Losing It: And Now for Something Completely Different

Robin's made a lot of progress in her weight-loss journey. But to get her through the home stretch, she's throwing out everything she knows and trying something new.

Apologies for abandoning you all last week, folks. I decided to take a much-needed week off from blogging to recharge the old batteries.

I’m totally lying.

I honestly didn’t know what to write about last week. I felt like I had spent all this time getting hyped for my cleanse and my run, and when they were over I felt … lost? Uninspired? Bored? Something. I was also pissy because I was still bouncing around in that 122-pound range and couldn’t break through it. I was all “but I’m exercising and eating healthy. Why is the weight not coming off??” Then it dawned on me …

I have SO not been eating healthy. While, yes, I have been attending Weight Watchers meetings since December, I have not been following the program at all. I can’t remember the last time I actually wrote down everything I ate in a day, which is one of the tenets of the program. It was like I was paying $14/week to clap for the people who actually were following the program. (Not to mention rolling in there with my two-year-old who did things like launch his Buzz Lightyear into a potted plant atop a very tall filing cabinet and then freak out about it. That was horrifying.) No, throwing money down the toilet, and small action figures into foliage, was not going to help me get to my goal weight.

(For the record, I like Weight Watchers and am 100 percent behind it as a way to learn how to eat healthy for life. Having lost weight on it twice before, I can attest to that fact that the program works if you work it. But for some reason I find myself needing to try something new this time around, which leads me to …)

Robin’s Weight Tracker
Starting: 130.4 pounds
Current: 120 pounds
Last week: 121 pounds
Goal: 118 pounds

So one day my editor forwarded me information about a weight loss doctor in Center City—Charlie Seltzer with Limitless Longevity—who was interested in working with me to get these last few pounds under control. Private nutrition and exercise counseling with a licensed physician/certified personal trainer? Yes. I’ll do that. Charlie and I first spoke on the phone so he could get a sense of who I am and what I’d like to accomplish. He then assured me that he would help me to blast through my goal weight and, in the end, have the body of a female body builder. Um, no thanks. Bikini model? Dude, I’m five-feet-tall with linebacker-esque shoulders and a thick waist. It’s like trying to put a bikini on a strawberry. Not cute. I’ll take fit and toned, buy a cute one-piece, and call it a day, thanks. He also told me that we were going to start talking about calories instead of points and measuring my success not by the numbers on the scale, but by how my clothes fit. Blasphemy! Years and years of programming undone in one phone call. Who does this guy think he is?

Apparently he thinks he’s the guy that’s going to give me a body fat ultrasound. What??? I walked into his office last week and was whisked into a little room to have my body fat measured. Picture being in the OB’s office, but without the excitement of seeing a tiny little life forming inside of you. Now cross that with every horror story you’ve ever heard about sorority girls wrapping your naked body in plastic wrap and circling your fat with a sharpie. It was kinda like that, but with good magazines to read and decent tunes playing in the background. Anyway, after that horror was behind me I plopped down in Charlie’s office to get the party started.

We chatted about my eating habits, my exercise routine, my sleeping habits (or lack thereof), my medications and supplements, etc. … I left with a date on the calendar for a Skype follow-up next week, a personal training session the week after, and a to-do list consisting of various items:

  1. Switch up my multi-vitamin and start taking Coenzyme Q10. Easy enough. I stopped at the Vitamin Shoppe before I left the city.
  2. Get a blood test done. He’s looking for clues to my weight issues that other doctors may have missed. They’re going to have to take about 20 vials of blood for everything he wants to see. That should be fun.
  3. Start using My Fitness Pal to track my eating and exercise. So I’m writing down everything I eat and all of my exercise again. But this time Charlie, as my “friend” on this app, can look at what I’m doing to assess my pitfalls. As someone who needs to be accountable to someone else to make this weight loss thing work, I may have finally found my solution.
  4. Add interval training to my running program. Hold on just a minute there, doc! I JUST got comfortable with my running plan and now you want me to change it up? I’m doing just fine running three miles four times a week and am actually angry with you for wanting me to break out of my comfort zone and …

… And therein lies my problem. As I’ve confessed before, I have never been one to challenge myself. Academically, physically—probably emotionally if I really wanted to delve into it—I have always taken the easy way out. As an almost-36-year-old (you can all wish me a happy birthday tomorrow) who is trying to mold two little people into caring, conscientious, hard-working, self-loving Bee Gees lovers, it is time to get over myself. It’s time to realize that while pushing myself may be uncomfortable at times and I will not always succeed, I have to keep at it. Two quotes I’m keeping in mind:

  • “If you do what you always did, you’re going to get what you always got.” No idea who to attribute this to, but my old boss had it hanging on her wall and it always resonated with me.
  • “There’s no easy way out. There’s no shortcut home.” Because I’ve always wanted to end a column with lyrics from the Rocky IV soundtrack. Cross that one off the bucket list.

(PS: Okay, so that wasn’t the end but I wanted to get this in here. I have now done the interval training workout twice: walking warm-up, running at my normal pace for five minutes, then sprinting at 9 MPH, 15 seconds on, 15 seconds off, for five-plus minutes, then finishing up back at my normal pace. I’m proud to say that I can do it and am looking forward to adding more time to the sprints.)

…………..

Robin Raskin blogs about her weight loss journey every Thursday on Be Well Philly. Catch up on the series here, and follow her on Twitter at @RobinRaskin. Join Robin’s Healthy Recipe Swap Facebook group here.