WHY “DUMPY OLD BROAD”?

I get a lot of flak for the name of this blog.  In 2012, when I started it, I weighed nearly 225 pounds.  By 2014, I was down to 140 pounds and many people told me that I should change the name of the blog because I am no longer dumpy.  They are missing the point.  The purpose of my blog is not to be slick and glamorous.  The purpose of my blog it to inspire every-day women, no matter their age or physical characteristics, to get out and have adventures. 

Ultimately, my love of hiking and sailing led me to lose weight so that I could continue to do those things.  My weight loss has been quite a journey in itself.  Those readers who face losing a substantial amount of weight will understand how impossible it feels.  Nearly every aspect of our lives affects what we eat.  The idea of staying on a diet long enough to lose (in my case) eighty-five pounds seemed impossible.  The truth was, I made a series of lifestyle changes that, gradually, added up to a whole lot of weight loss and I didn’t have to do them all at once.  It went something like this:

1     I retired.  This was good for about twenty pounds.  My stress level went down.  I no longer stopped for a pastry and a latte on the way to work.  I no longer hit the vending machine for chocolate at 4:00.  I didn’t need to “diet” at all to lose those pounds.

2     I started doing CrossFit.  The regular exercise helped burn calories and I made new friends who were good influences and supportive of my journey.  I built lean muscle and increased my metabolism.  That was good for another 20 pounds without “dieting.”  Then I got stuck and realized that I was actually going to have to change my eating habits if I wanted to lose more weight.

3      I started eating a Paleo diet.  I ate meat, fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.  I didn’t count calories or go hungry.  I just didn’t eat grains, sugar, or dairy.  I lost the rest of the weight and I kept it off until a series of events caused me to abandon my healthy ways and start living on fast food consumed in the car.

4      I gained back forty pounds.  I was still doing CrossFit and hiking a lot, so I never got as heavy as I had been but, once I eliminated all the stressors from my life, I decided I needed to get that weight off.  It was harming my health and preventing me from reaching my fitness goals.

5     By that point, I had been on the Paleo diet for about five years and was fairly sick of it.  I decided to try a different approach.  I stopped drinking alcohol and immediately lost about fifteen pounds.

6    Then I needed to go on an actual diet.  I chose to use an app called Noom.  The app gives you a calorie budget for each day depending on your level of activity.  It provides a handy database that includes the calories for almost anything you could eat which facilitates logging your meals.  If, like me, you like games, it turns staying within your calorie budget into a game.  The weight started dropping off.

7    I had always resisted counting calories and weighing and measuring my food, but I was very motivated to lose weight, so I bought a kitchen scale and a new set of measuring cups and started measuring my portions.  It was very educational.  It was shocking to learn that the portion of meat I was eating, thinking I was being good, could actually contain 600 calories.

8     I am almost back to my goal weight of 140 pounds.  Having lived for several months on 1200-1500 calories a day, the prospect of being able to eat 1600-2000 calories to maintain my weight seems extremely generous.  I will continue logging my food because it helps me to be mindful of what I am eating.  I can eat whatever I want, but there are trade offs.  I need to stay within my calorie budget, so eating calorically dense foods at one meal can leave me feeling hungry later.  This has helped me shun French fries and pizza.  I still eat mostly Paleo foods, but relatively harmless foods like a slice of toast or a piece of cheese now seem like treats to me.

9    Traveling and eating with friends is fraught with opportunities to overeat.  I fight this by bringing my own food.  I try to bring things that everyone likes and then bring enough for everyone.  No one turns down a free steak or a salad that they don’t need to prepare.  Pre-

made salad bowls from the grocery store make great lunches on road trips (or at home.)  I bring a cooler full of food wherever I go and feed healthy food to my friends, rather than letting them push fattening food at me.  That and surrounding myself with new friends who care about diet and fitness has overcome most of my temptations.

If you have a lot of weight to lose, pick a healthy lifestyle change.  Get used to it and see how far it takes you.  When you stop losing weight, make another change.  Don’t try to do it all at once.  You’ll feel deprived and give up.  Just keep moving forward.  Don’t get discouraged by the inevitable setbacks.  No one is condemned to being “dumpy” forever.