Just call me Babe!

I never ever thought I'd say this, but I almost wish that Christmas, with all its sweets and treats, would be over and I could go back to watching what I eat, which is not possible with all the family get-togethers and parties!

...

Almost.

The metric system is just better, okay?

Before I went home to my parents house for Christmas, I was using one of those websites that help you keep track of your daily calorie intake and the amount of calories you burn by exercising. At my parents house, however, this is futile. I can hardly ask my mother to do the math when she's cooking. Also, I'd feel extremely funny whipping out my digital scales on Christmas Eve to find out exactly how many grams of potato I'm consuming. So it was just easier to let calories be calories for the month of December, and just try to make healthy choices more often than unhealthy ones.

I did, however, miss knowing how many calories 'extra' I could earn by exercising. It is Christmas after all, and avoiding the goodies simply isn't possible.

(Let's not dwell on the fact that I wouldn't want to avoid them either...)

So I decided that the amount of calories consumed didn't need to be accurate. If I don't know how many calories are in a dish, I'll just guess. As long as I can experience the mood boost of entering running for 30 minutes and seeing the amount of calories burned jump up by about 500.

Wait, what? 500 calories? For running a 2.5 miles in 30 minutes? When you're only 5'3"? And weigh 'only' 170 pounds?

I never really questioned that number before. But today, I realized that the treadmills at my local gym work with kilometers per hour, whereas the website operate with miles per hour. So when I've been entering 7 kilometers per hour for thirty minutes, I've actually been given the number of calories that I would have burned if I ran at 11 kilometers an hour. In thirty minutes, that translates to 2 kilometers that I didn't run.

Can you say BUMMER?!

My frienemy, the tape measure

In a lot of ways, I like the tape measure. It lets me feel accomplished when my other frienemy, the scales is being a bitch, and for me to keep chugging along at this weight loss thing, I need to feel like it's working.

However, the tape measure has the nasty habit of telling the truth. Now, I do believe that honesty is usually the best policy, but what's a little white lie among friends? If the white lie spares the ego of the fragile soul (cough cough, that would be me!) being lied to? No biggie.

I like getting on the scales to see that I've lost weight. Likewise, I like breaking out the tape measure and see that I've lost inches. But even when I lose, it's a reminder of how much I weigh and how big my measurements are. I know neither of these numbers are going to magically be dealt with, if I don't deal with them myself. But still. I don't like knowing that I weigh 170 pounds. So during Christmas, I've only gotten on the scales once. I hadn't gained anything, but then again, it was fairly early after having arrived home at my parents house, and before the baking had commenced. It's only Christmas once a year. I don't want to feel guilty for enjoying the home made Christmas cookies that I only get to eat in December.

I've employed the same method with the tape measure, though the two of us have been a bit distant with each other for longer than the month I've ignored the scales. It's been so long, in fact, that I do not remember what, exactly, my measurements were the last time I checked. I know the ballpark figure, because I feel like I've been hanging out in the same ballpark for ages, despite valiant efforts to find a new playground.

Tonight, my eyes fell on the tape measure as I was going to the bathroom to go to bed. I figured, what the hell. I did get into a pair of jeans that are a size smaller than my formerly smallest pair of jeans when my mom insisted on buying me pants. I started with my thigh. Usually the bane of my existence with their thundery-ness, I found that I could easily make them measure 23 inches. Note how I make the tape measure lie to me! I usually pull it extra tight to get an extra boost of confidence Yeah yeah yeah, I'm only fooling myself, but it makes me feel better to see 24 inches than it does to see 25 inches. Also, there are limits to how tight I can pull it before I completely cut of my circulation. However, this time I didn't really try to pull it tight, I just let it fit snugly around my thigh. And I still got 23 inches. I've never gotten anything under 24 before, regardless of all my best efforts.

Spurred on by my skinny thighs (ahem), I measured my calf. It usually hangs out at around 15.7 inches. Today? 15.

...

It sounds like it's so much less when I tell it in inches. It sounds much cooler to say that my calves usually measure in at 40-41 centimeters, but today they were measuring 38! 2-3 centimeters rather than a measly 0.7 inch. How about I operate within the metric system for now? For the sake of that fragile ego of mine that I mentioned.

I went on to my tummy. Which I shouldn't have. I can never decide if it's my thighs or my tummy that's the most important bane of my existence. I'm pretty sure both are banes of my existence, but you know... I don't know which is the baniest. After tonight, I'm leaning towards thinking it's the tummy. The tape measure showed no significant loss. When I measured where the waistband of my pants goes, it said 90 centimeters. When I measured where my waist actually is, it said 85 centimeters. I don't like it either way. What's the 'limit' for diabetes risk? Isn't it in this area? Also, to me it seems like I've been hanging out at this tummy circumference for-friggin-ever. I've heard that your tummy is usually the last place you lose fat, because the body wants to have fat there both to keep you warm and to help protect internal organs. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but to me, it sounds like a plausible explanation.

Despite the disappointment, I measured my hips and was surprised to see that their circumference is a dainty 99 centimeters. Okay, maybe not dainty, but I read somewhere that they've conducted studies that indicate that women with a waist to hip mratio of 80 to 100 live the longest. Does that mean that I am normal-hipped now? I still feel like my ass should come with one of them 'wide load' signs!

Anyway! The last hip measurement I can remember taking was a 106 centimeters. 6 centimeters lost? Score!

So, all in all, my tape measure and I are friends today!

New adventures in exercise

Today, I went spinning for the very first time ever. I've never even considered going to a spinning class before, but an old friend called me and asked if I wanted to hang after she'd been to such a class. Or maybe I wanted to join her? I thought about it, and said to myself, yeah, what the hell. It's exercise. So I went with her.

Before the lesson started, she warned me not to push it too hard too soon. Guess what was the first thing I did after class started? Push myself. Hard. In my defense, no one told me that when the instructor said 'turn up the resistance' he meant 'twist the knob in front of you a teeny tiny little bit'. So I went ahead and cranked it way up. I came very close to reacquainting myself with the salad I had for dinner. I had to stop. After the interval was over, the instructor hopped off his bike and came to ask me if I was okay, and to tell me not to crank up the resistance quite so much.

Funny thing is, I never actually considered that my exhaustion might have something to do with me turning the resistance higher than the rest of the class. I just thought to myself 'Jesus, you're in bad shape!' It wasn't until after class when my friend looked at me and said 'you're crazy!' that I realized that hey, you might not be so bad after all. Because after that one incident when my dinner nearly ended up in my backpack on the floor in front of me, I did more than okay. I sweated like a pig, but I easily kept up with the rest of the class. My friend's mother even said that I'd done really well if this was my first class.

I'll definitely look into spinning classes when I go back to the city in a few weeks' time!

Reasons to hate the clothing industry

My mother and my sister went in to the city today, and ended up buying clothes for me. (I don't know whether that says most about my lack of interest in fashion, or my mother and sister's addiction to shopping...). They got a pair of wool pantyhose, a dress and one of them long tank top that nearly reach your knees.

Great. I tried them on. Both fit. The problem?

The dress was a size medium, and it was even a little loose around the waist. The tank top was a whopping size XL, and it fit very snugly everywhere.

...

Same store. Hell, it was even the same brand. Two completely different sizes. What is up with that?

The one about my mother's winter coat

I'm basically one big, walking and talking fashion faux pas. I really don't care that much about what I'm using to cover up. I'm sure part of that stems from when I was young and imagined myself to be horribly fat, even though I was quite a normal sized kid. I was also quite the tomboy. My mother tried her damndest to dress me up all pretty, but she had little to no luck. Nowadays, she only manages to drag me on one shopping trip a year, right before Christmas.

It should come as no surprise that I don't have many clothes that my mother deems as worthy of being seen in public. I especially don't have any nice winter coats at my parents house, because although I do have one, I rarely bring it with me home for Christmas. I have limited suitcase space and I much prefer to bring my more serviceable Helly Hansen coat. It's doesn't look nice over a dress, but it's warmer, and I don't worry that much about getting it dirty.

Where I grew up, they host a Christmas dance every year on Christmas day (Norwegians have the fancy dinner and open presents on Christmas Eve...). In the past, it's been mostly for the 'older' people, like my parents and their friends. But the last few years, the young'ens have also started going, and this year was my second year attending. Last year, I didn't have my winter coat with me, so my mother gave me one of hers. I was at my heaviest at that time, but the coat fit, albeit quite snugly. This year I, once again, did not bring my winter coat home for Christmas. My mother gave me hers again, the same one that I wore last year.

It is now loose and comfortable to wear. Also, my mother has lost weight, and has decided that I can have it. Double score!

A not so brief introduction

I have had issues with the way I look, and particularly my weight, for a very long time. In fact, I had issues way before it was an issue, which probably did a lot to contribute to the issue itself.

Are you still with me?

According to pictures, I was a pretty regularly sized kid up until I was around 13-14, though if you'd asked me back then, I would probably have compared myself to a medium sized whale. At this particular age, I went through a lot of changes. I was on the cusp of puberty, I started a new and bigger school, I suddenly had a lot of new peers and teachers to relate to, the new school had an open campus and was within walking distance of a mall. It was also at this age that I landed my first job: a paper route. Obviously, the pay check wasn't going to make me into a millionaire, but unlike most other kids my age, I had access to money on a regular basis, and my parents were in no position to tell me what to do with them. It was the perfect set of circumstances for me to gain weight. The physical maturing, the new environment, the new people, the new teachers all contributed to me feeling stressed out a lot of the time, and stress usually does bad things to your weight, which, in turn, made me feel even more stressed out. Food became a forbidden indulgence, a pick-me up when I was sad, a reward when I did well, and a booby prize when I didn't. I could always find a reason why I should eat, and with the money from my paper route, I could always afford to treat myself.

I got bigger and bigger. I would often come up with schemes that were going to help me lose weight, but they never really worked out. They would work for a while, but then something would trigger a binge, and BAM, every effort would be demolished. I'll admit, some endeavors were more successful than others, but in the end, I'd always give in and gain even more weight. Usually not in huge leaps and bounds, but a couple of pounds here, and couple pounds there.

When I started upper secondary, the Norwegian equivalent of high school, I weighed around 165 pounds, which is not horribly awful, but enough to give me a bit of a belly and a pair of the dreaded love handles. I stayed at this weight throughout my first year at the new school. Then, when I decided to sign up for an exchange program and spend a year in the US, I really wanted to slim down for that. I did manage to lose a bit of weight, and by the time I was ready to leave for Lima, Ohio, I weighed approximately 150 pounds.

Of course, the US is a difficult place to live if you're trying to watch your weight. I did really well for quite a while, though my diet was shot to hell pretty much right away. However, while I was there, I played soccer, softball and swam, and because of that, I got more regular exercise than I've ever gotten before, which staved off the worst of the weight gain. I think. I don't actually know, because I had no opportunities to weigh myself while I was living in the States. I wore the same clothes throughout the year though!

Then, on April 1st 2005, my beloved grandmother passed away unexpectedly. I'd always been very close with her, and to be halfway across the world when she died was something I'd never thought was a possibility. I wanted to come home right away, but my parents convinced me not to, partly because they didn't want me to spend hours and hours alone at various airports right after such an emotional K.O., and partly because my grandmother shared my zest for traveling and wouldn't have wanted me to cut my exchange short. So I stayed, but the death of my grandmother affected me profoundly. I cried a lot, stopped going to softball practice, binged a whole lot, the works. When I finally got back home, I weighed 180 pounds. I swore up and down that this was the highest weight I would ever be at. For a while, that held true. I managed to get down to 165, and then I moved out of my parents house, and zoomed right back up to 180. I held steady there for quite a while, until I decided that NOW, I would tackle my weight issues once and for all. I quit eating candy and drinking soda, and sure enough, I got back down to 165, and then promptly screwed it up when I got rejected by this guy I liked. He was a member of my taekwon-do club, which made it slightly awkward to go to practice, so I kinda stopped. Instead I sat at home and wallowed with a bag of cheese doodles My weight went up to an all time high: just shy of 200 pounds. Again, I swore up and down that I would lose weight and never ever look back. And that brings us to today. I started seriously working towards losing weight before the summer, and have lost quite a bit already, but after having read a lot of weight loss blogs over the last few days, I've been inspired to start one of my own. I really hate exposing my weight to the world, but if I have to tell you guys when I fall of the wagon and stuff my face with chocolate, maybe I won't be so tempted to do it in the first place.

However, December 20th is a really shitty day to start making the ins and outs of your diet public on, especially since I'm currently at my parents' house and have no control over what's being made for dinner, and since my mom's Christmas cookies are beyond delicious. I still wanted to create the blog though, and get used to writing about my weight on the internet. I have a sneaking suspicion that that's going to be the hardest part, having to put forth this amount of candor. But here goes.

Here are my current stats:

Height: 5'3" / 161 cm (Somehow, I doubt this one is going to change much.)
Weight: 172 pounds / 78 kg (Hopefully, this will change a lot!)
BMI: 30 (I'm obese! >.<)

Here's the kicker: I don't want to be skinny. I don't strive towards weighing a hundred pounds. I like having an ass and I like having boobs. When I was younger, I thought I had to weigh 110 pounds or less, or I'd be ugly. But as I've matured, I've realized just how low this number is. Being just shy of 5'3", I could probably pull off this weight without looking too emaciated, but I'd be toeing a fine line, and I've come to realize that I don't actually like the look of people who are toeing this particular line. No offense to those who do, but I think a little bit of fat is cute, and I don't want to bust my butt for the rest of my life trying to maintain this weight. So the question is, what weight will I be comfortable at? What weight will I be able to reach? At what weight will I be soft and squishy and feminine rather than blobby and unhealthy? This past summer, I worked as a cleaning lady at the local city hall. The GP's used to have their offices in this building, but they've moved. However, it's still the place where babies and children go for their checkups, so in one of the offices I cleaned every day, there was a height and weight chart. It told me that the highest weight I could be at and still be healthy is 68 kg, or 150 pounds. According to the BMI calculator I'm using, I need to be 147 pounds before I'm in the normal range. Then I started thinking that it would be good to have a little bit of "leeway", and get myself down to a BMI of 24, which would be 141 pounds. And then I did some more thinking, and realized that I don't actually know what my body is going to look like when I reach 150, 147, or 141 pounds. So I decided to wait and see, and then adjust as needed. So for now, here are my goals:

Partial goal: 160 pounds
Final goal #1: 147 pounds
Pounds to lose before partial goal: 12
Pounds to lose before final goal: 25

Obviously, I'm going to need a way to stay motivated, which is what the partial goals are for. Not too long ago, I bought a copy of a book called '1001 books you have to read before you die'. Obviously, there are a lot of books I haven't read. I'm not really supposed to buy books for my own enjoyment, because I'm a poor student and should spend the money on boring things like rent, electricity and internet. So I'm going to give myself two dollars for every pound that I lose, and then twenty dollars for every partial goal that I reach. For that money, I can buy whichever book I want to. Sound fair?

Also, when I reach my final final goal (depending on which final goal I chose to run with), I'm going to buy a dress from here! I really like this one! And this one, although I suspect that the pretty flowers would disappear completely under my formidable boobage!