"THIS" is GOAL??

7-1-2002
Am I “settling”? Or am I just (finally) accepting reality, and living my life with a long-overdue sense of peace and acceptance?

I’ve been wrestling with this concept for over a year now. It’s been more than 18 months since I stopped losing weight, for no apparent reason, a good 20-30 pounds shy of my “goal”.

It’s been two months or so since I decided to consciously accept that I may never lose another pound, and I may never reach my original goal – and to begin eating things which I consider ‘maintenance foods’.

I was a very obese woman for 15 long years out of my first 35. For more than a decade, after failing several times to lose weight (more than temporarily) with conventional low-fat, reduced-calorie diets, I remained firmly convinced that I would ALWAYS be obese. Then I found low carb, and after I’d lost about 40 pounds on it, I started to imagine again how life might be for me once I was thin again. In my mind’s eye, I envisioned all those before and after pictures you see where the “after” shot shows a lot of firm, taut skin, a plunging neckline, and a sexy, bare midriff. In my very wildest fantasies I saw people being nice to me instead of rude or dismissive, I imagined that my children and pets would behave better, my car would run smoother, and even my lottery tickets might be luckier, in this wonderful, barely perceived, shining future …

The next 25 pounds left more slowly, with a lot more fits and starts and stalls, but I continued to lose, all the while loving my food and meticulously tracking every mouthful, so that I would not unconsciously deviate from the formula that had proven successful. (I lost all my weight without restricting fat or calories, just carbs…. in fact, for a while I lost better while consciously pushing a higher fat consumption!)

My goal was modest, I thought, I’d set it at 15 pounds above my 19-year-old wedding weight, which allowed for increases due to the ravages of time and childbirth, as well as the extra muscle mass I would have no doubt gained by then. I was a size 13/14 when I married, and because sizes had increased substantially in the intervening years due to the “vanity factor”, I felt confident that I could be a size 14 again.

As it turns out, I fit into a pair of off-the-rack size 14 jeans from K-Mart when I was still 25 pounds over my weight goal. Hmmm, they had increased the sizes even more than I thought…. so I duly revised my size goal down to a 12.

At 5’ 11”, with a large frame and all the extra skin I now sport, along with pretty good muscle tone from now- regular exercise, I still consider that an appropriate goal for me. But..... I no longer have any great expectations of actually reaching that elusive goal…

Because of my extensive cyber-interaction with hundreds (if not thousands) of other low carbers since I started my own journey and website two and half years ago, I have become painfully aware that many more people FAIL to reach their ultimate goal with low carb than actually reach it…. not many people will talk about that, however. They don’t want to bum you out or discourage you - and neither do I! But I do want to be honest, and I want you to know that just because I may never qualify to be a swimsuit model, I am still a success…. it’s just that my goals and expectations were a little skewed for a while.

Losing weight will not make you a more popular person (and if it does, shouldn’t you really think twice about associating with those people who obviously value personal appearance that much?).

Losing weight will not necessarily make your daily commute any less irritating, your life more organized or your spouse more responsive and complimentary - but having a better outlook overall can make life seem better in all those areas… it’s getting and keeping that better outlook, in the first place, that trips a lot of us up!

If you are fretting about how far you still have to go, instead of how far you’ve come, it’s easy to feel dissatisfied with your progress - and that’s a sure prescription for trouble.

In the eighteen months since I stopped losing, I've tried many different tactics, including limiting my fat grams and calories, increasing carbs, decreasing carbs… exercising more, exercising less, giving up artificial sweeteners, dairy, etc. Nothing really helped. I can stay within ten pounds of my stick-point without a ton of effort, I just need to not average much more than 2000 calories and/or 40 net carbs daily – and I have to be very strict these days with both calories and carbs for about one week out of each six or so, because just a few too many legal treats or Miller Lites can make me gain up to ten pounds - but a week of induction level eating puts me right back where I was, consistently (thank goodness!) Even induction-level eating will not allow me to lose any more than that, however, and I have eventually come to realize that perhaps this is just the weight I am meant to be. A five foot eleven, two hundred and ten pound, size fourteen (and sometimes I am still a sixteen – it depends a lot on the brand, naturally). Not what I had in mind for a long time, but – and this is a big but – MUCH, MUCH better than the morbidly obese body I had come to accept BEFORE finding low carb!

It has been harder to accept this size 14, reasonably-slim-looking (at least when dressed) body, than it was to accept the size 24-26 body that made children laugh and point, and adults look away - or worse, stare with obvious disgust! That’s CRAZY. So perhaps I wasn’t so much truly accepting of the size 24 body as I was simply resigned and used to the misery of it … But… there you have it - once I had envisioned myself as “perfectly slim again”….. suddenly, nothing else would do.

Still, “perfectly slim again” may or may not be in my future. I have finally accepted that, and now I can admit that here, to all of you.

If “perfectly slim again” DOES ever occur, it will be because of the regular exercise that I have made a part of my low carb life, of that much I am sure…

Now, this may or may not be the case with you, and your first stall of a month or more will almost assuredly NOT turn out to be your own “stick-point”, so please don’t misunderstand my message, or my purpose in sharing it.

I just want you to keep in mind at all points in your own journey that there are many measures of success, and something is always better than nothing. Some progress, maintained, beats the heck out of a complete reversion! Even if you never lose a pound on low carb, or if you never lose *another* pound, if you feel better and you are healthier, and you can maintain a given weight without gaining or having to starve yourself to do so, that alone should be enough of a reason to stick with it! I really believe this, because I really believe that low carb is the healthiest Way of Life there is.

So, with all this in mind, I finally ate some whole wheat spaghetti recently with my daughter. It was good (but not magical, tastes really DO change!) and I didn’t gain afterwards, or turn it into a carb-fest or binge of any kind, so I will probably eat it again, on occasion. This is what you do when you decide you are on lifetime maintenance, I decided … you add in some so-called “healthy” carbs. The week before that, I ate half a sweet potato while dining out. (Same verdict. Good, but not great. No weird after-effects. Cool!)

Strange as this may sound to some of you, allowing myself these “treats” was the hardest thing I have done since going low carb! In a weird way, it was harder for me to eat them then to just stay “ultra strict.” But I really do believe that I should go ahead, now that my insulin receptors are surely healed and my blood lipids are acceptable, to replace some of the low carb, high fat foods which I regularly eat with some low impact, “healthy” carbohydrates. By doing so there is a good chance I can lower my overall calorie consumption on a consistent basis. At this point in my journey, calories DO appear to matter, so......

This, along with exercise, just may be the way I will eventually break through this plateau…. and maybe not – but dining out will be definitely become easier with this particular mindset, don't you think?! *grin*

Since finally accepting myself, my progress, and the possibility that there just may not be any additional progress, I seem to have liberated myself in some whacky but wonderful way. I find myself enjoying my low carb journey again. I have attained an almost "Zen-like" peace, through this self-acceptance – extra skin, remaining cellulite, starch marks, and all – and surely, true self-acceptance and peace of mind coupled with greatly improved and stable health are worthy goals in themselves.

Or, at the very least... "that's my story, and I'm sticking to it!"

~ Karen Rysavy, July 2002
Size 24 / Size 14 / (Goal Recently Revised) "Healthy & Happy"