New Year's Eve, Goal-setting, and Change

Everybody's doing it. But I've never done this before, this goal-setting and measure-noting. In fact I usually don't even note the passing of the year with much interest. Even at work I resist the formal goal-setting process. I've never needed it before.
But I acknowledge that what I have been doing isn't working for me and this is as good a time as any to start something new. So I'm going to set goals.

This morning (I'm off of work this week and I haven't just been a vegetable as usual.) I decide to check out the BMI charts. I am encouraged by Late Bloomer who is doing a year in review and has wonderfully gone from "severely obese" to "obese". I know there is a lot of controversy over BMI but honestly, a BMI of 47.6, mine as of this morning, can't be good whether BMI is an ideal measure or not.

Here's a chart tailored for me:

Weight 260 BMI 47.6 Morbidly obese
Weight 245 BMI 44.8 Semi-morbidly obese (I made this up)
Weight 218 BMI 39.9 Severely obese
Weight 191 BMI 34.9 Obese
Weight 163 BMI 29.9 Overweight

(I made up the semi-morbidly obese because from a BMI of 40 up, it shifts from every 5 points to every 10. And this dismissal of nuance for the heavier folks is just unacceptable. They tell us that even 5 or 10 pounds matter. They should act like it.)

So my numeric goal will be to become semi-morbidly obese (245 pounds) by July 1 and to go from morbidly obese to severely obese by this time next year (218 pounds). This is 42 pounds in a year, about 3.5 pounds a month. And that seems quite doable.

More tomorrow. I'm going to the gym. Goal: Something for three minutes. Yes, just three minutes. Why do you ask?

I'm Surprised

to find that I am glad to have been found. Thank you to those who have dropped by. It is nice to see you and hear from you.

The Dead of Winter

Thanks to my propensity to look for easy solutions and slogging through Lyn's archives at Escape from Obesity I purchased a light therapy lamp a couple of months ago. Ok, you have just experienced my habit of putting a weeks worth of stuff into one sentence.

I was wading through those archives. I loved reading her stuff but, as always, when I slog through archives I got them in a concentrated form very different than the form in which they were written. So I see a lot of change and a lot of emotional stuff quickly. Somewhere in there she talked about SAD and getting a light to help fight it. I'm not sure whether I have SAD or not, but I resonated to the notion that I never see the sun.

Winter was drawing nigh -- nice hokey construction, eh? -- and I had just bought a car. This matters because I struggled with not having a sun roof. My new car doesn't have one available. And some part of me realized that most of the sun I got was because I had a sun roof. This time of year I leave home in the dark and arrive home in the dark. If I were to get sun I'd have to go outside regularly at midday which just isn't going to happen. And even if it did, I'd be wearing a lot of clothes so only my face would be available to the sun. So I figured it was worth a shot.

I use this thing for 15 minutes while I am performing ablutions and dressing in the morning. And after about a week I found that things just got easier. I don't know how to explain it better than that. It was less of a struggle to get up and do whatever I need to do. It isn't that I felt depressed before so much as that I feel undepressed now. Does that make any sense?

Anyway, I am hopeful that this might help to reduce my inertia, ease my reluctance to get up off of my padding and move. I've had a lot of years of not moving. At this point I'll take all the help I can get.

Weight today: 261

Explain That Stupid Blog Name

Ok. I have to start somewhere.

As it says over there on the side -- of course these things change -- when I was born my mother struggled between two names. I got the other one.

Most of my life I have been glad that I landed where I did. But in the more recent past I have longed to be Claire. The Claire in my mind is an ethereal pale tall slim creature with long fingers. She ages well, with a pronounced sense of personal style. She has a quiet grace, punctuated by occasional humor.

I am not that person. I am short and fat and older than death. I don't appear to have much subtlety (a trick to throw folks off track) and can't wear stylish clothes to save my life. They don't design stylish clothes for 260 pounds and 5'2". And, as I said, older than death.

I'm sick to death of feeling clunky and inelegant. But apparently not sick enough to fix it. Gee, I've lost 6 pounds in the last six months. Aren't you impressed? I'm disgusted. But there is that teeny voice that says "Losing 6 pounds is a whole lot better than gaining 6 pounds." While true, that isn't saying much.

It is the dead of winter but the days are finally getting longer. I'm giving this place a shot. Maybe talking about it here will help, give me a little distance and more focus at the same time. And if you drop by, whoever you are, you are welcome.

Starting Weight back in October: 268
(It was a while back but I'm taking credit for every ounce I remove.)