What Have I Learned From 35 Years of Tracking My Weight

Would I like to lose weight? Yes.

Will I lose weight? Maybe.

Look at this picture (if you are on a phone turn it sideways):

The horizontal grid lines are ten pounds apart.
The blue line was my goal weight for most of this time period.
The red line is a place I'd be happy to be now.

This is the last 35 years of my life, as told by my weight. Key on the numbers:

1. 1988: I join weight watchers for the first time, at age 33. The weight I was then is a weight I would love to be now!
   
2. 1997: I move from Chicago to DC for a major career change, the same week my father dies. After about a year settling in, I buckle down and lose weight.
   
3. 2008: My sister dies unexpectedly, resulting in a major lifestyle change as I become a parent in the midst of grief.
   
4. 2010: I start this blog, determined to gain control over at least the physical parts of my life as life with grief-stricken adolescents remains chaotic. I de-emphasize work.
   
5. 2019: I retire, which blows up every habit I ever had. And then the pandemic strikes.
   
6. 2022: I embrace "intuitive eating", buying and eating whatever I want whenever I want.
   

Why do I keep coming back to this picture? Am I just wallowing in fact that my current weight is right up at my all time peak from 25 years ago? What can I learn by looking at this history, enriched with other stories of my life? Memories are faulty, but here my actual weight is recorded accurately. Looking back over this blog has also been helpful, to color in what was going on in my life during the ups and downs recorded on the graph. Here are some tidbits I've gleaned from anchoring my other memories in the truth of my weight:

• Losing a lot of weight for me is likely to happen relatively quickly, if at all.
• Not paying attention to what I eat and what I weigh means I'll gain weight.
• Each significant weight loss involved eating low carb a lot of the time, not eliminating sweets entirely, and never choosing low-calorie formulations of real food but instead cooking and eating more vegetables and meat from scratch.
• Each significant weight loss required a great deal of attention and focus, taking up bandwidth in my life.
  
• Each weight loss period was also associated with increased exercise and conscious activity levels.
  

How might I turn the above information into actual weight loss? Do I have the motivation and interest to focus on this? Stay tuned, I guess, because I don't know the answer yet.

California Dreamin'

 

View from the dorm

Wow, is northern California absolutely beautiful! And, it seems my girl is in love with it. And with school. And with the people she has met so far. I'm feeling she is well launched! 

The last week before leaving was fraught, indeed. Many last minute errands, several farewells (her brother threw her a going-away party!), and tears as we said goodbye to the dogs and drove off to the airport. But through all of this, "It's gonna be great!" was the mantra, even if sometimes through gritted teeth.

We got to SFO mid-day, and drove the almost two hours to Santa Cruz nonstop, going directly to Target to buy the essentials we didn't get in advance. By then we were exhausted, so off to the motel for a rest, before venturing out in the car to get more fully oriented. I was astounded by the change in terrain from the relatively flat and green town by the water, up the mountain through brown meadows to the wooded top part of campus where the dorm is. My ears popped on the way up, every time. We found our appointed unloading spot for the next morning, located one of her classroom buildings, and drove randomly around the mountainous campus, and then down to the waterfront campus three miles away where one of her classes would be. The main campus, not even including the coastal campus, is enormous and beautiful, stretching a couple of miles up and down the mountain, and about a mile across. It is completely separate from the town. There are clusters of housing units with food and various amenities, called colleges, and other clusters of the academic classrooms, laboratories, and libraries. They are designed into the landscape so that you don't see buildings until you are one them.

Evening view from overlook,
halfway up the mountain to campus

We got takeout dumplings from across the street from the motel. There was (yet another) orientation zoom session she had to be on in the evening, and she also wanted to take her time doing her hair in the privacy of our motel bathroom (before having to be in the gang bathrooms). After eating, I pretty much crashed out while she seemed to be having a good time on the zoom call. I fell into my signature hour-long deep sleep the minute I closed my eyes, but woke up when she came back into the room after facetiming with a friend in the motel courtyard. We both tossed and turned, dozed and woke, off and on for the rest of the nervous night.

Dorm from parking lot
Many stairs involved!

My girl had astutely signed us up for an 8:15 unloading slot, so we were among the first wave of cheerful students and parents rolling laundry hampers full of luggage and bedding and boxes around parking lots and into the dorms. Her room is a large triple, and she got first pick of the beds. All of the setups were the same - lofted upper single bunks with wooden desks and wardrobes under each one. She picked the one that seemed like it would have a view into the redwood grove behind the dorm from the bed! 

We had a flurry of opening bags and unboxing things, laying out power strips and surge suppressors, while waiting for roommates to show up. No-one joined us, and we decided to head back out to Target to knock items off the new list of more useful stuff we had been compiling while we unpacked and set up. It felt familiar to go back to the same store, but we also saw a Bed, Bath and Beyond with a final liquidation clearance and went in. We scored some high-end sheets as her second set for a pitifully low amount of money. 

After Target we went to a Hawaiian poke bar I had spotted on the map, and we got the absolute best poke bowls ever. But we had to hustle back for the first event happening on campus. 

Digressive anecdote follows:

The bed that trapped me

As she went off to the orientation thing, I decided to stay and set up the new foam pad and mattress cover and make up her bed. I pulled the plastic wrap off the compressed foam mattress topper, and from the ladder at the foot of the bed started unrolling it, and got the rest of it laid out while standing on the floor at the side and head of the bed. As the foam continued to puff up, I climbed back up the ladder at the foot and flung the top of the white fabric mattress cover as far towards the head of the bed as I could, and then tucked in the foot. The cover stuck to the foam pad, so from the floor I pulled and tugged to get it deployed over the rest of the top of the bed. I reached between the wooden bed frame and the wall to get at the cover from the head, and my arm was suddenly stuck! I couldn't pull my elbow back out through the small gap between the frame and the wall, even though I had gotten it in there somehow!

It was hilarious, and scary. I was alone in her securely locked dorm room - only the coded ID card could unlock the door from the outside. My arm wasn't uncomfortable while stuck in there, but no matter how I twisted and maneuvered, it wouldn't come out. I couldn't move the heavy wooden bed frame, anchored in place with the heavy wooden desk and newly stuffed with clothes wardrobe pushed against it. I tried to climb up the bedframe to slide my arm out the top of the frame, but I couldn't cling to the frame with my arm stuck. Feeling like Lucy Ricardo, I contemplated my next options.

My right arm was stuck, my left arm was free. My phone was in my lower cargo pocket on my right leg. I might be able to reach it, and one-handed dial my girl, but I pictured dropping it, having to remove my shoes and socks with only my feet to pick it up with my toes. Besides, the cell phone coverage in her room was lousy. Then I had an image of the missing roommates coming in with parents to find me stuck there and barefoot. 

That wouldn't do, so with a mighty shove by my stuck right hand and a pull with my free left hand, I moved the heavy wardrobe an inch. Then I could slide the bed just the half inch I needed, and I was free! Just as I was rubbing my poor red but free elbow, my girl came back in.

Return to main narrative:

At 3 that first afternoon, there was a half hour reception, introduction of some staff, and a very pointed dismissal of parents to allow the students to attend some mandatory meetings and optional additional events. We were each on our own. I went to the beach.

Santa Cruz has a road along the waterfront, with several parking areas every few blocks. There is a walking / biking path right along the cliff edge - the water is several yards down from the land. The weather was severe clear, and the California sun felt like it had a different quality than we get in the east. The temperature was perfect though the fierce sun meant that often you need a sweater in the shade but long for shorts and a skimpy top in the sun. I walked and sat on benches and read, content to be in such a beautiful place and rejoicing that my girl seemed to be settling in.

Saturday morning we exchanged texts, and set up a tentative evening rendezvous. Knowing she would be so busy, I floated the idea of going home early, but that received a lukewarm reception. So I decided to embrace leisure and tourism.

Seals under the wharf

Amusement park from the wharf

Santa Cruz also has a downtown, a municipal wharf, and an amusement park on a boardwalk by the beach. I drove out to the wharf, and spent time walking the wharf, people watching and then also seal watching. I went to a dog beach, and spent a very long time watching the canine and human interactions. I read on a bench on the sea cliff in the sun. From the motel, I walked to a beer garden (passing three other beer gardens on the way) and had a lovely lunch. 

My girl managed to squeeze me in for about an hour Saturday night, during which time we drove around downtown and stopped at Trader Joe's for a couple of necessities. But she had to get back to campus to attend a forest rave with her new friends. Also, one of her roommates had appeared and she wanted to spend some time with her. We set up another tentative rendezvous for the next night.

State park beach, with Coastal Campus seen in the background

So Sunday, I went to a lovely fancy breakfast at a downtown cafe. Then, I went to see Oppenheimer. (I opted against Barbie, because I was afraid that on a weekend daytime showing there might be kids.) While in the movie, I got a text from my girl saying she was downtown having lunch with friends, and would be happy to meet me there when she was done. The timing worked well. We met up easily ("downtown" is not that big) and wandered together for a while. We made another brief shopping trip for some more necessities (this time at CVS) and I dropped her off after a couple of hours. She had some pre-work to do before classes the next day. I had time to walk to ice cream and the beach, and one more trip to pick up a useful item for my girl at a hardware store (a flashlight - they have already had a power outage in her dorm!)

First day of school,
Grade 15

Her first class was at 9 am at the Coastal Campus. As I didn't need to leave for SFO until 9:30, I volunteered to pick her up and drive her to class. As a rule, she will take the bus, unless she manages to find a fellow student who drives. So Monday morning, I went to the usual pickup spot, and enjoyed a few minutes in the redwood grove while waiting. While she might have been pleased to just hang out and party with her new friends, she exclaimed that she loved her pre-work, was absolutely convinced she was studying the right thing. Biology is her jam. 

My trip home was long but completely uneventful. And, I am so happy for my girl, embracing the next step of her life with gusto! Her dad picked me up at the airport and was also thrilled to hear she is doing so well!