Refuse To Regain

C25K…..4BB

By Barbara Berkeley

For the past ten years, I’ve longed to be a runner. I like the way runners look and I like the fact that they can’t live without their sport. Then there are the practical aspects. You can run anywhere and anytime. If you’re a runner, you don’t have to wait until 5:45 for your step class to start. You don’t have to schedule your work around that kickbox instructor you favor. You don’t need to be bummed out when your gym is closed or your teacher can’t make it because her kid has conjunctivitis. Aside from these attractions, there is the alluring zen nature of running. Wouldn’t it be great to get in that zone…just fly along in a meditative state while nature moves past?

The totally ineffectual way I’ve previously approached my desire to run reminds me a lot of the way some people approach dieting. They assume they can do it without any help at all. This belief has been my downfall when it comes to running. After 25 years of doing aerobics, I have plenty of cardiovascular fitness. What’s the big deal about running? So, about three times a year, I lace up my sneakers and go out for a run. I push myself for a mile or a mile and half finding the process increasingly tedious and painful. I do this for about two days. I don’t need any help. I don’t need anyone to tell me how to do this. But after a couple of runs I can’t stand the thought of going out again. At this point I decide my body isn’t built for running and I give up on the idea entirely. Many people who come to me for weight loss follow this same pattern. They decide to diet, think they know everything about it, and start full out without any pre-planning or support. They push themselves for a few days or a few weeks only to pull up short. Then they conclude that there is something wrong with their metabolism. They simply aren’t “built” for weight loss, so they quit.

Since becoming a blogger last year, I’ve gotten a first-hand look at the power of the internet to export ideas and motivation. One site that keeps coming up on weight loss blogs is Couch to 5K (www.c25k.com), the running program that promises to turn couch potatoes into road warriors. As the soggy Cleveland April has given way to the bright green buds and pink blossoms of May, the desire to run has started to push into my consciousness like a spring bulb. This time, though, I have decided to approach the process with greater humility . I may be able to manage three step classes in a row, but I am clearly a D level runner. I’m simply going to have to start at the beginning. I’m going to have to admit that I need a teacher.

So, last week on a cool, sunny day, I headed out with my MP3 player loaded up with Week One of Robert Ullrey’s Couch to 5K running podcasts. I pulled on the geekiest set of running clothes ever: some big floppy pants and an oversized Cavs playoff shirt. I slathered on my favorite 45 spf zinc oxide cream from CVS and – looking like the least attractive runner on earth – headed down the street.

Robert Ullrey has a voice that reminds me a little of Kermit the Frog. But his matter-of-fact tone and gentle muppet-y cadence makes you feel that he completely understands your plight. It’s OK, he seems to say, that your pitiful trot is a disgrace to runners everywhere. At least you’re trying. So, when he says walk, I do. And when he says run, I dutifully take off. The techno music helps too. I’ve never tried to run with music and now I find that, lo and behold, it dulls the pain and blots out the sound of my labored breathing.

So, after plowing through week one I have actually moved on to my second podcast. Will I be able to run three miles in just 9 weeks? I’m still not sure. Whatever winds up occurring, I’ve been reminded that it’s both painful and important to be a beginner periodically. Each time I try to learn something new, I realize how easy it is for adults to avoid taking on things they don’t do well. Avoiding those experiences is temporarily relieving, but in the end…you miss a lot.

For the better part of my grown-up life, I’ve given up on things if I saw I couldn’t excel at them. Thus, I’ve come out looking good. “You’re so good at this or that,” people will tell me. But the truth is that I’ve engineered it that way. They don’t know about the watercolor lessons I quit after two weeks, the adult piano lessons I stopped taking, the forest of plants I’ve killed with my “black thumb,” the playwriting group I quit after one month, the rug hooking course I abandoned. I could go on.

It really wasn’t until I took up tennis a few years ago that I followed through on doing something at which I was absolutely bad. I mean clumsy enough to elicit laughter from onlookers. It wasn’t pretty. But I really wanted to learn and I had the suspicion that if I could make it through the mortifying period of beginner-hood, I might improve. About five years have now passed. I’ll never be a really strong tennis player, but I can play well enough to be part of a team and I’ve moved up past the beginners. Learning to play tennis at 56 years old was one of the greatest growth experiences of my life.

So I’m hoping that running might grow on me as well. It could lead to new friends, new venues to explore, new music to download, new meditative opportunities, new goals, who knows? After thinking about it, I realized that my newly resurrected resolve to run is largely a result of my contact with you…the people who read and respond to this blog. Day after day I’m inspired by the fact that you have dared to be great. I’m inspired by the way you’ve become exercisers, even when you started out without the slightest desire to break a sweat. I’m inspired by the way you’ve dared to change. I guess I want to be a little more like you. So what if I look foolish? So what if I even fail to become the runner I hope to be? It’s the daring to try that makes life interesting, right?

No More Hiding Behind A Mask

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

What a fabulous no-makeup, who-cares-what-the-hair-looks¬-like weekend. It’s 85 degrees here in western PA. Hard to believe it snowed four days ago.  I went biking, pulled weeds and laid down mulch in my gardens, cleaned the basement, went grocery shopping, visited with neighbors…and all without benefit of my “face on.”

This would not have happened 170 pounds ago, and I’m not talking about the biking (although that wouldn’t have happened, either). If I ever made a public appearance, even at Wal-Mart or at the back fence in a casual conversation with neighbors, I wore makeup. It wasn’t vanity as much as I tried everything I could to keep people’s eyes above my neck.

When I was obese, not wearing makeup in public was really disconcerting to me, to the point where I wanted to crawl out of my skin and hide. Quite the opposite at home. With my husband and kids it wasn’t an issue, probably because I was always comfortable with them. Their love for me was (and still is) unconditional, and my home was, in a convoluted way, a sanctuary from my inner demons. While the humiliation I felt about my weight came from inside me, it was most exposed and felt in public.

I didn’t realize this self-inflicted obligation to wear makeup until recently, as in the last few years. It was a gradual realization, something I didn’t fully grasp until I asked my daughter to take a photo of me with my granddaughter, in the morning, in my pajamas, without makeup and bonus! – bed head. I saw the photo and thought, “Isn’t Claire adorable?” Thank goodness I know there are bigger things than me in my life than just how big I am. Does that make sense?

Even though I looked healthier at my goal weight than I had in years, I wasn’t quite as emotionally healthy. I was still insecure and felt compelled to hide behind a mask. Part of this was due to what I thought were people’s expectations of me. I was now known in town as the woman who lost a lot of weight and so I thought I had some kind of “image” to live up to. I only now understand that that “image” was self-made. People don’t really give a damn if I wear mascara, and if they do, that’s their problem.

I don’t know what happened exactly – it was a slow change – but I got tired of taking makeup off every night which started me thinking about why I was wearing it all the time in the first place. I gradually wore less and less makeup on days when I was “just” going to the store and “just” hanging out with friends in my back yard. Sometimes after a workout, I’d actually go to the coffee shop in my sweaty clothes and sweaty face! Oh what that 300-pound me was thinking!

SHE was thinking “Bravo!” SHE was thinking thank goodness that frenzy was over. Thank goodness she didn’t have to worry what other people thought. Thank goodness she could see herself – scattered eyebrows, errant chin hairs, pasty white skin with red blotches, pale blue eyes – for what she really was. She was and still is Lynn. Lynn who was 300 pounds and isn’t anymore. Lynn who grew up fearful of other people’s opinions of her body, skin, what have you. Lynn who figured out that she had to look beyond her fear and rationalizations and accept what she’s got now.

HAVING SAID THAT: I still haven’t tackled the “just going to Pittsburgh” thing, or the “just going to visit friends in______ who I haven’t seen in ages” thing. Not sure I can or will or want to. That needs more mulling over. But at least now, when I look at my makeup case, I think about why I am applying it. I wear makeup because I want to, not because I feel compelled to. Makeup enhances my appearance. Maybe some day I can just say no. Maybe not. But this attitude is a long way away from the “before” me.

As I write this, I’m on my deck enjoying some much deserved sun and warmth. I look like an unkempt 8-year-old who just got out of bed because, after gardening, I showered, put a little product in my hair and let the wind do whatever it wanted to it. So what.

My neighbor has a few friends over and they’re eating dinner at her picnic table, not 30 feet away from me. These are people I know and we’ll probably chat in a few minutes. Will I go inside and put on makeup? Nope. I am who I am. At least in this moment. I don’t want to hide. I don’t want to crawl out of my skin. The only “image” I have to live up to is my own. And it’s changed in two years. I hope it changes even more (for the better) in another two years. 

I posted this photo on my Lynn's Weigh blog, but it bears repeating here. The self-portrait after a big old bike ride yesterday. No makeup and total sweat hair, but I was doggone happy. And isn't that what's most important?

"FAT: What No One Is Telling You" Challenges Fat Prejudice

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

This week I watched the PBS documentary “FAT: What No One Is Telling You.” It not only brought back a lot of memories, but it challenged me to better understand the complexity of obesity.

While Barbara works in the field of obesity, my only understanding of the issue is through my own personal experience as a formerly obese person, and through what I read and see in my daily life.

I identified with two of the women profiled, Rosie and Mary. While Rosie had gastric bypass, her reasons for losing weight were very similar to mine, and probably many of yours, too. Aside from the usual desire to walk without pain and to sit on the floor and get up again without it being a major endeavor, Rosie talked about wanting to be “normal,” to be in control, and to not be viewed as fat and therefore weak. She no longer wanted to be the butt of jokes.

Then there was Mary, who is a comedian and was often the butt of her own jokes. Her story, particularly her “ah ha” moment, was something I related to. She was in a park sitting in her car and crying. Her mother was dying of cancer, but at that moment she wasn’t crying over her mother like she usually did. She was crying, she said, because she wanted more from life. Then two guys pulled up and got out of their car. One of the guys said to the other, “Wonder what her problem is?” His friend said that she was probably crying because she was fat and nobody wanted her.

When I heard this, I was offended by their meanness and sad for Mary, but she called it her “epiphany.” She realized she WAS crying because she was fat. She asked herself how she could ever be happy if she couldn’t control what she put in her mouth. People, she said, stop at the physical when assessing each other and she wanted to change what people saw. I understood completely.

It was the other people in the documentary, including one of the producers, who challenged me to assess my “fat prejudice.” Not a comfortable challenge, to be sure, because I’m asking myself, after losing 170 pounds: How do I really see overweight and obese people?

Carla, who was thin as a child but gained weight when she began working in the corporate world, is trying to lose weight. She’d had a particularly stressful day and although she wasn’t hungry, bought ice cream on the way home from work. She said she knew going for a walk would make her feel better, but all she wanted to do was put on her pajamas and eat ice cream. Because that’s not my experience with food, and especially not something I struggled with while losing weight, my first gut reaction was, “Why? Why is she sabotaging all her good efforts?”

Ah…because the problem with obesity is that it is densely complex. My own experience is one of millions, and no two obese people are alike. Not physically in how their fat is distributed, not in their metabolic rates, not in their emotional health, not in their relationship with food and physical activity, and not in the reasons why and how they are obese, be it cultural, genetic, or psychological. There are as many ways to get obese, stay obese, and not be obese as there are people who are obese.

When producer Tom Spain was asked, “What was surprising to you during your journey through this?” he responded:

“The big surprise, and the big dilemma, is the complexity. One researcher told me early on: If you're going to deal with the subject, you have to honor the complexity...I've since learned this is a social phenomenon, an emotional phenomenon, a genetic phenomenon, it's a food supply phenomena. It's such a vast subject that's way beyond the reach of medicine or weight loss programs...it's just huge. That's something that was a surprise and a dilemma because the job of a filmmaker is to take an issue and make it clear and simple. And our message is that this is not clear and this is not simple.”

So how do I, as a person who’s been down the obesity path a few times and is now not obese, honor that complexity?

First impressions is a running theme in the “FAT” documentary. Many of the people interviewed said they wanted to lose weight so others would see them for who they really are. I remember that was one of my reasons for losing weight, too. But our bodies are not our personalities. God knows there are as many malicious skinny people out there as there are good-hearted overweight people. We can’t know someone’s nature simply by assessing their body size. But how do we teach the world to honor an entire person and not judge them based on body size?

When I visited my home state of Minnesota in 2007, I weighed 132 pounds. I went to a convenience store in a small town to buy ice. The woman behind the counter was morbidly obese. She didn’t greet me when I walked in, and when I asked her where the ice was, she merely pointed to the corner of the store. Another woman came out of the back room and joined the woman behind the counter. She, too, was morbidly obese. When I got to the counter, I smiled and said hello. Both of them just looked me up and down with scowls on their faces. I felt like Clint Eastwood when he rode into town in “High Plains Drifter.”

When I got to my car, I wondered if they were rude because I was thin or because I was a stranger or because they were just having a bad day. Thinking back, after watching “FAT,” I wondered if maybe I sent out an anti-fat vibe, the same one I picked up on time and again from non-obese people when I was morbidly obese, whether it was real or imagined. It’s not like I could say to them, “Hey, I used to be just like you!” I had to acknowledge that my first impression was that I saw two very obese women. How in my subconscious did I measure and judge them based solely on that observation? 

Watching “FAT,” I realize I’m one of the lucky ones. My mind was prepared to lose weight, and that “switch” we talk about, the one that kicks us into permanent weight-loss mode, stayed in the “on” position during my final journey down the scale. I was also lucky because my body responded to the “eat less, move more” approach. While maintaining my weight is not something I’d describe as easy, I know I won’t gain 170 pounds because I’m in a place – physically and emotionally – that works for me. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, and I suppose if I did I could make a million dollars because if every overweight and obese person thought like I do now and had the same physical makeup as me, everyone would be on their way to thin.

“FAT” doesn’t answer as many questions as it asks, and it left me with lingering doubts about my perceived notions about obese and overweight people. It’s a challenge I am anxious to pursue and perhaps, but not likely, remedy anytime soon. Even after years of being intimately familiar with obesity, I’m only now beginning to learn just how viciously complex a subject it is.

You can watch “FAT” online or check the site for dates in which it will air in your area.

Take Care of Your Beta Cells and Perhaps Live Longer

By Barbara Berkeley

The body is an incredibly complex mechanism. Just when we think we understand how one part works, another layer of signaling, hormones and pathways reveals itself. Like a child playing with a Matruschka doll, we open up one of the bodys’ mysteries only to find another one within. I say this because I am about to talk about insulin and I want everyone reading this to know that I fully realize that there are many other underlying layers to the story I am about to tell. Nevertheless, the hormone insulin – made by the Beta cells of the pancreas – continues to be implicated in an astonishing number of modern disease states. Take a look at any of our current health problems and likely as not you’ll find insulin lurking around acting suspicious.

For most of us, insulin comes to mind as the substance that diabetics lack, the stuff they need to inject. One of the easiest ways to make the connection between insulin and our recent health deterioration is to take note of the number of TV commercials that have suddenly appeared touting bright new “toys” for diabetics. We have a glut of these ads because developing diabetes is becoming so common that it’s almost a part of pop culture. These commercials make it seem like becoming a diabetic and testing blood sugar is actually fun. Your meter can be blue, purple or pink. It can even match your clothes. It’s easy! Painless!

Let’s start with a basic diabetes primer and the primer begins with this statement: diabetes is a destroyer and a killer. There’s not a thing that’s good about it.
 
Diabetes comes in two major forms: juvenile onset diabetes and adult onset diabetes. These also carry the names Type 1 and Type 2. Doctors have substituted the numbers for the old names because adult onset diabetes is no longer the province of adults. Thanks to all the starches and sugars we eat, it’s become common in kids too. So it’s more accurate to call it Type 2. The two forms of diabetes each come from a problem with insulin, but the source of the problem is different.

Normally, insulin is released by Beta cells when the brain senses that sugar levels are about to rise in the blood. Why would sugar levels go up? Usually because of something we’ve eaten. When we eat either starches or sugar, they are broken down into simple sugar molecules that enter the bloodstream. Insulin’s job is to keep sugar in the blood within a small, acceptable range. To do this, insulin takes sugar out of the blood and directs it into cells that can use sugar as fuel. But insulin has a second major job. It is also the body’s primary fat storage hormone. In a well-functioning body, insulin will decide how much sugar to send to the cells and how much to send into fat storage. The body will stay at normal weight because the insulin system is on auto-pilot.

So what happens to insulin in the two forms of diabetes? In Type 1 (more common in kids), something happens that destroys the Beta cells of the pancreas. This is usually an auto-immune process. For some reason, the body attacks its own Beta cells and destroys them. Type 1 diabetics have a total or almost total lack of insulin and must inject it to live. No one can survive without insulin because it controls the breakdown and storage of food.

Type 2 diabetics (more commonly adults, but increasingly kids as well) don’t have a problem making insulin…at least at first. Their problem is that some of the cells of their body have stopped listening to insulin. As a result, insulin can’t move sugar into the cells that would dispose of it. The unfortunate consequence is that the sugar is shunted into fat cells instead. There, it is transformed into fat and the person with the problem grows larger and larger. The brain recognizes that insulin is not working properly and asks the Beta cells to make excessive amounts in the hopes that the large volume of insulin will overwhelm the problem. This continual stress on the pancreas leads to Beta cell burn out. Over time, type 2 diabetics start looking more like type 1 diabetics. They lose a significant number of Beta cells and need medication or insulin injection to keep up.

Because Beta cell destruction is so common and so important, I have a real problem with the diagnosis of “Pre-Diabetes.” Patients who are told that they are “Pre” diabetic or simply have “abnormal” blood sugar need to know that we doctors don’t have a good handle on when diabetes begins. There is no “pre.” It’s all a continuum. What we do know, is that once blood sugar has started to become abnormal, a marked loss of Beta cells has already occurred and that these Beta cells can’t be resurrected. How much of a loss are we talking about? Read the following from a diabetes text book:

“A study of pancreatic tissue obtained from autopsies demonstrated that obese humans with impaired fasting glucose (110-125 mg/dl) had a 40% decrease in relative beta cell volume, and obese humans with type 2 diabetes had a 63% decrease in relative beta cell volume.” (Clinical Diabetes, Fonseca)

This simply means that those people we call Pre-Diabetic are already well on the road to losing almost half of their vital Beta cells. What’s “pre” about that??
 
When we talk about taking care of ourselves, we always mention eating less fat, exercising more, stressing less. What about taking care of a vital and unappreciated asset? Our Beta cells. Forget about the stress on us! Let’s try taking the stress off them! This is easily accomplished when we eat fewer foods that turn into sugar in the bloodstream.

Apart from staving off diabetes, there may be another reason to be awfully nice to our Beta cells. As it turns out, insulin appears to be a kind of super-hormone with vast areas of responsibility that go beyond simply controlling sugar and fat. The April 9th issue of Nature features an article on life extension through caloric restriction. As I’ve written previously, animals who are fed calorie restricted diets live longer and appear younger than controls. Accumulating evidence points to beneficial effects in humans as well. Now it appears that insulin plays a role in this process. In rodents who have been implanted with human tumor cells, cancer growth has been stopped by dietary restriction. It appears that the tumors continue to grow when insulin is around, but stop growing when insulin stops signaling them. It has also been noted that certain tumors that do not respond to restricting calories. When these particularly cell lines were investigated, researchers found that the tumor itself had developed a mutation that continued to signal cells just as if insulin were still present. Thus, the tumor continued to grow. Anne Brunet of Stanford University writes in Nature:

“Dietary restriction can prolong life and delay the onset of cancer. Suppressing the signaling pathway that is mediated by the hormone insulin might be crucial for the anticancer effects of reduced caloric intake….Moreover, involvement of the insulin-mediated pathway indicates that drugs that ameliorate insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes might be beneficial in preventing cancer, even in non-diabetic patients.”

The study of insulin and its role in life extension and tumor growth is still in its early stages, but once again, what is known seems consistent with my personal belief that diets that stimulate less insulin production are healthier. I believe that this is of particular importance for those who are overweight or who have been so. Many of these people are insulin resistant, meaning that their bodies are making inappropriately large doses of insulin to compensate for the problem. As we have seen, Big Insulin is not a good thing.

I know your self-care list is a long one, but I’d like to put in a plug for kindness to your Beta cells. They are the underappreciated workhorses of your body and are central to your health. When they start dying or overproducing insulin, you are in trouble. To quickly and simply cut your risk, lose belly fat so that your muscle cells are not resistant and insulin works better. This will cut the amount of insulin you make. Then, eat minimally from the starch and sugar group so that insulin gets the rest it deserves. Who knows, the vacation you give these mysterious cells may even lead to fewer worries about cancer and a longer life!

Sometimes A Girl Needs A Cookie

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

Yesterday, my little brother turned 43, and my mom made his favorite dessert: chocolate chip cookies.

Now these aren’t just any cookies made from a recipe on the back of a bag of chips. These are the only chocolate chip cookies I knew existed until I’d grown up, moved out of the house and discovered Mrs. Fields at the mall.

I have no idea where mom got the recipe, but it’s been in the family as long as I’ve been alive. They’re made with shortening and oatmeal, which makes them crispy, not chewy. Perfect for dunking in milk. They were a staple in Mom’s cookie repertoire, which included peanut cookies, peanut butter cookies, M&M cookies, peanut blossom cookies (the ones with the Hershey Kiss in the middle), and sugar cookies. If cookies were a symphony, Mom’s CCCs were the fourth movement, the ones that got the most attention, whose “melody of flavor” stuck most in our memories.

When I was a kid, I knew the minute I walked through the door that CCCs were cooling on the counter. I’d drop my books, grab some milk and a couple of cookies, and sit and watch “Guiding Light” with Mom. CCCs didn’t last long, but always tasted better the next day, and even better on day two, which they rarely made it to.

When Mom wrote in her email that she’d made CCCs for Matthew, I started thinking about how long it had been since I’d had one, let alone baked them. I can’t remember, but I’m sure it’s been 10 years at least. I didn’t even have the recipe anymore. My oldest daughter makes them for her sister once in awhile, but I’d not laid eyes on them in a long, long time. Especially not since embarking on this weight-loss/weight-maintenance odyssey. But the thought of them nagged me all morning, so I emailed Mom, got the recipe, and made a batch “for the kids.”

Yesterday was a day off from exercise and, for whatever reason, when I don’t exercise, I’m more hungry than when I do. I worried that creating my favorite cookie would create temptation I couldn’t resist. Not that I binge, but I had visions of my husband finding me passed out on the kitchen floor in a CCC coma, crumbs all around me and chocolate smeared over my smiling lips.

Maybe I shouldn’t do this, I thought as I threw the chips in my shopping basket. But surely I have the will power, right?

I honestly wasn’t sure. I hadn’t made these cookies in years, and I remembered them in an almost reverent way. I salivated just thinking about their sweet crispness. What the heck was I doing tempting fate this way?

With all the ingredients mixed, I dug out a dough-covered chip and ate it. Salmonella shamonella…there was a day not so long ago when I thought cookie dough should be a food group.

Once the CCCs were baked and cooled, I took a bite. Just as crispy and yummy as I remembered. When I swallowed, though, it left behind a thin film of fat on the roof of my mouth. I didn’t remember that being an issue before. Very curious. I waited a half an hour and took another bite. Same thing, only this time, my stomach felt full, like I’d eaten butter straight up from the tub, which, in essence, I had. Did my tastes change that much in four years? Or was I just more aware of the sensations certain foods (like fat) created in my mouth? My cookie baking had turned into a serendipitous science experiment.

I didn’t like the feeling of fat on the roof of my mouth. It felt unnatural and tasted strange. Ergo, two bites of a fat-laden cookie cured my craving for Mom’s CCCs!

Ah….not quite. When I looked beyond the physical elements of the cookie, I realized was that it wasn’t the taste I craved. It was the memory of coming home from school and eating CCCs with my mom. I craved the ritual of baking cookies and seeing my children’s eyes light up when they came home from school and saw (and smelled) that I’d baked their grandma’s CCCs.

Food is a more pressing subject in our minds than on our palates. Our relationship is complicated and deserves vetting. Here’s my question to you: What makes some foods so enticing, and how, as people who have lost weight and are keeping it off, do we engage in this relationship in a way different from the rest of the world?

For me it’s evolutionary – a constantly changing and educational bond. I’m just glad I’ve evolved to the point where I can no longer eat an entire chocolate chip cookie. So why does it make me happy to make them and share them with my kids and with my husband’s students (that’s where this batch is heading)? Perhaps as someone who is maintaining a large weight loss, I shouldn’t be making cookies at all? It hardly promotes the healthy eating I engage in. Shouldn’t I practice what I preach? Live my words?

I don’t know how I think about it all. I haven’t made any conclusions yet except to say, sometimes a girl just needs a cookie.

Going The Distance

By Barbara Berkeley

I loved this entry on Jonathan’s blog. With his permission, I’ve reproduced it below:

Persister

While I was out running this morning I tripped and had kind of a tough spill. But fortunately, other than my phone, nothing was damaged. (Well, my pride was a bit wounded.) I have a bruise on my chest and a scrape on my knee, but no blood was shed, no muscles pulled, no joints twisted, etc. so all things considered, it was a relatively fortuitous fall, and much less scary than when I have tripped and fallen in the dark running on a weekday morning. I was able to get right back up and continue on, even if I was a little bit shaken.

As I continued, and got back into the rhythm of running, I started to get annoyed. I noticed that time and again, someone would run right past me, sailing forward as if I were standing still. It really began to bug me that they could all go so fast, so easily. Regardless of age or gender, everyone seemed to be just cruising along at top speed while I felt as though I were plodding. All of my running and training and efforts, and here I was, slow as the proverbial tortoise.
So I’ll be honest and tell you that at that point, I strongly considered giving up. My phone is smashed, but I can still use the keypad, and I thought about giving Devin a call and asking him to come get me. It was a sort of petulant, pouty feeling, one which I often had as a child.

This week, in the blog “Refuse to Regain,” Barbara Berkeley talked about her dissatisfaction with the word “maintenance” to describe the process of remaining slender after having lost weight. She noted that it didn’t really do justice to use the word maintenance to explain such an “interesting, compelling, challenging process.”

I agree that it’s hard to come up with just the right word. I’d suggest “persister” if that was a real word. Because what I did today after first falling and then being passed by a whole bunch of runners was stop and assess the truth of what I was feeling, acknowledging the frustration and difficulty….and then I JUST KEPT GOING.

In the end, I ran over six more miles until I got home, and as I was getting pretty close to finishing, I had that blissful, “this is the best day ever” kind of feeling. Legs pumping, lungs pulsating, eyes and ears taking everything in around me — it was awesome.

That’s what weight maintenance is like to me. There are lots of times when I trip and fall and think about giving up. There are times when I get angry that “everyone else has it so much easier than me.” There are times when it just seems too painful, too unpleasant and too scary to keep moving forward. But then I pick myself up, brush myself off, and keep going. And I never, ever regret it.

One of the most important mental attitudes any maintainer can develop is the confidence that he or she can persist. Like any of the skills of maintenance, this confidence comes with practice. Getting to this feeling may take awhile, which means many moments of simply forcing one’s self to keep going without being at all sure of success. Many of you have written to describe this experience in relation to exercise. You started off by simply forcing yourselves to do it. You grew more confident in your ability to persist. Finally the persistence morphed into love.

There is a commercial currently running on TV which shows a man going out in the morning for a run. He heads onto a wooded path and begins to jog. In the first mile of his run, roots trip him and plants send thick vines out like lassos to wrap him up and keep him from moving on. But he persists. As the early going passes off, he breaks through the sabotaging foliage onto a clear, wide path. The rest of the run is laid out easily and joyfully before him.

The topic of persistence has particular meaning in the days following holidays. This past week, with its Easter and Passover foods, tends to be a hard one for the dietarily remodeled. Holidays link food with family, love, ritual and even the divine. Special foods have always been part of cultural tradition and none of us want to completely sever that connection. Yet we learn to persist through the moment even if those chocolate bunnies nip at our heels or those matzoh balls plop pounds of weight on the morning scale. Even if we cannot control the moment, we manage to stumble back from the fall. The path lies wide and joyful ahead of us and we can truly say that “this is the best day ever.”

Welcome to “Sustenance City”

By Lynn Haraldson-Bering

The makers of Estroven, makers of a menopausal symptom relief product, launched an ad campaign last week in which a woman writes a postcard from her trip to Menopauseland:

It reminded me of a question Barbara asked me in an email last week: “So how’s life in Maintenance World?”

“Maintenance” truly is a world all its own, but I agree with Barbara, the name is need of a change. In her last blog, “The Unsatisfactory ‘M’ Word,” Barbara posed an interesting question about the language of “maintenance.” We all know maintaining our weight is about more than just staying the same, although that is a component and, I suppose, the “ultimate goal” of weight loss. But maintaining weight is more than goal. Goals are finite. Maintenance is forever.

Debby shared a quote from fellow maintainer Baby Steps V’s blog in which writer Vickie calls maintenance a “path,” one that is never ending and gives her a sense of direction. The path of maintenance is one on which we’re always moving. It’s hopeful and a challenge, not drudgery because we consciously chose this path, unlike something we’re forced to do.

I loved to irritate my brother when we were kids by barging in his room and switching the light on and off, on and off, on and off until he threatened to tell Mom. Then I’d flip the switch off and leave the room, laughing.

I came to weight loss this last and final time in a similar way. There was no one particular switch that flipped on, but rather it was a series of switching “lights” of reality on and off and on and off that caused me to realize that things had to be different this time. More importantly, I wanted things to be different.

To lose weight and maintain at a particular scale number, you have to have an incessant want, a drive, a deep desire to change and commit to change, despite the odds. And once you have that drive, you can no longer tolerate looking at your life through tunnel or one-dimensional vision, or to see food and your relationship to it through rose-colored glasses. No. Those switches we flipped required us to look at our lives honestly and completely, to be brave and look under the bed and in the closet, and in the end, after the weight was off, to move our “belongings” to Maintenance World.  

I’m not sure there is a word that encapsulates everything related to weight loss and maintenance. Life after weight loss is a concept, constructed of ways of thinking and being and growing and learning. It’s a way of life.

When I looked up “maintenance” in the dictionary, here was the dull little definition:

1. The act of maintaining or the state of being maintained.
2. The work of keeping something in proper condition; upkeep.

Then I looked up the word “sustain,” and I found a much more conceptual definition:

1. To keep in existence; maintain.
2. To supply with necessities or nourishment; provide for.
3. To support from below; keep from falling or sinking; prop.
4. To support the spirits, vitality, or resolution of; encourage.
5. To bear up under; withstand.
6. To experience or suffer.
7. To affirm the validity of.
8. To prove or corroborate; confirm.
9. To keep up competently.

Now that’s a definition of the life I’m living now as a person who is keeping off the weight she lost. It encapsulates all three components of self: body, mind and spirit. Do I supply my body with nourishment? Yes. Support the spirits and vitality? Absolutely. Experience and suffer? Sometimes, yes. Affirm, prove or corroborate and keep up competently? Every single day.

We “sustainers,” those of us who have committed to changing our physical and emotional lives, packed our bags and moved out of the ordinary world. I suggest “Maintenance World” isn’t the appropriate name for where we live now. Perhaps we need to call our town “Sustenance City.”

The Unsatisfactory “M” Word

By Barbara Berkeley

As anyone who has read this blog knows, I have the sometimes annoying tendency to create new words and terms. Primarian, Scream Weight, Gong Food, IBM….the list goes on. I don’t do this to be cute. Honestly, I don’t. I’m just attempting to reframe the language of weight loss. So much of what we say about weight loss and maintenance appears wrong to me. And we keep repeating the same phrases over and over. My compulsive creation of new words is my brain’s way of trying to speak about weight in a different language.

Recently, I’ve become increasingly unhappy with the word “maintenance.” To maintain simply means to keep things at a steady state. It’s a boring word; one with absolutely no passion or appeal. Who wants to aspire to maintain? It seems like an endless drag.

When I look at what you have written and when I speak to maintainers, I am struck by the fact that all of you are far more than a stable scale number. Successful maintainers are something else entirely. They are changelings: people who have been able to permanently remake themselves. They’ve gone from one side of the world to the other. There has got to be a better descriptor for this new state than “maintenance.”

I’ve been unable to get my mind around the right word to substitute for “maintainer.” In my book, I call long-term successes Weight Mentors, but that really doesn’t capture the morphing from one being to another that characterizes you changelings. (Neither does “changeling,” by the way).

Dr. Oz asked me the following question during our radio interview: “What is the moment that causes someone to go from a person who’s been struggling with weight forever to someone who can permanently control their weight?” I couldn’t tell him because I don’t know the answer. To be honest, it seems no one else does either. All we can say is that the switch seems to flip for some people at some undetermined moment. (Should we call you “The Flipped?” I think not!) It’s very unsatisfactory to think that this flipping is unpredictable, but in a way there’s something wonderfully hopeful about it. The fact that a transformation like this can happen even after many unsuccessful attempts tells us that it can happen to anyone with enough persistence.

Maintainers seem to be particularly alive. I suspect this has a multitude of explanations. They live a life that is closer to the life nature intended, consuming purer fuels and using the body actively. They have a daily purpose: health. They have a sense of accomplishment that reflects very real achievement. None of this is boring. None of this has much to do with simply keeping things on an even keel.

In other words, maintainers aren’t simply maintaining. Using this word to describe them seriously shortchanges what they’ve done and continue to do. If you’re a “maintainer,” you’re reveling in a new way of being. You’re exploring and enjoying a brand new territory. You’re continuing to educate yourself about the new neighborhood you now inhabit. It’s an interesting, compelling, challenging process, not at all conveyed by the “m” word.

So what is the word that describes this new way of being? Like “maintenance” and “maintainer” it should have two forms, one to describe the state and one to describe those who inhabit that state. Give it some thought.

LeBron and the Art of Weight Maintenance

By Barbara Berkeley

At the risk of alienating our dear friends and readers from elsewhere in the country, I must brag just a little. Cleveland has one heck of a basketball team.

I might be one of the world’s biggest Cavaliers fans. For years, my husband Don and I have watched the changing fortunes of our home team at the Richfield Coliseum and later at the arena that would become known as the “Q.” Many years ago, after moving to Cleveland, we were lucky enough to meet Harvey, a nice guy with terrific basketball seats. We became part of a group of people who split those season seats. Eight rows back. Center court.

The first years were exciting. Those were the years of Mark Price and Brad Dougherty. The Cavs were terrific. Only one problem. Their division also included a little team called the Chicago Bulls which featured a certain player named Michael Jordan. Time and again, the Cavs would get close to greatness only to have it snatched away on the final shot by number 23. (NOTE: This link is for b-ball fans only. It replays one of the worst moments in Cleveland sports history. We were at this game and I’ll never forget it). Don and I consoled ourselves with the knowledge that we were present at many, many incredible performances by the greatest player ever. But you just couldn’t get past the fact that those great performances meant you were getting beat!

Then came the lean years. The Cavs were really awful; a rotating squad of names and faces you barely could remember. We still split the seats but it was tough giving away the games we didn’t want. No one wanted to watch the Cavaliers. They had become just another part of the painful Cleveland sports legacy.

But in an unbelievable twist of fate, the Cavaliers were to find their own number 23. Someone who might eventually surpass Jordan himself. Someone who would most certainly wipe away the sting of being a sports fan in Cleveland, Ohio. Along came LeBron James with a singlemindedness that is nothing short of astonishing. By himself, he resurrected our once sorry team and the hopes of an entire sports-crazed city. And those seats that no one wanted? They’ve become hotter than an asphalt street in August. From very close range, I have been a witness to greatness.

But the greatness has not been about talent alone. It’s been about something larger in the way LeBron has remade the Cavs.
During the Cavs’s demolition of the Mavericks Sunday on ABC, there was a distinct change in tone from the national announcers. Their commentary honed in on the essence of this Cavaliers team and on the unique something which LeBron has brought to the court. That something is joy.

 

LeBron has announced that he’s out to win the NBA championship, certainly one of the toughest goals in sports. Yet he’s decided that the journey is going to be a blast. In fact, he’s having so much fun that he’s brought the team, the coaches, the fans and the city along with him. Even the hardened national announcers were sounding a bit envious. One of them said of the Cavs, “Find a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life!” Then he went on to report on the love-fest that was the Cavaliers bench. Time and again, the cameras showed shots of the teammates hugging, cheering for each other, dancing and laughing full-out. There were multiple replays of the complicated pre-game rituals that LeBron has instituted which include tossing rosin into the air like stardust and taking faux family portraits of the team with an imaginary camera.

I’ve learned a lot from this year’s Cavs team and even more from LeBron. Anyone who is trying to hit on a formula for success can benefit from watching him. And it’s not as far a jump from basketball to maintenance as you might think. Here are the ABCs of LBJ and how we all might apply them to our own weight-related goals.

1. The tougher the task, the more you need to throw yourself into it. For all his kidding around, LeBron never loses focus for a second. Remember that a moderate effort will always get you a moderate result.

2. No one can do it alone. Even one of the greatest players on the planet needs a supporting cast and you do too. What LBJ has discovered is the multiplication of energy that comes from a true team. Find that team, either in life or on line. Or create your own team by forming a group of maintainers and leading them to greatness.

3. Use ritual. LeBron has utilized the age-old power of ritual to galvanize both team and fans. Maintainers can use ritual and routine too. Some examples? Wear a particular piece of jewelry or clothing whenever you know that you are going to be in a challenging food situation. Like a string around your finger, let this item remind you of your goals. Start each day with a reaffirmation—perhaps by looking at old photos of yourself or by repeating some thoughts or quotes that are meaningful to you. Create your own rituals and let them work for you.

4. Don’t be afraid to fail. In an interview with 60 Minutes this week, LeBron cited this as a particularly important principle. Many maintainers are crippled by the fear of regaining. Sometimes, the fear is so intense it prevents them from observing, weighing or making the right corrections. Don’t let fear of failure get in your way. Take the three point shot at the buzzer.

5. Find the joy. This one is crucial. LeBron has taken a grueling task that involves intense physical exhaustion, constant injury and unrelenting mental focus and turned it into a celebration. In doing so, he has brought everyone along with him. We maintainers should enjoy our new lives and always keep a sense of humor about what we’re trying to accomplish. But more than just enjoying, we should find something truly great in our efforts.

Thanks for being part of the RTR team. Let’s all go out there on the floor and make it happen! And many thanks to LeBron, Mo, Delonte, Andy, Z, Ben, Daniel, Wally and all the Cavs for providing Cleveland with a season that has thrilled and inspired.