bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Head to toe.

    1.  For  some reason, I'm extra pleased that I managed to get down to a normal, healthy weight before my hair went gray.  Yeah, I have gray hair in there, but you only notice if you look real hard.  

    2.  My face seems to have aged five or ten years in a few months.  Plumpness fills you out more, I guess, and losing it makes your skin collapse, at least just a little bit.  Or maybe it's the ravages of starvation, ha ha.  It's a bit startling, but as I get used to it, I like the change.  Ever since childhood I've looked too young for my age.  It's nice to look just right.

    3.  Collarbones.  I was bending slightly over the sink in the washroom at church and looked into the mirror to see collarbones peeking out from the neckline of my blouse.  I think I'd like to celebrate them with a new necklace, but the price of gold is staggering right now.  I'll probably wait a bit.

    4.  I've got muscles in my arms and shoulders.  Did you know that?  I refuse to flex for Photobooth, so you're just going to have to take my word for it, but I will attest that swimming twice a week for ten months produces very visible results.  It is almost, but not quite, enough to eliminate the upper-arm jiggle I inherited from Mom and Grandma.

    5.  Breasts?  Hahahaha.  No, really, I still have them, but I don't like to look.  And no, I'm not depressed because I'm small-breasted now.  (I'm a 34D now.  Before, the weight hurt my back and bra straps cut into my shoulders.)  Oh no, it's the stretch marks/extra skin combination.  The phrase "two pounds of stuff in a three-pound sack" comes to mind.  A good bra takes care of it, but still.  Just be ready for it if you ever lose 31 percent of your body weight.  (Don't let it stop you if you decide it's a good idea, but be ready for it.)

    6.  Moving right along:  Did you know that not only do I have muscles, but I have a ribcage?  Really!  The bottom edge of my ribcage, where it makes a sort of corner near my armpit, is mysteriously weird to me.  I keep resting my hand there and wondering where this strange lump came from.  Seriously, it does not seem to be part of my body, like aliens came and surgically implanted a ribcage in my torso.   I should try to get Oliver Sacks to interview me for his next book.  "Alien Ribcage Syndrome."

    7.  Tummy:  Oh, yes, there's a tummy.   Unless she's exceptionally fit with exceptionally elastic skin, every woman has extra tummy tissue after having one baby.  Or three.   Skin and its supporting structures just don't disappear, you know.  Well, I've got that in spades now.   However, I can report that I can, and have, fit into some clingy, form-fitting dresses I never ever thought I could wear.  Let's just say:  Don't sell your stock in Spanx.

    8.  Hipbone.  See "ribcage."  I get two chapters in the Oliver Sacks book.  "Alien Pelvis Syndrome."  No, wait, that sounds like a different kind of book.  I take it back.

    9.  I remember as a young teenager flipping through some women's magazine to a two-page spread that was called something along the lines of "What Perfect Legs Look Like."  I have no idea why someone thought this would sell magazines.  Maybe the idea was to inoculate their readers with feelings of shame and unworthiness so that they would buy more magazines the next month.  But I distinctly remember a photograph of a  bikini'ed woman from the hips down, legs together, facing the camera, backlit.  Arrows pointed to the four places where a woman, standing with her Perfect Legs straight, should be able to clasp a single dime: a spot between the top of the thighs about an inch below the bikini, between the knees, between the calves at their widest point, and between the anklebones.  In the photograph, light showed everywhere else.  

    There must have been other requirements for Perfect Legs that I failed to remember, because trust me, I do not have them.  But I could totally do the dime trick now.  I'm worth more though — anyone have four hundred-dollar bills?  OK, I'll settle for fifties.

    10.  I ran on the treadmill a couple of weeks ago, and my shins didn't hurt, my ankles didn't hurt, my feet didn't hurt, not even a couple of days later.  What a great feeling.  Perhaps I can learn to be a runner after all.  There's still hope, Kim In Iowa Who Wants Me To Do Triathlons With Her. 

    11.  Hello, toes.  We'll be seeing a lot more of each other from now on.

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  • The magic number appeared this morning.

    I don't count it as "goal" until the average of my last five meets goal, but still, there it was:  108.0 .

    I celebrated with a boiled egg 🙂

    110, 108.2, 108.4, 108.2, 108.0 —>  average 108.6

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  • What about the clothes?

    I got an email question from a reader yesterday:


    I'm wondering how you've dealt with dressing yourself as you've lost
    weight. I've vacillated between two sizes over the years and as the
    smaller size gets looser, I'm not sure how much I want to invest in
    new clothes. I'm assuming you've gone through more sizes than me —
    do you have clothes in all the sizes in your closet? Are you getting
    rid of the big ones or keeping them for possible future postpartum
    times?

    Not counting maternity wear, I have pants in 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, and now 2.  I have bras in three cup sizes.  I have shirts in all the sizes from XL down to S.  I have four different sizes of swimsuit.

    What I have mostly done: replace a few pieces at a time as they became unwearable.  My two pairs of black pants don't fit, ok, it's time to get a new pair of black pants.  Jeans falling off, ok, it's time to get a new pair of jeans.  A few items (mainly elastic-waist skirts) have stuck with me from the beginning to the bitter end.  Sadly, some of my favorite items don't fit and can't be found; oh, Sahalie.com, when will you sell your fleece overalls again?  Please, I'm freezing here in Minnesota.

    All the outsized stuff is in a big pile on the spare bed.   Like you suggested, I'm thinking about a future possible pregnancy.  If it weren't for that,  I'd make a big clothing donation right away.  I am convinced that getting rid of The Fat Clothes is an important symbolic step, and that having clothes that fit you well are an important signal to you that you're the right size.  If you're trying to lose, they should feel (but not look) the tiniest bit too tight, at least after you've had a big meal.  

    This has been a really expensive year, clothes-wise, as you can imagine.  Mark keeps telling me, every time I fret about how much I had to spend, "How much is it worth it to us for you to lose forty pounds?"  The answer is, I think, more than the cost of the clothes.   

    But you'd be surprised at some of the extra costs.  I'm gonna have to get my wedding rings resized, for one thing.  And I bought a fair amount of swimming paraphernalia when I got started.  And, um, I've spent a lot of money on diet books and books about swimming.

    Let me tell you about the money I spent today, out by myself while Mark had the kids.   A couple of weeks ago I tried running on the treadmill, and my athletic pants — size 12, my only pair, bought in 1996 — kept wanting to fall off.  And then last week I tried wearing them and a tee shirt to a yoga class, and the pants fell down and exposed my squishy mommy tummy — Now With Extra Flaps Of Skin! — and when I bent over, my overlarge tee shirt fell over my head and showed everyone my sports bra.  (At least the bra is new and fits well.  I do have some priorities in order.)

    So it was off to REI, and I was thinking only of which fabrics seemed more comfortable and which pants I could move in.  I tried on about a dozen different tops and pants, bending and stretching and eyeing them in the mirror to see if they would stay put in a yoga class.  I found some running capris that were the right length and that didn't have seams that irritated my thighs.  I found a wicking tee on the clearance rack.  Grabbed some extra athletic socks, and a pack-small bath towel for my gym bag, and headed for the cash register; and then when I stacked the merchandise on the counter and really saw what I was buying, I — okay, this is really corny — I almost started to cry.  

    Because I hadn't noticed until then, but I — I went into the sporting goods store to buy clothes that I NEEDED, not just clothes that I aspired to need.   Because I am a swimmer, I am a runner, I am a person who takes new exercise classes just for the heck of it, I am a person who never misses a workout.  I became that person and I don't think I really noticed it until that moment.

    (After that I went to Old Navy and bought two pairs of size 2 jeans, just because I could.  Hey, I can only sustain the navel-gazing for so long.)

    (Please, don't gaze at my navel.  It's all smooshy.)

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    5 comments on What about the clothes?

  • Sneaking up on it.

    Last five:  111.4, 110.0, 108.2, 108.4, 108.2

    Mean: 109.2

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  • The most recent five.

    110.2, 111.4, 110.0, 108. 2, this morning 108.4

    Mean:  109.6

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  • Averaging.

    I decided last night as I prepped the dry ingredients for the pancakes that I really wanted to have some myself. So I planned whole-wheat blueberry pancakes (healthy!) and made berry sauce to go on top.  

    And then I lay in bed and fretted about whether I wasn't going to be getting enough protein for breakfast, whether the carbohydrate overload would make my blood sugar crash and force me to make it up with Swedish Fish, and shouldn't I eat a boiled egg too just to be safe?

    But wait!  That would mean eating TWO breakfasts.  Surely that can't be right.  Better just eat my egg.

    But wait!  I already made the berry sauce.  Two whole wheat pancakes with a couple tablespoons of berry sauce is a fine breakfast.  I am allowed to have this.  Something different, for variety.

    But I already know that I really do best if I get my egg.  Maybe if I eat the egg and ONE pancake.

    Now wait a minute.  That's not "something different for variety."  That's "my usual breakfast, plus a pancake I don't need just because I want it."

    Probably because I think of boiled eggs as quantum entities, it took me a long time to come up with what in retrospect seems obvious:  I made a ten-minute egg, peeled it, and cut it in half.  I had half an egg — that is, half my usual breakfast — and one pancake with a tablespoon of berry sauce — that is, half the planned breakfast.  One single breakfast, the average of the "usual" and the "different."  

    And I ordered Mark to eat the other half-egg.

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  • Trucking along together.

    Hannah and I are slowly developing some new patterns to our days together.   Here's how they are changing.

    ——

    Before:  We each started with a list of what each of our own boys had to do for school, and we made them work until they were done. 

    After:  We each bring a list of what we would like our boys to accomplish.  We sit down together over coffee in the morning and we put the two lists together and try to figure out how best to mesh them so that our families are "working together" as much as we can.  Can Ben quiz Oscar on his mental math?  Can Oscar administer Ben's spelling test?  Can Hannah present the same writing assignment to both Ben and Oscar?  Can Erin run a Latin drill session for both boys together?    What will each boy work on while he is waiting for the other?  If some of our goals don't mesh well, or if a list seems too long, we just drop goals; they can be done some other day when we're not together.

    Before:  Each boy worked from his own assignment checklist.

    After:  We write one unified assignment checklist for "Ben And Oscar."   For example, one item is often "Take turns giving each other spelling words from your lists.  Each of you write a sentence for each missed word on his own list."  Another might be "Look at pages xxx-xxx in the History Encyclopedia and take turns quizzing each other about the facts and pictures."  A third might be "Ben does his handwriting sheet while Oscar practices his catechism memorization." (We're still figuring out how best to order things on the list.)

    Before:  We made the boys work until they were "done."   If they dawdled, there was less time for play.  Sometimes nobody, including us, got a break except for lunch.

    After:  We are sticking to four hours total of work. School is from about 10:30 to 12:30, we take an hour break for lunch and play, and then again from 1:30 to 3:30 when we have tea snack.  (We haven't yet figured out what consequence to impose if the boys deliberately waste time and so don't get a reasonable amount of work done.  Fortunately, they haven't tested us yet.  My temporary measure on our side is to tell Oscar that what he doesn't get done, he must do on Saturday.)

    Before:  I read history to the big boys while Hannah tried to pay attention to all four other kids and also make dinner or do housework at the same time.

    After:  I start reading with a storybook for everyone around the table, and then I begin reading history.  Hannah stays with us, fetching tea and icewater and light snacks, and listens in on the story, stopping to ask questions or discuss a point.  The other children may stay and listen, or they may play quietly nearby, or they may play elsewhere.

    Before: I gave Milo his reading lesson whenever I managed to scrape a few minutes together to sit down with him.  Hannah gave Silas his lessons whenever she managed to find a spare moment.

    After:  One of us gives the two of them together their reading lessons — they take turns, each boy reading a page from his own lesson (they're on different levels in the same curriculum.)  And one of us gives the two of them together a math lesson:  sometimes Silas listens in on Milo's lesson, and sometimes Milo listens in on Si's lesson; then they each do their own practice exercise (they use different curricula but are at approximately the same level.)

    —-

    There have been a few lovely surprises along the way.  Hannah overheard the younger boys arguing about a plot point in the biography of Las Casas I've been reading to the third-graders; we hadn't thought they were even listening to it!  And those same middle boys are clearly relishing their new identity as "study buddies." 

    Sometimes it's still pretty hard.  Yesterday wasn't really a good day.  We got started late, and everybody was really frazzled (it seemed that nobody had slept well the night before), and we just knew not a lot was going to happen.  We made the list pretty short, and still not much got done.  But we know we're working for the long term, and learning what works and what doesn't, and next year will be easier because we'll plan our whole curriculum around this new way.  That keeps us going, even when the coffee pot runs out.

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  • Thanksgiving.

    The irony has not escaped me that I will most likely achieve goal within a week or so of Thanksgiving.

    I love going to my grandma's house at Thanksgiving.  I don't see my relatives very often, living hundreds of miles away as I do.  This year we'll be missing one of my cousins; she is the second person in the family to move far away.  I have not missed a Thanksgiving yet, except for the year I had influenza in eighth grade, and then there was the year that Oscar gave everybody the norovirus.

    Yes, they're all still talking about that one.

    Ever since I lost my mom five years ago to adenocarcinoma (a type of lung cancer that is not as strongly associated with tobacco smoke as other types), it's even more important to me to be at Grandma's table every Thanksgiving, even though (since Mark won't think of skipping the trip home at Christmas) it means two big driving trips within a month of each other.

    So I'm going, and I'm going to eat the food that Grandma has for us, particularly the bread stuffing, which was Mom's favorite.  I'm not sure she ever ate anything else at Thanksgiving, now that I think of it.

    How will I cope?

    A couple things.

    First, the bathroom scale is coming with me on the trip.  I know that sounds kind of crazy, especially since my in-laws (where we'll stay) already own one.  Here's the thing though:  I know what habits got me here, and I know I need to keep those habits, and the first couple months of maintenance are going to be especially important.  Well, one of those is stepping on the scale first thing in the morning.  I'm not going to do it if I have to wait till I can borrow the bathroom in Mark's mom and dad's master suite.

    Second, I'm going to do something that as far as I know nobody has ever done:  I am going to bring a covered dish to Grandma's house.

    (No kidding.  Grandma's pushing ninety and she still cooks everything for Thanksgiving.  My uncle helps her get the turkey in and out of the oven, and it helps that we're a fairly small family, but still.)

    Photo 57 Grandma MJ and me, long before my little MJ was born.

    I brought some roasted vegetables (yes, it was the fatal vegetable medley) to a potluck last weekend.  It wasn't the sort of thing that anybody would rave about — they were very plain, and there were a lot of them left at the end of the night.  But it was something I could fill half my plate with:  broccoli, yellow summer squash, and carrots, with a little bit of oil and some garlic and herbs.  I plan to bring the same stuff to Grandma's, for half my plate.  

    And I'll fill the other half with whatever looks best.  Probably not just stuffing.  I like turkey, and sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie, too.

    The really weird thing I've already started doing?  Rehearsing it mentally.  I am picturing myself sitting down at Grandma's table with a plastic plate, half full of the vegetables I'm going to bring, and half full of the other stuff.  Over and over, surveying the loaded platters, piling on those plain vegetables, leaving room for only a little of everything else.

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  • The mean rules.

    If you're going to play the game, you have to agree on the rules up front, right?

    OK, here's mine:  I reach goal when the average of 5 consecutive morning weigh-ins is 108.0 lbs or below.

    Here are my last five weigh-ins including this morning:

    109.0

    110.2

    111.4

    110.0

    108.2

    Mean: 109.8

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  • Positive eating.

    Christy sent me this article a few days ago:

    Instead of Eating to Diet, They're Eating To Enjoy

    That doesn’t mean they’re giving up on health or even weight loss. Instead, consumers and nutritionists say they are seeing a shift toward “positive eating” — shunning deprivation diets and instead focusing on adding seasonal vegetables, nuts, berries and other healthful foods to their plates.


    It's nice to see people focusing on what they should eat, rather than what they shouldn't eat.   That principle has helped me a lot over the past six months — mainly, I added enormous amounts of vegetables to my plate and let them shove all the other stuff to the side.

    Along the way, I read lots of different diet books, but also a number of books in the category "how to eat and live well."  Real Food by Nina Planck.  Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food.  The most recent one, which I thought would be kind of dumb but which turned out to be a fun little book to read, was French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano.  (It brought back some lovely memories, as I spent a college summer in Lyon.)

    There is one big problem with all these books.  They make me crave expensive food.

    Nina Planck's book had me dreaming of filling my cart with organic greens from the co-op, and lingering at the cheese counter at the good grocery store, you know, the one where they actually pay someone to put your groceries in a bag for you.  Michael Pollan's books — well, ok, I've already drunk that Kool-Aid locally produced organic cider, my freezer is full of grass-fed beef that met its end in the glass-walled slaughterhouse of Cannon Falls, MN.  Guiliano's book had me wanting acacia honey stirred into my yogurt, and caviar and crème fraîche dabbed onto my boiled fingerling potatoes.

    Not so good.  Well, I mean, it is good — it's caviar and crème fraîche and POTATOES for crying out loud, how could it not be good?  But maybe not so good for me to be reading about.

    Something I've learned:  You cannot eat all the good stuff there is in the world.  Certainly not all at once.  You must pick and choose.

    Which puts the gummy bears I've been craving into some perspective.

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  • Morning report.

    I feel obligated to disclose that last night I dreamed this:

     I got up in the morning, came down to the computer, opened up Google Reader, and was greeted by this headline:

    DARWINCATHOLIC DIES
    Roast Vegetable Medley Implicated

    I never got around to reading the linked article — dreams are notoriously shoddy on followup — but:  

    Hey MrsDarwin?  If you need a recipe, just let me know.

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  • Okay, I’m hungry. Hungry, I’m okay.

    It's 9:20 and the kids are eating chips and salsa for their bedtime snack, a few feet away.  A loaf of whole-wheat bread, fresh from the bread machine, is cooling on the counter.  I happen to know there is a cabinet over the stove that is stuffed full of dark chocolate and leftover Halloween candy.  Plus, there's about two and a half pounds of my favorite pasta salad in the fridge, right next to a big bowl of leftover steak-and-black-bean fajitas.

    Right now, I am not tempted to eat any of it.  I mean, it's true that a few hours ago I almost ate a piece of salami the kids dropped on the floor, but I didn't, and right now I'm hungry but okay.

    I could feel my stomach growling as I drove home from picking up Oscar at his evening class, about an hour ago.  I noticed something interesting:  I wasn't thinking of the growly tummy as a "bad" sensation, Something About Which Something Must Be Done.  It was just… well, there, the way my tiredness was there near the end of the day.  Both will stop bothering me when I fall asleep tonight.  I'll be ravenous in the morning, and that is just fine, because in the morning there will be an egg.

    It's just there… something I don't need to deal with now, something I can deal with later.

    This has taken practice.

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