In Which Angelina's Sheepishness Is Infinite

We have a doctor's scale in our garage.  It is an old school one which requires a person to shift weights around until they all balance perfectly.  There are no digital settings to set incorrectly.  Because it was one of Philip's funky treasures for which I felt some suspicion I used to always weigh myself at home right after getting weighed at the doctor's office to see if it was the same.  It was always exactly the same.  Eventually I simply stopped double checking and accepted that Philip's doctor scale gave accurate results.

(There are some people (anti-establishment conspiracy freaks mostly), inevitably, who suspect their doctor's scale of being inaccurate and their home scales being of unassailable correctness.  I think this is silly.  Doctors have no motivation to keep scales that are unreliable and LIE.  This is my opinion.  I still trust that the general intentions of most doctors, and certainly any doctor I agree to entrust my health to, are good, not evil.)

Anyway, I'm telling you this for a very specific reason.  I have never  been a scale obsessed individual.  Not when I was working at losing the weight I gained from being pregnant, and not now when it is more important than ever that I shed some pounds.  When I'm trying to lose weight I will generally only check the scale once a week.  For me, it isn't really about the pounds.  I mean, I set a goal and I say "I want to bring my weight down to 165 because I felt good at that weight but didn't  have to struggle or be a lifetime dieter to maintain it."  A lot of people have an idea of what they should weigh based on what other people think is thin enough or they don't want their weight to SOUND like a lot.  I notice a lot of dieting people aiming for numbers like 115, or 120.  It sounds thin, doesn't it?  165 doesn't sound very thin at all.

Why aim for mediocrity instead of a glamorously hungry number?

It must be admitted here that people who are considerably shorter than I am and have different (less clod-hopping peasant-y) builds than I do might actually have a normal natural and healthy weight that is much much smaller than mine.

I don't care.  I only chose that number because I happen to remember when I weighed 165 and it was a good weight.  I could dress in a style that I enjoyed and was generally flattering but I didn't have to count every calorie every day.  Regular exercise was enough to maintain it.  That's important to me.  I want to get to a place where I don't ever have to think about pounds or size again.  I want to get back to the place where I was blissfully unaware of the special torture of having to account for everything I ate or did every day.  Back when I only knew what weight I was because I'd been to the doctor's office which never revealed anything unpleasant, that was great.  I loved needing only a slight tightening of my clothes to tell me I needed to increase my exercise or eat a little less peanut butter from the spoon. 

So, I'm really dragging my feet about getting to the point here. 

Cause I am super-sheepish today.

Well, as I've mentioned quite a lot recently, losing weight since breaking my hip (and diving right into one life-bomb after another) has made the scale my enemy.  Especially when I stopped seeing results.  Remember back in the beginning of 09?  When I was on fire to lose 30 pounds in the year?  But instead I gained 20 more?  I was actually working very hard to make a difference, getting more exercise and being more mindful of what I ate.  I still couldn't seem to get the drinking down, what with the bankruptcy and all, and about a billion other reasons, but I was not idle or doing anything that should have accounted for a continued weight gain. 

For all of 2009 I checked myself on the scale and every single time I got on it I weighed more than I had the last time.  This gets old pretty fast.  This deteriorates one's hope and one's faith that the world makes any sense at all.  Then we started Kung Fu and I was the heaviest I'd ever been.  Then I went to the doctor in November and was heavier than the last time I weighed myself.  Then in February I got weighed at the doctor's office again and to my great and very deep distress I weighed 257 gigantic unbelievable pounds and that was it.  That was the last time I got on a scale.

Are you starting to see what I'm getting at? 

So when I said I hadn't lost any weight at all, I was making an assumption based on the following factors:

• My clothes were just as ill fitting as always (on the snug-ish side)

• My face, in the most recent self portrait session, looked bigger than it ever has.

• My resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock, especially in sidewalk window reflections, had increased alarmingly to the point where I would catch sight of myself and scream "Oh my god!  I thought Alfred was DEAD?!"

• Every single time I've stepped on a scale this year I have found I weighed more than before.  With no indication at all that my clothes were looser, I assumed I had not lost weight.  I declined getting on my own scale because WHY BOTHER?

Since we've started our month of going gluten free I figured I ought to have a starting weight since so many people claim that going gluten free helped them lose weight and that a gluten intolerance often prevents one from losing weight.  I decided to end my cold war with the scale and went out to the garage to face the inevitable.

Weirdly, it turns out I've lost 10 pounds since the last weighing at the doctor's office.

That means I was wrong.

That means I was making assumptions and engaging in all that ASS-NESS the platitudes suggest avoiding.

That means I'm feeling mighty sheepish.  My sheepishness, in fact, feels limitless at the moment.

On the other hand, unless you're a mean puss who likes to shove other people's ass-ness in their faces for a really long gloat, it means that MY BODY IS ACTING NORMAL.

For the very first time in over two years, my weight is actually reversing.  DECREASING.

I don't understand how I could lose 10 pounds and look fatter and have my clothes fit exactly the same, but friends have already pointed out that sometimes you can't tell the difference until you've lost more than 10 lbs.

So while I'm feeling the limitless sheepishness, and marveling at how great it is that I never had a mistaken desire to be a scientist, I am also:

REALLY RELIEVED AND HAPPY AND ENCOURAGED AND EXPERIENCING RENEWED EXCITEMENT TO CONTINUE MY EFFORTS AT GETTING HEALTHIER, STRONGER, AND RETURNING TO A NORMAL WEIGHT.

Yeah, so my body IS acting just like I expect it to, but I was fooled by the two solid years of continual weight gain which seemed impervious to all exercise and reduction in sweets and overindulgence. 

Taking Kung Fu, riding my bicycle for errands, reducing my beer drinking by half, and then almost half again, and not indulging in hot cheesy toasts late at night has started to make a difference.

I needed this.  I needed this evidence.  My increasingly destructive relationship with my scale, having resulted in a kind of reverse obsession (never weigh yourself unless you're forced), managed to get in the way of my good sense and prevented me from seeing progress when it was staring me in the face.

Right now I weigh less than I did last November.  Now I only need to lose 82 pounds.  With my body actually working, I know I can do it.

Believe me, the sheepishness will linger but with so much happiness that I'm tempted to say WHO CARES?

In spite of this extremely encouraging discovery, we are going forward with a gluten free month.  It seems worth it to find out one way or another.  If there is an allergy then we can address it and say "Hey, people were right to suggest we might have this!" or if we find we don't we can say "Thanks, I've done an elimination test and am amply satisfied that I don't have it." when people suggest it again in the future, because, in my experience people are always suggesting I have food allergies even during times when I'm not obese and complaining and pounding my fists on my chest in frustration.

When I go to the doctor (next month, geeze, couldn't get an appointment until the end of May!) I will still request getting my hormone levels all checked (especially cortisol) and I want a complete vitamin panel done.  That's all.  Just to check in with all that and make sure I don't have looming issues that might explode all over me later on.

• I would have made a lousy scientist.

• It's important not to develop a phobia of inanimate objects.

• Latin is a very funny language.*

• Today, the part of Angelina Williamson was played by Hank Azaria.

• Max doesn't care if his mom is huge or regular sized, he just loves his mom.

• Life continually offers opportunities to reconnect with humility.

*Was looking some Latin up online to base some fake Latin on.  Latin is a funny language to play with.