The Art of Losing Winter Weight (draft version)

T.S. Eliot was right: Spring's a bitch.  (He didn't really use those words.)  Northeastern late March weather will tease us with 60 degree days, so we'll all start putting away our snowshovels, and then it will hit us upside the head with a "late-season snowstorm."  We know if Spring is nigh, so is summer, and all of a sudden, the next season's merchandise hits the store windows, the Lands' End swimsuit catalog comes through the mail slot, and I start wondering if I should be shaving my legs more often.

And then I ask myself the same question I ask myself every March: how will I try to lose the seven- pound (or more) winter coat before I have to start trying on lycra/spandex?  How has my body--my metabolism--my self-image changed this year?

Eliot may have measured out his life in coffeespoons, but I've measured mine out in ounces, tablespoons, and calories.  I don't mean literally, of course--really, if there's any measure of one's life, I hope it's in kisses and belly laughs, roadtrips and campfires, concerts and confidants.  Every spring, though, here I am again, carefully doling out the half-and-half into my coffee cup so that I don't feel guilty, later in the day, about having a little treat before bed.

In my flannel pajamas, I'll flip through the Lands' End swimsuit catalog, which is sitting on my counter, while I enjoy an ice-cream sandwich and a cup of tea.  I don't know how I ever wound up on the LE mailing list but I haven't bothered to take myself off of it, maybe because I find browsing the swimsuits so hilarious.  Lands' End has done everything in their power to make you believe that no matter what your shape or size, there's a suit here for you.  They do so by showing a bunch of models--who may at one time had been Models, and by the look of their belly buttons, they've had kids, and so they're curvy, but their cellulite has been airbrushed--in a variety of styles with words like "minimizer" and "control" in the descriptions.  When you're drinking tea in flannel jammies, it's hard to imagine that you're going to need to squeeze into a piece (or two pieces) of lycra/spandex, let alone in front of other people.

The first time I stepped into a Weight Watchers meeting was with my friend and her mother in the late 1970's.  The meeting was in a church basement, and there were lots of silver-haired ladies in polyester vests making women take off their shoes and get on scales.  Then they'd write the weight down in a little booklet, and the women, putting their shoes back on, would murmur to each other knowingly about their struggles that week.

I had no idea what was really going on, until the group leader asked for a show of hands: how many of us cheated this week?  Everyone's hand went up, as I remember it.  I thought the meeting was for adults who had been bad, behaved badly, shouldn't be around kids--hell, what were they doing out of jail?  This was my introduction to the never-ending struggle so many of us have between eating for pleasure and feeling guilty about it.

Eventually, almost every grown woman I knew was on the WW diet.  The language of Weight Watchers seeped into our vernacular ("portion control," "points") so that every so often, when we  indulged in a decadent dessert, someone would kill the ecstacy of the moment by wondering how many points she'd just ingested, and we'd leave the table feeling more guilty than satisfied.

It's taken me nearly 30 years and four WW memberships to understand that these are the rules of occupancy in my body:

1.) I have a functioning body for which I am thankful;
2.) No matter how tight or loose my clothing is during any given season, I will always be somewhat self-conscious, a by-product of growing up slightly chubby and being mocked in grade school (even though I now understand how mean girls can be when they lack confidence in themselves);
3.) No matter what my weight, regular exercise makes me feel more alert, more strong, and more rested;
4.) No matter how I eat and exercise in any given season, my weight will fluctuate seven to ten pounds between winter and summer and winter again;
5.) I eat on autopilot when I am lost in emotion; the vicious cycle of sad (i.e., missing my father), eating without thinking, and guilt/more sadness is itself consuming and its immediate remedy is only found in the company of people I love and who love me.  To that end, there's also a correlation between how I eat and how I feel, so when I'm in the doldrums, be they winter or spring doldrums, I need to be honest about what I've been eating--snacks, nibbles, Devi's leftovers, whatever--and rather than plague myself with guilt, change my behavior;
6.) No matter how much I measure in tablespoons and ounces what I've eaten, at the end of the day, I have a love affair with food and a love affair with putting good, real food into my body; gnawing on celery stalks and rice cakes all day is just as self-torturing as beating myself up about the half-bag of coconut hershey's kisses I managed to mindlessly blow through during the Israeli version of Life of Brian.

The true art of losing the hibernation weight isn't--at least for me--about counting carbs.  It's remembering a promise I made to myself long ago; that I like to feel good (bathing suit or no bathing suit), I like how I feel when I'm exercising in fresh air, and I like how I feel when I eat right.  Spring is a time to reconnect with the outdoors and yourself, to set some new goals, to be realistic about them.

I'm not diving into summer with an image of myself in a bikini.  I hope to start a little garden, grow some good veggies, feed our family with them, and take our kids for walks more often.  I'm on WW now to help me shed some baby weight and remind me how to eat when I'm not eating for two.  I'm almost--almost--ready to go bathing suit shopping, even if it means coming to terms with how things have shifted around having had two babies, even if it feels like (write it, Gebell) disaster.