Autobiography in 5 Short Chapters
by Portia Nelson

Chapter I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit ... but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter V

I walk down another street.

What Does the Scale Say? 

The only thing the scale can tell me is how much my body weighs at the moment I step on it. It provides objective numerical information. All of our value judgments based on that information are subjective … coming from inside our own heads. The scale cannot tell me how I appear to myself or others, whether I’m healthy, or how I should feel about myself and my own character.

The scale is a TOOL that can be helpful in weight-management.
It is not a judge of my worth, my health, or even my beauty.  I can choose to get on the scale and weigh my body or not, but that numerical information is an objective fact, whether or not I choose to look at it.

I weigh myself every day. I record my weight in a computer program that provides me with a graph that shows me whether over time (weekly, monthly, yearly) my weight is going up, going down or staying about the same. I find this information useful in my efforts of personal weight-management.

My own reality is that my own food intake … over time … is what ultimately moves the scale number up or down. As a “reduced obese” person, I need my MIND to help me stay a normal weight because my BODY continually signals me to eat in a manner that will cause me to regain my lost weight. I have discovered that  I, personally, ALWAYS choose to eat more ...over time... when I don’t use the scale to weigh myself and force myself to SEE and recognize that objective numerical reality.

I agree with the following article:

Don't Stress About the Scale

By Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, M.D. – May 1, 2013 – usnews.com

It's simple, right? You stand on your scale, and then it tells you how much you weigh. And if the sentence ended there, I'd agree you know how to use a scale. Except most folks, especially folks who are struggling with or are upset about their weights, don't end their sentences there. Instead, their scales also somehow seem to magically tell them "how they're doing."

Doctors aren't often any better. Despite a whole lot of schooling, their scales also seem to tell them things beyond weight; once patients stand on doctors' scales, somehow those scales miraculously tells doctors whether or not their patients are healthy.

Well, I'm here to tell you and your doctors that the only thing a scale is capable of telling you or them is how much you weigh. How you're doing and whether or not you're healthy—well, those variables depend on how you're actually doing and whether or not you're actually healthy.

It's no surprise that society assigns a huge amount of undeserved power to the scale—after all, that's what we've been taught. That may be due to the past 50 years of weigh-ins at Weight Watchers or the nonsensically dramatic final weigh-in of The Biggest Loser or the incredible weight bias that permeates all of society and leads many physicians to rather than actually take a careful history and examination of the person in front of them, to simply weigh or even just look at a patient with weight and ascribe all of their concerns to it.

But here's the thing. The only thing a scale ever tells anyone is how much that person weighs at the moment they step on it. And I realize there's often overlap—if you're trying to lose weight and the number on the scale goes down, it reaffirms your strategies, and weight does in and of itself raise the risk of many medical conditions. But letting the scale be the sole arbiter of success or health is risky.

It's risky because there are times when more weight doesn't correspond to worse health, and there are plenty of medical problems that have causes other than weight. It's risky too because scales measure a great many things that don't count—clothing, constipation and water retention for instance. And scales also don't know whether or not there have been great reasons in your life for you to have used food quite appropriately for comfort or celebration.

Most importantly, it's risky because the scale should never have the power to deflate you. Whether it was for weight loss or health, if you've adopted healthful changes with the express intent of seeing the scale go down, and it doesn't, you run the risk of abandoning those behaviors that likely improve your health at any weight consequent to your potential discouragement.

So the next time you sidle up to your scale, remember: It'll tell you how much you weigh, but you have to tell yourself how you're doing. And when you're trying to figure out how you're doing, instead of looking to an LCD readout, look to what you're actually doing to affect your weight or your health. If what you're actually doing is "good," don't let a stupid scale tell you you're doing any differently.

I recently made changes to my Weight Range Maintenance Plan.

Previously the top black "Unacceptable" area was 126 lbs and over,
       (now the "Unacceptable" area is 130 lbs and over);
and the red "LoseWeight" area was 125-120,
       (now the "LoseWeight" area is 129-126 lbs)

The use of a visual image is an effective way to set specific goal-weight-range numbers into my mind and heart. I tell about how I created this graphic, and why, in a previous article, "Setting A Goal Range". 
See that article to see the original chart and the maintenance weights that I originally set for myself.

Over time I've adjusted the graphic to reflect my current realities.  See "Change in my Weight Range Maintenance Plan" for my previous changes to these numbers and the reason for making them. 

During this entire past year, despite consistent and continual ongoing low-calorie eating, together with keeping accurate daily records of my food intake in the computer food journal DietPower,  my weight has refused to drop down to my former maintenance levels. 

My body will not allow me to be as active here in my late 60s, and it also appears to need a great deal LESS food than it did in past years. Therefore I am again changing my Weight Range Maintenance Plan to reflect my current reality.

  See "Records: My Past 8 Years" for a detailed understanding of the relationship between my food-intake and my body-weight.  I am still keeping these type of records, and one of these days, I will do another post with updated information.

       I enjoy reading about many different people and their individual Diets, and am frequently interested, entertained, and/or inspired by them. Many of them like to avoid labeling their eating style a “Diet”. Some of them use terms like - Healthy eating / way-of-eating / lifestyle / non-diet.

This is merely a Semantic Difference, because EVERYTHING THAT INVOLVES EATING is by dictionary-definition a “Diet”. Even “overeating” involves a Diet.

A great many people choose to associate and attach negative connotations to the word, “Diet”, however, this is merely a psychological prejudice, and it doesn’t change the fact that the word “Diet” is an accurate label for EVERY TYPE of eating style. Diet is the label that I personally choose to use when I discuss the issues of eating.


I use DietHobby as a digital scrapbook.

See the ARCHIVES which are full of writings that entertain, inform, and interest me.  I frequently review them for personal encouragement and inspiration.

Today DietHobby features a recent article by a young woman, Kate (K-8), who first Blogged about her large weight loss, and now Blogs about having a “healthy” self-image and “healthy” lifestyle.

Her weight-loss appears to be due to the fact that she began eating less by adopting a vegetarian diet, that is relatively free of refined sugars and starches, together with quite an active exercise “lifestyle”.

At a height of 5' 9", she weighed 287 lbs in Jan 2009 and dropped to a low of 161 lbs in September 2011. Her records show that in maintenance, she bounced between and 164 lbs and 177 lbs between November 2011 and April 2012. Her last recorded weight of 168 lbs was in July 2012.  On October 7, 2012 she posted that her current weight was around 175 and that she was now thinking that her "initial goal of 180 lbs was the right one." She included a picture of herself in that Oct 2012 post which shows her size as larger than her 2011 picture (see below) but smaller than her 2013 picture.

After that time, she stopped weighing, and adopted the principles of the diet book: Health at Every Size (2010) by Linda Bacon.  From reviewing Kate's Blogs and Facebook posts, and using my own maintenance knowledge, my best guess is that she is currently maintaining her body weight somewhere near the 190 to 200 lb range.

I wrote an reflective article this past New Year’s Eve that included a previous article by Kate about her change of maintenance style, see: The End of 2012. 
Today I’m including another such post here in my Digital Scrapbook, DietHobby.

The Media Diet 
          by Kate - 4/13/13 - www. thisisnotadiet-itsmylife.com

I've been a larger person for the great majority of my life. I've never experienced being someone who has teeny little invisible-to-others flaws they pick apart in the mirror. In fact, for most of my adult life I thought it would just be fantastic to wear a size 14 so I could shop somewhere that sold clothes I liked. I never coveted a "thigh gap" or a stomach with so little fat you could see my abdominal muscles. I thought it would be great if my thighs didn't chafe when I walked from all the rubbing.

The closest I ever got to the nit-picking your body phase was at the end of my weight-loss and the year that followed. I flew past original goals, to wear that size 14 and be able to walk anywhere I wanted to without getting out of breath or chafing my thighs. I was wearing size 8, even 6 in some things. My thighs didn't chafe. In fact, they didn't touch at all. In clothes, my stomach looked flat. I lost most of my breast tissue and went from a DD-cup to a small C or even a large B.

While I was deep in the process of obsessively losing weight, I became a consumer of a type of media I previously never knew existed: fitness and health. I started looking at pictures of fitness models. I started following them and reading about their workout routines and diets. I worked out at least 6 times a week, for 1-2 hours each time. It was all very intense. No walks in the park for me! I weighed myself every morning and I adjusted my diet accordingly. I was the thinnest I had ever been in my life and I kept it that way with constant vigilance. But I still didn't look like the fitness models. There was a time when I thought I should, and could, look like them if I just tried a little harder. Why not? I lost 125 pounds. I could do anything. All it takes is enough "will-power" right? If I didn't get the six-pack, I must be full of lazy-excuses. That's what those fitness model types said, and look at them! It must be true...

Except that it's not true at all. My body is my body. I first gained weight in the third grade. My adult body had never been so small. I have been so many sizes in my life, from 6 to 24. I have yo-yo dieted, losing and gaining 20-40 pounds at a time. I even lost 100+ pounds, gained it all back and lost it again. I bet I have lost close to 500 pounds in my life if you added it all up.

The reason I do not, and never will, look like one of those headless ab posters actually doesn't have anything to do with laziness or excuses. It's just not the way my body is due to my genetics and personal history. It took me a long time to recognize and be able to accept that, especially with all the messaging telling you that if you just Tried a Little Harder, you could make all your perfect body dreams come true.

The fitness and health world is not at all what it seems to be. At my heaviest, I would have killed to be the size 14. Visible abs were never on my radar. My outlook on myself was far healthier before I ever started reading about health and fitness. Isn't that just backwards? Shouldn't the health industry be promoting actual health and fitness, not obsessive body re-composition?

I had long ago stopped looking at fashion magazines and models. I knew they were underweight and that it was crazy to think I would ever look like them. But the fitness look seemed so "healthy" and that's how it was promoted. Anybody can do this, they tell you. You just have to want it bad enough. Just eat a "clean" diet, lift weights, and wake up one day looking like Jamie Eason!

Fast forward to now. My outlook is totally different. I'm never going to look like Jamie Eason. I'm me. I look like me. Kate. Hi! Nice to meet you. My thighs touch and my belly is not flat. I am strong and healthy.

The 2013 picture was taken a few months ago. I'm wearing the same outfit today, so I must be a similar size. I don't weigh myself anymore though, so I can't say for sure.

I went on a new type of diet, you see. I went on a Media Diet. I already didn't watch much TV or read magazines, but I do spend a lot of time online. Throughout my changing lifestyle I had managed to build up quite the repertoire of places to consume other people's tight, toned, surgically and digitally enhanced bodies online and read about their endless nit-picking of their imperceptible flaws, Facebook being the most gluttonous.

The most important tool of the Media Diet for me the Facebook UNLIKE button. Does the page post fitspo? Unlike. Does it go on about counting carbs after 3 pm to get the flattest belly? Unlike. Does it tell me I'm not good enough the way I am? Unlike. Does it send me the message that if I don't look like the model in the picture, I'm a lazy, full of excuses waste of space? UNLIKE at the speed of light!

If it does not lift me up and support actual health and actual fitness, I don't need to consume it.

We are bombarded with messages about not being good enough every single day. You cannot completely escape this. I can't stop going to the grocery store and seeing the headlines about which celebrities are too fat and which are too thin. But I can take an active role in many parts of my life. I can choose.

You do not have to buy those magazines or follow those pages to be healthy. If you're like me, you might be a lot saner and healthier without them.

My New Years Resolution this year was to stop reading weight/health/nutrition books. I am proud to say that in 2013 I have only read fiction and art books.

Come to think of it, ever since I went on my Media Diet, I am doing a lot of things I enjoy that are important to me that I wasn't doing before. I'm not working out 6 days a week anymore. I am walking in the park. I am hiking. I am practicing yoga. I only go to the gym 1 time a week, for BodyPump, which is just plain FUN. I have drawn in my sketchbook almost every day this year, something I kept telling myself I would do that I never did. I guess I needed to free up the mental space for it. When I get sick or am too exhausted, I do a crazy thing: I REST. I do not worry about what it might do to my weight the next day.

I don't track anything anymore, except my menstrual cycle. When I exercise, I do it for myself, for my mental and physical health, and because I want to, not for calories burned. I don't do it to earn my dinner. I'm going to eat dinner either way. And sometimes it's going to be pizza.

I have allowed myself time and space to think about what is really important to me, how I really feel about my body, and to stop comparing myself to anyone else. Comparing yourself to other people is stupid. A person with my body and my history is never going to look like someone who has always been thin. That's a great big "DUH." right? But I think a lot of people still don't get it.

Many people would look at my body and find things to dislike about it, but I am not them, so it's okay. My hips? They are glorious. My stomach and thighs that touch once more (but don't chafe)- so nice, so comforting, so warm and soft. Fat is not an enemy, it is part of my body. It gives me my hourglass shape. It gives me my fabulous D-cups. I gives me warmth. I am no longer constantly cold. I don't feel dizzy. I have a lot more energy. I am more comfortable sleeping. I feel more attractive and less self-conscious.

Contrary to what I thought, being the thinnest ever didn't make me happier. It didn't make me better. It just made me look different. I remember how I felt when I took the middle picture you see above, and I kept staring at it thinking "Wow, I am actually thin." It was strange and intriguing. It was an out of body experience for sure. When I look at the picture of me now, I see me. It's not weird, it just is. Living the life I want to live naturally returned me to the body I was meant to have. The funny thing is, this is the body I probably would have had if I had never dieted at all. If I had just let my body mature as it was meant to. But everything told me I wasn't okay the way I was, and I believed it. I don't believe it now. And anyway, it's not for anyone else to say.

You shouldn't consume things that make you feel like crap. That includes food and media. Are there people in real life or online in your life who treat you like crap? Do they talk down to you? Do they act like they know you better than you know yourself? Do they make you doubt yourself? Cut them out. You deserve better. And make sure you're not one of them.