Weighty Kaity

My half-sister, her husband, and two children are Seventh-Day Adventists, whose religious guidelines suggest a vegetarian diet. A while back I thought this was completely insane and often mocked their choices, religious and dietary. When my father was hospitalized with kidney failure for three weeks in late December and into January, their get-well gift to him was a book called The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, PhD, and Thomas M. Campbell II. It's a book that advocates prevention of disease through a whole foods, plant-based diet. At the time, I was incredibly sensitive, and my thoughts were: "How dare my sister send my dying father a book about how he could have prevented his illness! He's the healthiest eater I know!"

And it's true. My dad's always been an exceptionally healthy eater, to the point of obsession. While most American men his age are taking medication for high cholesterol/blood pressure or suffering from obesity or other issues, he's always been incredibly lean and healthy. His kidney failure snuck up on him, and I don't think that his diet could have prevented it entirely----however, he could have SEEN A DOCTOR in the years when he was experiencing symptoms and not saying a word, but that's beside the point. The point is, his healthy diet did save his life. He got incredibly sick, he shouldn't have been alive. Doctors were stunned that he was living and that he survived, and they've pinpointed his diet as the primary reason. That was part of my decision to start getting healthy and start losing weight.

Fast forward to eight months down the road. I've made the choice to go primarily vegan, and The China Study is still sitting on the shelf. The whole family has taken an interest in vegetarianism, and now all three of us are finally reading the book. The China Study details years upon years of scientific research done to examine the correlation between nutrition and disease, and it's nothing short of extraordinary. I realize now that my sister giving this book to my father really isn't a slap in the face; it's the gift of knowledge to unlock one's best potential for good health. Skinny Bitch was the rude slap in the face that I needed to start paying attention, and The China Study is the research necessary for me to keep it up.

Okay. So. I have not updated this in a good long time.

I left the food diary behind and thought that I could handle things without religiously watching everything that I do, but I don't think I'm at that point yet. The last two weeks have been horrible in terms of my eating habits. It's like everything's been thrown out the window and I've just been eating nonstop. Lots of unhealthy things. The schedule of the show is taking its toll on me and I'm just using that as an excuse to eat badly. My dad keeps buying frigging Hostess donuts and they're out on the counter and I find myself completely unable to resist them.

To be honest, I never thought I had any kind of addiction or problem or anything. I just figured I ate badly but had total control over it. I'm beginning to think that I don't. I don't want to take the blame off myself, but I'm realizing that my willpower is CONSIDERABLY less than I thought it was. I make excuses, I eat things with the intent that I'll get them out of my sight so I won't eat them LATER, I look at the calorie/fat content and am disgusted by it but then sit down and eat it all anyway only to beat myself up over it later. I eat something, and even if I'm not hungry, I feel the need to eat more and more, like I haven't balanced out my cravings. --Part of that, I know, is because I'm eating unhealthy sorts of things and my body is continuing to crave nutrients it's not getting, so I keep eating. I eat late at night when I'm not hungry just because I want to eat----usually I AM hungry around midnight, because that's like dinner for me with my current schedule (going to bed around 3 or 4 each night, waking up at 10:30/11). But last night I wasn't, and I ate a big bowl of canned clam chowder just... because. At two in the morning. It's also been incredibly wet and cold for the last couple of weeks. I've craved comfort food. And to me, comfort food is ... macaroni and cheese. Donuts. Cereal that I'll.. sit down and eat half a box of.

So maybe I do have some addiction issues. I don't know. I don't like how I've eaten over the last couple of weeks. I think that... I needed to, to jumpstart myself again, to learn some things about myself and how to keep them in line. While during my down time at the theater I've been writing out new plans for how to continue. I haven't had as much energy these days, I've been out of breath despite my activity levels being the same and despite my weight loss---and my health, too. In the last two weeks I've really noticed that decline in energy and health because of my eating habits. I NEEDED to feel the difference in my body to know that this is still worth doing.

I knew going in that hitting 210 was going to be my plateau point, and I think my subconscious is rebelling because I'm scared to continue. I don't really know what's underneath all this, I've built a massive portion of my identity on being overweight, and so once I get down to a point where... I haven't been UNDER such a weight in so long, it starts to get scary. 210 is by no means skinny. I feel thinner than I am (which.. always makes me cringe in photographs). But I have to keep going because that's what I need to do for myself. I want a different experience. I want guilt-free foods and foods that will leave me feeling energized rather than weighed down. A treat is fine every once in a while, to satisfy a craving, but a treat's no longer any good if that's what I'm eating all the time just because it's THERE. Healthier foods make me feel just as good in-that-instant as unhealthy foods do. I get just as much pleasure out of fresh pineapple as I do macaroni and cheese----and I don't feel guilty after.

So.. I made a grocery list and a list of new rules, taking my issues into account and tailoring my plans to suit how I feel at the moment and what I know I'm going to eat and what I won't end up eating, what my bad habits are. I'll write the rules/goals/plans up here later. For NOW, I am off to the grocery store to take my life back.

I went to the doctor's today for a follow-up visit, to talk about the results of my blood testing, et cetera, and I'm pretty damn happy with most of the results.

Weight: 221 lbs. This includes clothes and shoes. I checked the scale at home with my shoes and clothes and it also came to 221 lbs, which means really am still at the level I've been at. This is also ten pounds lighter than when I saw the doctor on February 12.

Pulse: 72 bpm. Healthy healthy.

Blood Pressure: 120/60. This is pretty much optimal. :D

LDL (Bad) Cholesterol: 108 -- this is near optimal. 100 or less is optimal. Considering I used to be on medication a few years ago for my cholesterol levels, this is extremely exciting.

Triglycerides: This is what I'm not happy about. I'm at 396. A healthy triglyceride level is 150 or below. My triglycerides have always been about triple what they should be, and as far as I remember this is considerably lower than they were a few years ago... I think part of the problem has to do with the PCOS, which might be why everything else is low and this is high (since cholesterol and triglycerides tend to be high together). Dr. Dorantes gave me suggestions as to how to tailor my diet to help my triglyceride levels and it's all stuff I'm doing... so I should just continue in that vein.


So. I'm doing everything right. I'm going to get my triglycerides checked next year and we'll see what's going on with them. Dr. Dorantes doesn't want to put me on medication unless I'm over 400 and ... because I'm young. Which is good, so I'm going to try and continue to fix myself with diet. I don't know what's up with the triglycerides but maybe they'll quit being obnoxious in a year.

Seven weeks of this? Are you fucking serious?

So far I've lost 18 pounds, and I'm still losing, but I need to get back on the vegetable track just for my own peace of mind. I haven't been doing that well with the shift in schedule. It's a shock to my system but I'm SO glad that I've been doing this prior to Monty rehearsals. If I still weighed 238 and was in the shape I was in? I would never have been able to handle rehearsals. I haven't been exercising as much as I would like, with the walking and all, but the dance rehearsals, again, seem to make up for that. I feel pretty good except for the fact that I'm consistently exhausted and then boost up my energy for work and rehearsal. I just have to get used to this and then continue on.

Goals:

• MORE FRUIT & VEGETABLES, AGAIN.

.. That's it. I need small goals right now.


Weight = still at 220. Figured. It's even slightly above. And I'm upset and I'm frustrated and trying not to beat myself up over it. I just need to get back in the game. I can do this, even with the weirdness of the schedule. I can handle this.

The best gifts are the ones you give yourself. :D Everything I've seen has said I should come up with a series of non-food rewards in order to treat myself instead of giving myself a bad food. I was writing things down today and realized how HARD that is, especially when a lot of those things require money and I'm not into going out and getting massages or manicures. But... here's my rewards list so far, I'll add to it when I think of more. It's not just a list of little treats but also incentives for losing the weight, provided I have the money at the time. Any ideas?

Regular (Weekly-ish) Rewards
• Long, relaxing spa bath (at least once a week)

Special Rewards (Less than weekly)
• Go see a movie or play
• Visit a museum
• Buy flowers

Incentives
• 1 iTunes download for every pound lost (and no downloads otherwise)
• Earrings/jewelry (under $50) for every 10 lbs lost
• New pair of eyeglasses at 40 lbs lost

I do NOT want to buy myself clothes during this time unless I really have to. Still, it's not going to go on the incentives list for now.

Little Food Rewards
• Small Starbucks drink (no more than once a week)
• Homemade cookies (once every few weeks)


I read somewhere that after every time you lose 10 pounds (if you have a lot of weight to lose) you should try to "do something scary." Do something that takes you out of your comfort zone but something you wanted to do for a while but never did either because of your weight or other inhibitors. So.. I made a list of scary things that I would like to accomplish this year as I lose weight. I don't know if I'll do them all but it seems like a good list to have anyway, especially because I inhibit myself a LOT.

Scary Things
• Go to a water park (with contact lenses, gosh darn it!)
• Ride a huge roller coaster
• Go to a dance club or gay bar
• Wear shorts to WSYT
• Audition for Shakespeare & Company's fall tour

Shape Up, America!

Their "Shape Up & Drop 10" steps are chock full of interesting information. I'm not interested in following what they have to say to the letter but I'm already doing most of it, just... on my own terms. However, there's a lot of good advice about sensibly losing weight and being healthy, and the best part is that the site is free. It says that it's for dropping 10 pounds but they're really teaching healthy habits for life as far as I've read.

I'm really worried about my brother, and I desperately wish that he'd be willing to talk to someone.

My eye-rolling irritation with how he eats has changed to something like abject horror after several days of watching BBC's You Are What You Eat. His entire repertoire of food consists of pizza, cheese quesadillas, mozzarella sticks, chips, Coca Cola, fast food burgers and fries, soft pretzels, cookies, pork rinds, Kool Aid, and anything else that's as full of chemicals, empty calories, and over-processed junk as possible. I was always really angry that he was thinner than me with a diet like that, but I'm starting to notice the weight gain... bad skin, stringy hair----which is really noticeable because his hair's down to the middle of his back. I don't know if he eats a LOT, but the problem is less how much he eats and more WHAT he eats... the only meat he'll eat is a fast food burger or chicken nuggets, and the closest thing he'll get to a vegetable is an onion ring, and even then he's bitching about how there should be less onion and more batter. I genuinely think he's so addicted to the chemicals, flavor enhancers, salt, and sugar in the food he eats that he can't bring himself to eat anything real.

He was always a picky eater as a child (so was I), but because of that, people were always pressing him to try new things and always watching how and what he ate... so now he refuses to let anyone watch him eat except on very rare occasions. He hates talking about the food he eats, hates being encouraged to eat other things... I like pizza, I like mozzarella sticks, I like chips and soft pretzels and stuff, but that's far from EVERYTHING I eat. Eating like this will kill him.

Part of me thinks I should mind my own business, and I've tried to bring it up to my mother multiple times.. and she seems to know that it's wrong and worthy of concern but it's all "don't talk about it" and she continues to buy stuff for him that's bad for him just because that's all he'll eat.

Let's stop and let me clarify: I'm 22 and my brother is 20, and yes, we both live at home. I graduated college and lived in an apartment for a while but moved back home to save money for a while. I have a job as an instructor/performer with Mad Science of Western New England. My brother dropped out of high school at 17 after a long, long battle with the school system about learning disabilities and anxiety disorders, etc. He's never lived away from home, has never had a job, and only got his GED a few months ago. He does not know how to cook for himself, do his own laundry, or handle a bank account----because he doesn't have a bank account. He's up all night and sleeps most of the day, and spends 90% of his time in his tiny bedroom playing video games, watching tv, and hanging out with his girlfriend or his best friend who has a psychotic girlfriend who calls all the time while he's over. I rarely see him and my room is directly beside his. He has very low self-esteem and a lot of that has to do with the school situation, et cetera, but I think if he ate better, he'd start to feel better.

I'm scared for him and it's not like I want to convert him into a health freak. I just want to get him healthy, and mom's avoidant "don't bother him about it" attitude is very unlike her----and leads me to believe that she's tried and failed several times. My brother can't change unless he wants to change, but I don't think he realizes that his food actually, y'know, might AFFECT HIS HEALTH.