Confessions from a Dieter Drop-Out

There are a couple of (gay) women living here who I’ve nicknamed the Skinny Minnie Twins. Both of them were college professors and have been together since their early twenties. They are upbeat, friendly and well accepted into the ecosystem here…if the term ecosystem can be applied to a continuum care campus. They both took Mahjong lessons when we all started but one decided the game was not for her. We’ve had 4-5 others who’ve tried to learn but gave up on themselves ever catching on, so they dropped out too. But the other twin plays Mahjong every Wednesday along with me and enough others to make up two tables. American Mahjong is a hard game to learn and even harder to get good enough at it to occasionally win which is why I love it. The challenge of always having something new to learn about playing the game excites me. Yes, I’m obsessed. And I'll bet you're thinking I got side-tracked away from the dieting theme. I didn't. Well, maybe a little bit but not much.

I recently learned that Twin # Two has been going to Weight Watcher meetings every week faithfully for over 40 years. I’d been a member of Weight Watchers for a couple of stretches in my life but I gained what I lost back again when I quit. I’ve been in Tops and another diet group whose name escapes me. I’ve done a doctor supervised, all liquid diet (my favorite of any I’ve ever been on because I never got hungry or thought about food). I’ve joined gyms and worked out obsessively, then quit when the pounds were gone. I’ve lost and gained back 50 pounds three times in my life.

I was 14 or 15 the first time my mom dragged me to a (quack) weight loss doctor. He had me breathe into a tube and declared I needed thyroid medication to speed up my metabolism and he had me wrapped in clothe strips soaked in some kind of herbs and put in sauna bath. Behold I’d come out five pounds lighter and ready to pass out. Of course, the water weight that got sweated out of me would come back just in time for another ‘treatment.' which he sold in blocks of ten. Years later, another doctor told me that putting me on thyroid medication that young and without the proper tests to know if I even needed it is probably what killed off my thyroid gland so that now I actually do need it. (Being on it for so many years is what thinned my bones out.)

I’ve always admired how the Skinny Minnie twins look. Their bodies could easily pass for women in their twenties and they dress in simple but well-made jeans, tailored shirts and occasional sweaters. Before I learned about Twin # Two not always being skinny I thought they maintained their healthy bodies because they walk a lot and take the line dancing classes which I know helps, but I never would have guessed # Two once had an unhealthy relationship with food, like I do. I asked her if she was a WW leader. “Nope.” I thought maybe she worked for the corporation like all the long-timers I knew back in the day. I asked her if after all this time she still feels she needs to go and she replied, “I’m afraid to stop going.” I need to have a one-on-one conversation with her sometime. I’d love to do a deep dive into her back story regarding her relationship with food.

My back story is the classic tale of a fatty-fatty-two-by four. I use food for comfort, for celebration, to soothe hurt feelings or to treat anxiety and depression on the rare occasion when I experience the latter. I use food when I’m bored or if I want to punish myself or someone who dares to suggest I shouldn’t eat this or that. Yes, I’ve been known to be a closet eater because no one tells ME what I can or can’t put in my mouth! Not since I turned thirteen and my dad and mom had a huge argument over making me clean my plate or sit at the table until bedtime when I didn't comply. Closet eating makes no sense and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out nor would it take a psychiatrist to point out that it’s all my mothers fault. Just kidding. She may have set me up for an eating disorder but intellectually I know I’ve been an adult for far more years than she forced fed me as a child so in theory I should be able to monitor myself by now. I can get obsessed over things like playing Mahjong or learning a new craft so why couldn’t I have obsessed over developing a healthy relationship with food for the past 69 years?  

Weight gain has been on my mind big time since the first of the year when I usually do the traditional New Year’s Resolution and loss a few pounds but this year instead of losing I’ve been gaining at an alarming rate. So fast that I obsessed for awhile that I had a huge tumor growing inside me until I remembered that in February when I was in the hospital they did a thorough set of  x-rays of my body looking for broken bones and would have seen the mass my imagination conjured up. 

My only comfort is that one day at a lunch table with a dozen or so of my fellow residents everyone was complaining about gaining ten pounds over the past year. One lady said, “It’s all the carbs they serve us” and a guy replied, “they do it on purpose so we’ll all die off faster and they can resell our apartments.” Ms. Social Worker bemoaned the fact that she’s had to buy all new clothes and I confessed that I refuse to do that and I have fewer and fewer choices left in my closet. I mean that, too, about not buying clothing in a larger size. I’m only fifteen pounds under what was the highest I’ve ever weighed in my life. I’m not going to make it easier for me to get there again.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about my life since The Fall in February. I’ve experienced most of the benchmarks we humans are supposed to find along the way and I’ve long ago made peace with the ones I’ve missed. I’ve had hard times and good times. Fun times and sad times. Times when I've failed and times when I succeeded. But I’m mostly proud of the way I've 'done life.' I may not have accomplished great things that will go down in history but I've had some good friends,  found my soulmate and I'm a good person where it counts in my heart. I have only one real regret, one big thing that if we had do-overs in life, I’d do over and that's my relationship with food. Its my Achilles' heel.

Until next Wednesday… © 

The Widow's Dog and her Diet

 

This past week, the dog had been showing an unusual level of interest in something going on underneath a shrub in the front yard.  Today, I found out why. Just before I was ready to walk out the door to go to the dentist, Levi made a quick trip outside to pee and when he came back in he was chewing on something hidden by his long Schnauzer beard. I almost didn’t check it out and I’m so glad I didn’t make that error in judgment. When I pried his jaw open I discovered he’d brought a bird inside!  At least it was dead. The last time I had to pry his jaw open a live toad dropped out. Thankfully, it wasn’t a species that makes dogs sick but I had a heck of a time catching the thing before he disappeared under the couch.  

Minus the bird prize that Levi wasn’t happy about giving up, he still had a great day. Going to the dentist I drove by (and over in one case) four dead skunks. Nothing makes Levi happier than inspecting the wheels on my car when I return home from an outing and he actually finds something of interest. The minute I unlock the door coming in from the garage, he’s there to do his walk-around my Malibu. I think he was a detective in a former life. He also checks my pant legs for signs that I’ve been cheating on him with another dog or cat. And in the mornings if I sleep later than he’d like he checks to see if I’m still breathing, his lips pressed against mine in case he has to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.  Ohmygod, I’m setting the alarm the rest of the week or he’ll give me his dead bird germs!

I had my first weigh-in at the drink-a-diet-shake-and-talk meeting. Five pounds down in five days. I don’t expect that kind of results to last long but it was a great way to kick off my get-fit project. They have me eating high-protein snacks throughout the day so I feel like I’m getting more calories, now, than before. In addition to the snacking and two shakes a day, you have to have one healthy meal of whatever you like and I can honestly say I’m not missing the sugar fixes and Starbucks I’ve become too dependent on lately. I did a bad thing, though. I was at my doctor’s office yesterday for my biannual appointment and I didn’t run this diet plan past him. Not that he’s the boss of me, and I did check the product out on the internet for safety alerts and I couldn’t find much. He’s big on Weight Watchers and I know it works but all that talk of cooking, recipes and counting points whips me into a cross-eyed frenzy. Weight Watcher math is time consuming and you’re always thinking about food! It’s not unusual for me, though, to go on a diet from Halloween through New Year’s. If nothing more, it keeps me from gaining with all the holiday temptations around.

Also on my agenda this week of old people maintenance obligations to do before winter sets in I had my first annual checkup at the hearing aid center. Yes, the little buggers are still annoying in large places with all the background noises amplified. No, I didn’t drop one of the aids in the toilet or otherwise compromise its functionality. And begrudgingly, I bought the insurance against things like that happening, says the woman whose dog destroyed two of her deceased husband’s hearing aids. Earwax is so tasty, mom! Crunch, crunch.

When the Baby Boomers die off, what are younger people going to do for jobs? Think about all the services and products that it takes to keep us old people up and running. The economy will go down the drain. Housing values will plummet with a glut of unsold grandma houses on the market. City budgets dependent on real estate taxes will suffer. But the solution to those problems that the long-range government planners want---increased immigration of younger people to bring on another baby boom---isn’t flying right now. They say we can’t be a strong force in the world without something driving our economy like the Baby Boomers have done for their entire lives. Others argue a larger military complex/industry can drive commerce better than babies. Babies or building weapons of war, what a choice! It’s all too complicated, isn’t it? Thankfully, I’m from a generation of women who can imitate Scarlett O'Hara and say, “I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.” Well, aren’t I little Miss Sunshine today?

Speaking of sunshine, the dog is laying in his own ray of that warm, wonderful stuff coming in through the dining room door. I wish I could do that, but alas I need to step away from the keyboard and make myself useful. I have a garage to clean, perennials to cut back and three door frames to paint this month so I can check them off my fall to-do list. Gone are the October days when I had rake leaves, take down screens and put storm windows up, or to help get snow plow equipment moved out of storage and I am grateful for that. Not having to work so hard is one of the perks of growing older and I’ll take all of those kind of perks I can get. ©

Go to Weight Watchers or Become an Artist's Model? That is the Question

 This article was first published by Yahoo Contributors, in their humor section, but they are going out of business and the publishing rights have reverted back to me. So if it seems out of order to the rest of the content here, that's the reason. It was written before my husband passed away.

I'll be the first to admit it. Overweight old people don't look good naked. We've got bulges and things that look better draped in tee-shirts and sweat pants. It's not just the extra pounds but at a certain age we start growing things: warts and moles and bumps of unknown origin. My husband can get away with carrying a few extra pounds. He's got the Santa Claus look---a belly that looks like a bowl full of jelly, and hair and a mustache as white as snow. Well, grayish snow that's been lying around too long without a touch up from mother nature.

Me? I sometimes wonder if I was once the Venus of Willendorf before she turned into limestone. Unfortunately, most of you will never get to Vienna to see her. But she has her counterparts in primitive art from all over the world---the fertility goddesses carved of various stones---so you can use your imagination about my figure type. Why couldn't I have been born back then when 'mature' bodies were revered and worshiped? "Hefty woman. Works hard. Lives through famines. Makes good babies." When the heck did that ideal of femininity slip out of fashion?

Fluffy women were still desirable when Botticelli was into painting nude women in the 1480s. But those wide-assed ladies with flat, lifeless hair wouldn't get a second look in a pick-up bar today. And Mona of the Mona Lisa fame, she'd have to drop thirty-forty pounds if she wanted to find a husband in the year 2007. Her beautiful, creamy skin and soft eyes wouldn't cut it at a place like Mickey Gilley's without a cropped top to show off a flat belly she doesn't have. Can you image Mona line dancing! There would be a few rednecks down there in the south who would make "mooing" sounds at the poor girl. Then what would happen to her famous smile?

I've been slinky and skinny. I've been fat and fluffy. I've been in between, bouncing around for a lot of years. I was probably sitting at one of the very first Weigh Watchers meeting in town back when they thought dehydrated onion flakes and pimientos makes everything taste better and bouillon cubes were a major food group. I've dropped in and I've dropped out of the diet and exercise crazes more times than I can count. Once, I was even on the belly dancing exercise program for weight reduction. No kidding. I had a hip-rider, layered transparent skirt with bells and other clinking things attached so you hear when your hips were moving just right. Okay, so I was too chicken to wear that skirt without a leotard underneath, but I still thought I was pretty hot stuff. And this is the kind of thing that young people don't understand about old people! Most of them seem to think we were all born with our gray hair, wrinkles and extra pounds. They don't look a Mrs. Santa Claus figure type like me and see a person who could have dreamed of owning a belly button jewel that would dazzle the guys as it moved up and down and around. They don't see an old man in a wheelchair, like my husband, and think to themselves that he was probably a hot piece of eye candy in his prime.

Growing older and imperfect makes you feel like you're also growing invisible. I'll bet I could walk into a bank in broad daylight and rob it and no one but the security camera could describe me. I hate feeling invisible. Even worse is being noticed and treated like my brain is operating on only two of eight its cylinders. "Here's your change, dear. Can you find your car in the parking lot?" Elvis may have left the building, but I still have all the bats in my belfry. Thank you, very much! And how does that young twerpy clerk know that I didn't come riding in on a customized Harley-Davidson Screami' Eagle? Old people have the money for toys like that, you know....or maybe you don't know because you're---gasp!---one of those young people.

Back when I was young and dreaming of fame at the end of a paint brush, I took a lot of life figure drawing and painting classes. They used to hire all types of people to pose nude. Fat ones, old ones and models with wrinkles and rolls were the most fun to draw and paint. So, I'm debating a decision: I either get back into Weight Watchers and I start a diet, or I go get a job posing for a life figure drawing class. The young people there would not only HAVE to look at me, they'd have to PAY to look at me as I lounged wearing nothing else but a Mona Lisa-like smile. And that smile would say it all: "One day, kids, you're going to look just like me." ©  

By Jean R*****

Jean's main passion in the writing world centers around educating the general population about stroke related language disorders, caregiving issues, and growing older---often using humor to do so.

Widows and Weight Watchers

 

All week I’ve been weighing the pros and cons of going back to Weight Watchers to rid myself of the pounds I put on during my Winter of Boredom. The niece-in-law I walked the nature trail with all last summer signed up and she wanted to know if I’d be interested in going on Saturdays. One of the pros of going is that Weight Watchers has worked for me in the past. And if I want to live to be 100 I need to turn my diet around. Again. Why does healthy eating have to be so hard for some of us to maintain long term? The winter before last I spent a lot of months losing the weight I put on during my New Widow eating binges and now I’m right back where I started.

One of cons of going to Weight Watchers is the King Arthur Flour catalog for April just came in the mail to tempt me. Strawberry stuffed scones for breakfast? What a great idea! And have I mentioned that my social calendar for April and May is getting close to being overbooked? Losing weight is time consuming. Another con is I just signed up to use one of the gift certificates I won at an auction last year for cooking classes at an upscale restaurant in town. They are teaching Thai cooking the night of my class. How am I going to fit eating five Thai dishes and drinking wine into Weight Watchers’ Simple Start program? Lie, of course. All fatty-fatty-two-by-fours are good at that. No, I didn’t eat all that cake. The dog did it! I also hate all the measuring, counting and homework that comes with losing weight which probably explains a lot about why I have to do it in the first place. Now, they have all the online tools I’ll have to learn! Weight Watchers comes with too much homework and I am one, undisciplined widow who can’t be good for long. Jeez, if I left the food part out of that last sentence about being “an undisciplined widow who can’t be good for long” it would make a great line to use in an online dating profile.

Speaking of dating, if you read the Time Goes By blog linked in my sidebar this week Ronnie had an interesting post about statistics for the 65-plus population. One line really showcases the reason why so many senior halls are filled with mostly women. Quoting TGB: “In 2012 there were 43,145,356 people age 65 and older – about 5.5 million more women than men.” So, if you are a woman 65 or older who wants to date, feel free to use my undisciplined widow line. It might give you an edge. And if you are over 65 and still have a guy of your life, keep it in the back of your mind that if you ever need to supplement your income you could take him down to the senior hall and sell his hugs for a $1.00 each. Think of it like the old kissing booths of our youth only you’d be doing a good service for your senior sisters. Guy hugs are hard to come by the older you get!

Speaking of yarn---oh, I wasn’t it? Well, pretend I did and now I’m going to explain the photos below. They are baby sweaters I made for my nieces. They are both going to be first-time grandmothers soon and I knitted the sweaters to start their ‘sweater drawers.’ When they were growing up my mother always had a ‘sweater drawer’ where she kept extra clothing. It came in handy when my brother would send his kids (my nieces and nephew) over to the family cottage without a change of clothing and the weather would turn unexpectedly the way it often does around a round a lake. Both of my nieces have homes on lakes and I’m sure they’ll need to accumulate some extra stuff to have on hand for when the grand-babies visit. I knitted car seat blankets for the mothers of the babies so the sweaters are just something extra to acknowledge how special it is to be newly minted grandmothers.

From what I wrote above about joining Weight Watchers, one would think the cons outweigh the pros and I didn’t even mention that I’ve already signed up and paid for a restaurant crawl along Lake Michigan,  a fancy meal at a culinary college and a chocolate crawl in my adopted hometown. I have so many fatty-fatty-two-by-four 'holidays' coming up on my spring schedule! Plus I’ll need one glorious week to eat all the junk food in the house before starting Weight Watchers, But it’s time to pay the piper so I told my niece-in-law I’ll join after I have my bi-annual appointment with my internist coming up very soon. I’ll let him think my efforts to lose weight were inspired by him because I just know he’s going to give me The Lecture. ©