#22 The Why-Bother-Blues

The slippery slope of the SCALE.

Sometimes the scale can be your friend and other times your frenemy. Let me explain. Maintaining one's weight loss takes vigilance, not obsessiveness, but just honest day to day oversight. To aid in this endeavor, there are different methods. Here are some:

-how we feel

-how our clothing fits and feels on our bodies

-the mirror

-fat calipers

-the scale

-honest friends and family members

For me, the scale [used almost every morning] is my aid of choice. I believe that clothing stretches [everyone knows that a pair of jeans just out of the dryer in the morning feels very differently by the end of a day], family and friend's moods apply to how they see you, there are some great 'skinny' mirrors out there that can trick you and it's too difficult to use fat calipers on yourself. So for me, the scale works. Now here comes the psychology of the scale.

My happy weight is 133-138. Sometimes, around 137-138 I get a little tense and start to watch what I'm eating. Other times I say to myself, just screw it [in less nicer terms]. Here I am watchful of everything that I eat and exercising 5-6 days a week and the scale isn't being friendly. This 138 hover can send me either way; like rein me in or make me feel frustrated and give me the why-bother-blues. This is the heavy hover of weight psychology. Wait till you read the light end hover of weight psychology. When the scale hovers around 134, I either feel so good that I tend to allow myself foods that are not part of my maintenance regime or I feel so good that I stay in control and revel at this weight. I never know until I step on that scale how I'm going to react.

Now I know what you are thinking. Good lord, we're talking 4ish pounds here. Yup! What can I say? This is the emotional roller coaster of weight maintenance. I don't want you to think that I or we maintainers never give ourselves a break. Sometimes, weeks go by where I'm on auto pilot. I'm feeling good, exercising, eating healthy and actually forget to weigh myself. But with every success, comes the F-word, and there are those days or weeks that feel like torture, where food controls all behavior and thought. Thankfully, I know this is usually an emotional and/or hormonal hiccup and food will become a non-issue again... until the next cycle.

I want to end this enemy/frenemy babble on a happy and positive note. Here goes -- I'm maintaining. I'm not going up and down the scale by 10 or 20 or 30 pounds. I don't have to constantly start a diet. I don't have all those "heavy" emotions that come with dieting, like failure, fat, doomed, denied, etc. Ninety-nine percent of the time I feel really good and successful and happy and for those of you who read my last babble, I got rid of that picture in my head of the perfect me and have embraced that I am the perfect me right now.

one way to maintain

For those out there maintaining, I say-- hurrah for us! Having dieted and maintained, I think we can all agree that this might just be the harder job.... As Robert Collier says, "Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out."

#21 Picture Perfect

I always dated or wished to date tall, dark, beefy men who had that edgy, bad boy look. Of course I wanted them to be a professional [at something], but beyond that I didn't give too much thought to their personality traits. Actually, that's not totally true. I should share that in the 5 years preceding my marriage there were 2 attributes in men I wasn't interested in. The first was men who were doctors. Since I worked with them every day in the Emergency Room, taught them surgical wound management and played on a softball team with them, I just didn't think I could deal with any more MD ego after hours. The other kind of man I didn't want to date was a Jewish one. Let me share this with you, I'm Jewish. Despite dating my fair share of Jewish boys, I tended to lean towards 'bad' boys and none of the Jewish boys I met were bad boys. Anyway, people reading this babble who know me and my husband are smiling. Why? Because my honey is about 5'7", as blue eyed as they get, has blonde hair [now with more salt and pepper in it], is Jewish, a doctor and is the antithesis of bad boy. The only quality he has that was on my list is that he's a little beefy - far from fat of course [in case he reads this].

Now, I know you are all wondering why I'm writing about my husband. Well, I'll tell you. Just like I had a picture in my head of my perfect man, I have a picture in my head of a perfect ME. When I met my husband, I didn't even look at him as a potential date. He didn't fit the picture I had in my head of "my man". I actually walked away from him and his buddy leaving my friend's sister to keep them company. She, being a nice enough girl, gave my husband my name and where I worked [she didn't know my phone numbers]. He looked me up, called my office on Monday and we chatted. This story could go on and on, but I'll make it quick. I wasn't interested. However, he told me he plays tennis and I thought what the hell, I like to play tennis too. We played tennis and then went back to his place for some wine and cheese.I thought, nice guy, but nothing there for me. I couldn't see beyond his shortness and blondeness. The next day I came home from work and there was a message saying he's meeting some friends for a drink and did I want to join them. My girlfriend, who was over, told me to go. She said I might end up meeting one of his friends. I arrived at the bar and learned quickly I had made a mistake. It turned out that he was setting up 2 of his friends - so it was really just the 4 of us. While walking me to my car later that evening, he asked if he could take me out for my birthday [about a week away]. I thought why not? Nobody else had asked me yet. It was after that birthday date that I began to wonder if this was the kind of guy my mom had been talking about.... a best friend boyfriend. By the 4th date, I realized that this short, blonde, blue eyed, Jewish doctor was wooing me. I haven't looked back since.

So, this is what I was thinking. I had this picture in my head of the perfect man and ended up marrying him. I just didn't realize he had all the qualities [and more] that I was looking for, but the packaging wasn't exactly what I had had in mind. I came to the conclusion today that I needed to ease up on the perfect picture I had of me. Maybe this is what the perfect me is supposed to look like. I've worked [and I mean dieting, exercising, self actualizing] very hard to be where I am today. Why don't I just rip up that old picture of the perfect Bobbie and just take a new picture of me - the today me?

Starting today, I'm going to see me through more accepting eyes... those same eyes that finally saw my husband as the man he was and not the package he came in.

November 2008, me in 3 inch heals with my picture perfect husband...