(more on that later)

So here's the "more" from my first entry. Have trouble remembering that exact quote? Lemme refresh your memory... 


Here I was, in my troubled 20's, a lonely young lady trying to unravel her confusing and traumatic teenage years using food to protect and comfort. I wasn't thinking 'Dang.. if I stretch out all my skin now, it'll look like a fried egg on a hook when I'm 40!' I had no foresight. No sense of responsibility to my older self. Which now, come to think of it, my older self would love to go back and smack my younger self for NOT thinking about (more on that later).


I will tell the commoner that the way I'm gauging my weight is by the scale. But really, that's a lie. I only use the scale as a way for rewarding my very significant effort. It takes a lot to get my lazy ass away from facebook on a morning free from children, and trade in my prized "me time" (read as: the only time I have when the kids aren't arguing about which episode of Phineas and Ferb they'd rather watch) to go to the gym and sweat like a hog (more on that later, part II. that's a hint, people). But numbers on the scale, as frustrating as they are, are only a means to an end. They get me STUFF. I lose ten pounds, I get X-number of dollars to spend on REAL athletic clothing so I can show up to the gym wearing something other than worn out Old Navy t-shirts from last summer. 15 pounds lost and I get a snazzy new hair cut. Quite frankly, who wouldn't want to see me wearing a fashionable coif ala Alison Mosshart. Google that. My new less-15 lbs-of-flab bad ass muscles meet bad ass hair cut. That'll drive the hoity-toity elementary school mommies whose upper thighs don't touch even though they've had 3 or 4 children nuts. They won't know what the hell to think of me!  20 pounds lost and I am rewarding myself with professional head shots. And who knows what after that? I think 20 pounds lost is a pretty big goal at this point. But the possibilities are endless! As... are... the amount of lbs I have to lose to be suitable to the judgmental whore my doctor calls "BMI".


But do I judge how my body is changing by numbers on the scale or inches on a measuring tape? Hell no. I'm too smart to fall for that kind of lunacy. I judge the amount of weight lost by the density of flab that hangs over my emergency c-section incision. And if you think THAT is a bothersome idea, you should have been there at the hospital when I earned said scar and nearly died on the table thanks to a certain incompetent anesthesiologist. Believe me when I say that we all have ideas of the things that "truly" gross us out, but once you've gone through feeling your entire abdomen spliced open on an OR table, nothing grosses you out so much any more. Not baby poop. Not your kid throwing up an exorbitant amount of Oreo's that he ate without asking and, between you and me, deserved to throw up. These kinds of traumatic instances make cleaning up yellow dog barf out of pristine white carpet seem like a cake walk. Which is why, every day, when I step in the shower, I use my precise, caliper-like fingertips, to feel how loose the skin fold is that flops over that miserable scar. Please take a moment here to throw up in your mouth a little, but continue reading... I'm done grossing you out.


The fact that I'm over 40 (just by a little bit) means a few things, factually: my skin has lost elasticity. I will never have washboard ab's... well, that anyone can SEE, anyway... without surgery to nip and tuck. I will never have arms that don't flap under my tricep when I wave goodbye to my kids on the bus. I will never have knees that don't resemble an elephant. And I'm ok with that. It's a small price to pay, and to be honest with you, it'll probably seem more like a victory flag all over my body. I may have to wear Spanx for the rest of my life, but at least there will be the grand illusion to the general public that I wasn't, at one (very long) point, a fatty. Being over 40 also factually means that when I lose weight, wrinkles will appear on my face that I had no idea existed. Wrinkles that no amount of New Youth Code by L'Oreal can smooth over. And I'm learning to... y'know... except that.... kinda. Those "It's already 7am?" morning-squint wrinkles between my eyebrows don't vanish as quickly but... but... there has to be a positive spin I can put on that..? Right? Maybe. Y'know. Some day? Ok. Enough fooling myself. The face wrinkle part sucks ass. 


Ok, ok... going back to my original point: the true gauge of weight loss is in fat density, which no moron can argue with. Here's my simple formula (and you don't have to add/subtract/multiply/divide anything, so math haters: rejoice!) #1. Find the flabbiest part of your body. #2. Feel it. #3. Judge how pliable it is. #4. After you've been working out 6 days a week, eating less,  drinking more water and the scale starts to budge; feel it again. Is it softer? Congratulations! You lost weight! Is it heavier? Oh, too bad: 30 more minutes on the elliptical for you! See? Piece of cake. No scale. No measuring tape. No calipers. No smoke. No mirrors. Easy-peasy lemon... errrrr... fatty-squeezey!


My well educated and highly trained* method will work for everyone, you know how I know? BECAUSE EVERY WOMAN IN THE WORLD EVALUATES HERSELF IN THE SHOWER EVERY SINGLE DAY. Deny it. I dare you. Even women whose upper thighs don't touch after having 3 or 4 children (which to me means they are half-alien anyway) slips their hands down the sides of their non-human size 0 waist to measure for lump of fat content. It's true! I say again, I say: Deny it. I dare you. YOU LIE!!


So there's the honest "more" in the "more on that later"! The true measurement of my measurements: the feeling of density. Not in how a certain pair of pants that shrinks around just the waistband when it's washed but manages to stretch out and sag everywhere else fits you (thank you Old Navy)! Not in how many inches lost! Not in the total embarrassment of having a personal trainer walk you into a private fitting room to caliper your fat so as not to let the skinny woman who likes to parade around the locker room in the buff see that you're never going to be as thin as her no matter what you do outside of massive plastic surgery! NO! It's because... and let's put it all out here on the (non-OR, because that experience still gives me nightmares) table... it's because once you reach 40 you lose elasticity in your skin; and that skin ain't gonna' stop sagging! This means the measuring tape won't ever stop measuring. The scale will never "reduce weight" based on wrinkly bunches of skin under your incredibly ripped tricep! The only real gauge is to know your own body and to feel the progress over a 1/8" scar!!!  YES! Because these are the types of trials every woman who wants to slap her younger self for being a self-fish dumb-ass goes through!!!!


And because.... even though I say okay with Spanx... I'm really not.
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*I am neither highly educated nor well trained in anything at all related to gauging weight loss

For starters...

I started losing weight in January 2012 when I reached 175 lbs. I could barely fit in the winter coat I managed to easily zip up last year. 'What? How could this possibly have happened?!?' I was aghast that I had gained weight. But between you and I...? I shouldn't have been shocked or surprised. For the last year, I had managed to tailor make a list of excuses for eating more, drinking more and not exercising (at all) that was longer than my kids' Christmas gift list.

Expert Excuse #1. We don't have any full length mirrors in the house. How could I possibly gauge my weight without seeing myself? First of all, that statement is not entirely true. We have these 1970's mirrored "sliding" doors on a closet in our basement directly across from the laundry room. If I may toot my own horn, I will say that I am quite the seasoned expert at walking past those mirrored doors without looking up once. Oh hey! Does that count as an additional excuse?  And, excuse me while I diverge for a moment and ask: what kind of idiot invented mirrored sliding doors? Do you have any idea how heavy mirrors are? How any designer/contractor/inventor expects mirror doors to simply.... glide open... with the slightest push of a finger is beyond me. I have to pick up the damn thing and put my shoulder into it to get it to move 1/4 of an inch. It's like cow tipping. And I'm the cow. ha ha. Actually... it has nothing to do with my strength or figure... I was just trying to be funny. It's just a really, really, really, really, I mean dumb-ass-dumb concept: 1/2 ton mirror that's supposed to be a sliding glass door. Preposterous!

Expert Excuse #2. We don't have a scale. We used to. But not any more. See... we have one bathroom in our lovely "vintage" home and there isn't a lot of room for a scale. The only real space I could manage to tuck the scale was between the wall and the toilet. Which was fine for a little while. Until it came time for my little boy to potty train. Growing up in a home with 3 girls and no boys, oh! I was so blind! So naive! I didn't think a little boy who was potty training would find aim such a challenge. Isn't that supposed to be instinctual, fellas? Like a primitive response, the brain says: AH HA! HOLE! PEE-PEE GO IN HOLE! Apparently not. The stinky pee scale had to go.

Expert Excuse #3. Beside my other two brilliant excuses, there is the real truth: I turned 40. Look, I know people like to say that 40 is the new 20, but for me it was more like "40 is the new 21". Take a moment and think about the first year you were able to buy alcohol legally. Yeeeeeah. Let that feeling sink in. Felt good, right? That's precisely what my mid-life crisis felt like. To me, turning 40 felt like my last opportunity to live life without consequences: as though I were going to live forever. 'I need a mammogram? What? No way!' and  'I'm supposed to get a colonoscopy? Psssssht! How can I have polyps when I poop like an ox?' Yes. Yes, the year of my life between ages 39 and 41 became one giant example of purposeful negligence: "I'm perfectly healthy!", "My metabolism isn't slowly dying!", "My breasts are still perky!" 40 was the year to live the lie. And I was very successful at it.

But let me make myself very clear: it wasn't as though I went from being thin to fat in one year. In fact, since I turned 22 (I blame turning 21, much as I blame turning 40) I have only had occasional bouts of what, in a verbally descriptive scale, I would call "less chunky". I'd swing somewhere between 185 (at my heaviest) and 145 (on our honeymoon), all of which according to the over-rated BMI scale would categorize me as "overweight". Although I hardly think 145 would be overweight... but that's why I've come to the well informed and highly educated* opinion that the Body Mass Index is truly only applicable to movie stars, anorexics and heroine addicts. Here I was, in my troubled 20's, a lonely young lady trying to unravel her confusing and traumatic teenage years using food to protect and comfort. I wasn't thinking 'Dang.. if I stretch out all my skin now, it'll look like a fried egg on a hook when I'm 40!' I had no foresight. No sense of responsibility to my older self. Which now, come to think of it, my older self would love to go back and smack my younger self for NOT thinking about (more on that later). Although... when I was 25 a friend, who I am no longer friends with now, tried to kind of give me that kind of kick in the ass, subtly saying "What happened to you? You used to be so.... svelte." That's the kind of compliment that convinces an insecure girl to head straight to Denny's to order the comfort of cut potatoes fried in lard instead of steamed veggies. "What?" He said, innocently, "I'm just trying to motivate you!" Thanks. Thanks for the motivation. You're a real peach.

So, anyway, Winter 2011 when I was able to zip up my coat, I came in on the scale at the gym at 168. In the month before my 41st birthday when I was unable to zip up my coat, I weighed in at the doctor's office (because obviously I wasn't going to the gym) at 175. Crap. That's near my one-time all-time heaviest weight of 185. I don't want to be there again. Ever. Luckily for everyone in my family, I had bought Just Dance 3 for Kinect and decided that night to give it a shot. And I. had. the best. time. ever. Sure, I looked like the hippo in Fantasia, but I was in the privacy of my own home having a lot of fun with my 7 and 5 year old kids... talking, laughing and connecting with them for an hour before bedtime. It was great! And the kid kept asking me every night to dance with them again, so there I was unwittingly getting exercise 5 days a week for 2 weeks. I lost 2 pounds. I was mentally prepared to sulk back to the gym, feeling guilt that I had let so many months pass without visiting once.

I am skeptical. I have been to the gym many, many, many times before. Needless to say consistency has not been a loyal and trusting friend. In January 2012 I went to the gym not thinking that this year was not going to be anything unusual. What makes this attempt any different from the rest? What would snap in me to convince me to endure and keep at it? Hell...  I just wanted to zip up my winter coat because the cold wind was freakin' restlessness.

But here I am: 7 weeks since I started dancing, and 8.5 lbs 9 LBS lost. I'm thinking to myself 'Y'know? Maybe I'm done being 40. Maybe I ought to keep going with this.' I feel pretty good. I sleep better. I'm taking vitamins and drinking water. I'm making better choices with food... not because I'm following a plan... just... y'know... 'cause. I don't know what happened when I turned 41. Maybe I got tired of trying to keep up the wild-and-crazy lifestyle (and by wild-and-crazy I mean eating cheese sticks and reduced fat Triscuts at 10:30 pm while watching The Amazing Race on DVR). Maybe my daughter hugging me and saying "You eat a lot so you're fat, aren't you Mommy?" had something to do with it. Maybe it was the recent vacation when I was physically repulsed by seeing myself while wearing a bathing suit in a full-length mirror for the first time since moving into the vintage house 6 years ago? Maybe I'm just tired of being afraid and want to get rid of that wonderful security blanket they call fat? I don't know. But I seem to be doing it. And my coat fits. Even though it's March and 70 degrees outside so I don't even need the damn thing anymore. So this blog is meant to keep me motivated by making fun of the horrific sight of my body changing as I no longer have 20 year old cell regenerative skills and my skin refuses to tighten no matter how many reps I do. Aaaaaand.... I suppose... all the other many varied glories of evolving as you get older.

I'm a little scared.
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* I am neither well informed nor highly educated on anything about or to do with body mass index.