And I thought *my* weight-loss was impressive (Day 114)

At this point, I am down 58 lbs. total and can no longer wear any of my existing pairs of pants without either a belt or a clip in the case of elastic waists.  Else they're down around my ankles.  Which is a fashion statement of a kind, of course, but one I prefer not to state.  One of these days, I'm going to get some pictures onto this blog, as I am less ashamed of what I look like, now.  I was hesitant to post a "before" picture out of shame but now the sting is out of the shame. Done!

I do look back, unfortunately, with a certain amount of disgust.  As I said, it's in our culture.

I feel lighter on my feet--I'm always feeling lighter, and still lighter, and then lighter again, on my feet--plus more physically capable and inclined.  I handle better, especially on corners.  Walking feels different in a way that's hard to describe... almost not quite right, like I'm not sure where my balance is, though I'm not staggering.  Or maybe it's disorientingly easy.  It's really nice not having my inner thighs rubbing together.

I also handle heat better. Just now I remembered that the forecast high today is 29 (Celsius), so I checked the temperature out of curiousity (it's about 1 p.m., close to when we usually hit the high) and found it was 28.  I was like, "No way!  There is no way it is that hot!"  I would have guessed maybe 23 or 24, and was wondering whether the forecast was wrong.

In previous recent summers, I would have been very uncomfortable, brain-fried and unable to work without a big-ass fan trained on me (or fleeing inside into the A/C) with my feet swollen up so much they almost hurt.  Whatever the physiological reason is for heavy people finding heat hard to handle, it no longer applies to me, or at least not to the same degree.  The real test will be when I go to Cuba in November.  Rico rico!

Another difference: on hot days, I still go for fairly frequent swims.  I no longer wear sandals for the walk from the gravelled parking lot to the beach, however; I go barefoot.  This is because with 58 fewer pounds pressing my soles into the stones, it doesn't really hurt any more.  There's a sense of freedom to it, like when I was a kid and went everywhere barefoot in summer.

These changes are all amazing and wonderful, but they pale in comparison to what another person I know of must be experiencing.

Last weigh-in, my coach told me that Medispa's Ideal Protein customers, over the year and a half they've been offering the program, have collectively lost more than 8,000 lbs.  I had vague notions of being the champion, once I've lost the whole 100 lbs, but she let me know I'm not even close.  They have a female client who has lost 180.

Can you imagine that?  How different must she look and feel!  How must her life have changed!  I try to imagine losing three times what I have, and I can't even do it.  I asked the coach how she feels emotionally: "Giddy."  I bet!

As you probably know, I am a freelance journalist, and hearing this of course pinged my newsy's antennae.  180 lbs. is definitely newspaper-worthy, imo, so long as the client is willing to be so open publicly about it.  I have emailed my editor with the idea, and if she likes it, I'll ask the coach to contact the client.  I really hope she says yes, and yes also to before-and-after pics.  They must be gob-smacking.  Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, in my kitchen adventures, I have begun to experiment with cooking vegetables in a very hot skillet, searing them to burned on the outside while only slightly done on the inside so as to get that carbonized, barbecue-ish flavour.  I once had a short-lived romance with a person who always used pans that were quite hot, and so learned this approach by observation.

This next soup may or may not work with your skillet at low medium; I don't know, I've only tried it this way.  It was also my first experiment with cooking daikon, which I think worked.


Mushroom Chicken Soup

1 packet IP Chicken Flavoured Soup, mixed in your shaker as usual
2 portabella mushrooms, diced
6-8 snow peas, cut into quarters
1 tablespoon diced daikon
2 tablespoons chopped red onions
1 tsp olive oil
sea salt, pepper and Greek-style spice mix to taste

Heat up the pan with the oil spread over the bottom at high medium until it starts smoking.  Throw in the onions, cook just long enough, stirring frequently, to turn their surfaces golden brown while they remain raw inside--remember, you're not supposed to have cooked onions, this is a micro-cheat--then remove them from the heat.  Throw in the rest of the veggies plus the pepper and Greek-style spice and cook, stirring frequently, until the veggies are partly burned on the surfaces.

Turn off the heat, wait until the pan cools way down and add the soup (you can't add it to a hot pan or it instantly curdles; I found this out the hard way).  Or, while you fry the veggies you can be gently heating up the soup in a different pot, then add the finished veggies to it.  Stir in the salt, if necessary (I personally rarely add salt to any IP soup-based dish), and serve.

The slightly-burned flavour is what makes it.  Next time I do this I think I might put in something like cayenne or nyonya or chili peppers to heat it up that way too, a nice burning foil to the crispy inner romaine lettuce leaves I'm nibbling with it.

Soupapalooza

IP Chicken Noodle Soup, mixed the usual way
zucchini slices         \
diced red pepper      --- 2 cups
diced mushrooms   /
1 tbsp chopped garlic
sea salt and pepper to taste

Saute the veggies to doneness of your preference, garlic just long enough to change taste, add soup, serve when heated.  Dead simple but it somehow really works... something about how the pepper's sweetness is a foil for the zucchini's tang and the mushrooms are just warm and meaty.  I liked this so much I scraped the bowl with my spoon.

(Note: I don't do things like scrape the bowl with my spoon because I'm on a diet.  I did that before I got on the diet.)

Cilantro Veggie Soup (Day (102)

According to shiatsu teachings, if you do something for 100 days, it becomes indelible habit.  I guess I am there with this diet, then, and consequently will hit my goal, shrink past it and ultimately starve to death.

No!  No I won't.  I will just always know how to do the diet.  I am in Phase One.  As you approach the goal you transition gradually to maintenance helpings of carbs and fats by going through Phases Two and Three.  Phase Four is maintenance.

Anyway, this past weekend was the Muskoka Novel Marathon, the organization of which I co-lead.  A whirlwind of busy-ness, between organizational co-leader duties and trying to write something worth submitting for judging... and a bit of a challenge, similar to travelling, in the IP sense.  I was very much helped by the fact that the Den Mother--whose purview is the care and feeding of the writers--happens also to be on the IP diet.  In fact when I was having moments of weakness--our sponsors were providing us things like creme brule and trifle--she scolded me into adherence, in her loving way.  "Don't even look, Karen!  Don't even look!"

In fact, between the two of us talking it up to the writers, and how we both look compared to last year's novel marathon (she has lost 25 lbs. in 5 weeks), I predict that 2-4 writers who were there will undertake the diet.  Stay tuned.

What, you want to know how I looked?  Well, all right.  To set this up: back when I was in my late 20s or early 30s and still reasonably svelte, my dear friend Louise Hypher tailored a shirt for me based on that which the main character of my published novels wears officially.  Of course it has not fit me for about two decades.  But before the Novel Marathon I decided to try it on, and--ha!--I can get into it.  So I wore it on the third and final day of the marathon, and fellow marathoner Lori Twining got a pic.  I was so much in la-la land I forgot to take off the phones.

July 16, 2012 - down 53 lbs.

Now, enjoy this Cilantro Veggie Soup:

1 packet IP Chicken Flavour Soup, shaken as usual

Bok choi ------
Red pepper        \ ___ 2 cups
Green onions      /
Mushrooms----

1 tsp olive oil
2 tbsp low-carb chicken stock
1 tsp chopped garlic
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
2 tsp lime juice
Fresh ground black pepper to taste

Heat up the oil, chicken stock and black pepper in a frying pan.  Chop veggies, cilantro and garlic and add.  Fry until veggies are done.  Add soup, stir in lime juice, serve.  Some cilantro leaves artistically arranged would be a nice garnish for this.  Non-IP version, substitute regular cream of chicken soup from a can, or home-made chicken stock with heavy cream.  Yes, this is one of mine.

Thing that I have learned while on the IP diet

1) More about how to cook vegetables.  In fact, more about how to cook, period.  I cook way more, and different foods, than I did pre-diet.

2) What they say in the instructions about protein packet contents being hard to scrub off of cookware is true.  However they soak off easily.

3) Tearing open an Ideal Protein packet with wet fingers is physically impossible.

4) People who know and like you don't pay as much attention to your weight as you think.  Or as your mother does.

5) People have trouble believing that you can lose weight without exercising.

6) Walden Farms salad dressings don't taste like what they're imitating, but can be made acceptable with copious additional seasoning.

7) The diet still works with microcheating--so long as it stays micro.

and finally -- the biggie:

8) Contrary to my former belief, it is possible to lose weight without major suffering.

Past halfway (Day 93)

A thousand pardons for not posting in all this time.  What has happened is that the diet is no longer this shiny fresh new amazing toy I've got, a top-priority item in my life.  It has settled down into a routine and become normal, and other parts of my life have re-affirmed their primacy in my energy and attention.

That does not mean, however, that I do not continue extremely happy with it.  At 13 weeks I am down 53 lbs., more than half-way to my 100-lb. goal and still averaging about 4 lbs. loss per week.  Every time I catch a glimpse of my shadow on the wall or my reflection in a mirror, I am struck by the squareness of my shoulders or the reclaimed angularity of my face.  People notice less than I wish they would--I think they will when I've lost more--but some still notice, and I get lots of "You look fantastic!"

The wardrobe is currently a good news-bad news area.  I have no swimsuit that fits properly, but don't want to buy one at the moment for obvious reasons.  My granny-underwear are falling off.  I am wearing wrap-around and elastic-waisted skirts.  I have old stuff that I'm hauling out of the closet because it fits once again.  I bought something out of necessity: a totally adjustable belt, else my non-elastic pants are down around my ankles. I have a beautiful purple tunic-top with shoulder-pads and an attached sash, a really science-fictiony thing that is still elegant enough to wear to a formal event.  I said mournfully to Melissa, when I was down about 45 lbs., "I don't want to shrink out of this!"  She said gently, "I hate to say it, but you already have."  Fortunately I have another dear friend who is a costumer, ergo quite a good tailor, and she says she'll take it in for me.  I hope it works, because I can't imagine being able to replace it.

Perhaps a year or two ago, I went to the Barrie Value Village and found this beautiful shirt in a two-colour fabric... burgundy with a blue/teal sheen.  I whipped it off the rack, tried it on and found to my misery that it was way too small for me, the front panels not coming even within three or four inches of each other, let alone buttonable.  Because I couldn't stand not to, I bought it anyway, thinking maybe someday I'll lose weight... even though the voice of sense was telling me Don't be stupid... no you won't.  It'll end up in your closet with all those other things that don't fit you.

It fits me now.  Still a tad tight, but it buttons.  About four weeks ago, before it really fit me, I took it in to show my coaches, telling them the story.  They gave me coaches' orders to bring it back in each weigh-in.  Last one--yesterday--it fit.

When I was at 40 lbs. or so down, I was carrying one of those 18-litre bottles of spring water up my stairs.  They weigh 18 kg, of course, which is about 40 lbs.  As I hauled it, I thought to myself, "That's how hard it used to be to walk up these stairs when I was carrying nothing."

When I walk, I feel a bit as if I'm gliding; when I get up from a chair, I feel sort of as if I float up.  I walk faster, and have been told I walk more gracefully.  I feel as if I am reclaiming mobility, which was one of my reasons for doing this.

Looking at pictures of myself as I was before I started... on my driver's license, my passport, in albums... well, alas, there is disgust there.  I ostensibly refused to condemn myself at the time, but at some level I think I did anyway, because it's in our culture.  Fat is associated with negative character traits such as greed, selfishness and laziness.  (Also jolliness, a stereotype I definitely fit; but it can also mean people not taking you seriously.)  It de-sexualizes a woman, taking her out of the mainstream marketplace at least.  Our culture has trained our eyes to see fat as ugly, and I've internalized all this as much as everyone else, for all I didn't want to.

The upside, however, is that I love looking at myself in the mirror now.  I can never become wrinkle-free as in youth, but it's still like watching years roll back.  I weigh now what I did 15 or so years ago.  I am blessed with fairly smooth, clear skin and hair that refuses to turn grey other than a few strands at the temples (same as my mother--hers was like that at age 64 when she died).  My hair has come to seem more voluminous, in contrast with my less-voluminous face.  I was already sometimes being mistaken for mid-30s at the age of 50.  It's only going to get better.

The beautiful thing is that once I hit slender, I will wear things I never would have worn the last time I was, when I was in my twenties.  I had a severe self-esteem problem then, and I avoided dressing fashionably or even what you would call well.  Hating my body, I never dressed to show it off.  Here is something I suspect most people don't understand about low self-esteem and appearance: it's not that people with low self-esteem can't be bothered to enhance it, or feel that it's futile.  It's that they feel that looking good would be fraudulent, creating a false impression of them as worthwhile people when they are really worthless people.  That is certainly what I felt.

But I don't any more, and not only that, but today there are styles that I like and that would suit me as there weren't back then.  Like the slender androgynous/athletic look; I am totally going for that.  (Melissa looks great in it, but I won't stick to earth tones as she does; I'm more the jewel-colour type.)  Or these free-hanging flowing tops based on classical draping that are so in now--they're gorgeous.  (I've picked up a few, but I'm shrinking out of them... and I've been too heavy to carry most of the nicest ones.)  I plan to dress to show off my body...especially its slenderness... and to sometimes be flashy in an offbeat, artsy but still snappish sort of way.  I don't care what anyone thinks, and I no longer feel it's fraudulent.

I do not actually know whether it's possible for me to slim down to well-defined muscularity--though Jo-Ann's words, anything is possible, remain always in my mind--but I have always wanted that, and maybe I'll get back into working out just to attain it.

The one thing I worry about is the post-C-section "apron" tummy.  There's a lot of extra skin there, already hanging down over the bikini scar.  How much will it tighten up?  Exercise would help--not that I'm allowed it, yet--but sometimes it simply doesn't get rid of extra skin.  Would I go for surgery?  Ehh... I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

My confidence in terms of body image has gone through the roof, and that has pulled up my general confidence and positivity.  I am happier than I have ever been in my life.

I have this absolutely gorgeous black and dark-green satin chongsam, embroidered all over, that dates back from the 80s... I can't even remember how my ex and I acquired it, but I think I only wore it a few times before I got too big to.  I just tried it on now.  Three months ago I couldn't even have got my shoulders into it; now I can, but it's still too small around the middle.

But I will wear it. I am certain of that.