I am my father’s daughter.
This phrase became a mantra as I forced myself to walk those extra blocks. Ever since I had made the decision to lose weight by becoming more physically active, I had to daily talk myself out of excuses for not following through with my new exercise plan.
I am my father’s daughter.
My father had been a smoker. He started smoking cigarettes when he was thirteen years old, stubbornly maintaining his habit into his seventies. My sister and I had spent years trying to convince him to quit, but it took an X-ray of his lungs to give him the incentive he needed to finally do it, cold turkey, by sheer willpower. It had been five years since he smoked a cigarette, and I was so proud of him.
I am my father’s daughter.
I was skinny as a teenager. Everyone was always encouraging me to take seconds, and sometimes even thirds, as a child. So I had gotten used to heaping my plate full and then eating every single bite so that I didn’t waste any food. This was never a problem when I was thirteen years old, but when I reached my thirties, the pounds started adding up until the morning that I stepped on a scale and realized that I was 255 pounds.
I am my father’s daughter.
For a few years, I tried to find excuses. It was my metabolism. I ate the same way I had always eaten, so why else was I fat? Maybe I had a thyroid problem. As more years passed and I moved into my forties, I blamed the media for promoting a “thin culture” of unrealistic body shapes. I scoffed at friends on fad diets, convincing myself that my diet was healthier than theirs. I used to laugh about my sister-in-law’s skin turning orange from eating too many carrots. Surely, a few extra pounds were preferable to that?
I am my father’s daughter.
When my doctor diagnosed me with high blood pressure and prescribed medication, he told me that if I lost weight, I probably wouldn’t need the medication. When I fell down some stairs at work and the clinic x-rayed my knee, I was told that the fall had not injured my knee but that my knee didn’t look good, due to the strain of my weight. I decided I needed to make a change in my lifestyle.
I am my father’s daughter.
After six months of half-hour walks, four to five times a week, I lost forty pounds. Then I added weight circuit training three times a week and monitored the portions of food on my plate, and now, almost two years later, I am seventy-five pounds lighter. At a recent family get-together to celebrate my father’s five-year anniversary of giving up smoking, relatives exclaimed over my trimmer, fitter figure and asked me how I did it. I caught my dad’s eye.
I am my father’s daughter.
Deborah P. Kolodji
Gone to the Dogs
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.
OrsonWelles
I’ve struggled with weight problems all my life.
During college, I tried every fad diet out there, from grapefruit juice with every meal to two weeks of nothing but boiled rice and fruit. Fromthe time I was nineteen until I turned forty, my weight yo-yoed by as much as sixty pounds. I’d keep it off for a year or two, and then gradually the needle on the bathroom scale would creep back up.
Then a personal miracle entered my life, in the form of two Labrador retrievers.
My wife and I had been married for about a year when we got our second dog. Harley, our chocolate Lab, had just turned eight months when her sister, Buffy, a yellow Lab, was born. On that day, our lives changed forever.
All dogs require regular exercise to stay fit, but anyone who has ever owned a Labrador knows that it’s a breed with boundless energy. Most experts agree a Lab needs at least two miles of brisk walking each day, and a typical Lab can do that and then be ready for a few hours of swimming or running afterward.
Harley and Buffy are no exception to the rule. We soon discovered that if we didn’t give them a good workout each day, all their pent-up energy would lead them into all sorts of trouble around the house. As soon as Buffy was old enough, we instituted a regular exercise program for them, designed to tire them out so they’d sleep all night.
Weekdays begin at 6:00 AM with a brisk, half-mile to mile walk, depending on the weather. Only the heaviest snows or rains keep us from our morning constitutional. Then, after work, we do a minimum of two miles, often accompanied by games of chase-the-ball or stick. In the warm weather, we will often increase it to three miles.
But it doesn’t end there. On the weekends the afternoon walk begins earlier, and usually involves a nice three- or four-mile hike in one of the local state parks.
Harley and Buffy are now eight and seven, respectively, and their exercise program, combined with nutritious food and no table scraps, has them in better shape than “any other Lab I’ve seen,” according to our veterinarian.
The dogs love their daily exercise; the same can’t be said for their masters. It’s never easy to drag yourself from a warm bed on a cold or rainy winter day, bundle up, drive to the park and then trudge through the muck and puddles while a frenetic eighty-pound Energizer Bunny romps alongside you.
Even in the summer, there are often other things we’d rather be doing: relaxing after a hard day’s work, taking care of the house, visiting friends. But when you make a commitment to a pet, it has to be honored. So we still take those walks, every day.
Of course, there’s another reason we strap on those leashes.
Since dedicating ourselves to keeping our dogs fit, my wife and I have each lost more than forty pounds and kept it off. As soon as we realized the daily exercise was working as good for us as for our canine companions, we found the motivation we’d been lacking to stick to our own healthy diets.
Gone are the days when we’d give in to temptation and eat fast food, or buy popcorn and candy at the movies. In the past four years, I’ve had approximately twelve cans of soda. Before that, I drank it with lunch and dinner every day.
When we want Chinese food, we chop vegetables and tofu and make our own stir-fry. We measure portions of pasta and rice. The only snacks after dinner are fruit and sugar-free Jell-O. We’ve eliminated cheese on hamburgers and substituted veggie burgers for the beef patties.
On the occasions when we go out for dinner with friends or family, we make sure to fill up at the salad bar, skip the appetizers and order grilled chicken or some other healthy choice.
When one of us is lured into temptation, the other is always there to provide that most effective of all dissuasions: “Honey, if we eat that we’ll have to walk an extra mile every day this week.” Those words have the power to make either of us drop the candy or frozen pizza as if it were poison.
Of course, walking by itself isn’t enough of an exercise program for a middle-aged person fighting the never-ending battle of the bulge. We’ve set up a small exercise room in our basement, with stationary bike, treadmill, elliptical machine and even a Bowflex for the arms and chest. On days when the rain, snow or temperature are too horrid for even diehard dog-walkers to venture outside, the home gym is a warm, dry alternative.
I’ve also gotten my wife to play golf with me, and we’re both bad enough at the game that we get plenty of exercise walking from cart to ball and back again.
But in the end, it all comes down to the dogs. They’re our impetus for rising early each morning and heading back out again in the afternoons when all we want to do is sit on the deck with a glass of wine.
The funny thing is that all the excuses we had for never doing something like this before have turned out to be just that—excuses. No time? We still get everything done that we always did. It’s too cold? Five minutes after coming home, it’s like we never went out. Skipping a day won’t hurt? Not only do Harley and Buffy make us crazy by bouncing off the walls, but we’ve found that we don’t feel good if we skip a day.
Most importantly, all four of us are healthy, which means we’ll be together for many years to come.
Greg Faherty
Skinny Munchies
Just think of all tho
se women on the Titanic who said, “No, thank you,” to dessert that night. And for what!
Erma Bombeck
Dieting is an embarrassing occupation, one I would really rather keep quiet about. My logic goes something like this: If no one sees me buying diet food, they certainly won’t notice the extra fifty pounds I’m hauling around on my 5’3” frame. Perhaps it isn’t the diet that’s as embarrassing as the failure to stay on the diet.
Discretion is essential when shopping, and knowing your way around the local grocery store is crucial. It’s reassuring to know where the Marshmallow Mateys are when you’re in a hurry for a nutritious breakfast. Or which aisle to avoid when toting a toddler with a long reach. Or where along the cookie aisle some teenage bag boy has stocked the Chips Ahoy.
After moving to a small town from a large metropolitan city, I was unable to locate a favorite low-cal snack in the local grocery store, so I decided to inquire at the register. Right away, a voice inside my head raised an alarm. Don’t do that, the voice warned. Just keep looking. It might be embarrassing if you ask and they don’t have it.
Oh, give me a break, I argued withmyself, I’m thirty years old. I can certainly ask for a product in a grocery store. I am an adult.
You really might want to think this through a bit more, dear, the voice wheedled.
Bug off, I answered.
At least I wasn’t talking out loud like the lady two aisles over debating whether Windex would kill the ants in her petunia bed.
At the checkout, a slim, young woman whose name badge read “Clarista” began checking out my groceries. I got my nerve up and leaned over the package of Ding-Dongs just crossing her scanner.
“Do you know if you carry Skinny Munchies?” I inquired.
Pausing in midscan, she replied, “Skinny what?” A tiny smile spread across her face.
“Skinny Munchies,” I answered, lowering my eyes in a flicker of panic. “They’re a Weight Watchers product, uh, little chips that are legal for Weight Watchers to, uh, snack on . . .”
“Oh, that’s the cutest thing I’ve ever heard!” she exclaimed, breaking into a big grin and reaching for the large microphone stretched across her cash register. “Mr. Sidensticker,” she called with delight, “do you know if we sell something called Skinny Munchies?”
Mr. Sidensticker, the store manager stationed in the customer service booth one aisle away, reached for his microphone. “Skinny what?” he asked.
“Skinny Munchies,” she answered over the PA system, ignoring my stammered pleas to “never mind.”
“She says they’re a Weight Watchers product. Isn’t that cute?”
“Never heard of ’em,” Mr. Sidensticker’s voice boomed back. “Do they work?”
Feeling the amusement of every well-proportioned shopper standing in line behind me, I managed to choke out, “No, uh, uh, no, never mind . . . it’s not important.” Desperate for a quick exit, I grabbed my Cheez Doodles and Diet Orange Crush and began pulling them over the scanner myself.
“I don’t know, I’ll ask her,” Clarista’s voice echoed. Still holding down the “on” button of the microphone, she turned to interrogate me further, “Do they work?”
Shoppers throughout the store looked up to the speakers in the ceiling, anxiously awaiting an answer. Sucking in my stomach and pitching my Cini-Minis down the conveyer belt, I offered breathlessly, “Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?” Rushing to scrawl out a check, I made my escape.
Never again would I argue with the smug voice that was smiling in my head and tut-tutting, I told you so! From now on, if I can’t find the diet product I’m looking for in the grocery store, I’ll save myself a grocery-cart-full of embarrassment and substitute a high-calorie equivalent.
Sally Clark
Amazing Apple Vinaigrette
MAKES 2 SERVINGS EACH SERVING: 0 GRAMS SATURATED FAT
1 handful of fresh parsley
¼ cup flaxseed oil
½ cup unsweetened applesauce
¼ cup apple juice
1 tablespoon brown sugar
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
2 garlic cloves, chopped
¼ teaspoon salt
Toss all ingredients into a blender or food processor and puree until smooth and creamy. Serve with mixed greens.
Note: You can store this vinaigrette in a covered container in the refrigerator for up to two days.
Reprinted from The Gold Coast Cure. ©2005 Andrew Larson, M.D., Ivy Ingram Larson. Health Communications, Inc.
Trading Fat Cells for Barbells
To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist.
Gail Sheehy
She whips out her appointment book and cheerfully rattles off open times. “First thing in the morning is always good,” she lies.
Nothing is good first thing in the morning except coffee in bed. In fact, the best thing first thing in the morning IS my bed.
“What about 5:00 or 10:00 AM?” Dancing brown eyes shimmer over a smile that cuts her face in half. She is all teeth and joy. Even her name is cheerful—Lorri Ann. I had hoped for someone as somber about this situation as I. If fitness centers are great places to meet people, I wanted someone I could relate to right off the bat. Someone who knows that this is the last stop on the road to the end of the world. At least the world as I knew it.
“Weight training is so exciting. You won’t believe how it will make you feel. We can reshape your body like PLAYDOH. When you come in, first thing we’ll do is fat testing. Then we’ll measure your dimensions.”
I was never keen on tests in school. My fat did not wiggle for joy upon notice that it too would endure a test of its own.
Her enthusiasm ricocheted off a forty-foot ceiling. “You’re really gonna love it,” she lied again.
Cautiously, I returned to the gigantic lobby of the big, fancy health facility (BFHF) early one Friday. Thawing out under the bright lights of the BFHF, I pondered the lighting. Brightness burst through big windows and down from the ceiling like those merciless bulbs in dressing rooms that highlight your figure flaws when you are at your most vulnerable—trying on clothes.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Suzan!” Lorri Ann Code bounced toward me with that beaming face of hers.
Health clubs make me feel uneasy. Over the years I have entered their doors after occasional bouts of bottoming out from my lifestyle of denial, indulgence, denial, indulgence, repeat. These clubs attract spandex-laden lassies with perky ponytails who strut in glittery tights. I wear old maternity pants just to get through the buffet line during the holidays.
“Let’s begin!”
I filled out health history forms, then, with Lorri Ann, established “measurable goals.” It was important that I understand what I wanted out of this undertaking.
I wanted it to be over.
I also wanted stronger bones and tighter everything else. I knew that New Year’s resolutions often fail because we promise on the heads of our children to give up something without considering that we are actually taking on a lifestyle change. Clearly, bowing out of this commitment would be difficult with Captain Code around. Accountability this time had a face with a big grin on it.
We headed for the equipment—gigantic contraptions of metal with pulleys and cables connected to an array of weights. Captain Code demonstrated each apparatus, which strengthen and tone different muscles. I followed her lead, receiving encouraging remarks and gentle corrections, “Keep your wrists straight, put your head back, align your back, don’t rotate your shoulders.” She wrote copious notes on my workout sheet denoting the number of repetitions, weight used, posture, seat height, where my feet belonged and so forth.
Code does not tolerate a sloppy performance. “You’ll get great benefits but you have to use the machines correctly. When you come back next time, you’ll go first and I’ll tell you what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong. It’s the best way to learn.”
I can hardly believe I am finally
keeping a promise I’d made for fifteen years—to learn weight training.
“The first four weeks we build a base,” she says. “After that, we’ll develop a program where you can work your upper body one day, lower another or do a combination. Does it hurt yet?” she smiles. “Four more, three, two, one, rest and stretch for sixty seconds. Do you mind being sore in the morning? Wait until tomorrow night!”
I claim I don’t mind pain later, but in the heat of the moment I am adverse to it. She says something else but I don’t hear it, distracted by a man with arms the size of the Sierra Nevada mountains. The next fifteen reps whip by. Some views in the BFHF are not designed to go unnoticed. People of all ages and sizes are there. A variety of “before, during and afters,” I consider. It is comforting to see folks in their thirties, forties and fifties. I thought mostly twenty-year-old blondes in tights went to health clubs. At forty-five, I was in the right demographic in my Big Dog gym pants.
We concluded with a cardiovascular workout. Captain Code gave me a choice of stair steppers, exercise bikes, treadmills and other pieces of equipment designed with your sweat in mind. “You’ll start to burn fat after twenty minutes.”
“Put the timer on thirty,” I bravely retort.
“Good girl! You’re doing great!” she says this for the twentieth time. I love hearing it. An hour of being the center of attention when I am used to ignoring my needs in lieu of family demands felt surprisingly rejuvenating. I wanted more.
Lorri Ann whipped out a set of headphones called “Cardio-Theater” and plugged them into a box on the machine. Two television sets hang from the ceiling in front of us. “This TV is Channel 4, that one is Channel 15, or you can listen to music or talk shows.”
Working out wasn’t so bad after all. The handle of my treadmill measured my heart rate. I felt sudden exhilaration. I had a trainer! At long last I was learning the correct way to use intimidating equipment that would tone my body in new and unexpected ways. And perhaps my attitude might get toned in the process. For the first time in ages, I felt like a star.
Chicken Soup for the Dieter's Soul Page 6
