All of my yearly maintenance exams got rescheduled and landed all in the same week. I spent three days a couple of weeks ago being probed, prodded, joints popped into place, blood drawn and weighed. I waited in three different waiting rooms. It was quite the adventure. When I finally sat down with my doctor that deals with my cholesterol, she told me that I looked great. She looked at my chart and told me that I had lost weight, almost twenty pounds since the last time I saw her. Then she asked me how I’d done it. How on earth did I perform this miraculous feat? I looked her square in her masked face and said “Torture and starvation.”

This is not far from the truth. I started with torture first with a strength training class twice a week. The class consisted of jumping around a lot with weights and I hated it. Every time I did a jumping jack, I felt all of my body fat jiggle. Every exercise we did in that class made me hyperaware of my gross flabby body. Then I would get angry with myself. How could I be so out of shape when every day I spend thirty minutes on the elliptical, do an hour of yoga and walk a bazillion steps?!?! But I stuck with it because the instructor was/is cool and super supportive. She knew that I hated all of the things she made us do and she encouraged me with an appropriate amount of cheer. Eventually, I stopped hating the class. I didn’t love it, but I no longer hated it and I lost ten pounds. So it was obviously working.

Then I started the starvation tactic.

Starvation is a pretty dramatic word. The scientific word that really applies here is ‘fasting’. I did a lot of reading and research about intermittent fasting and then I sent my findings to Michael. He was immediately on board, which kind of surprised me. He usually needs more convincing, but intermittent fasting would mean giving up breakfast and he’s never been a big fan of breakfast. I on the other hand needed more convincing to give up something that has always been a part of my life. I was raised on breakfast. Just ask my mother about that phase I went through at age three or four when every morning for three weeks I requested one poached egg whenever she asked me what I wanted for breakfast. Eventually she stopped asking me what I wanted and made what ever she felt like making that morning, but we ate breakfast every single morning. If we were going to do this fasting thing, I was going to have to wrap my brain around not eating breakfast.

There was something else that made me hesitant to do fasting. I have been aware of my weight for most of my life. I have never ever felt skinny and as a teenager, those feelings created a dangerous relationship with food. There was a lot of eating and not eating and then eating a whole bunch going on, which was made worse by a ‘eat everything on your plate’ rule. The contradiction of being told to ‘watch my weight’ while at the same time being told to ‘clean my plate’ did not make for a healthy relationship with eating. I worried that intermittent fasting would once again lead me into an unhealthy eating relationship. I worried that my growling , hungry belly would cause me to just eat all of the food all day long. Honestly, I was really scared to start an intermittent fasting program. So of course, I went ahead and started an intermittent fasting program. Do the things that scare you and all that jazz.

I lost another ten pounds.

My doctor got very excited when I told her that I had been intermittent fasting during the week. I told her that I have either a green smoothie or avocado toast around 10:30 in the morning. Then I go do some form of exercise, usually yoga, and eat lunch at noon. Then I said “And I haven’t murdered any one yet!” I do not eat all of the food all day long. I eat reasonable amounts of food and I do not deprive myself. If someone brings in apology cake to work, I eat a slice of that apology cake (apology cake is the best cake). My doctor was thrilled with this news. She said that researchers have seen that intermittent fasting has helped Type 2 Diabetes patients get off of their insulin. She also said that I was doing every thing right, which is all that really matters to me, validation that I am doing everything right. So torture and starvation is how I have managed to perform the miraculous feat of weight loss at my age. Though the strength training and fasting thing really do not feel like torture or starvation any more.

It feels more like a mild annoyance.