A weekend in the middle is relaxed.

Calm.

Impromptu.

Free-flowing.

Yesterday, Carlos and I drove for 90 minutes, in the rain. No where to go and Iggy on my lap. Just driving with Stevie Wonder as our soundtrack.

Today, the neighborhood smells of hotdogs and hamburgers. I spent all day outside reading and my sunburned face proves it.

I’ve broken my dry-spell at the gym and life progresses. I have a message for my long-time reader turned friend, Norma. But that will have to wait – life is happening.

Happy Memorial Day!

(I’m blogging from my phone so excuse me for the unformatted and randomly placed photos) br />

©2012 Prior Fat Girl. All Rights Reserved.

This is new to me – this whole eating to live versus living to eat.

Years ago, as I began my fight to embrace more healthy habits, I had no idea what kind of roller-coaster of an adventure it would be. I’d never have imagined everything that I’d experience these past couple years. I’d never realized how connected eating was to life. It’s silly, actually. I started my journey thinking I just wanted to lose weight and be healthy. I never realized to lose weight and be healthy, I’d actually have to accomplish so much more than that.

I’d have to embrace myself.

I mentioned the conversation I had a couple weeks ago with my therapist, when he challenged the idea that one can be overweight or have eating issues purely because they enjoy the taste of food. He shared with me he thought I often used food for joy and that in our sessions, we needed to figure out how to find joy in life, not food.

Joy from life.

So how do I go about finding joy from life? How do I disconnect my mind from the pure satisfaction of flavor combinations I’ve grown to desire intensely?

Dinner with friends.

Tuesday evening, Carlos and I went to our friends house, Jared & Jackie’s for dinner. On our way, we stopped to grab a bottle of wine.

Chianti is my favorite. I mean, my faaaavooorite! It’s followed closely by Riesling and Shiraz… but top of all top is Chianti. The sun was blaring it’s evening rays and Iggy was sitting on my lap, excited to play with Stella, their dog. Jackie was excited to share with us a salad she made, it’s one of her favorites. As we talked and shared conversation, I took a bite of one of the most delicious, sunny-weather appropriate salads I’ve ever had.

The salad had black beans, mango’s, red and orange peppers, and some crisp tortilla sprinkled on top with a lemon/cumin/Tabasco vinaigrette. I remember smiling often during our conversations, laughing as I shared stories and my hands flying through the air as I elaborated stories. I remember looking over at Carlos and Jared’s plates, realizing they were done with their salad and I had barely started mine.

CONVERSATION.

I was so involved in the conversation, it was almost as if the delicious, most amazing salad in front wasn’t actually there. Who could eat where there was so much conversation to have? I paused long enough to finish  my salad since dinner was ready. I also made sure to finish my glass of wine since it was my favorite. As I poured myself a second glass of wine, dinner was set out in front of me.

It looked amazing. So simple yet so satisfying. But I didn’t dive in right away. Instead, I leaned forward and widened my eyes as Jared shared a story about Jackie’s retirement plan. I was so invested in the conversation, my whole body was activated and involved. It was as if I was on pins and needles, waiting for each word to be pronounced. The ceiling fan above us whiirrreeed as we laughed at the fact that both Stella and Iggy had accidents as conversations distracted us. The rice and chicken were a good compliment to the salad but my fork wasn’t busy. I ate about half the chicken and then gave the rest to Carlos. I wanted to talk, not finish my chicken – I wasn’t hungry anymore.

Jackie and I scooped up the dinner plates and nestled them into the sink as the smell of freshly made brownies floated past our noses. Oh yes, the evening wasn’t over. Jackie had made brownies and served it in a bowl with a scoop of simple vanilla ice cream.

So simple. So perfect. I ate my brownie with soft, creamy ice cream – almost runny ice cream. Runny because I talked so much; I very much prefer very soft, almost runny ice cream so it was no problem to me. The evening finished a few hours after it started with promises of another repeat soon. It was a perfect mid-week evening – there is no better way I can think of spending a Tuesday then how we did.

I wonder if you are asking yourself how this story relates to joy from food or joy from life. Funny thing. I woke up this morning and was 9lbs lighter than I was in February 27th. Sure, it took 3 months but I haven’t worked out in those 3 months so losing 9lbs is actually a very big deal for me. Joy from life.

Joy from life. Joy from conversation, not food. Food is not joy. Life is. Dinner is. Conversation is. Friends are joy.

This is not to say I’ve figured it out because the reality is, it’ll take day after day of fighting… but I’ve fought this hard, for this many years and I recognize how far I’ve come.

Joy from life. My life. I am embracing myself.

©2012 Prior Fat Girl. All Rights Reserved.

I mentioned in 2009 about post-weight loss, I was FREEZING. Weight loss made me cold. Losing weight meant losing layers of warm fat.

I cannot emphasize enough how cold I really was. It was so cold, I would often not be able to concentrate on anything else. I spoke to my doctor multiple times about it and sure enough, people who lose large amounts of weight tend to have cold intolerance. The solution? Ride it out. Eventually, the body is suppose to re-adjust.

And guess what? It did! Two years later, I realized I wasn’t shivering all the time. I’d still get cold, but it was manageable. So the good news is, for all of you who recently lost a large amount of weight and are freezing, IT DOES GET BETTER!

But something recently happened. In the past six months, I’ve begun overheating. Like sweating all the time. Rarely cold, sometimes normal, often fanning myself off and trying to figure out how to cool down. I have no idea where this came from except for one idea.

When I had my surgery back in November, Dr. Gervais removed a large portion of the hair follicles under my arm, as well as all the other skin under the armpit. This morning, as I was driving to work with the air conditioner on full-blast, I wondered…

Is it possible my body is now trying to re-adjust to the change in how it cools itself down now that my underarms have changed?

I have a post-op in a couple weeks so I’ll ask Dr. Gervais but until then, I’ve got to figure out how to cool down!

Sincerely,

Sweaty Jen

P.S., I started a craft project this past weekend and
ended up at a hardware thrift shop type store with
my sister. At one point, I turned around and saw this:

Key Takeaway:

SMILE!

©2012 Prior Fat Girl. All Rights Reserved.

It was over 90 degrees here in Minneapolis. A beautiful day ending a busy week.

Dinner was salmon, rice and Riesling.

After dinner, since we had no plans, we decided to go outside and read. My mind alternated between getting lost in the story I was reading and the story of my life. The wind pressed against my exposed shoulders. I sipped my wine and looked up, across the alley. Three little children squealed as an older child sprayed them with water from the garden hose. My attention moved to the front of our house where two men walked past; in the distance, I noticed the siding hanging off the vacant house across the street blowing in the wind. Our neighbor walked out her front door and sat down, taking in the familiar sounds of the neighborhood.

When I tell people I live in North Minneapolis, they ask me one of two questions:

• Why do you live there?
• Is it scary there?

I smile when they ask me this. They only know what they see in T.V. Our neighborhood is full of so much culture. People outside, walking. Children playing in the yard, screaming in glee. Neighbors talking. It’s an active neighborhood and I love it. It’s a stark contrast to suburban life where everyone drives into their garage & closes the garage door behind them. The suburban life where kid sit inside all day and neighbors don’t know each other.

As I say outside tonight, I mentally mapped out how is get back back working out. Starting Monday, I will get up early before work and do either the stationary bike or the stair stepper. My goal will be to do 4 stair stepper or stationary bike workouts per week for the next 2 weeks. After 2 weeks, and assuming I feel okay, I may begin to work running into my schedule.

This weekend, my plan is to take Iggy on a ling walk Saturday and Sunday. I also want to be very careful on my eating so I don’t wake up Monday with a food hangover.

How’s that sound?

©2012 Prior Fat Girl. All Rights Reserved.

Background Info #1: I’m a life-long learner – I want to know it all. No kidding. I’m so curious all the time and constantly ask whywhywhywhywhy.

Background Info #2: For as long as Carlos and I have been together, we always get into huge discussions when we are in the kitchen together about my cutting skills (er, lack of.) He is ademant I’m going to cut a finger off. Apparently I use the wrong knifes all the time, don’t cut in the right direction and he can’t watch me cut anything.

Background Info #3: What I learn, I want to share. I love finishing a class and then screaming everything I learned for everyone else around me to hear.

I tell you all this because now that I’m done with school (okay, I finished in 2009), I’m always looking for ways to do classes… either sharing what I learned or learning from others. Check out the two options I’ve worked out:

;

Blogging for Beginners
Sunday, May 20th
4:00 – 8:00pm (breaks offered)

REGISTER HERE

In this interactive online session, you will learn how to:

• start & maintain a blog
• upload images and embed videos
• use plug-ins and widgets
• monitor your stats
• push your posts to Facebooke/Twitter
• take it to the next level with community engagement strategies

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;

Knife Skills for a Healthy Life
Tuesday, June 12th
6:30 – 7:30 pm
(very limited space!)

REGISTER HERE

Join Jen, a priorfatgirl and Kate from Kate in the Kitchen while learning Knife Skills for a Healthy Life!

Kate will show attendee’s:

• knife safety
• Knife selection
• Storage of knives for use at home
• What kinds of knives are needed in a kitchen
• Proper grip
• Basic sharpening
• Interactive demonstration on foods like potatos, onions and carrots

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©2012 Prior Fat Girl. All Rights Reserved.

What? You thought this was a healthiness blog? Psh.

Okay, okay.  It’s true I’ve been working through some emotional healthiness things, and I’ve been allowing myself to heal. I gotta get back into being healthy, not only just mentally but physically. Being healthy physically also means giving my body the exercise it needs.

I realized on Monday that it has been almost two months since I worked out. TWO MONTHS.

Because of the two surgeries I’ve had in the past two months, I am not really sure if the only slightly noticeably difference I feel is from not working out or recovering from the surgeries. Here’s the difference in the past two months I’ve noticed:

• I feel flabby. Mushy. Squishy. My close fit differently although they are the same clothes I’ve worn for the past year.
• I am not as active. I look forward to coming home and sitting on the couch.
• I get tired in the afternoon. I’ve always had the 2pm or 3pm yawns but it’s gotten worse in the past couple months.

What I miss:

• Running
• Meeting my friend, Jen, at the gym
• Feeling strong
• Accomplishing workouts
• Energy all day
• Confident

I’m excited and anxious to get back into the gym but Dr. Gervais said I have to start slow. Dr. Gervais said I could start working out after 3 or 4 weeks. Carlos is insistent that I wait at least 8 weeks post-surgery. His reasoning is he said I wouldn’t start very slow, that I’d just jump back into it. I really don’t know if I can wait that long, 8 weeks.

I just want to work out.

I feel lazy and gross. I feel sloppy and mushy. I feel unbalanced and crooked. I just want to feel the energy and accomplishment.

I do still have some slight pain in my underarms when I move the wrong way, it’s been primarily when I move during sleep (I’m a tosser and a turner.) Nothing during the day.

On Friday, it’ll be 3 weeks. Can I really wait another 5 weeks to work out? Maybe just another week? Maybe I can just finish out May and start working out June 1st? And when I start, I can start with the stair stepper and stationary bike?

©2012 Prior Fat Girl. All Rights Reserved.

If every weekend could be like this past weekend, I would be a happy lady. It was perfect in every sense of the word. A lot of time with friends, laughter, glasses of wine, quiet peaceful time and sun.

The only thing missing was Carlos. He was in Vegas. For his bachelor party. Let’s compare weekends, shall we…

My weekend

Friday evening, I swung by the hospital to visit my newest
niece, McKenna. She was born Thursday evening at 11:50pm
after only 3 pushes. 6 pounds, 11 ounces of pure smushable baby.

Saturday morning, I got up and headed out to pick up a tree
that given to us by Tree Trust. State Farm Insurance donated
trees to Tree Trust, to be distributed to residents effected by the North
Minneapolis Tornado in May of 2011.

 Thank you to Tree Trust and State Farm Insurance for our Honeycrisp apple tree!

After I loaded up our tree, I realized I was really close to the
Minneapolis Farmers Market so I swung over to say hi to Jason from
Pahls Market. Jason and Pahls Market helped coordinate flowers at cost
for the Project Flower Bomb last year.

I am forever grateful for Jason and
his generosity and strongly encourage you to hunt him down at Minneapolis
Farmers Market when you are there. Tell him Jen sent you.
Their stall is in the middle of the last & north most row.

Jason helped me pick out the most beautiful, vibrant and brightest flowers.

I pulled weeds for a few hours and then got ready for some friends who
came over Saturday night. We had more wine then we should admit,
shared stories not safe for blogging and laughed harder than words can explain.
It was perfect.

Sunday, I met a friend for brunch, played around in the garden
a bit more, napped and met my maid of honor, Cindy, for dinner
on the patio of Muddy Waters. And throughout the whole weekend,
I spent a ton of time with Iggy, who happens to love the laundry basket.

That was my weekend.

Want to know about Carlos’ weekend?

I picked Carlos up from the airport last night and he was so tired! I didn’t ask too many questions because the truth is, it is a bachelor party – would I really want to know? I do know they didn’t sleep a lot and did their fair share of drinking. They also spent a few hours at an Extreme Sports Race track and got some great photos – I’ll share with you later this week.  My bachlorette party will be much more low-key compared to Carlos’. It’s the first weekend in June and I cannot wait. I have no interest in going downtown and wearing inappropriate anatomy necklaces.

What did YOU do for your bachelor/bachlorette party?

©2012 Prior Fat Girl. All Rights Reserved.

Thank you so much for  your comments on the last post. It’s given me so much to think about – my mind has been going crazy this past week thinking about my therapy session last week. We talked about how I’ve been now that I’ve been on anti-anxiety for about two months. I feel like, for the first time in 2 1/2 years, I am in a good place relating to my anxiety. The question came up… what now?

How do I get my eating under control? It’s not to say I’m out of control but the fact is, I’ve never had a healthy relationship with food. Even though I’ve stabilized my weight into a healthy range, I still have days when I eat way more than I should and other days where I eat less. I want to just eat within moderation. I want to walk past a chocolate cake and not have it trip me so that I accidentally fall face first into it with my mouth open. I want to stop when I’m full at dinner instead of inhaling it all as if it were the first time I’ve seen food in 3 weeks. I want to eat to live, not live to eat.

So what’s my deal? Why can’t I figure out this healthy eating thing? After 4.5 years of fighting. After 2 years of weight loss and 2.5 years of maintenance (eh, most of it anyway), why am I still feeling like I haven’t figured this out? So I asked my therapist:

Is it possible to just love the taste of food?

We’ve talked about it a few times. He has in previous sessions, told me people who struggle with food are often lacking passion, enjoyment or pleasure in their life so they turn to food for what they believe to be what they are looking for. It is a false sense of enjoyment, often only filling the void with immediate yet temporary gratification. I’ve heard him say this but can it be true? Am I missing something in my life? I’ve doubted the idea. Last week, I countered his idea with this:

Let’s say I made an amazing dinner for Carlos and I. An amazing, melt-in-your mouth meal. While eating, we had great conversation, laughter and shared a vibrant energy. I sit back, thinking of how perfect everything was and how amazing dinner was. So good. The best meal I’ve ever made. In fact, it was so good, I consider having seconds. I know I’m not hungry but it was so flippin’ good, I just have to have seconds. So I do.

Or…

Let’s say I go to a friends house for coffee & pie. We sip our coffee and eat the most silky of french silk pies. The crust crumbles into perfect balance of buttered graham cracker chunks. Our conversation transitions from topic to topic without prompt as we alternate between storytelling and laughing. Both of us look down and realize our pie is gone but we still have coffee. We comment at how amazing the pie was. So amazing. In fact, since we both still have some coffee left, and the pie was out-of-this world amazing, we should have another. Neither of us are hungry but we just have to have another piece.

Is it possible to just love the taste of food?

Is it possible that my struggle with healthiness is because I just love the taste of food? Or is it, as my therapist proposes, that I need to find other things in life that give me more pleasure. Is it possible for someone to not be able to lose weight because they love food too much? Can we as a society be overweight because of our love for food?

As I bombarded my amazing therapist with question after question, he calmly listened, allowing me to verbally walk through my thought process. After a few minutes, I stopped, took a breath and was ready to hear his thoughts. I was ready for him to validate my struggles. For him to acknowledge that it is possible to just love the taste of food. I waited to hear him tell me I was right. Instead, what he told me caught my breath.

In that moment, when you are considering a second helping… or a second piece of pie, you are telling yourself you just love the taste of food. But what is really happening, Jen, is that you are saying you cannot think of any other way for that exact moment that can bring you as much happiness or enjoyment as another piece of pie. What you are saying is during that perfect dinner with Carlos, you would rather have a second helping instead of going to sit on the couch and finish the conversation. What you are saying is you don’t think you can enjoy your coffee and conversation with your friend as much as you could without the pie. What you are saying is that food gives you more happiness than anything else you can do.

Whoa. I just stared at my therapist. I didn’t know what to say. I had never heard it explained like that. Why would I give food so much power in my life, to choose it over a simple conversation with a friend and coffee? Why would I need a second piece of pie to make the conversation better? Why is pie so powerful, that it would make or break a conversation? How have I allowed myself to give food so much power over me that I compare everything else in life to the satisfaction I receive from food.

Is it possible to just love the taste of food?

The answer is yes and no. Yes, we can just love the taste of food. But that cannot be the sole reason we are overweight or have food struggles. We would be blindly denying, in fact we’d be fooling ourselves, if we continue to allow ourselves to believe our struggles are just because we love the taste of food.

If we are to let ourselves say we just love food, what we are really saying is that we love food more than anything else in life.

I’m not sure how to break the cycle but I know for a fact that I don’t want to love food then everything else in life. I want to love life and eat to live.

©2012 Prior Fat Girl. All Rights Reserved.

I have something on my mind. Something that stems from a conversation I had with my therapist last week about why people struggle with food. Why I still struggle with food, despite the fact that I’ve come to a more ideal, healthy weight. I have a post I want to write about it but first, I want to hear from you.

Why do you struggle with food?

©2012 Prior Fat Girl. All Rights Reserved.