Ups and downs

Sandy struggled with her weight throughout her adult life. She'd drop pounds and get fitter — and then gain the weight back again, hating herself for every pound accumulated. No matter how she tried to embrace fat acceptance, it still seemed to be a moral issue for her. Though she knew better, she somehow thought that if she were a better person, she'd be thin.

I tried to be supportive, but I kept forgetting about the issue. Weight isn't something I worry about, but mostly, I literally didn't notice that she was gaining weight (or, at other times, losing it). I don't notice when people have cut their hair, shaved (or grown) beards, gotten new glasses or switched to contacts. I'd be a wretched eye witness in court, because I'm pretty useless when it comes to visual memory.

August, 2003, about five months before she started the program.

It drove Sandy crazy that I didn't notice her size changes. Now, looking through photos from the past sixteen years, I can see that she grew larger and smaller multiple times. But in the moment, she was just Sandy.

Seven years ago next week, she started a comprehensive fitness program that included a strict diet overseen by a nutritionist, a robust exercise regimen overseen by a personal trainer, and an attempt to change attitudes and behaviors around food and lifestyle with a counselor. She loved the program. She followed the guidelines to the letter, celebrated the high-protein diet (which meant I needed to let her cook meat in the house), and learned all she could about efficient and effective weight-lifting. The pounds fell off consistently, taking her from 226 to 150, and her health improved, as did her self-image. It was a heady experience for a couple of years, as she found she enjoyed running and stretched herself to run half-marathons and bike long distances.

At her skinniest, 150 pounds, in May 2005. I thought she was
too thin then, and thought she looked healthier when she'd
gained a few pounds back. Here we're with Chuck and Mindy in
Moses Lake, on the way to the Over the Dam Run at the
Grand Coulee Dam. Sandy ran the 10K; I walked the 5K.

When she left Microsoft in spring of 2005, she fell off the careful diet wagon a little bit and started to gain slightly, but she remained very active and athletic and fit. And then in July 2006, cancer entered our lives. As she put it, she "ate her way through breast cancer," and with the debilitating effects of treatment, she couldn't get much exercise. She gained and gained and gained.

She had great hopes for getting fit again after treatment, but first plantar fascitis, and then osteoarthritis in her hip (an artifact of the chemo), limited her options. She worked very hard to stay physically active, and we attempted to prepare healthy meals and snacks for ourselves, but still she gained. She was pretty fit, but she was back to 220 or so again, and filled with self-loathing.

May 2008, at some sort of work retreat at a golf club.
She titled the photo "Me and the rich people's view."

In early 2010, she started losing weight. Sandy was thrilled, even thought we thought it was one of many side effects to a new antidepressant. (She knew she needed to stop taking those pills, but dragged it out, hoping to lose more weight.) Soon we learned that the cancer had returned and was likely the real explanation for her weight loss. And I finally started paying close attention to Sandy's weight changes. Any time her weight went down, she cheered and I worried. It stabilized after a few months, and from early February 2011 until our vacation in May, her weight was always between 176 and 178 pounds.

We'd discussed the latest research about "set points" and the challenges of keeping weight off after dieting, but we didn't understand the reasons for the difficulty. Now, scientists have learned some interesting things about why obesity is such a challenge to overcome. According to an article in the New York Times Magazine this weekend, our bodies are coded to panic when weight loss occurs, and so they start producing more of a hormone that slows calorie burn, and of other hormones that do things such as increase hunger — physically and emotionally. Apparently, we haven't evolved much since the time that we all faced scarcity and starvation.

With Cassandra in California in May, toward the end of our
vacation. She'd been losing weight, largely due to the nausea.

I'm one of the people described in the article who tend to drop weight quickly and easily, and who burn more calories with exercise. I haven't always considered myself lucky; I'm often painfully hungry. But I've escaped the self-judgment and self-loathing that Sandy suffered from. Sometimes I'm lazy and don't get around to exercising; sometimes I eat an entire bag of potato chips or a box of cookies in half an hour's time. I get mad at myself when I do these things because I can feel the toll they take on my mood. But no one judges me; no one even guesses that I've indulged. Over the years, I slowly gain a few pounds. And then some crisis occurs and I drop 15 pounds in a weekend.  I no longer worry when I drop the weight, because I know I'll put it back on over time. And I don't worry when I'm ten pounds past my ideal because there's always another crisis to knock me back. I'd love for everyone to be able to be so cavalier.

Even with my relative cluelessness, I knew what a toll it took on Sandy to worry about her weight. She's not alone, of course. Most people I know are either worried about their weight or putting a lot of emotional energy into trying to manage it. The information we're gaining is frustrating news for many of those people, but I hope it pulls the moral question out of the equation once and for all.