small loss, big thoughts.

Well, my big weigh-in last night resulted in a total loss of ... 0.8lbs. I have to admit, I was disappointed. I was perfectly on point all week, and only used 2/3 of my flex points. I didn't even make it down into a new pound -- I just went from 254.8 to 254 even.

I'm starting to remember that this happened last time I tried WW too. My loss was verrrry slow. And the weeks I ate 'good' I seemed to lose less than the weeks I ate 'bad', and I got annoyed -- at the program, at my body, at the whole thing. Eventually I rebelled by eating 'badly' for many weeks in a row, and just fell off the program completely.

I'm trying to be a bit more ... well, zen about it now. Here's what I was thinking last night.

The best case scenario -- the very BEST case -- is that I will do this program for the REST OF MY LIFE. It's not like I'm going to lose the weight and the suddenly not need to watch what I eat anymore. The best case scenario is that I follow the program until I hit goal and then continue to follow the program basically until I die. Which on the one hand is kinda depressing, but on the other hand is kinda freeing. I could be doing this program forever -- so whether I lose the weight sooner or later is kind of irrelevent, I'm still just going to be...doing the program.

Anyway, my total loss for now is 3.4lbs, which is still pretty good.

*****

In more exciting news, our leader announced that the NEW WEIGHT WATCHER PROGRAM is coming out next week!!!! She didn't tell us anything about it, but she said she felt better and more optimistic about it than she ever did about the flex / core program they have now. So I'm super-excited to hear the details of the new program!! I'm going to call my mom this weekend and see if I can get the inside scoop.

(Yeah, did I mention my mom is a manager with Weight Watchers? But that's the subject for a whole other post...)

temporarily uprooted.

I'm about to have my first big WW-related challenge -- being away from home.

I live in the basement flat of a house that's been divided into four units. At the end of the summer, the girl who lives above me discovered she had ... bed bugs. She's a very clean person and totally freaked out by this -- she travelled a lot this summer and likely picked them up at a hotel/b&b somewhere. Anyway, our landlord is super good about these things, and we've had the whole house sprayed twice now, but they're still seeing signs of the little assholes.

So it turns out that one sure-fire way to get rid of them is to freeze the house. Which means for about three or four days, we all have to get out of the house. We'll turn off the heat, open up all the windows, and get all ice age on the bed bugs.

Which means me and the cats are going to be moving into S.'s for the week.

I eat at his place about three nights a week anyway, so it's not a HUGE change in my life, but still. I made my meal plan for the whole week, and then realized I'd have to scrap about half of it, because S hates fish and isn't going to want to eat tuna melts and baked salmon (plus I'd feel guilty making his place all fish-smelly.) And I'll have to scrap a couple of other items because he doesn't have the same ingredients on hand as I do, and I don't feel like spending $200 stocking his kitchen this weekend. Now I'm thinking lots of veggie burgers (he can have real meat if he wants), stirfry, and maybe that WW chicken pot pie recipe I was looking at last night.

I also wanted to try making a WW granola recipe this weekend, but that may have to be put on hold as well.

Grrr. I dislike any kind of upheaval like this. Although I am secretly excited that S. and I will basically be living together for a week, with the cats and everything. It'll be a good chance for us to test the waters.

you turn me on, i'm a radio

I'm buying a new shower curtain today, which sort of has nothing to do with weight loss but also sort of does.

In addition to trying to take better care of mySELF, I'm also trying to take better care of things around me, like my home. I KNOW that I feel a million times better and more in control when my house is clean -- not to mention that cooking seems less daunting when there are clean dishes and free counterspace readily available.

Sometimes I feel like I live on the fringes of my own home. If that makes sense. Like, it gets so messy and so out of control that I come home from work and I can't bear to do anything but sit on the one clean corner of the couch, with my laptop. I eat 2/3 of a bag of chips for dinner because I can keep them on my lap with me and not have to venture into the kitchen. My whole life becomes that little spot on the couch. I barely even look up from the computer. I eat chips. I ignore the cats. When it's late enough I go to bed. That's it. I just kind of ... turn off.

But when my house is clean, I feel happier. I engage more with everything in the house. I turn on my hanging star lights. I light a scented candle. I play with the cats. I cook a nice dinner and I actually put the computer down and maybe watch an episode of The Golden Girls or maybe read my book. The evening seems to last longer, and it's more enjoyable. I turn on.

Recently I've been aware of that in the rest of my life too. I'm living only on the fringes. I rarely see my friends, except S. I don't feel very mentally engaged in things. I don't enjoy many things, and I don't make any effort to find things I WILL enjoy. It fees like, with my apartment, my weight/health/lifestyle has gotten so messy and so out of control that I can't bear to deal with most of it. I'm doing the mental equivalent of sitting on the one clean corner of the couch. I'm zoning out and just ... turning off.

Getting my eating under control will be part of turning back on, and so will keeping my apartment cleaner. Last night I cooked a healthy stirfry, along with brown rice and some edamame. And I scrubbed the bathroom until it sparkled. Except the shower curtain looks totally shitty now.

So I'm buying a new shower curtain. I'm turning back on.

a steak for a wife?

My awesome-o boyfriend took me out for dinner on Friday, apparently just because he thinks I am awesome-o too. Though it wasn't the original plan, we ended up at a steakhouse. I've never in my life had steak at a restaurant (I M CHEAP OK), but S. convinced me to order it. I had a New York Strip with a peppercorn vinaigrette and internet, I must tell you, it was probably worth every penny AND every point AND every awkward moment when I almost elbowed my table-neighbour thanks to my uncoordinated attempt at cutting my meat.

In conclusion, steak = love. That bottle of wine also ended up equalling love too ifyouknowwhatImean.

Also featured this weekend: not one but two friends asking me if I was pregnant. Not because I was looking particularly large, but because, apparently, I looked like I was keeping a secret. I had to confess to following WW again, even though I hadn't really planned on telling anyone yet. Anyway, I'm glad to know that dieting gives me that 'special glow'.

is that a one or a seven?

Well. I went to my meeting last night, feeling good and looking forward to a nice loss after a week of being perfectly on plan and only using three banked points. My starting weight was 251.4, and I thought I’d at LEAST get into the 40s last night.

Imagine my surprise when I stepped on the scale to see it said 254.8.

“How can that be?” I shrieked/whispered to the receptionist. “I was so good all week!”

“Well, that’s not bad,” she said, punching numbers into a little red calculator. “You’ve got a loss of 2.6 lbs!”

“No, I don’t!” I continued shriek/whispering. “It’s a gain of 3-something!”

“No, dear, it’s a loss,” she said and pointed to my weigh-in booklet. “This is a seven.”

So apparently I am an idiot. So apparently when I looked at the scale last week I thought it said 251, but actually it said 257. Truthfully, I’m still fairly positive that it was a one, but it DOES make more sense that I would have lost rather than gained this week, and I DID express some surprise that my weight last week was so ‘low’. The 257 admittedly makes a little more sense but damn I was sure it was a one.

Anyway. So the result is, a loss of 2.6, that somehow feels like a gain of 3.4. Not a very auspicious start.

you can't beat that week-one energy.

I’ve been doing really well with my food this week. Well. It’s only week one, so I should HOPE I was doing well. Anyway.

I made a food plan for myself for the entire week, listing all my meals and snacks. I didn’t use any banked points in the plan, since I figured I might need to save those in case something unexpected came up. I printed the plan up on a tabloid page and have been carrying it around with me everywhere.

I haven’t stuck to my plan exactly. The page is already covered in notations and substitutions and slight point variations, but I’m happy that in terms of my daily points totals, everything has stayed mostly the same. I’ve only used one banked point, for a bit of wine that I wanted to indulge in after my ‘pumpkin ravioli’ turned into a disaster (could not find pumpkin and had to use zucchini. Pasta stuck to bottom of pot. Accidentally left a bowl on the burner and melted the glaze right off it, almost resulting in full-on kitchen fire. And so on.) Since the pasta sucked, I ate less of it then planned, and used up the rest of the points (plus the one banked point) on a lovely Shiraz. Wine is so much more dependable than my cooking.

Anyway, I can’t wait for weigh-in day to get here. Despite the fact that I’ve done WW a few times, this is probably the best first week I’ve ever had. Certainly it’s the most organized I’ve ever been. I hope that it pays off on the scales.

the height (and weight) of fashion.

I had the most hilarious / sad flashback the other day. I was sitting on the streetcar and saw a girl wearing what I thought was a very cute outfit – a brown belted tweed jacket, skinny jeans, purplish chuck taylors, and a big purple patterned scarf. I thought she looked so nice – but I wondered to myself if I would ever wear skinny jeans, even if I were ‘skinny’. Then I started thinking about what my ideal outfit would be when I get to my goal weight.

The happy thing is that I realized most of the stuff I would want to wear isn’t that much different than what I wear now – in recent years, I guess I’ve learned to not let ‘society’s’ expectations influence what I wear. So despite being 250+ lbs, I still wear cute summer dresses, strapless tops, pencil skirts, etc.

That said, I still look forward to fitting into a wider variety of clothes, finding coats that don’t bunch up around my hips and patterned tights that actually come in my size.

Anyway, this train of thought led me to remember a time when I was about 10 years old – already ‘overweight’, already on a diet. I flipped through the Sears Catalogue and picked out my DREAM OUTFIT for when I lost all that weight I was gonna lose.

It was:
- Tight yellow stir-up pants
- An over-sized plain white t-shirt
- Wide shiny yellow belt
- Pointy black alligator-skin flats
- Several giant yellow plastic bangles

LOOK IT WAS 1990 OKAY.

Anyway, I cut pictures of all of these things out of the catalogue, and taped them to a piece of paper, and I stared at it CONSTANTLY. I tried to imagine myself wearing those clothes – in my head I was always standing on a beach, with my arms spread wide in a catalogue-esque pose. In my mind I was the picture of happiness, not to mention good taste.

Thinking about all this the other day made me so melancholy – realizing just how unhappy I was, how unhappy I seem to have always been. Eighteen years is a long time to hate your body.

it all starts here.

Well, I had my first meeting. It was not as bad as I’d feared.

I almost didn’t make it at all – I had planned to sneak out of work a little before 5, to give myself time to get there, but instead I ended up getting caught up in a project and only leaving around 5:15. I practically ran to the subway, only to find the platforms packed because of some delay. I waited and finally crammed myself on the next train, even though there really wasn’t enough room for me. Standing pressed up against all those other people, I had to wonder if they hated me for how much room I was taking up. I thought, “Maybe someday I won’t take up so much room.”

Of course, I came out the wrong exit from the subway station, and had a tricky time finding the meeting, but I finally did, just in time for the meeting start. The leader seems nice – she’s enthusiastic and funny, both of which I like. There seem to be some ladies who chat the whole way through the meeting, and of course I was sitting right behind them, so I’ll try to avoid that next week.

There were two other girls who were new, and one of them I liked instantly, even before I realized she was new like me. I hope she sticks around.

I didn’t get to weigh in until after the meeting, but the end result was (dun dun duh dun) 251.4 lbs. Which to be honest is not nearly as bad as I was expecting (I thought more around 275-280.)

The last time I lost a significant amount of weight, I had started at 246, and gone down to 204, a loss of just over 40lbs. Thinking that I was at 280 was so depressing because of that – I thought, even if I lose 40lbs again, I’ll only be where I STARTED last time. So I feel really optimistic now, knowing that’s not the case. Only my first 5lbs will be ‘wasted’, getting back to that start weight. Of course, it’s frustrating to have to lose the same 40lbs again, but it is what it is.

The meeting is conveniently located right above a giant grocery store, so afterwards I popped down to pick up some foods to keep at work. I got yoghurt, almonds, cheese strings, apples, baby carrots, instant oatmeal, and a couple frozen burritos. I also got a strawberry banana smoothie and a fruit and nut chocolate bar, just as a last hurrah. I ended up not finishing either of them, and stuck the leftovers in the fridge.

Things feel different already. Change has come to Andrea.

the last supper.

Tomorrow is the first day -- my first meeting. I thought I'd go crazy today eating things I might try to avoid for the next little while. I had a low-fat muffin for breakfast, a 6" meatball sub for lunch, and for dinner I had a grilled cheese and some low-fat french fries. Then Sh. and I split a bottle of wine. I claimed this was so that it wouldn't be sitting around to tempt me after tomorrow, but mostly I just wanted the wine. Mmm, wine.

In retrospect, I guess this wasn't a great day, but the sad truth is it's still better than my usual days, at least lately. Most days I would eat: a breakfast sandwich, chicken sub with extra mayo, and grilled cheese with regular fries + heaps of mayo for dipping. Today, no mayo and a low-fat muffin.

I keep telling Sh. that, "change has come to Andrea." I'm not totally sure he gets the reference but it's amusing me nonetheless.

this time for sure?

I feel like I've written this before but I'm going back to Weight Watchers. I feel better about it this time though, than I have in a long time. I feel like I have better reasons this time -- like I'm not doing it just to be more attractive to men or to buy nicer clothes.

Along with a host of other reasons, which I'm sure I'll get into at length here, I'm doing this because I'm tired of my body hurting: my hips hurt when I lie down, my knees hurt when I sit down, and my feet hurt when I walk around, so at this point it seems like I either need to lose the weight, or learn to stand on my head. I actually think losing the weight might be easier.

Resources

I wanted to put together a list of things that have helped me so far along the way: books, DVDs, and other miscellaneous people or places or things. I'll probably add to this page as I find more things that I like or find useful.

Weight Loss Tools:

First up, of course, is Weight Watchers. I know it doesn't work for everyone, but I couldn't do this without the POINTS system, and without my weekly meetings and weigh-ins. I like the accountability, I like the focus, I like the routine.

And ... my very favourite WW tool is the 3-Month Journal. I have written down literally everything I've eaten since November, and I do it in these journals. Again, not something that's going to work for everyone, but I love them. I'm on my third one!

I loved loved loved my Booty Camp Fitness sessions. It was such a great way for me to start being active outside of doing DVDs at home, and I KNOW I would never have pushed myself that hard if I'd been on my own at a gym. I took two 8-week sessions (for a total of 16 weeks), and in that time I lost over 20lbs and 20 inches. I KNOW! I love you Kelly!

I adore my heart rate monitor! I have this exact Polar F6 (yes, it's the men's, it's all I could find and it isn't any different except the watch face is bigger, which, all the better to see your calories burned, AMIRIGHT? Anyway, I just think this is such a great tool to have -- it really encourages you to push a little harder when you work out, even if it's just because you know you have to burn off those Cheetos you ate last night. OOPS.

Books:

I think The Beck Diet Solution is one of the most sensible weight-loss books I've ever read. It acknowledges that most of weight loss is mental, but not in a "oh no, you need therapy to get over all your food issues and learn to love yourself!" kind of way. Instead it gives practical steps on how to get into the habits of weight loss, or as the book says, how to think thin.

I remember I used to go to a (terrible) Weight Watchers meeting, and the (terrible) leader once said, "Come on people, think about it, what can the chocolate give you that the apple can't??" It made me so irritated! Because, you know, there are lots of things the chocolate can give us that the apple can't. That's why we got fat in the first place. If we weren't getting something from the 'bad' food, we wouldn't have been eating it! It can give us comfort, nostalgia, familiarity -- even a sense of freedom. But after I'd ranted at this at home a bit, a very wise friend of mine said, "Maybe you should just flip it: think about it like 'What can the apple give you the chocolate can't?" Ding Ding Ding! That was when I realized how important it was to think about weight loss and health in terms of the positive -- not about why you should cut out the bad stuff, but why you should add in more of the good stuff. 101 Foods is THE BEST resource for that. I'm totally behind any book that can make me feel virtuous about eating stuff I already love.

After I started thinking more about what I should put in my body and why, it sort of naturally led to thinking about food on a more global scale. I started wondering whether it really was better to buy local or organic, whether it was better to go meatless or to eat hormone-free meat. The Omnivore's Dilemma doesn't necessarily answer these questions, but it will give you a TON to think about.

Potatoes Not Prozac really changed the way I thought about my relationship and reactions to food. The author has done a lot of research into the ways our body handles sugar (and simple carbs, which are processed like sugars), and her conclusions are quite fascinating. I wrote about it a bit once, but basically it made me realize that a lot my reactions were biochemical, and not necessarily just a character flaw, as I'd always assumed. For some reason that made them easier to deal with. She does have a whole prescribed eating plan but I don't follow it.

Well, what can I say about Dietgirl besides that I would totally give up cake if I could have HER as a wife. I just think Shauna is one of the sweetest, brightest, most inspiring and crush-worthy bloggers around, and this book was my favourite Christmas gift this year. I plan to read it again and again, except I keep lending it out! I keep myself afloat by regularly reading parts of her blog archives.

Okay, obviously this is not a book exactly, but I wanted to give a shout-out to my favourite magazine, Cooking Light. I have like a zillion Weight Watchers and other healthy cookbooks, but it's Cooking Light that I love the most, and that I get the most recipes from. I love that it really is light and healthy cooking, but not anything you'd be embarrassed to serve to guests, like, "Here, eat my weird diet food!" (Yeah, Hungry Girl, I'm looking at you.)

DVDs

Love love love my Jillian! This workout DVD gets talked about a lot in blogland, but for once it's justified. Easily the best workout video I've ever done. It has everything I want in a home workout: fast, easy to follow (no coordination or fancy footwork required), doesn't take a lot of space or equipment, and actually does give you a good workout. Enough said.

To be fair, I have to give a thanks to these Weight Watcher walking DVDs. When I first started working out I was seriously out of shape and these really eased me into things and got me into the habit of working out again. There's nothing specifically spectacular about them, I just liked that they were easy and short. A great way to get started.

Blogs:

Okay, now obvs I read a MILLION blogs and I love all of them, but two of them are really special to me.

The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl: I know I mentioned her already, but I just find Shauna so inspiring. I think the reason I find her story so appealing is because she lived the true fantasy: losing a ton of weight and having a totally different life at the end of it. Her growth as a person is so remarkable to read, because you can actually see it happening on the pages.

Kath Eats Real Food: I know there are a lot of food / health bloggers out there but for some reason I just adore Kath. I think it's because she has the kind of life I want to have, so I like living vicariously through her. Plus, don't tell anyone this, but sometimes when I can't decide what to make for dinner, I totally ask myself, "What would Kath eat?"

Contact Me

Obviously you can always leave a comment if you want to get in touch with me, but you can also email acakeforawife@gmail.com

You can also follow me on Twitter! I am, of course, acakeforawife!

Progress Pictures

Unfortunately(?), I don't have many 'before' photos, but here are a few I've come across.

This is pretty possibly my least favourite photo ever, and it's one of the only ones I have that I know was actually taken at my highest weight: 257 lbs. I was so shocked when I saw this photo.

It's from about October, 2008. 257 lbs.

Below are a few others. I'm a little fuzzy on what weights I was each of them, but I guess it doesn't really matter. The point is: I was big.

I only started taking progress photos after a couple of months, but here they are.

In these pictures I'm 241 (16 lbs lost), 227 (30 lbs lost), and 215 (42 lbs lost).

Same weights, side views:

 

And here is a current and more candid photo, for reference.

about me.

I'm a cake lover, and a weight loser! What more is there to say?

I live in Toronto with my boyfriend and our two cats. The boyfriend's name is Shaun, and the cats' names are Beezus and Zack Morris, though they're more commonly referred to as Poo Butt and Le Poo, respectively. Shaun is mostly always referred to as Shaun.

I work as a writer / new media coordinator.

some history.

I have been unhappily fat my whole life, honestly for as far back as I can remember. I know I weighed over 200 lbs in highschool, and even before that I remember having to wear these terrible old lady clothes because nothing else fit. I used to lie in bed at night and dream about carving off parts of my body, just slicing off these huge chunks of fat. Blech.

Just before university, I managed to lose about 20 lbs, and I graduated highschool around 185 lbs. That's the lowest weight I remember ever being, by the way. Then I went away to university in Halifax, and I somehow managed to gain 50 lbs in 8 months. I am not kidding! Who does that? I mean, besides baby horses? I came home after a year of school weighing 235 lbs.

I maintained that pretty much through the next few years of school, and by the time I finished up I was 240 lbs. I got my first real job, and decided to tackle 'the weight thing'. I did Weight Watchers, (though just on my own, no meetings), and I lost about 35 lbs. I got down to 204 lbs. I loved everything! I was so close to "onederland"! Then what happened?

ERRRRRRCH - KABLOOOOOOO (yes, that is the crash and burn sound.)

I got laid off from my job. Which meant I was broke and depressed. Which meant (obviously!) brownies and potato chips!

Eventually I parlayed my unemployment into a freelance writing career. I wrote, I travelled, I did a ton of fun things, and I don't regret much about those years of my life. But food and health were not high on the priority list, and over the next few years, I started gaining the weight back.

In 2004 I moved to Toronto, and I took a "temp" job in an accounting office. You know, just until I got my freelancing stuff back in order. You know what happened, right? FOUR YEARS later, I was still there. I wasn't doing any writing. I had moved into a basement apartment with the two cats, and I ate a lot and drank a lot and partied a lot. More weight.

In the late summer of 2007, I met Shaun, and everything changed. Suddenly I wanted better for myself. I wanted more. It's not because meeting a guy made me realize I deserved more or anything like that, please, I am SO not that person. I guess it's just ... hmm, when you meet the person you think you want to spend the rest of your life with, you actually start thinking about the rest of your life. It's not such an abstract thing anymore.

So in 2008, I decided it was time to get my proverbial "ducks" in a "row". I quit my crappy job and decided to go back to writing. Strangely, my new job (as a writer) paid more than my old job (in accounting), so that also allowed me to get a lot of my financial stuff in order. By the end of 2008, my weight was the only "duck" not yet in that "row". But by then I was bigger than I ever was, and to be honest, I had sort of stopped thinking that it was possible for me. I was trying to get used to the idea that I'd always be fat.

But then I saw a picture of myself, and I realized: I had to make it possible. No way was I living like this anymore. I joined Weight Watchers, and I started this blog.

I guess that's it! The story from there is chronicled in the archives.

about this blog.

The name "a cake for a wife" is actually a play on the name "a cat for a wife", which was a web comic I used to make about my cat. (It's true. Sadly they're no longer online.) It comes from the lyrics of a Pedro The Lion song called The Longest Winter. The song is basically about growing old and lonely, and it asks "will you spend your whole life / in a studio apartment / with a cat for a wife?"

I dunno, one day I just kind of realized that FOOD was the major relationship I had -- that I was going to grow old and lonely with cake. I decided to change that, and this blog was born.

As a side note, it's actually an incredibly depressing song. I do not recommend listening to it. Ok, I warned you.

The illustration of me on that's on the blog header was done by my boyfriend. He is super talented! And knows that he has to make me look cute. That is a winning combination!