I often think of my body as a WWE wrestling match, with my avoirdupois going belly-to-belly with my Work It Out-created muscles. Around my middle, the pudge always wins, with whatever ab muscles that I have hiding underneath about 50 pounds of fat. Recently, while on a 'walk' (read: a hard jog) with Janice during Monday's interval training class, a fellow WIO gym gal asked "How will I know if I am gaining muscle? Where will I see it first?" Janice replied, "Well, you won't see it unless you lose the fat over it first."
This got me to thinking about every diet I've ever been on, and how difficult it is for me to lose my upholstered middle. Sugar and simple carbs being my weakness, it takes almost super-human restraint for me to cut down on sugar in my tea or a half-box of mini-saltine crackers as a snack. The only time I truly lost over 100 pounds, I exercised 3-4 times a week and I ate around 900-1,000 calories a day. I ate very little meat (no more than twice a month, and even then it was usually chicken or an egg) very little fruit or vegetables, (mostly apples or salad greens) and Grapenuts cereal with milk (I could tolerate dairy back then) or dry toast as my bread/cereal for the day. My mantra was "It is good to be hungry, hunger pains mean you are losing weight." The problem was, once I started eating 'regular' food again with my then-boyfriend-now-husband, I started gaining weight, and then once my gym closed and we moved, got married, had a child and I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease, plus I was laid off from my steady job, the weight came roaring back on with a vengence, especially around my midsection.
Though I've been working out regularly for almost 4 years at WIO, and I've lost inches all over my body, my belly remains firmly upholstered, despite hours of crunches and core work. I think my recent spate of belly weight gain is due mainly to the cortisone I was given after my gut operation last year. While its the ultimate anti-inflammatory drug, it also makes me crazy with hunger, and all I want to eat is something sweet with bread. I could live on sweet tea and toast with cinnamon and sugar when I am on cortisone, and my satiety button in my brain is switched off when I am on cortisone, so I eat too much, too.
So when I look around me at WIO at all the flat-bellied women who always complain about their butts, hips and thighs, I find myself thinking of what I'd do if I were wealthy to get some weight off my body without any diets or more exercise. I dream of lap bands and liposuction, and always think that I would go to one of the places that maintains that neither is too painful because of their latest methods that always seem to involve lasers and laproscopy. There's a commercial on the local channels here for "Sonnobello" a plastic surgery practice that specializes in liposuction and the like. I happened to be channel surfing the other day when I saw the tail end of a piece on a woman who died at Sonnobello just recently, apparently from too much anesthesia, which she was given before liposuction. Last weeks episode of "House, MD" also had a patient who died of a fat embolism making its way to her heart and killing her after having her leg amputated to get her out of a collapsed building. Liposuction, like any kind of surgery, no matter how casual sounding, carries a risk of losing your life, which in my opinion is too high of a risk to take for a flat belly or underarms that don't flap like turkey wattles when you take a punch in kickboxing class. And once any bariatric physician hears I have Crohn's Disease, I bet he will toss me out of his office on my rear for having the temerity to ask for any kind of lap band surgery...chances are my guts would turn anything wrapped around them into one big stricture and I would not be able to pass anything through the inflamed tissue.
So my bulging belly will just have to keep hanging around for awhile, until I can figure out a way to get my diet under control. Meanwhile, though, I will keep pushing this body through space 6 days a week at WIO, which is an oasis for any woman seeking a healthy body and a calmed mind.
