Day 2 late night (mom)

Hey! There was nothing wrong with your diet today. Except possibly, like me, too much healthy food. Dinner was very healthful. Three potatoes between four people (yes, two are little kids) plus handfuls of veggies: carrots, onions, kale, summer squash. Eat the rainbow! What's unhealthy about that? 

Berries and yogurt are GOOD for you. Okay, if, like me, you ate two big bowlfuls of frozen berries with yogurt and cream and cajeta - that's what I used for sweetening, what did you use?- you may be feeling, as I am, that the second bowl was too much. I don't eat junk food very often, I don't pig out on chocolate or chips very often, but I do eat way too much good-for-you food. It's possible I downed 600 calories worth of frozen berries and yogurt. It's probable that my tummy will feel funky for the whole night. Is it also possible that I will learn from this and eat only one bowl next time?

It's possible. 

Day Nine- Emo Pajamas (Daughter)

Food Log:

Scince last entry:
Blueberries with cream and maple syrup, a small cookie, a bite of whatever the pastry mom bought downtown was, the dinner mom described below, raspberries, a handful of baby carrots.
Not very healthy, eh?

As for exercise, I'm ashamed of myself. A little haying, walking around the raspberry festival and downtown, and like 5 minutes of bouncing on the trampoline. Other than that I've been sitting around reading Oprah magazine. Go figure.
I got these cute emo pajamas at a thrift shop near the raspberry festival, and they fit fine.... for home. They're tight enough to camel-toe if I don't watch it. Ack! All my bulk is concentrated in my belly and upper thighs. The only thing I'm going to regret about losing weight is losing some of cleavage and butt. Last time I was at Annie's house, she was having me try on all her clothes (TRY being the key word! She's about six sizes smaller than me!) and when we found a pair of pants that fit (tightly) she was all like "Girl, you got a butt going on!" And she's right! It felt awesome to know SOME part of my bulk is actually attractive. Not that my mom likes seeing me in tight pants. C'mon mom! Skinny jeans look good on fat chicks!
As for the emo pajamas, the only thing I really hate is that they stop right where my belly begins. Major gross factor:

Day 2, 7 pm (mom)

I'm about to start cooking dinner: roast yukon gold potatoes, sauteed zuchinni and onions, romaine and snap pea salad with vinaigrette, and herbed goat cheese. Raspberries and cream (okay, yogurt with a little cream added) for dessert.

Food Diary : filling in the gaps here, I already posted breakfast (toast and goat cheese, blueberries). Lunch was a bento box including salad, rice, two pieces of tempura, teriyaki chicken and beef, and three pieces of a tuna roll. Too much food, I could've eaten half. The, since we were at the Lynden raspberry festival, a small sundae of vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce. 

A tiny snack downtown, one sixth of a baguette with tomatoes and cheese. And another doubleshot of espresso. 

Exercise: Farm chores, pushing goats around, trimming hooves (made me sweat) and haying a little bit. Walking around the Lynden raspberry festival. Walking around downtown a little bit. This isn't much exercise, is it? Not considering that to seriously lose weight you are supposed to exercise 90 minutes a day. But also! Start slow! So okay, while I watch TV tonight, I vow to do at least 10 minutes on the elliptical. Hear that, R.? Hold me to it, 'kay?

Day Nine- Mid Afternoon (Daughter)

Food Journal Entry:

Breakfast: None.
Lunch:
3 pieces of sushi, yakisoba, and a large bowl of udon soup. Raspberry sundae, cotton candy, blueberries.

Day 2 (mom)

Hi Sweetie,

I think it's very very brave of you to post your fears packet where I can read it. 

Of course you want to feel beautiful and sexy. A girl your age as a right to feel beautiful and sexy! Let me tell you a little secret that I've learned (painfully, over and over again) through the years. When you are older and you look back at photos of yourself from this age, you are going to think, "My God! I was gorgeous!" 

Really.

Really. 

Here's another little secret. I, too, want to feel beautiful and sexy. (Ewwwwwwwww.)

Your fears are very very familiar to me. I have, at one point or another, felt all of them. Most people have. Some of these fears I no longer have; I have found love (and I wasn't skinny when I did) and I'm not afraid of losing it because of my weight. I'm afraid that as a married woman, some of my inner feelings and fears aren't really appropriate to share with you and so I doubt I can be as open as you are being (Shout out to all the married ladies who know exactly what I mean).

But I can be completely open and honest about my food journal.

It's 9 am.

Four squirts of goat's milk straight from the teat (Ewwwwwwwwww.)

A quad shot of espresso with a tablespoon or so of half and half

a slice of whole wheat bread with herbed chevre

a handful of fresh blueberries

check back in later.

Day Eight (Daughter)

So, Hi. I'm the daughter in this Dynamic Dieting Duo.
I've been doing this for about a week now, which made my mom decide to start too.
I began not exactly "dieting," but just watching what I eat, last week, at the urging of my therapist.
I've known for a while that I have an eating disorder, but it wasn't until my clothes started getting WAAAY too tight that my weight really slapped me in the face. I'm a five-foot-three fourteen-year-old girl. I didn't know how much I weighed when my favorite dress couldn't be zipped up, but I did know that I felt awful when the most expensive article of clothing I owned, which had been a tad too big when I bought it, now couldn't be zipped up over my big fat ass.
Well, it turned out my mom is just an incompetent zipper-upper, and the dress fit just fine, but it was still a wake up call. A nasty wake-up call that spurred a bout of depression and poems like this:

"Hey, You! Put that down!
You don't need more sugar now.
Time to lose some weight."

I did a whole page of weight-related haikus in my journal.
After my mopey bit, I decided to talk to my therapist about all this. I am a compulsive over-eater, which means that I just eat and eat whether I'm hungry or not. What I do is take food to my room and eat all of it; not just small amounts, but gallons of icecream, three-pond bags of pecans or frozen blueberries. Ludicrous amounts of everything. She gave me two packets: one about my fears related to weight, and the other a journal of everything I eat. I started at 172 lbs. One week later, I'm 170 lbs.
My goal is to lose one to one-and-one-half pounds per week. If I lost more than that per week, it would trigger my body's defense system, and my system would try to hold me at my current weight. I want to lose 30-40 lbs in 6 months, in time for my Quinceanera.

A Quinceanera is the latina coming-of-age ceremony which takes place on a girl's fifteenth birthday. It's a really big deal, like a cross between a sweet-sixteen and a wedding. I know, I know: I'm white. But my stepdad is from Mexico, and I grew up with the customs. So I might as well be Mexican, too.

I can't have my Quinceanera at my current weight. I just can't. I feel so ugly. Just look at that picture on the side there! I look like I'm pregnant! When I wear tank tops, I look in the mirror and I see all that bulgy fat right under my armpits, and the lines when my pants cut into my belly, and it's just gross. I want to feel beautiful, even sexy. And losing weight will help me feel that way.

Anyway, here's the contents of my packet, eh?

It's called "FEARS BENEATH THE EATING DISORDER", and the first thing it had me do was select three fears from a list, in order of how strong the fear is.
My fears were:

1.) Being rejected by friends and family
2.) Losing control and gorging
3.) Gaining weight

Then it asked me how each fear influences my behavior.

1.) I'm timid and very appeasing. When someone is yelling at me, I shut down and stonewall. I'm always afraid of losing people, so I put their needs before my own.
2.) I try not to eat large portions of breakfast, lunch, or dinner, but then I have HUGE and continuous snacking.
3.) It doesn't. I just keep gaining.

It asked what thoughts I have that trigger these behaviors.

1.) If I don't put this person before myself, I might lose them.
2.) If I eat too much of this, I'm going to look like a hippo and feel gross.
3.)If I keep gaining weight, I'm not going to be attractive and no one will want to date or marry me.

Finally, it asked for positive phrases I could use to replace those bad thoughts. My counselor told me to write my answers up pretty and pin them up where I'll see them every day. I'm going to work on making them into a poem.

1.) I'm strong and Independent. People who will only be my friend if I'm their slave are not real friends. If I just be myself, people will like me. My family will never abandon me.
2.) I have enough willpower not to eat all of this. I am strong.
3.) I can find someone to love me no matter what I weigh. I will consume a healthy number of calories.

I will begin posting what I eat tomorrow. I have a packet which I carry with me everywhere and write down everything that goes in my mouth. Personally, I don't think mom's system of remembering what she's eaten and putting it on the blog is going to work. What about soda? What about mindless snacking? I certainly can't remember those things unless I put them down right away. C'mon, mom! You should get a notebook for this to put in your purse, okay?

Day One (Mom)

Prompted by my daughter, who wants to lose some weight for her Quinceanera, I bought a bathroom scale this evening. I haven't owned a bathroom scale since about 2001, or roughly when I passed 200 pounds for the first time. I know what my heaviest weight ever was: 245, 9 months pregnant with my third and final child. I know what my heaviest non-pregnant weight ever was: 225, a week after delivering aforementioned child. And now, god help me, I know what my present weight is: 220. That's crept back up from 194, my lightest recent weight. 

So my daughter and I are starting a diet together, and this, our joint blog, is part of it. It's a food diary, an exercise log, and a mutual encouragement vehicle. Ground rules are: nothing mean, nothing untrue, and no names. And no faces in the pictures. Okay.

To my daughter, first of all, I want you to know I think you are beautiful. Why should you lose weight? Because

a) you want to

b) there's such a terrible terrible history of serious obesity and related disease in the family

and

c) hopefully, losing weight in a healthy way will help you overcome the unhealthy relationships you are developing and show you that you are so much more in control than you currently believe. In control of your decisions, I mean: decisions not just about food, but about all kinds of things. More on that later.

Food log, starting from now, 9 pm, 7/17/08

One large flour tortilla, filled with approx. 2 oz goat cheese (homemade!) and a bunch of swiss chard and onions. I expect that will be it for today, but if I get a late night snack, I'll write it down tomorrow.