Reformed Dieter: Chapter One

Excuse me while I blow the dust off my blog...Has it really been over a year since I have written anything? Wow. I think it's time to go back to basics and relaunch this blog. Let's get caught up, shall we? I have recently made the decision to quit the diet industry. Yes, quit the diet industry. After having spent decades obsessed with my weight and size I have finally said fuck it! Am I going to spend my entire life trying to fit into some sort of deluded media based image of perfection? That seems like a waste of beautiful life if you ask me.

That was my driving force in reclaiming my life from the diet industry, I don't want to waste my life trying to achieve socially acceptable beauty. I found myself relapsing into my eating disorder, bulimia. It only came around every once in awhile so I never allowed myself to admit I had a problem. While I was fighting through this relapse I had the thought of all the conversations over weight, diet tricks, and eating habits I have had over the decades. Truly diet culture has been at the forefront of these conversations.

Weight has been an on going conversation in my life since 4th grade, when I first was placed in the obese category.  Fast forward to age 35 and I am a pro at weight loss. Oh yes, no one knows how to lose weight like I do. How fast do you want to do it? What lengths are you willing to go? What diet fits you? I could answer all those questions! Weight loss became my identity.

The ability to lose weight became my shining achievement. I was placed in a separate social box - the "Successful Dieter" box. Up the ladder I climbed as I seemingly became more successful at weight loss and managed to shrink myself down to a size 4. **autographs later** **No, No, please no pictures** I had reached the dieters Mt. Everest - Skinny! Do you know what's shitty about Mt. Everest? No one can live at the top and it's a long way back down!

So, as I slowly slide back down and gradually put on weight I became desperate to get back to the top. I didn't want to lose my shining achievement. I was going to be pushed off the dieters pedestal, and my fear of failure made me do some desperate dieting tricks. When I crashed at the bottom I crashed hard! It took out my confidence, my self-worth, and my spark. Everything felt like punishment. The joy was gone from daily life and what came in its place was shame and embarrassment. That's what broke me.

I am done with diet culture. I am done with killing myself to look a certain way. I am done with counting, weighing, obsessing, and punishing myself.  The diet industry broke me. I cannot do it any more. I am tired. I am 35 years old. I am done. I just want to be. I want to be whatever my healthy is, and I am prepared to do whatever it takes to NEVER live in a diet obsessed world again. **drops mic**

I am currently working with a wellness coach who is helping me find balance, peace, and health in a slow, made for me program. Diet culture is ingrained in me. It is all I know. I do not know how to just be. Food, weight, size, and exercise is the hamster wheel in my head and I'm taking it apart with the help of a great coach.  New Figure Forward is going to continue on as my outlet for the journey that lies ahead. I have begun to use YouTube to capture videos of epiphanies as they happen, Instagram is my daily in the moment posts, and my blog will document the overview of it all.

CLICK HERE to watch my YouTube videos.

Personal evolution is truly a gift. We are not stuck as the same person forever. Yes, I am a changed woman. This once diet crazed woman is turning in her calorie counters, pedometers, scale, and measuring tape. Goodbye diet culture, hello peace of mind and a long glorious life of living healthy!

Remnants of a Binge

     I had a sobering moment in my car today. While I was poking around in my glove box I came across an old candy wrapper.  I sat holding it, having flashes of the me up until 3months ago. The sugar binger. The sugar hider. The sugar sneaker.  I would eat my candy in my car, usually within minutes of leaving the store.  I ate it quickly and I ate it all. A fleeting moment of bliss and then the guilt would beat down on me like a hammer.

     When I refer to sugar as my drug, I am not being cute. I mean it to my core. Sugar ruled my thoughts, sabotaged my healthy eating, and made me hate myself. I was addicted. I was a bitch when I wanted something sweet and couldn't find any. I would eat other things to try to curb the cravings; that never worked. When I would get what I wanted I would binge on it, including ODing on chocolate cake until I was sick. I am not the only one. I am not the only person who has found the only way to stop themselves from eating sugar is to pour salt, soap, or Windex on it.

     I had to come to terms with my addiction when it was seriously interfering with my health. If I did not quite sugar, it would be the thing that was going to make me very sick.  Women with PCOS are wired to crave sugar due to having insulin resistance. Drastic highs and lows in blood sugar can cause mood swings, cravings, weight gain, fatigue, and depression. The huge risk in feeding the craving for sugar is the high risk of diabetes, stoke, and heart disease.  I was walking a path of destruction. It did not matter that I was happy with the number of the scale and my pants still fit; on the inside I was destroying myself.  Reality check time.

     So, just like a drug addict or alcoholic, I asked for help with my addiction.  I found what I needed by way of support and understanding. I woke up one day and never touched sugar again.  The first week was horrible. I was a bitch. I was short with everyone and nothing would make me happy. I stayed strong, motivated by my own health and well being. All the research had sunk in and I wanted to be free from this poison. I detoxed from my drug of choice and I survived and no one died.

     I came out on the other side free from cravings and binge eating. I had made peace with my body. I promised to no longer abuse my body and to only care for it with loving thoughts and healthy foods. I found great dessert recipes that not only satisfy but are so much better than the junk I was eating prior to my change.  I have found myself happier and more stable in mood swings. I am happy with myself. I am proud of the adult I am working hard to become. I am not a victim of my addiction. I forgive my body for what it does with sugar due to my PCOS and now I make accommodations for my body and nourish myself.

 

Here are a few changes I made to break my bond with sugar:

-I do not eat anything with high fructose corn syrup

-No more white sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, cane sugar, and sucralose.

 -I read labels on EVERYTHING

      - if I cannot read what is in it, I do not eat it. No more franken foods!

-No more white flour and very little wheat flour

- More fruit and vegetables

- I found Chocolate Covered Katie (google her....you'll love her) for healthy desserts

-I use coconut sugar

-I drink lots of tea, all sorts of flavors. It's my new spurge at the store instead of candy.

-I had to make myself be ok with saying no to everyone. Family or friends. It is not personal. Sugar items to me are like putting drugs in front of a recovering drug user. I had to be ok with being open about why I am making the choices I make.

-I made connections online. PCOS websites filled with stories just like mine. I am not alone. That helps.

   

     The most important change I made was realizing this is about my health and well being.  Sugar will not be the thing that beats me! I eat for my health and not a number on a scale any more. Weight is not the whole picture of health.  I know I have to stay away from sugar. I have eaten it once since I stopped and I had a headache so bad I almost cried. That was all I needed to know! No cupcake is worth that kind of pain!

To read all about my sugar addiction click here
It is a very real addiction!

My Battle with Addiction

Teal is worn to represent PCOS awareness 

Since coming out of the PCOS closet I have been receiving emails from women with the same condition. Many of these women had not been informed by their doctors of the potential health risks PCOS contributes to our bodies. The majority, like myself, have been handed birth control to put their bodies back on a month to month schedule. I am not sure why doctors are not explaining the high risk for diabetes, heart attack, and stroke.  PCOS goes beyond a mustache; it can be life altering if not taken seriously.

Answered many of my questions

I have been putting in hours of research to have an understanding as to what my body is doing and what it needs. I checked out books from the library and read every legitimate doctor written article I could find online.  The information is out there and not hard to find. What I have found has been a resounding focus on the link between PCOS and Type 2 Diabetes, which can be fatal.  This was a huge slap in the face for me. I have written about being a sugar addict in a previous blog (click here to read about my battle with sugar).  It never occurred to me that I was putting myself at risk for diabetes; after all, that stuff only happens to really over weight people and I lost the weight I needed to to put myself back into a healthy bracket. I could not have been more wrong!

The biggest hurdle I had to get over was the idea of thin meaning healthy. There is such a focus in this country to reach and maintain a small size that, often times, the health risks to obtain that size are brushed under the rug. We are not praised for good health - we are praised for our physical size.  I wasn't paying attention to what my body needed to be healthy, all I was concerned with was maintaining my waist size.  This is where I had to take a real look at myself and what I was doing to maintain my size.  I had to stop lying to myself. I was maintaining my weight through deprivation.  Up until 2 months ago I was still abusing my body and had managed to rationalize it as the way I needed to eat to prevent weight gain.

The past two months have been a journey of self love.  I had to step outside myself and treat myself like a dear friend who had lost her way. This is when I started to educate myself on PCOS. I was motivated by my hair loss, I wanted to put a stop to it and maybe throw it in reverse.  The information I was obtaining was overwhelming and started to explain the battles I have been fighting with my body.  The sugar cravings have been explained in that PCOS causes insulin resistance which causes extreme highs and lows in blood sugar causing cravings for processed carbs and sugar. The body is trying to quick fix the imbalance of sugar. I was not having just any cravings; I have had cravings for sugar so bad in the past I have become a monster until I had a fork and cake in front of me.  Now I had to face reality and break this addiction.

My addiction to sugar was like that of a drug addict. I would binge behind closed doors. I could not stop, sometimes for days. I lied about binging and purging for years. The thought of breaking this cycle scared me. I seconded guessed myself over and over.  I can't live without sugar. All the fun foods have sugar. I will miss it too much.  I forced myself to go through the detox anyway. I braced my husband for the mood swings that could happen during this time. I braced him for what life would be like on the other side; no ice cream, no cake, no late night trips to Diary Queen, and the diet overhaul that would be taking place.

The detox was not fun or easy. I needed to break the habits I had formed over the years. The biggest being my bowl of ice cream every night. I had to tell myself it is the habit that is the hardest part and to stay strong. I had to be aware of what I was eating, reading all food labels for the hidden sugars that sneak into our foods with clever new names.  I ended up cutting out more than just junk food, out went the salad dressing, the peanut butter (I use 100% natural now, one ingredient-peanuts), the bottled sauces, white flour products, and much more. This has forced me to take control over the foods that come in the house.

Jumping head, I am on the other side of the detox and kitchen overhaul.  I have successfully cut sugar and learned to balance my blood sugar levels with healthy foods and not letting my body go hungry (letting the body go hungry can cause dips in blood sugar and for someone with PCOS this leads to craving for sugar that can then lead to diabetes). I eat more fresh vegetables and fruit than I did before the wake up call about my health.

This journey has not been about weight. I hid my scale a few months ago as part of my New Years resolution (click to read about my addiction to the number on the scale.).  I wanted to see if my body would change so I took out the smallest pants I own and took my before picture. Yesterday I took another a month later and was shocked. I have no clue the weight difference or even the inches. This lifestyle change isn't about any numbers. This just reinforces that the changes I have made are making my body happy.

I don't have a size goal. I am letting my body come to its own conclusion of where it is happiest. I have to eat for my health and for my health only.  The weight that comes off is because my body does not want it, not because I have dieted it off.

My journey with PCOS is changing my life as I take a mature look at my health and set aside my vanity. This world can not get rid of me that easy. I will show my body love and compassion. My body is only as strong as I make it and at this rate, I will be a rock of strength.

Empowered Woman on a Mission. Join me.

    I am excited, shocked, and humbled by the amount of fans my Facebook page has received in the past few days. In light of my New Figure Forward project picking up speed I figured I should take some time to explain who I am, where New Figure Forward came from, and what my mission is as a blogger and as a woman.  

    My name is Alyson, I am 31 years old, and I live in Las Vegas, Nevada.  My passion for figure equality comes from my own life long struggles with weight. I do not remember a time when I was not the biggest kid in my class. I was always the tallest and then I became the roundest. I quickly developed a distain for my own reflection. Up until a year ago I have always hated my body and I punished it in many ways.

     In elementary school, I was bullied, teased, and beat up. Middle school was the same. I was fat and miserable. I did not feel pretty. I started diet pills in 7th grade. I started binging and purging in 8th grade. By high school I was abusing myself in the worst ways.  I wrote about my high school experience here; My diary. 

    After high school my weight went up and down, over and over. By the time I was 25 I was 300 pounds! I lived with it. I was fashionable. I had friends. I had a job I loved. I was making 300 pounds work for me, until a moment in my bathroom changed my life forever. 

       **WARNING** I'm about to get seriously honest.  

     Everything changed for me the day I could not reach around myself. I sat on the toilet unable to reach around. I did what I had to do and then burst into tears. I actually cried myself to sleep on the bathroom floor that night.  I had lost the empowered female I had told myself I was. I was strong enough to be big. I was strong enough to not let the stares, comments, and almost needing to purchase an extra airplane seat make me feel bad about myself. I put on my happy face everyday. Deep down I knew I was lying to myself. I was not happy. I was miserable. I realized I was depressed and stuck - but then I had the realization that I didn't have to settle for this being my life. 

     October of 2007 I signed up for Weight Watchers and proceeded to lose 125 pounds over the next year and a half.  My entire life changed. Forever. I promised myself I would NEVER go back to 300 pounds and I have kept my weight off for 6 years now. The biggest challenges have come from being in a new body. One that did not end up like a super model. I had to learn who the new face in the mirror was. I did not know her, I had never seen her before. My problems were not solved at the end of my weight lose journey. No one told me I would actually have a whole new set of problems fall in my lap. 

     I still struggle with weight issues. I am still a food addict. I still see a fat girl in the mirror. However, I am also a runner and I enjoy cooking and eating healthy. I work everyday to repair the mental damage that simply became apart of my everyday thought process. I am not perfect. No one is. I have stretch marks. Everyone does. My thighs touch. So do the thighs of most people.  I created New Figure Forward as a place to be deeply honest about my body and my struggles at all of my weights.  I created my blog to be a place where women (and men) could come together and empower each other with honesty.  
     
     A passage from a pervious blog I wrote :" I will never be a super model and neither will anyone else. There is no such person. I like this reality; there is a lot less pressure realizing no one has a blemish free body. I am done playing dumb to a culture that assumes I don't know models and actresses are being Photoshopped.  I will not allow these fantasy images to influence the acceptance of my body.  I am human, I am normal, and my body is healthy and strong.  I choose to love myself, to value myself, and to cherish my body.  I will now be removing the "sucker" sticker off my forehead. No one can make me feel bad about myself anymore."

     And with that I took control over the images I see everyday. I do not read magazines any more. "Cosmo" went into the trash and does every month. I follow plus size models and other curvy empowered women on Facebook and Instagram. I love my body so much more when I see other bodies that look just like me. I look at these women and I think they are beautiful. I am beautiful. You are beautiful. I am ending my own self abuse and I hope to inspire others to do the same. Learning to love myself is not easy and everyday I have to keep working on it. I hope to encourage someone to do the same, to shut off the hateful inner monologue and embrace their body, however it maybe shaped!!

     

My weight loss gave me a new figure 

and I am pushing forward!!! 

Welcome to New Figure Forward!! 

The Diary on Video

Photoshopped lies made me hate my body

I kept one hell of a secret in high school. I kept it so well not even my best friends knew. I never talked about it until a few years ago. I've shocked people over it. I've shocked myself over it. I always knew I had it but I never wanted to admit how bad it was.  I had an eating disorder, I hated myself, and put my health at risk for the approval of my peers.  I kept a diary during several attempts to lose 40 pounds or more.  It's time to be brutally honest about how much I hated myself.

February 13, 2000,

     Well this is it...hopefully....the start of the rest of my life. Today I got on the scale and weighed in at 190! Oh my god! I felt so bad.  So I ended the day right, with a an all vegetable meal...

 ...So let's see how long I'm going to last (and yes, I'm trying to stop putting myself down.) 

February 16, 2000,

     I totally screwed up on Valentines Day and yesterday! My punishment today is I'm not eating anything until 5p.m. tonight....

...I'm so hungry. I have diet pills on me that I'm going to take after this class...

...Well I'm very proud of myself. I survived lunch and didn't even take my pills. Can you believe food means so much to me?

Filled with hateful words. I was my worst enemy. 

Entry after entry detailed my longing for food, how hungry I was, and how I had to make it until 5p.m. until I would eat. I always had diet pills with me and many days they would be all I would have. 
No wonder I was such an angry teenager - I was starving! My grades and classes suffered because I wasn't able to focus on anything expect my empty stomach. 

My goal was to weigh 140 pounds. That was the magic number that would make me beautiful, popular, and would bring the boys to their knees. ...At least at that weight someone will find me attractive ...It's 13 years later and I have NEVER made it to 140 pounds! My doctor told me that between 170 and 180 are healthy weights for my body type. I'm 5'9, I'm not meant to weigh 140 pounds.

It wasn't long before not eating until 5 p.m. and diet pills also included taking a run before school. In my diary I used words like "fat ass" to encourage myself out of bed.  I lived off my diet pills and hateful inner monologue.  By March I had included a diet pill to take in my sleep,...I'm excited to see myself in three months.Starting tomorrow I'm going to take a new diet pill to help... This was a great combination. I'm starving and NOW I'm not sleeping. (I can feel my husband's heart tighten as he thinks of me both hungry and tired.) 

Hard on myself is an understatement. 

Rereading my diary makes me cry. I was hurting, I was starving, I was seeking someones approval, and I was slipping under the radar. The entires continue for a year and by the following February I was 220 pounds. How does a starving girl GAIN weight?! It's because of what I didn't write down. The binge eating. I refer to it in my diary as "a bad day." I would binge and purge. When I grew too weak to mentally fight off the need for food, I would stuff myself until I was sick. I remember telling myself I couldn't even torture myself thin. I couldn't starve the fat off or purge it off either. 

The worst binge memory I have includes an entire grocery bag full of candy. We sold candy in school to fundraise. I didn't want to sell it - handing me a bag of candy was like handing a drug user crack. The candy  didn't even make it a day. I was home only minutes before the carnage of candy wrappers covered my bedroom floor. This day was not entered into my diary. Many of these kinds of days didn't get written about. Acknowledgment would make them real. Instead I handed over my  money to cover the cost; that way,  no one knew I ate it all and life continued. 

Page from my diary. There are many pictures like this. 

As a senior, I wanted prom to be the highlight of my high school career. I wanted to be thin and amazing with my dream date on my arm.  Instead, it became my darkest time. My diary entries turn into daily check-ins of measurements, weight, food and exercise log. While on the outside I was an active senior; AP/Honors student, drama club president and editor on the paper, on the inside I was destroying myself. The closer prom got the worse my destruction became. I would go home after school, kill myself with an intense hour of exercise, then shower and return to school to work on the paper.  I timed everything around my school schedule and my mom's work hours. No one ever knew. I had reached my goal by the time prom rolled around. I was even lucky enough to have my crush as my date. I felt amazing. Then it was the next day. 

I road this roller coaster of weight lost and gained for almost 10 years. When I tipped the scale at 300 pounds, I knew I was fighting for my life now. I needed help. I wasn't winning the war with myself. I tried crazy diet after crazy diet. When I saw the commercial for Weight Watchers I figured, why not give that a try? Something has to work. Weight Watchers was what I needed. I needed to learn how to eat. My eating philosophy prior was eat salads to be thin and eat the entire package of cookies so there would be no evidence and purge. This was getting me nowhere. Weight Watchers taught me how to balance healthy with junk food. Healthy wasn't just rabbit food, in fact I lost my first 100 pounds without eating a single salad because I hated them! 

I now weigh 175 pounds. That's not much smaller than my smallest in high school. I worked hard to get to where I am physically though my greatest achievement has been breaking the mental hold my weight had on me.  I'm ending the war within myself. It's not a fight to be at my current weight. I do have to take care of myself, eat healthy (which does include salads), indulge occasionally, and exercise 4-5 times a week. I'm no longer on a "diet"  - I eat to live a long and happy life which sometimes includes cake! 

I still hear the voice of my disorder in the back of my head. 95% of time I am able to shut it up and move on with my healthy habit day. Then there is that 5% where I succumb to the voice and binge eat. After the blanket of guilt lifts off me, I forgive myself and just move past it. It is not easy, sometimes I get so unbelievably pissed at myself, however I made a promise to myself that I would love myself. Forgiveness is a part of love. 

I'm not perfect. I never achieved super model statues. My thighs still touch and I'm soft around the middle. I still have two digits in my size tag and the double chin has been known to make an appearance in pictures. I cannot get back those years of self-hate and torture. All I can do now is give myself the gift of love and forgiveness.  For today and many tomorrows I vow to embrace my body, just the way it is, and love it!