a big bowl of cereal. See the pattern?

Overeating. No portion control. Mindless snacking. No wonder I'm failing. I may have changed the types of foods I'm eating but I'm still overeating. A doctor at the Brookhaven Obesity Clinic said once in response to one of his obese patients lamenting his weight gain despite eating only oranges ( a dubious claim if you ask me), "You may be eating only oranges, but you're eating 45 oranges! You eat 45 of anything and you're going to gain weight!" I've learned this for there is no difference between me and my incessant snacking on grapes and pineapple and this patient's snacking on oranges. At least I'm admitting I eat other things during the day too!

It comes down to my constant eating. If I'm not eating I'm drinking something. At work, I'll drink 3 or 4 coffees/teas over the course of the day in addition to the 3 24oz. containers of water I sip on. I always have some food or drink item at hand, I'm rarely without. I do this at home too, if I'm not eating, I'm sipping on something or I'm doing both. I eat when I'm not hungry, I just want something. Thankfully it's usually fruit, but it adds up. I used to think I would eat maybe 3 cups of grapes in an evening, now i think its more. Since I don't measure them and lets face it, a cup is not very big, I must be easily downing 5 or 6 cups, maybe more. At 62 calories a cup, that's roughly 300-400, probably more. And that doesn't include the pineapple, which I might add I stopped eating about a month ago, just lost my taste for it.

And here's another problem: when Red and I started taking these cardio classes in the evenings, I thought I could get away with eating more because I was working out more. So I would have that sandwich at lunch more often, or that slice of pizza in addition to my lunch of fruits, salad and maybe the soup. And I didn't think much of the beer on the weekends, again I was working out more so I had room to play. Same went for the candy at the movies, the ice cream cone we'd treat ourselves to, the cookies we'd bake, or the chocolate bar I'd ravage. Where was my head?!? I knew this was wrong! I knew I was already having problems losing weight the last few months and these classes were perfect for helping me get over that hump! So why did I do it? Why did I throw away all those months of hardwork and sacrifice? I'll tell you why. I was never hugged as a child.

That's right, never hugged, never kissed, never told I was loved. I wasn't abused or anything, Christmas was fine, we had stuff, I just lacked emotional attachment. And I guess I turned to food to fill that need. And its something I still do despite being with a woman who loves me to death. But you can't change what's hard wired in you overnight. And I haven't tried to change it. During this whole time, I changed what I ate for the most part, but not when I ate and how much I ate. Its like I'm filling some need deep inside of me although the whole thing doesn't make me happy. I mean here I am bitching about my weight and i'm still eating. All the time. Filling that need. If I doing such a good job of filling that need, shouldn't I be feeling better? Is this a circular argument?

So, how to fix. There's the million dollar question. How do you turn off the eating when you don't know how to? I notice I don't eat when I'm busy, so there's a start. We're hitting the gym roughly 4 nights a week after work, 2 of those nights we're doing a double class so that eats up part of the evening. I stopped buying grapes, didn't think I would resort to that, but I did. I'm very much an all or nothing person and if something isn't there, I won't eat it. If we don't keep snacks around, I can't eat. Won't I substitute the grapes with something that is in the house? Hopefully not. I can't say I won't because it would be easy to grab a sleeve of Ritz crackers or a couple of apples to munch on. All I can do is try. Same with my lunches. Just keep to the salad, fruit and soup. Stay away from the cafeteria and don't make a trip to Subway or the pizza shop.

I had another reminder of how much I've regained in the past few months. In September of 07, I bought a new suit to go to a wedding. At the time, I weighed 227lb and it was just before I started the regimen. Last September, we attended another wedding and I weighed about 203lb so you can imagine how ill-fitting the suit was. I was practically swimming in it. We have a family event to attend in a couple of weeks and I figured I'd get the suit altered so it fit again. I brought it to work today to take to a tailor at lunch and when i tried it on at the shop, it basically fit again! I was so disappointed. It really brought all of this home for me. I feel terrible. But I did it to myself. I was on the right path, doing great and I let it slip away. I've been at the gym more than ever the last 6 weeks and I blew a golden opportunity to drop some weight for the summer. Now I face dieting and working out hard just to get ready for my wedding in September.

There's no way I want to look like this when I get married. I'm disgusting. In late April, Red and I took our weight and measurements to help keep track of our progress and we started this busier regimen with high hopes of dropping excess weight and looking good for our big day. As of today, i'm about 4lb heavier than I was that day and we haven't done any followup. I just can't. But I made the decision over the weekend to fix things. No more grapes, at least not for now. Light lunches. Reasonably portioned meals at dinner. No more night time snacking. Exercise some god damned will power, I've done it before, I can do it again. Its only 3 months till the wedding, that's enough time to drop 15lb. That'll put me around 200 and I can live with that even though my original goal was to be about 190.

I'd like to think I'll pull this off. I know I can do it, i have in the recent past. With Red going to the gym now and being enthusiastic about it, I can get more time in there which can only benefit me. This is my best shot at succeeding, i need to take advantage of it. I'm getting older, the weight doesn't just come off like it used to. But am I still young enough to forge a new, healthier relationship with food? I don't know. Maybe this is my life, to be forever at war with my eating behaviours, my weight and my self loathing. I come from a heavy set family so I have the history. Thing is, despite my weariness with the whole thing, I can't give up. I would love to but I know what that would mean and that is not an option. So I'll trudge ahead with renewed vigor, how many times have I said that in the past? God, read my posts! They're full of the same never say die attitude, its laughable. That and the whining.