Having My Cupcake … And Losing Weight Too!

By Dianne Armitage

I’ve kept it sort of quiet because I didn’t want to jinx my progress, but I’ve lost 40 pounds since April. A significant weight loss is an interesting phenomenon because people tend to have such big reactions! It’s difficult not to feel just a bit confused when someone who hasn’t seen you in several months shouts across the room “Oh my God, you look wonderful!” I’m pretty sure this is where so many eating disorders begin. Our psyche wants to see if anyone will still shout something uplifting at us when we are overweight (or for that matter, underweight!)

My current weight loss odyssey is not so much the result of wanting to look better, although I’ll have to admit that is definitely a perk. It began in earnest while I was working on a series of articles about women’s health. In each and every incidence, whether it was heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, PMS, hot flashes, or even healthy skin – the one constant culprit was obesity.

I wasn’t what you would call thin prior to my first breast cancer diagnosis – but I had never really thought of myself as obese. Nearly 10 years later and more than 30 pounds heavier, my second diagnosis was literally a heavy duty wake up call. Since I didn’t have any of the known contributing factors again the second time around, this triple negative girl knew she might be endangering her life simply by the choices she made about what went into her mouth. That’s a huge burden since unlike other addictions, we all have to eat to live.

I could logically wrap my mind around what I should be eating, but getting my emotional self engaged was an extremely daunting and long term process. Because I wasn’t able to simply convince myself to stop shoving the wrong foods into my mouth, I often wondered if somewhere deep inside I harbored some sort of death wish. I still have moments when I wonder why something so obviously necessary took me years to embrace and put into action.

I’ll tell you what I have come to realize. After years and years of this diet and that fad. This promised quick fix. That supposed sure fire remedy. I was quite simply fed up with not only feeding myself way too much – but the disappointment of losing weight only to regain it again. On a much larger scale (no pun intended) I was also fed up with being so out of control.

And for anyone who thinks there is no stigma about being heavy, that people don’t judge you by your weight – I hate to say it – but looking askance at the portly, chubby, and pleasingly plump is still an accepted prejudice. Even our loved ones have been known to whisper sweetly “You’d be so pretty if only you’d lose …” Or the ever popular “Do you really think you need that …”

I personally was tired of having a closet full of clothes that didn’t fit. I was also tired of never finding new outfits that really made me feel good about myself. I want to say thank goodness a few companies have managed to actually make clothes that fit larger women – but truth be told – the more relaxed we become about upsizing, the larger our overall health problems too.

Has our cultural obsession with being thin made us fat? I’ve often kidded that I have the opposite of anorexia, that when I look in a mirror I always look thin. Well, that’s a bald faced lie. When I look in a mirror I see an unhappy woman. I see someone who has felt for many years that life has passed her by because she is not thin enough, desirable enough, pretty enough – you name it – I’ve never thought I had enough. That is until I realized the one thing I have really had enough of is those kinds of thoughts and feelings!

If I could be healthy and heavy would I be contented? I hope I possess that moral fiber, but I wonder. Luckily, I don’t have to look quite that deeply into my soul because at least for me, it’s impossible to be both healthy and heavy. When I pack on pounds my blood pressure soars, my bad cholesterol is up and my good cholesterol is down. My knees hurt, my back aches, and my liver pays a price. And perhaps, even more significantly, I expose myself to a greater cancer risk.

There is no secret formula for weight loss (darn it!) I’ve had to come to grips with the fact that I simply can’t eat as much food as I would like. Not only that, but I can’t eat certain types of food very often at all. When I stick to lean proteins and healthy carbohydrates like fruits and vegetables, I begin letting go of years of poundage. Sometimes I’m sad that I’ve had to also relinquish my strangle hold on pasta and creamy sauces, big juicy hamburgers, steaks that fill a plate, mashed potatoes swimming in butter and gravy (is that my stomach growling?) and nearly anything comprised of sugar.

I still need to lose at least another 30 pounds. I know I can do it. My challenge will be to keep it off! I’ve started taking yoga classes again and am trying to get back into walking every day. When it comes to my weight, I seem to have problems multi-tasking. I’m either religious about exercise – or I’m equally zealous about my diet. This time I’m trying to make sure both are in place so I can spend the remainder of my years both healthy and happy! I want to be able to get on the scales wearing combat boots (instead of being stark naked) and feel happy about where it lands! I want to look in the mirror and smile, not just because of how I look, but because unlike breast cancer, I’ve found something I may actually be able to control.