Anyone who has read this blog, or my other blog, Settling for More, knows that I’m style impaired and fashion challenged.  As much as I want to claim that I have a closet full of stylish clothes and that I’m always well turned out and beautifully dressed, I know that isn’t my reality.  The reality is this:  if it doesn’t have any holes and it doesn’t clash, it goes on my body.   I gave up long ago on trying to have a style,   and I contented myself with the idea that I looked clean and neat and decided that would have to be enough.

Unfortunately, looking clean and neat isn’t enough for me.  I want to wear clothes that flatter my shape.  I want to look well put together and, dare I say it, even fashionable.  I want to know how to be well turned out and proud of how I look, and I want to know how to do that without spending a fortune.   I need guidance, and so, as I often do, I turned to the Internet to see what was out there.   That’s when and where I found Cardigan Empire.

I love this blog so much I’d marry it.  There are a lot of reasons to love this blog, but one of the most prominent, at least for me, is this post.  I’ve made the resolution to dress better after I lose weight more times than I can count, which effectively postpones looking fashionable and pretty until sometime in the future.   As Reachel says, you deserve to be beautiful now, and dressing for your body type will help you find your good points no matter what size your body is at the moment.

For  those people who are anything but fashion savvy, this blog is a godsend.  Cardigan Empire gives instructions for determining your body type, tips on how to celebrate your best features, and ideas for how to dress your body, whatever shape it may be.  Best of all, there’s no judgment here.  No one body type or size is better than another, and the glories and tribulations of all body types are addressed.

For someone like me, who has spent years thinking her body was too big, the idea that even big bodies can be fashionable and sexy and pretty is kind of like being given the key to a jail cell.  While I won’t stop working to lose weight and get in shape, since I believe that will be healthier for me,  I am now also working to accept that my body is fine and should be celebrated just the way it is right now.  One way I’m going to find that acceptance is to keep reading Cardigan Empire.

It is, after all, clear I have a lot to learn.

Food has always been the way I dealt, or didn’t deal, with how I felt about what was happening in my life.  Someone made me angry and I didn’t get mad, I got pizza.  I was happy and needed to celebrate so I went out to dinner.  There was chips and dip when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in, chocolate when I was sad or tense, and cheesy, gooey nachos drowned in sour cream when I felt completely unloved, even by myself.   Although I may give voice to my feelings on occasion, it’s far more likely that I’ll stuff them away, and stuff myself with food to keep them from coming out.

I would guess that I’m not the first overweight person that uses food as a coping mechanism.  Food has always been easy for me, especially when emotions were hard.  Food never let me down, was always reliable and was always there, in easy reach, often before I asked for it.  When personal relationships were rocky, when jobs or education or romance didn’t work out,  when I felt stressed or when the world just felt too demanding, food was a comfort, something simple  that seemed to soothe the rough edges.

Dealing with the rest of the world could be hard.  Food was easy.

One of the thing that I’m trying to do as I work toward getting healthy, both physically and mentally, is to figure out why I do what I do.  Some may argue that this leads me to some excessive naval gazing, but I find it helpful.  I’ve started to stop and think before I pick up that phone and order a pizza or before I eat that whole bag of chips.  I stop now and ask myself why I want to eat what I think I want to eat, and often the answer isn’t hunger.  Often the answer is I’m mad, or I’m sad, or I’m lonely.  Very rarely is the answer I’m achieving things or I’m content or I’m happy.

I’m starting to discover that part of the answer I’m seeking isn’t stuffing my feelings by stuffing myself.  I need to let myself feel what I feel and I need to express those feelings when appropriate.  That’s a hard thing for me to do, but I’m working on doing it more often.

And that, surprisingly enough, feels good.

I haven’t updated this blog in a while.  There are a couple of reasons for my silence.  One is the fact that I was hospitalized with double pneumonia for 10 days in the beginning of November.  When I got out of the hospital, most of my focus was on getting my stamina and strength back.  I was also barred from exercise for a while, and I allowed myself to be convinced that being sick also meant that I needed to eat to build up my strength.  Basically I gave myself a license to pork out and be lazy for the last few months.  I’ll give you one guess what the results of that were.

Now, however, it is a new year and a new start.  The good news is that most of my muscle tone has held up pretty well.  The bad news is that the pneumonia really sucked away a lot of my stamina.  It didn’t do my breathing any good either.  That means I have some ground to make up.  Some of the gains I made have now been lost, but I guess I just have to accept that.  As I generally say after any of my health adventures, it could have been worse.

I have started to get back into exercising and I’m also working on getting my eating back into shape.  Over the next few weeks I plan to share a lot of what I’m doing here on this blog.  I have some new theories about eating and a few ideas about exercise as well.  I also got some new exercise DVDs I want to review, some of which I liked, and some of which weren’t for me.

I’m looking forward to a new year and a new start on meeting my weight loss goals.  If I have any say in it, 2010 is going to be a successful and  less weighty year.

In my effort to make food fun again, one of the things I’ve been doing is thinking back to the foods I loved when I was a kid.  I guess I’ve been trying to figure out what made the foods I loved so lovable, at least to me.    I’d like to rekindle some of that spark I had for the foods I loved when I was a kid.  Back then it wasn’t about calories, or sodium or fat or carbs.  It was simply about the fact that the food tasted good and I enjoyed eating it.  I’d like to find a way to get back to those days.

One of the foods I loved when I was a kid was s’mores.  I loved toasting the marshmallow, even though I almost always would get impatient and burn it about halfway through.  I loved using the graham cracker to pull my burnt black marshmallow off the stick and I loved the melting squares of Hershey bar that generally got all over my fingers.  It was great taking that first bite, oozing with chocolate and marshmallow, knowing that I’d probably end up with a sticky face and sticky fingers, but already eager to burn my next marshmallow and start all over again.

There was just something about the taste and texture of this treat that felt right to me.  Although nowdays I’d probably want to use Dove Dark Chocolate and multi-grain graham crackers, back in the day I just perfectly satisfied with good old Hershey’s chocolate and whatever graham crackers were first on the shelf at the store.  What we used didn’t matter, what mattered was the taste and the fun we had making the treats.

I think, if I’m honest, it was the fun we had that made the food taste so good.  When I remember making s’mores I remember that I wasn’t worrying about the calorie content or if eating the treat would make me fat.  In my childhood memories, no one is chiding me for eating too many, or warning me about the fattening nature of the treat.  Instead, we’re all sitting around a campfire, roasting marshmallows, laughing when they burn, and sucking sticky fingers after munching down another s’more.

I guess in the end, it isn’t the food that makes the experience, it was the experience that made the food.  I want to try to remember what it felt like to eat something just for the sake of eating it, with no concern for any of the things that I now worry about every time I take a bite.  My guess is that recreating this feeling will allow me to put healthier foods on my list of favorites.

And, if not, there’s always s’mores.

It pains me to say this, but I’m a hypocrite.  I don’t like to admit it, but I do try to be honest with myself when I can, and this is one of those times when, as much as it hurts, I should be honest.   Believe me, it does hurt.

Some of you may already know from this blog that I have been working on finding someone to date.  I’ve put my profile up on several dating sites and I’ve been perusing the boy buffet, seeing what’s out there, and hoping to find a tempting dish I can call my own.   If you’d asked me when I first started this I’d have told you that looks shouldn’t matter and, for me, wouldn’t matter.  I was interested in kindness and intelligence and wit.  A few pounds here or there wouldn’t make any difference.  I would have believed I meant it too.

I’ve spent most of my adult life railing against men who expected every woman to be a size six with breasts the size of flotation devices and perfectly sculpted bodies.  It was so unfair, I’d cry, that men were so blind that they couldn’t see beyond a few extra pounds to the awesome person underneath.  Why were women held up to such unrealistic standards, I’d whine.  Why were men so unable to see inner beauty and so obsessed with outer beauty?  Didn’t they know that compassion and wit and intelligence counted for so much more?

When I started my search for Mr. Right, or at least Mr. Try It Out and See What Happens,  I was looking for kindness and wit and intelligence.  It was only as I rejected guy after guy that I realized I was also looking for George Clooney, or the nearest equivalent in my neighborhood.  I wanted the guy with the six pack abs and the roguish grin.  I didn’t want the guy who was carrying an extra 100 pounds and looked like his most strenuous exercise was walking to and from the fridge.  I was, to my dismay, doing exactly the things I’d condemned men for all these years.

I guess, at last, I’m starting to see that I’m just like everyone else, and that I have the same prejudices that everyone else has.  I may not like it, but I certainly can’t condemn others for doing what I’m doing myself.  The only thing I can do is try and be less of a hypocrite and live up to the standards I’ve tried to set for others.

They say people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Tonight, my glass house has a few broken windows.

Someone, I don’t remember who, once said that sculpting and elephant was actually pretty easy.  You started, so the quote went, with a lump of rock and just chipped away everything that didn’t look like an elephant.  It was that simple.

Since I’ve been working on losing weight, one of the things I’ve had to do is a lot of discovering which parts of me were, metaphorically speaking, the elephant, and which were not.  I’ve had to chip away not only at fat, but at a lot of old beliefs that were keeping the fat in place.  Finding the metaphorical elephant has occurred both on the physical and the mental level, and so far it’s been an interesting experience.

On the physical level it’s been about discovering the body that was hidden under the flab.  I’m learning that I’ll always have boobs and hips, but that I’m built more in a classical hourglass shape, with a smaller waist than I would have imagined I’d have.  I’m starting to see definition in my jawline, my shoulders and my calves.  When I flex my muscles you can actually see muscles now.  I’m still adjusting to the idea that my body has parts that are admirable, even pretty.  The more I work on getting fit, the more I see that the sculpture I’m creating may actually be a thing of beauty by the time I get to the end.

While I’m sculpting the outer shell, I’ve also had to do a lot of peeling away on the inside.  I’ve harbored a lot of hatred for my body over the years.  It peeled and cracked and itched.  It reacted badly to sun and heat.  My head had migraines, my eyes didn’t work right, my spine was curved and my heart had fits.   I spent a lot of time dwelling on what my body couldn’t or wouldn’t do, and not much time thinking how incredible it was that, after I’d neglected it for so long, it did anything at all.  After many years of neglect and hatred, I’m learning to let those feelings go and value myself.   It’s a slow process, and I still have days when a litany of “you’re fat, stupid and no one will love you” plays in my head, but those days are getting fewer and farther between.

Mostly, right now, I’m just enjoying the process of becoming.  I’m still a half formed sculpture, but I keep chipping away.  I know eventually I’ll chip away everything that doesn’t need to be, and all that will be left is an authentic and healthy me.

I’m kind of in a snarky mood as I write this and that started me thinking about comfort food.  I’m guessing almost everyone has a comfort food, the food that has the taste of home, or which just satisfies some craving in a way that no other food does.  I’m also guessing that most comfort foods aren’t terribly nutritionally sound.   Comfort food, after all, isn’t about being healthy or being thin, it’s about being comforted.

I’ve found I have two types of comfort food.  One type is the meals that I ate when I was a kid.  Beef stew and biscuts.  A big pot of chicken noodle or beef barley soup.  Pot roast.  These are meals I remember my Mom making, and almost all of them have a specific memory attached.  Beef stew was a Winter meal, something filling to warm you when it was cold out.  Soup was our Sunday meal.  A big pot sat on the stove and bread warmed in the oven while everyone watched football.  Supper was whenever you wanted it and the pot of soup seemed bottomless, there was always enough for one more bowl.  Pot roast was a family gathering meal, with tender flavorful potatoes and carrots and lovely rich gravy.   Food was an occasion, and certain meals went with certain times.  To this day, there are some foods that only seem right when eaten in certain circumstances.

The other type of comfort food is the type that simply satisfies some craving for me.  Sometimes it is something sweet.  I also have a great affection for cheesy, greasy food.  Nachos are a particular favorite,  as is Idaho pizza.  There’s just something about the combination of flavors and textures that works for me.  I’m not sure what it is, but for me those foods are fun and uniquely satisfying.  They provide a sense of fulfillment that other foods just don’t give me.

When we start working to lose weight, one of the first things that often goes is all the foods that give us comfort.  While I fully applaud the efforts to eat healthy, and firmly agree that nutrition should be considered and eating wisely should be pursued, I also think there’s a place for the foods that fill that empty space that has nothing to do with hunger.  There should be room for the comfort foods, and they should be eaten without guilt or remorse, but in moderation.  Whether we like it or not, food is often about comfort, and that’s not entirely a bad thing.  If we can accept that, and not beat ourselves up about it, eating well becomes that much easier.

I took a little hiatus from this blog because I needed to examine some of my attitudes.  I also hit a bit of a weight loss plateau and that took a bit of a toll on my resolve.  I felt like I was working as hard as I ever had and I wasn’t getting the desired results.  Suddenly this whole weight loss thing was becoming deadly serious again.  I needed to take some time away to examine my attitudes and figure out how to get my head back in the right space.

One of the things I realized, while I was examining my attitudes, was one simple and pretty shocking, at least for me, fact:  food isn’t fun any more.

I’ve always had kind of a love affair with food.  I enjoy cooking and am pretty good at it.  I could anticipate a great dining out experience for days, contemplating what I’d have, anticipating how marvelous it would be.  I loved the tastes and textures of food and the how voluptuous and sensual a meal could be.  I loved the simple warmth of a bowl of beef stew and the cheesy goodness of an omelet.  I love the diner breakfast and the gourmet restaurant dinner and everything in between.  Food had a lot of roles in my life, and one of them was to be fun.

Gradually, however, as health and weight issues have occurred, food stopped being fun and became work.  First I had to worry if I was eating too much.  Then I had to count calories.  Then I had to worry about sodium and fiber and sugar.  Everything became about counting and measuring and obsessing and planning.  Eating wasn’t an enjoyable experience anymore, it had become more like an algebra equation or a chemistry experiment.  There were days when I almost wished I could have some sort of science fiction food pill that would fill me up without me having to eat anything at all.

In my past weight loss attempts, right about now is when I would say the hell with it and give up.  I don’t want to measure and weigh and obsess.  I don’t want my meals to be about everything but flavor and pleasure.  I do want to be healthy and I do want to be thin, but I also want to believe that I can be both those things while having nutritional  food I enjoy.  Those goals just can’t be mutually exclusive.

Since I control my attitude, and my progress toward my goals, I’ve decided it is up to me to make food fun again.  One of the ways I’m going to do that is with this blog.  I’m starting a series here called Fun Food Friday.  Every Friday I’ll discuss some aspect of how to make food fun.  Maybe it will be a recipe.  I might discuss setting up a food theme party.  Maybe I’ll talk about table decorations, or my favorite food from when I was a kid.  The idea is to take food out of the drudgery category and make it a joyous part of my life again.

I hope you’ll join me for Fun Food Friday.  After all part of the fun of food is sharing it with others.

Eating has always been my reward.  When I do something well or want to celebrate something I think “let’s go to dinner” or “I deserve a cupcake”.  Food has always been about more than just sustenance to me.  I eat when I’m sad and I eat when I’m angry and I eat when I’m happy and want to celebrate.  There were times in my life when food was the only support I was getting.  Maybe the people in my life weren’t there for  me, but that chocolate cupcake could give me a lift and make a moment special.

I’ve been able to retrain my thoughts about food in a lot of ways, but I’m finding the tie between food and emotion hardest to break.  If we’ve had a hard week at the office, I’ll bring bagels.  If something cool happens I think we should order pizza.  Food has always been a reliable high for me and, other than making me fat because I ate way too much of the wrong sorts of things, it has never let me down.  A chocolate cupcake or a slice of pizza or a bag of chips with dip has always been reliably fulfilling, even when nothing else was.   I suppose, when I think about it, that’s where the problem lies.

My life experience has taught me, rightly or wrongly, that it’s best not to rely to heavily on other people for support.  I realize part of the reason I think that way is that, for many years, I was looking in the wrong places and to the wrong people for the support and affirmation I needed.   As I started to like myself better, I started to make better choice about the people I let into my life, and the need for food as a support should have become less.  I guess it’s hard to give up old habits though, because I still seem to turn to food first.  I’m not sure whether it’s fear or stubbornness or habit, but I’ll have a cupcake before I’ll call a friend.  That certainly isn’t helping me reach my weight loss goals.

One of the things I know about myself is that I often try to complicate things that should be quite simple, and I think this may be one of those times.  Maybe breaking the cycle of emotional eating is as simple as thinking before I eat.  If I take an extra minute to think about why I’m having that ice cream, or suggesting a dinner, maybe I’ll realize that something else would work equally well.  After all, part of losing weight is being aware of what we put into our mouths.  Maybe I need to be aware of why I’m eating as well.

I would probably rather tell someone intimate details of my sex life rather than discuss how much I weigh.  I’ll talk about almost anything before I’ll talk about my weight.  I never, ever, reveal the exact number.  That’s partly because I’m ashamed of the number and partly because I think other people will think less of me if they know.  I know that’s probably a bit over dramatic, but for a long time my self worth and self image were tied very tightly to my weight. Thin, and a low number,  made me desirable and a good person.  Fat, and a high number, made me just the opposite.

I am working very hard to shake a lot of the habits and attitudes that it has taken me 40 years to build.  I’ve been successful, at least in part, with most of them.  I like myself better than I ever have.  My body image is more positive than it’s ever been.  I feel more confident in myself, and I’m more confident of my worth as a person.  I’m learning that my body is capable of doing things, bending, stretching, exercising, that I would have bet it could never do.  I’ve made positive strides in a lot of areas.  Except when it comes to that number.

Intellectually I know that it’s just a number.  What I weigh has nothing to do with what kind of person I am.  What I weigh doesn’t effect how I perform my job or write this blog or go through my daily activities.  A number on the scale doesn’t make me any less lovable or any less intelligent.  I know this in my brain.  I just can’t feel it in my gut.

I do want to try to get over this issue.  My weight is only one small part of me as a person, and a number on a scale shouldn’t hold this much power over me.  So I think it’s time to be brave, as much as it scares me to do it.

I’m going to start posting my weight here.  For right now, I’ll post it once a week at the bottom of a post.   After a while, as I get more comfortable, I’ll probably post a running graph on the sidebar.  As much as this frightens me, I think the only way to stop giving this number as much power as it seems to have is to put the number out there and let the chips fall where they may. So here goes:

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