Let me tell you a little about myself.
I was never an athletic child by any stretch of the imagination. Being short compared to my classmates, I usually scored poorly on any physical fitness test that measured my cohort by age as opposed to height: my legs were shorter so I couldn’t run as fast; my arms were shorter so I couldn’t climb as well. I was in 5th grade before it dawned on our Phys Ed teacher that setting the chin-up bar for “average height for xth grader” skewed his results for anyone on my side of the bell curve. He added one of those folding gym mats to make up for the difference, and suddenly 6 girls could do the flex arm hang that never could before! He probably took credit for improving our strength too.
Through Junior High and the first year of High School, I did bike a lot. There were actually places I could go on my bike, such as the library, park district, a grocery store, several friends’ houses, and a small shopping center. This was no longer true when we moved to Texas. My physical activity was largely limited to walking around the school. Nonetheless, my BMI on graduation day was 21.2* — well within normal range.
I went to college, and had a bigger campus to walk around. I also had to take a few PE classes, which is where I met the first truly competent coach I ever personally encountered. At the time, she was the head Women’s Volleyball coach, and she took the time to point out what I was doing wrong, and more importantly how I could do better. I was still not very athletic, but at least I wasn’t a hazard in the gym. However, like most other college students, my diet was not what anyone would consider spectacular. Somehow, I managed the 4 years only gaining 5 pounds, for a BMI of 22.2. This is, by the way, my current weight and BMI.
A year later — in the middle of grad school — I got married. By then my BMI was up to 23.6 — still normal, but I was still getting heavier. Then one night, I got home from choir practice to find my new husband watching one of those talk shows, and I became familiar with the work of Joyce Vedral. She’s looking pretty good for a senior citizen, isn’t she? Trust me, she looked terrific then too. Within days, I bought one of her books, the one she wrote with Jean Claude VanDamme’s wife. Well, I started weightlifting. And because we had a number of activities, we ate more fast food than was really good for us. I bulked up, but not in a good way. I moved on to one of Dr. Vedral’s other workouts, but not before my BMI was up to 25.4. I was able to delude myself that a lot of it was muscle. And hey, BMI is a crock, right? Right? Besides, I’ve got one of those relatively wide Eastern-European frames and will never ever be model-skinny. Right?
I got out of school and started working full time. I ended up in one of those apartment offices that always has some sort of food thing going on: cookies for guests; popcorn with the manager in the afternoons; lunch with “the girls”; stopping for a snack on the way to make bank deposits. Oh, and then we’d all decide to diet together — which usually meant a trip to Sam’s Club where we would buy a big salad bag and a monster sized bottle of reduced fat ranch dressing. By the time the lettuce got brown and disgusting, we had usually given up anyway. I still walked some, and we had fencing class once a week. We probably had fast food of one flavor or another 4 days a week for dinner. During this time, my BMI fluctuated between 26.3 and 28.1. I looked like a little sausage, especially in that “modular clothing” that places like “Units” used to sell. I had become convinced that diets were a waste of time. And then I got pregnant.
My official post-pregnancy weight is only 3 pounds more than my official pre-pregnancy weight. That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, my BMI was still way too high at 28.7! Like Scarlett O’Hara and many other women, I resigned myself to the idea that most women don’t get their old bodies back after having a baby. I bought size 12 jeans and decided to live with it. For most practical purposes, I had stopped working out except for an occasional walk around the block pushing the stroller — weather permitting.
One fine morning, my husband arrived home from work — he was by then working in an Emergency Room — and announced we were going on a diet. He had been keeping track of the progress made by the head of the local Nephrology residency (a kidney specialist) on one of those low-carbohydrate diets. Here’s my husband’s results. Frankly, he looks even better now. I got back down to college weight, and we did not do any kind of exercise at all.
We didn’t add exercise to our routine until several years later in 2001, when we bought a decent stationary bike. Although I was skeptical at the time, it has more than paid for itself since we didn’t have to buy a gym membership (or two). I started doing Joyce Vedral’s Fat Burning Workout and some flexibility training while he biked. I have since switched to a military workout, and experimented with the shovelglove. I tend to develop some less-than-feminine-looking muscles, so back to the military workout for me. He uses weights while I bike. We both watch CNBC while we work out.
I lost the weight, and I kept it off long enough to make me (according to a prominent “fat acceptance” blogger) “literally a freak of nature.” Although my BMI did creep back up to 24 for a bit — still “normal”, still lookin good, just not as firm as I’d like — I’m now back down to college weight and in better shape than I have ever been. Because I have much better muscle tone than I did in college, I wear a size 2 jean now. Frankly, I don’t think I have ever worn a size two before, even in Junior High! And we’re about to step up the workout routine; maybe I’ll get back to High School weight.
Next time, I hope to talk about being a freak of nature, the truth about fitness, and why most diets fail.
In the meantime, a little background reading in lieu of “in closing”: Children who sleep less weigh more; inexpensive recipes for the New Year; I hate to say it but Kate’s right about Weight Watchers and Jill has some insights of her own to add, too; BlogHer on the diet rabbit-hole; and heck, she’s still big but she looks like she lost 20 pounds just by getting a bra that fit! Thanks, Carson!
* I realize BMI is a controversial measurement. I am using it to avoid this kind of reaction. By expressing my weight as a ratio with my height, you can start to think of it in terms of what you would weigh at these levels instead of focusing on my relative lightness.