Tuesday Weigh In

257.2

This counts as my official weekly side of the blog weigh in. From now on, I weigh on Tuesdays. (Of course, me being me, I'll still start each post with my weight.)

I'm not faring too poorly in my wedding/weekend home recovery. This is .1 pounds lower than Friday, and 1.6 pounds lower than yesterday, when I shot up to 258.8. What's important is that I'm back into progress, and that my goals didn't get too horribly thrown off by the wedding.

Still, right now, I'm mostly feeling pretty blah. I'm squeaking along, but I'm just not accomplishing anything.

Let's be honest: the number one thing I need to do right now is apply to jobs. It's not that I don't like my job (I do!) but I've been here almost two years and it's time to move on. I need to get something that pays more and where I'll have more challenges and more opportunity for advancement. My current job is stale, and it's time for me to move on.

So, I've settled that. And I've actually found two jobs I would love to have and think I have a decent shot at. (Well, one I would love love love love to have, and one that would be a solid choice and improvement over my current position.) I've worked a lot on my resume and think it's currently at a place I like. But I just can't write the damn cover letters and get my applications out the door. I don't know what's wrong with me.

One of the jobs (the one I'd love love love) is in Denver. I have spent literally hours online looking at apartments I could get if I moved to Denver. I could get a place as nice, if not nicer, for about half of what I'm paying to live in DC. I've also spent hours looking at cars, dreaming about what my priorities would be if I were to get a car, debating if I'd buy purely from my savings or if I'd go wild and finance a nicer one than savings could buy. (Spoiler alert: I'm pretty cautious with money and there's approximately a zero chance I'd take out a loan to buy a nicer car.) Basically, I've just been daydreaming. Sure, I suppose it's better than, you know, eating, but it's really just not productive.

What I need to do is focus. Apply to jobs. Work out. Kick ass at my current job. Heck, even blog. I just need to not spend forever thinking about what I'd do if I got a new job without, you know, actually doing anything about it.

Onward and downward

Thank you all so much for the warm welcome back! It definitely feels good to have returned to blogland.

I did indeed go to the gym last night, and it was nice to be back after quite a few weeks away. I only put in 20 minutes on the elliptical, but it was much better than nothing. Combined with the hour walk during lunch yesterday, and the mile roundtrip walk to/from the gym, I think I got in some pretty solid activity.


I weighed in this morning at 242.7, which is 1.8 pounds less than yesterday. The scale tends to move quickly in the first few days of a new/renewed diet, but it's still nice to see. Getting rid of the easy weight is always a nice way to kickstart a diet.

The question, of course, is how much easy weight I have to lose. I'm hoping a good portion of the 240s will end up being fluff and water weight and that I'll be back in the 230s in no time, but things of course don't always turn out as we might hope.

Anyway, a few "While I was aways" just to get you guys updated:

While I was away, I finished my Arabic class. I got an A! I'm really happy with it and enjoy the language, but I think I'm not going to do Arabic this semester and instead focus on losing weight. I simply don't think it's smart to spend 10 hours a week (6 class, 4 homework) on it at the moment.

While I was away, a big paper that I'd spent a lot of time on at work finally came out. It's been received very well, and I got thanked in the footnotes! I was, I won't lie, pretty damn proud.

While I was away, my dormant blog managed to attract its first marketing email. It's from LA boxing, offering me a few months of membership in return for telling you guys if I liked it or not (well, probably it's "tell you if I liked it, say nothing if I didn't"). They sent it to me about a week ago, and since I just checked this email account, I just got it and replied.

While I was away, I turned 24! The side of my blog has now been updated accordingly. Part of me is debating if I should just rock "mid-twenties."

While I was away, I missed you guys a lot. And since I've been back, it's been great catching up.

Right now, I'm optimistic and happy. I had a pretty good 2009, and I'm looking to make 2010 even better. Onward and downward!

Tuesday Weigh In

Well, I bring some bad news, some good news, and some better news.

The bad news: I'm horribly stressed at work. I'm going in at 7am and leaving at 8pm, except for the two days a week where I have Arabic, where I need to leave at 5:30pm, be in class until 9pm, and then work until I feel like I'm going to pass out.

The good news: This too shall pass. Things should calm down substantially after next Tuesday, and I'm looking forward to resuming daily posting.

The better news:

Weight: 236.5
BMI: 40.59

That's 2.3 pounds in one week. NICE. It also puts me past the 40 pound mark, which is, well, NICE. Oh, and did I mention it means I've lost over 7 points of BMI and 14.93% of my bodyweight? Yeah, that's pretty snazzy. And I'm a mere 3.5 pounds away from no longer being morbidly obese.

So, I'm struggling at work, and I miss blogging, and I miss all my blog buddies, but at least I get to report back to you guys that in spite of the stress I'm still a weight losing machine.

I hope the rest of you are having fewer life issues, but just as much weight loss success. Take care and I promise I'll start with real posts again soon!

Scariness Ahead

One thing I occasionally do out of habit, even though I've been comfortably ensconced in my job for about 10 months, is check the employment opportunities at other places where I'd think of working later in my career. Since people typically stay at the job I have for only a year or a year and a half (sometimes 2 years, but that's rare), I had been planning on ramping up a job search come December.

On Friday, however, I saw something moderately close to a perfect job. It's a policy analyst position, in my field, and they're looking for someone with pretty much exactly my experience and education. (Although they do say a BA or MA in economics, and I only have a BA. So, I don't mean to suggest that I'm a slam dunk for it, but I do fit the requirements. This think tank is also one of the rare few that will hire policy analysts without Masters degrees, although there's sort of an understanding that you'll pick one up eventually.) I'd get to publish my own research, and self-direct my own projects. It's also not short term, and I wouldn't feel pressured to look for another job two years down the line. It would be perfect. It's the sort of job I've dreamed about, and it's the sort that doesn't come up all that often. After hemming and hawing a bit on whether it would be rude to apply when I've only been here less than a year--general consensus was that it would probably be close enough to the year by the time they actually finished the hiring process that I could go ahead--it seems like what I ought to do is apply for the job. And I will, probably tonight or tomorrow, assuming I can get over myself long enough to do it.

The issue is, basically, I'm petrified. I wasn't expecting to be looking at jobs when I was still this heavy. And yes, I'm less ridiculously fat than I was when I interviewed for my current job in December of 2008. But I'm still, well, ridiculously fat. I'm morbidly obese. I'm just not even close to where I wanted to be when I started doing interviews.

Being fat makes me less likely to get hired and more likely to get paid less even if I do get the job. That sucks. But honestly, there are so many ways in which I'm just not ready for this job yet. I don't want to be extremely fat in front a whole new group of colleagues, and colleagues I'll be around a while at that. If I were to get the job they'd likely take a picture of me to post on their website, and I'm so not ready for a photo of what I look like now to be the first thing someone who does a google search for me finds. There are so, so, so many ways I'm not ready for this.

But I think I should try to get over myself and apply anyway. It's likely I won't get the job, but if I do it would be great for my career. Sure, there will be fears and challenges and it will suck to start my next job fat, but it's worth it. I just need to face my fears and do it. There's no harm in trying.

A Parental Visit, Laced with Fear

I just wanted to thank you all for the wonderful get well soon wishes. I'm feeling much better, albeit still a bit blah.

So, my parents are coming into town tonight. They'll be here all weekend. It will be the first time I've seen them since mid-July, when I was hovering just under the 270 mark. And, I'm pretty damn nervous about it. Mostly, I have a lot of questions about what's going to happen.

First off, will they notice? If I'm honest with myself, my guess is there's a good chance they'll notice. I've lost 13% of my weight over all, and 10% since the time I last saw them. That 10% mark is supposed to be a visible one, and I'd say there's a better than even chance they'll pick up on it. After all, when I last saw them I was wearing a size 22. These days I'm wearing 18s and 16s. When I compare my size 22 jacket and size 16 jacket, the difference is pretty, well, sizable.

And, of course, if they do notice, will they say something? Well, there I'm just not sure. That's not entirely true. If he notices, my Dad will almost certainly say some sort of "You look so nice, Hadley." I don't think I'd get something as blunt as "Have you lost weight?" for which I'm quite grateful. My mom's less likely to comment, if she notices, but it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility.

Okay, so here's the thing: I love my parents. I'm very close to them. I haven't seen them since July, and generally I see them every month or six weeks. The not seeing them was entirely at my behest: I could've gone up to NYC at any point, or encouraged them to come down earlier. There's a reason I haven't seen them more recently, and it's because I didn't want to.

Again, let me emphasize, I love my parents. I've missed them a lot. I've felt quite a few times on this journey like I needed to just go home and see them for a weekend. But now, that I'm about to see them, I'm filled with dread.

I don't want them to know. I don't, don't, don't want them to know. I don't want them to notice. I don't want them to ask. I'm petrified. I am 36 pounds and 94 days into this journey, and I haven't told a single soul. I'm so, so, so terribly scared.

I hate the idea of people knowing I'm on a diet. HATE it.

Back in the day, I used to be incredibly into fashion. I used to be into shopping, being popular, being mean. All the superficial, the New York City, the money, the silly. That used to be my life. When I was 16, my picture was in TeenVogue. I cared so, so, so much about looks.

And then I stopped. I became serious, intellectual. I purposefully went to a college with the unofficial motto "where fun goes to die". Because I was an oh-so-serious person interested in saving the world and changing things and math and economics and serious things. I chose the college I chose specifically as a repudiation of all things New York. I hated what I was at 15, and I wanted to run away from that. (For the record, yes, with a bit more maturity I realize that there's room for some of the fun and that things don't have to be quite so serious. If you can't tell, I'm not quite as into being a super serious person as I was at 18.) And honestly, being fat was part of that. It was part of saying "I don't care about your superficial world. I don't want to be a part of it anymore."

And the thing is, I still don't, really. If you told me that I could lose weight with no one noticing, but still get the benefits of health and freedom of motion/fitting places, I'd do it. The thought of people commenting to each other on "Oh does it look like Hadley's lost some weight" drives me absolutely insane. Sometimes I'll say, oh it would be a nice bonus to be hot, but honestly, relative to everything else, I could care less. And half the days I don't even want it. I'm not doing this to be pretty. I'm not doing this to be beautiful. I'm not doing this to be noticed. I just want to be able to live and have the career I want with size not being an issue. I don't really care if I'm ugly as sin so long as it doesn't hold me back from the things I actually want to do.

I'm scared my family is going to notice. I don't want them to. I don't want anyone to. I am just so, so, so scared.

I have to accept that if I keep going along people are going to notice. They're probably going to comment, too. And I'm going to hate people looking at my body. And I'm going to hate people thinking that I must be on a diet because I care too much about how I look. But I need to keep reminding myself it's worth it.

And it is. Being fat puts me at a disadvantage applying to jobs. Being fat could cause me to fail the Foreign Service medical exam, and if I fail that my dream career is dead. There are also things I love (skiing! swimming! etc) that I either can't do or feel like I can't do because of my weight. My health and my career are worth it. Changing my life for the better is worth the fact that people are going to notice my body changes.

Right?

Turns Out My Office Is a Lucky Place

There are exactly four fat people in my office. There's one guy who's at the very top of the food chain who's quite heavy. One of the administrative assistants a floor down from me is fat. And there's one other fat guy who does some sort of facilities/mail room stuff, although I'm not sure exactly what he does. And then there's me.

The point I'm trying to make is that being fat here is relatively rare. I stand out, I'm an exception. Career pressure is certainly part of my motivation to work on losing the weight now. One of the things I'm finding out, though, is that there are even more previously fat people around here than there are fat people.

When I got my job in January, I found out within the first few weeks that one guy had recently lost 80 pounds. He was still losing at that point, but he was within a pretty normal range by the time I met him. I'm pretty sure at this point he's entered maintenance.

In the spring, I found out via photo that another, more senior guy, also had a heavy history. At a lunch over the summer, it came up that another low level policy person (his job is comparable to mine, but he's been here about two years) had lost 50 pounds after coming to work here but before I met him. He said he'd done it just by cutting out soda and walking more.

And then yesterday I found out that the only other girl on my floor (girls are a distinct minority at my office, but my floor in particular is almost girl-free) had also dropped quite a bit of weight, again after arriving here but before I'd met her.

My office, it seems, is therefore quite a lucky place when it comes to battling the bulge. There are as many former fat folks as there are current fat folks, which is quite a bit better than the standard odds out there in the world. Maybe it's that being fat is rare, and people don't like feeling like the exception. Maybe it's just that these are smart, dedicated people who realize when they get to DC that their weight will hold their careers back. Or maybe, just maybe, it's a very lucky place to lose your excess pounds.

Either way, I feel a lot less lonely knowing that I'm surrounded by people who have been where I am, even if it's not something I'd feel comfortable talking with them about. And I feel a bit more confident knowing I'm surrounded by people who have succeeded in doing what I now attempt. I can and will do this.

Hadley and the new suit jacket (with pictures)

So, I've got an enormous meeting today. If you'd noticed me slacking in commenting, it's because I've been ridiculously busy at work. A lot of that work is going to come to fruition in a meeting this afternoon.

At my office, every one wears a suit every day but Friday. However, us low-level policy folks are typically allowed to keep our suit jackets in our offices. Sure, I need to wear it to occasional meetings and events, and I'll put my jacket on if I know I'm going to be wandering where the highest-ups are. In all, though, I don't wear it much. Thus, even though I'm now wearing size 18 suit pants, I hadn't bought anything smaller than my original 22 jacket. It just hadn't seemed worth it. Last week, though, the tent like nature of my 22 jacket was starting to get to me:



So, with my big Monday meeting, I decided that this weekend, enough was enough. I went to Macy's, determined to pick up a size 18 jacket of my favorite suit. (Madison suit by Calvin Klein, that's the one where I have the 20 and 18 pants.) But, they had no 18s. No 20s, either. Only 22s and 16s. After a "Grr" I tried on the size 16. IT FIT. I am not shitting you. Granted it's all stretchy and plus sized and a little too tight, but check it out:



And while I was there, I decided to pick up the size 16 pants, just for giggles and to shrink into. In all but the side view of the size 16 jacket (which I just retook because the first one was terrible) I'm actually wearing the 16 pants. They're still too tight for me to wear to work, but they're buttonable. (Mind you, I just declared the 18s work appropriate on Thursday, so it'll be a while.)

And, you know, while I'm posting pictures, I thought it would be worth showing you the shirt I'm wearing underneath the suits:

(For the record, the weird lumps are mostly from the too small pants.) Anyway, guess what size the shirt is? You know, just if you had to throw one out there. Oh, all right, I'll show you:

Yes, that is a size Large. No X's. Just a large. I shit you not.

I've still got a long way to go before I can wear regular sizes in most clothes, but it's pretty awesome to have one size large shirt that actually fits and fits me well. I have the same shirt in XL in two colors, and while I wear them, they both feel a bit on the big size.

Anyway, I'm really happy about the suit jacket. I love the way it looks, and I'm damn excited to wear it. It's definitely still tight, and I doubt I'll keep it buttoned during the day. (I also took a photo of it unbuttoned, then tried the button and it was all badass and "Hey I maybe sort of have a waist instead of just fat into fat into one big blobby circle of fat.")

That 22 jacket used to be tight on me. It used to be fabulous. It used to be my favorite suit jacket. Today, I'm wearing the size 16 version, and you know what? It's so much better.

I know I have a long way to go. Another 100ish pounds to lose is no small battle. But right now, in this very moment, I feel like I've already accomplished a lot.

I hope everyone has a great Monday, and wish me luck at my meeting!

Ah, interns

Weight: 249.1

The scale's up, but scales do that sometimes when you weigh in every day.

So, I work in DC as low-level economist. I'm 23, and only a little more than a year out of college. Now, there are plenty of lame things about my job (low pay, long hours) and about DC in general (it's built on a swamp), but one of the cooler things is that you get interns.

Now, I suppose, technically, I don't get interns. My boss gets interns. But here's a secret about DC: 90% of things that don't involve cameras or schmoozing gets delegated. This semester, my boss has two interns, both of whom have masters degrees and graduated from college in the 1990s. In practice, however, this means I'm managing two people who are 10 years older than me, including occasionally asking them to make photocopies.

However each semester, before my boss starts ignoring the interns (aside from occasional "go ask Hadley" instructions), we take them out to lunch. Technically, I suppose, he takes us all out to lunch, but the point is it's always a good big fun long expensive but free to me lunch. Today was our lunch.

Both of our interns are hoping to transfer into policy from other careers. One of them, before this, was doing real estate in NYC. I'm probably, at one point, going to talk about the NYC thing. (I grew up there, all sorts of associated hang ups.)

But anyway, so we went out to lunch, and she said as the waitress was handing out menus "oh no thanks I'm not going to be able to eat anything off it." I replied back, sort of not sure what was up, "They have all sorts of vegan and vegetarian and whatever else stuff, and I'm sure they could work around any allergies" or something along those lines, just trying to make her feel like included and allowed. "I'm on Jenny Craig," she said back.

I'm going to just go out and for the record say she's not fat. Not at all. Maybe a size 8 or 10, if I had to guess. Not a stick, but well within normal.

When I was emailing the interns yesterday, I mentioned that it was a twice a semester (once at the beginning, once at the end) tradition, and that they should prepare any questions they had for our boss, since this is one of the few times they'll have him as a captive audience. I don't say this to be snide or to brag, but our boss is a big shot. This is a special thing. And every ounce of me was so blown away by the fact that she would come to this lunch and not eat, not even order a dressing-less salad to pick at.

Appalled is too strong a word, but it's the one that comes to mind. I was put off, maybe? I don't know. Then I felt bad and like I was being judgmental: who says you have to eat at social events anyway, and shouldn't I be supportive of anyone who's dieting since, after all, I'm going through the same thing? Why was I so thrown off by this?

Now I just don't know what to think.

Is it bad that I'm not as dedicated to my diet as she is? That I ate the restaurant's fatty food, and not even a salad but a Bacon Tomato and Cheddar sandwich? Is the reason she's thin and I'm not (yet) because I'm not willing to loudly proclaim "I'm on a diet so I'm not going to eat here"?

Or maybe it's not that I've not gone far enough, but rather that she's gone past the mark? Not eating at an important lunch like this is, quite frankly, a huge mistake. For the rest of the program, my boss is probably going to call her "whatshername, the intern who wouldn't eat lunch." (Our summer intern, who spent three years as a consultant and was one year into a PhD program at the London School of Economics is still known as "whatshername, the pescetarian" when on our initial lunch out she voted against a steakhouse and explained that she was a vegetarian except for fish.) We can't give up our lives, our work, for diets. It just won't work, and even if it does, are those sacrifices worth making?

I just don't know.

Tuesday Weigh In

Weight: 259.3
BMI: 44.50

Well, today's the big official weigh in day, and the results are, well, mixed. The good news is that I'm down 3.3 pounds from last week, which is a great number. The bad news is that I'm up .4 pounds day to day, but that's all right.

Last night I didn't sleep one wink. I was up all night working. I finished things just in the nick of time, and that was good, but I'm exhausted. I'm glad I didn't gain a lot more: generally my weight goes up throughout the day, and I lose a lot over night. I generally have quite a bit of trouble losing weight if I don't get a good night's sleep. Considering that (and the fact that I didn't work out yesterday), I wasn't expecting to lose day to day, and I'm glad I only gained .4

Last night I did relatively well in terms of food, all things considered. After work I went to a Subway and grabbed a five dollar foot long: it's not something I generally eat, so it was sort of the "special" that I generally use to get myself through crunch periods. I got ham with lettuce and tomato on wheat, and put on Miracle Whip at home. I ate half immediately after I got it, then waited about 20 minutes and ate the rest. I thought it was a bit of foreshadowing that I'd be in for a binge, but the sandwich was in fact all I ended up eating last night. Not bad.

So, I'm proud of myself for showing that I can get through hard periods of work without using food as a crutch. I'm proud I lost 3.3 pounds this week. And I'm proud I got all my work done in time (and did a damn good job with it, in my opinion).

I should work out tonight since I took yesterday off, but, well, I'll be coming up on 34 hours without sleep by the time I get home. I may just want to pass out.

And since it's been a while since I've shared one, below's a graph of my weight loss progress so far. Each mark represents a daily weigh in. The red line represents the 5-day moving average of my weight, the blue line the actual day to day weight. (Note that in San Diego, when I was unable to weigh myself, I just held my weight constant at my starting weight for the trip.)


Maybe this is just the exhaustion speaking, but I feel like I really am making progress.

Trade Offs

Weight: 258.9
BMI: 44.44

-.9 pounds day to day. 19.1 pounds total. I'm getting very close to the 20 pound mark. I don't think I've ever lost 20 pounds, so that would be a big milestone. I'm also now only 8.9 pounds away from my first goal. I'm 35 days in and have 36 days left. As of tomorrow, I'll be more than halfway in in terms of time. Even if my heart's not in it at this very moment, I'm making a ton of progress.

I think part of the cloud hanging over me is that I have a crunch time at work. I've just got a ton a ton of stuff that needs to be done soon, a lot of it by tomorrow. (Which probably means I shouldn't be blogging instead of working, but shhhhh.) And this is making me want food more.

I've always used food as a crutch to get me through the hardest parts at work and school. A pizza has always been an excellent companion for an all nighter. Even in my unhealthy days, I'd always get something special, something even unhealthier than I'd normally eat, just to get me through, like a bag of Cheetos, or soda with calories. And I'd always, always get a Starbucks venti white mocha. (At 580 calories and over $5, even I would normally only have that a treat.) But it was all okay, because it was crunch time: the time when work was more important than everything, and any standards of decency could be sacrificed on the altar of getting things done.

Well, it's crunch time. I'll see what I can do on my own, but I think I'm probably going to indulge a bit more than usual. Not, order a large pizza indulge, but something.

While I've been writing this, I keep alt tabbing to look at possible things I could consume that would be "worth it." Everything I look at I keep nixing. Not worth the weigh in, I tell myself. And even though I weigh myself every day, Tuesday's the big "official" weigh in day, the one that goes on the side of the blog. And I don't want to fuck that up.

As of now, I'll see how I can do while staying healthy. I may end up going off course if it's what's going to get my work done. As much as I don't want to, if I can't work, it might be a trade off I'm willing to make tonight.

On Conferences and Free Food

Weight: 260.6
BMI: 45.73

(-.2 day to day, -17.4 overall, yada yada yada.)

One of the things I've always loved about my job is that I get to go to lots of events and conferences. Up until a month ago, "free food" was a wonderful, wonderful perk. These days, it's a bit closer to a nightmare.

For all of today, I've been at a conference. We had a continental breakfast where I was just able to grab a piece of fruit, but lunch was a sit-down, 3 course ordeal. Throughout this journey, my willpower's held relatively well, but lunch was just a disaster. I ate the whole salad, over half the lunch (of salmon, risotto, and asparagus in some unknown cream sauce), even a few bites of desert. There were pastries and other goodies provided throughout the day, but I was able to resist those relatively easily.

I wouldn't be despondent if I could, you know, just have something very light for dinner and stay within my calorie limits. But I'm not going to: I have to go to a dinner for the conference. And it's going to be a seated meal of at least three courses, lasting 90 minutes. In other words, it's going to be bad.

I've become excellent at resisting food temptations when left to my own devices. I'm even pretty good at not eating food when it's optional. But at a served meal in a social work situation, you can't really choose to just not eat. You have to eat something, to not do so would be some combination of weird and rude. Which isn't to say you have to eat the whole plate, but you have to have a decent bit.

And that's where the problem starts. I always, always, always end up eating more than I mean to at these events. It's like 90 straight minutes of sitting with food! Good, free food. That others are eating. It's badness.

So I'm probably going to overeat tonight. My gym stays open till 11, so I may try to go after dinner.

Oh, and bonus: the conference is a half day tomorrow, too. So, truncated weekend and a fattening lunch on Saturday. Oh joy. Grrr.

Onward and Downward

Weight: 261.5
BMI: 44.88

Counting both the day I started and today, I am 30 days into this whole weight loss journey. When I started, pounds dropped pretty quickly. But after that, things became tougher. I'd be coaxing my body to drop just a bit of weight each day, and some days it would. Other days it would revolt. There were quite a few days where it just said "nah, I think I'd rather go up on the scale today."

Somehow, since I've gotten home from San Diego, the pounds have been just melting off. Initially it made sense: I was bloated from eating lots on Friday but didn't actually weigh that much. But, this is beyond just bloat dropping. I've lost over a pound for 5 straight days. I'm 4 pounds below my prior low. This, really, is just wonderful.

Too good to last, yes, but for now wonderful.

I'm now down 16.5 pounds in total (1.1 day to day). That means I've lost 5.94% of my starting bodyweight and 2.83 points of BMI. In order to hit my mini goal of 250 pounds by September 15th, I need to lose 1.96 pounds a week. This is the first time ever that my mini goal has needed a sustained loss of less than 2 pounds a week.

I am smiling. And it's not just numbers that are making me smile. I walk to work every day, and I now walk fast enough to catch a light I used to miss. The suits I wear to work every day all feel a little big. I was able to increase the resistance on the elliptical machine and still blast through my workout. When I stopped by the grocery store after the gym to pick up some extra produce, I actually stuck to my shopping list. Yesterday after dinner, I wasn't all that hungry for desert, and it wasn't because I ate too much.

There's a long hard road ahead. For now, though, I'm happy to be walking it.


And in case anyone's curious, thus far the new guy seems really nice. I ate breakfast at my desk this morning without feeling embarrassed about it, and it was definitely in large part due to all of your "He probably can't hear you and wouldn't even care!" comments, so thank you. :)

Tuesday Weigh In

I somehow didn't hear my alarm this morning and woke up late for work, but I did hop on the scale before I dashed off:

Weight: 262.6
BMI: 45.07

In the chaos of the morning, I just made a mental note as I finished rushing to brush my teeth, pack lunch, etc. I just kept the number in my head and planned to jot it down at work.

Then, as I was on the way to the office, it hit me: I've lost 15 pounds. NICE!

So, there's a bit of a spring in my step today. I'm still worried about the issues I brought up in last night's post, but I'll deal with that tomorrow. For today, I've lost 15 pounds (15.4 to be precise), and if that's not excellent I don't know what is.

A New Colleague, and New Embarrassment

So, I work in DC as a low-level economist. It's basically an entry level job, the sort of thing one has for about a year or two before moving on to grad school or something else. My office is this shared, sort of U-shaped thing--you can't see the other person unless we both roll out our chairs about 5 feet, but we can always hear each other. It's about one step up from a cubicle in terms of privacy.

Last Friday, my office-mate, easily my best friend in DC, left for another job. Her new position is in Texas: close to her family, better paying, more what she wanted to do, all around an excellent and amazing step for her. But it means this wonderful, sweet girl who I loved to bits is being replaced with a stranger. And I just found out he starts on Wednesday.

I am petrified.

One of the things that's big for me is eating in bits throughout the work day so I'm not particularly hungry at the end of the day. I'm really bad with night time eating, but I've found that having a dinner early in the evening (6:30 or 7) and then essentially closing up the kitchen works really well for me. So, on a typical work day, I'll bring:

1 banana
1 fat-free yoplait yogurt
1 chewy chocolate chip granola bar or 1 polly-o string cheese
~12 baby carrots (I guesstimate when packing in the morning and count before I eat)
1 apple or other piece of fruit (today I brought 1/2 cup of blueberries)
1 sandwich, made of: 2 pieces of light style Pepperidge Farm bread, 1 slice of cold cut (right now, I'm working on a half pound of roast beef), 1 tablespoon of miracle whip, two slices of tomato, and a bit of lettuce.

This actually only adds up to about 600 calories throughout the day. Most days I have the banana and yogurt shortly after arriving, the granola bar around 11 or so, the roast beef sandwich at 1 or 2, and snack on the fruit and baby carrots throughout the rest of the afternoon. When I go home around 5:30 or 6, I'm hungry but not ravenous, and have 600-700 calories left to make myself a relatively extravagant dinner.

There are many, many reasons I love this system. The first is, quite simply, that it works. The lack of slip ups on work days is proof of its day-to-day effectiveness. I like that it doesn't feel like deprivation: I get to pack a whole ton of food in my bag each morning, and when I get hungry at work, it's fine because I've almost always got something left to eat. When I've eaten everything, I tend to be sated--there's a lot of fiber and a lot of volume in it. I like that it leaves me enough calories to eat a big dinner. I like that when I'm hungry at night, I can tell myself "it's okay, tomorrow you'll have enough food at work and feel better" and I like that it's true. I like that on mornings when I actually am ravenous--which has happened once or twice in my 4 weeks of diet--I can actually get something that's close to a binge in terms of satisfaction by eating the sandwich, granola bar, yogurt and banana all in the morning, and that I'll still have baby carrots and another fruit to get me through the day. I can (partially) lose control, but since all the food I have is the food I've brought in with me, I don't actually mess up my diet. I like that it's healthy and delicious and feels like it has variety: there are tons of flavors of yoplait, tons of different fruits I can bring, the sandwich is different depending on which meat I use, and I even get some chocolate in the granola bar.

There are many, many things I like about my diet. Up to this point, there's been precisely one thing I've disliked: people walking in on me eating. I can almost hear them thinking, Ew, gross fat Hadley, of course she'd be eating when I stop by her office. And, for self-conscious me, that's a substantive drawback. But it's rare enough that it's only happened a few times thus far, and is easily outweighed by all the good parts. 98% of the time, the only person who could hear me eating was my dear office-mate, who was possibly the sweetest and most non-judgmental person in DC. (Yes, I know that's like saying someone's the least corrupt person in New Jersey, but I swear she'd count as nice even by normal standards.) So yeah, she could hear me eating, and while I'd still rather she didn't, I wasn't really embarrassed because it was just her.

Now, the person who's going to hear me eating is some strange boy who could easily be thinking, Ew, gross, I can hear her eating like all the friggin' time. And who could tell people, "No wonder Hadley's so fat, I can hear her eating like half the day." Scary!

So, I have until Wednesday to figure things out. I need to balance the embarrassment vs. my continued success. And I think I want to not be embarrassed about my weight in the future more than I want to not be embarrassed by eating seemingly-massive amounts right now, but right now, well, I'm just scared.