To read an excerpt from the book, please click on the following link:

ashaveilbook.blogspot.com

An excerpt from The Pleasure Palace, my romantic comedy, can be found here:



Sunday, March 08, 2015

Weight

I realize that one's weight does not define a person, but I am back up to 163 pounds and feel very bad about this.  In addition, my recent bellydance photos upset me and I am allowing very few on my timeline.  I'm not the biggest person in the troupe, but I do not like being at this weight.  My mother developed diabetes around my age (I am 55) and it is unhealthy for me due to this history.  Granted, she was an alcoholic and alcoholics tend towards diabetes, but it is definitely something I do not want.  When I go to CVS, by the way, I see very few things for wellness (videos, exercise equipment)  for  wellness (which used to be there when the place was Long's), but I see plenty of stuff to manage and control diabetes (same with Rite Aid).  I don't judge larger people and hate "fat shaming"--it is just that, for me, I want to be a bit more healthy.

M. tried to help me feel confident about losing weight and I feel badly that I snapped at him once about it, when all he tried to do was tell me to move forward with confidence, that  I could and would lose the weight.  I don't know what I wanted to hear from him; he was not a mindreader.  The scenario around it was horrible self-esteem when I saw bellydance photos: for about a week after I see them, I cannot get over how I look.

So, it is back to Weight Watchers, which is relatively inexpensive if you do the online program (a godsend for me as it is hard to get to meetings).  It is actually a lot of food to consume in one day for me if I eat heathily.  I do not go to coffeeshops to write most of the time now, preferring my quiet bedroom in my Lompico house, where I only store a little food in a sealed container, so as not to attract rodents. Coffeshops are full of things like my favorite cherry chocolate bread from Peets, which is almost 400 calories for a single slice, nearly as much as a Big Mac!  One of my theories about the rise of obesity in America is the advent of coffeeshops and their high-calorie drinks. Starbuck's white chocolate mocha is 620 calories if you order it with whole milk and whipped cream, which many people do.  You can have all these things on Weight Watchers, but the program makes you responsible for the food you eat and track it, so planning on something like that mocha is important.

 I'm not promoting Weight Watchers as the only weight-loss system in the world, but it works for me when I work it, as they say in recovery.  If I am using it, the weight loss is slow, steady, and tolerable.  The hard part, despite dance classes four days a week, is finding time to exercise in between classes...with a kid, everything changes.

Still, I am committed to losing my weight this time around, and hopefully keep it off!


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