Las Vegas Losers

My experience in the "Las Vegas Losers" weight-loss group, organized by the Las Vegas Review Journal.

Saturday, February 03, 2007

The high cost of eating well

I got my whining about weight-loss and pain out of the way in my previous post, so now I can write about something which really concerns me—the high cost of eating well.  When I signed up for the Las Vegas Losers, one of my plans was just to eat better food than I do now.  I’m a very good eater, and healthy foods are some of my favourite foods, so eating a healthy diet should come easily to me.  I love cucumbers as much as I love chocolate, I crave rutabagas, my idea of a perfect food is a piece of sashimi, etc.  I love a bowl of gently steamed fresh green beans as a snack, and I like my vegetables without butter.  This should be, no pun intended, a piece of cake.

When I hit the grocery store to shop for my lower-cal meals, reality set in.  On my tight budget (tight because I work from home, on commission, and have huge medical bills with no health insurance), I could only afford the food that was bad for me.  Two cucumbers for a cucumber salad would set me back $3, but a dozen Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls was just 99 cents.  A pre-made caesar salad with “lite” dressing (a good meal idea because I’m often too tired to cook) was $3.49, but an entire box of freshly baked cookies was just $3.00.  Chicken breasts were $8; four boxes of macaroni and cheese mix were on sale for $1.  I know I have to keep a lot of ready-to-eat (or “easy-to-prepare") foods on-hand, and anything in that category that was actually healthy was terribly expensive.  In retrospect, there wasn’t much in that category to choose from, anyway.  If I could afford to shop at Whole Foods, I could have any number of prepared taste sensations waiting for me in my refrigerator, but at the local Smiths, my budget “taste sensation” could end up being a 99 cent Banquet frozen dinner with 450 calories and 23 grams of fat.  The Lean Cuisine dinners, which are excellent, can cost almost $4 each if not on sale, yet a “Hungry Man” dinner with something nauseating like “2 pounds of food” cost half that.  It’s very, very difficult to pay so much more for something healthy, when every penny counts.

I love to cook, and wish someone would pay me to lose weight.  I wouldn’t have to tire myself out by working, I could just tire myself out by cooking!  I wish I had a personal chef.  I wish there weren’t so many other huge things to worry about each day beyond what I’m going to cook for dinner, and I wish fresh produce would just magically teleport itself into my refrigerator.

In summation, all I can offer to anyone else in my shoes is this one piece of advice:  if your money is tight and you want a quick meal that won’t make your gall bladder explore, try a frozen turkey dinner.  Even the cheap 99 cent Banquet dinners are fairly low in fat, have a bit of fiber, have a reasonable number of calories, and they even have vegetables!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/03 at 01:29 AM
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The grand experiment would be grander if I actually attempted it

I recently wrote about joining a weight-loss group, the Las Vegas Losers.  My theory was that if I participated in an informal group for my own experimental purposes, perhaps I’d be able to lose weight without pressuring myself to do it in a stiff and structured way.  That doesn’t sound like a recipe for weight-loss success, but my problem over the past few years has been that my body is so unpredictable, it’s impossible for me to stick to an exercise plan, an eating plan, etc.  I’d hoped that just the daily reminder that I was part of a weight-loss experiment could help me to find little ways, every day, to make a difference to myself.

While I haven’t weighed myself yet, I have a feeling I haven’t done anything so far to make a difference.  I’ve had to work seven days a week to earn enough money to get by, so even though I work from home, I’m still working more than forty hours per week.  As any FMS patient will tell you, doing anything at all for any length of time ends up being painful and exhausting (yes—even sleeping can be painful and exhausting for an FMS patient!).  I drag myself up in the morning, sit down to work, and drag myself to bed at night.  Exercise seems to be out of the question, given the pain I’m in from working.  Eating properly is difficult because I’m too tired to cook dinner, so I eat whatever is fast and handy.  I’ve been on a “muffin kick” lately because of a cookbook my sister sent for Christmas, so I’ve stayed up late a couple of nights baking interesting muffins.  Those are good for me, high fiber, and low fat, but it’s a drop in the bucket.

So sadly, all I’ve got to report after the first couple of weeks is lots of pain.  The pain gets worse and worse all the time, and the 10mg of oxycondone that used to leave me feeling queasy and dizzy now feels no more effective than a multivitamin.  I’m told to take my 10mg of oxycodone CR twice a day, and then to top it up with up to 20mg of regular oxycodone every four to six hours as needed, and I can’t bring myself to do it.  I’m in pain, but I fear that the pills will be a temporary fix before the pain rises up to be victorious again.  It frustrates me.  I hope it’s just the cooler and damper winter weather causing this, because my FMS gets worse with every passing week.  Forget weight-loss… I’m a winner if I can get out of bed in the morning and actually earn a few dollars.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/03 at 01:12 AM
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Sunday, January 21, 2007

I’m a Las Vegas Loser

As of today, I am a Las Vegas Loser.  Not the kind who comes to town to say goodbye to their paycheck, but the kind who signed up to participate in the Las Vegas Review Journal’s “weight-loss contest”.  In fairness, it’s not a contest as much as it’s a group effort to lose weight (I wish someone else could do my share!), but there are small prizes along the way for people who are meeting their weight-loss goals.  There are about 112 people involved (I think that’s what was said), and today we had our first official weigh-in, and we posed for a group photo.  The event will run for one year.

I’m not exactly sure what compelled me to write in to the newspaper to volunteer.  I’ve wanted to lose weight for a few years now (I’ve gained about 30 lbs. in the past four years), and I think the casual, experimental feel of this event appealed to me.  There are people of all ages and from all walks of life involved; we can follow any diet and/or exercise plan that we wish to achieve our goal.  There are tentative plans for a few guest speakers to talk to the group, but other than our required monthly weigh-ins, we’re really on our own.  I’ve always been a bit of loner and have never done well working under a buddy system, so this type of setup is perfect for my personality.

I have no idea how well or how poorly I’ll do.  My goal is to weigh 135 in one year.  Today, after getting home from the weigh-in and photo shoot, I was so exhausted that I took an oxycontin, an oxycodone, and a Skelaxin, and I’m still in pain, as well as suffering from extreme fatigue (I’m writing this entry from bed, on a laptop).  I have visions of daily walks on the treadmill, but this illness is so unpredictable—that treadmill walk may leave me so incapacitated that I’m unable to work, and that will be unacceptable.  I want to try to lose weight by exercising rather than changing my diet, but I’m not sure how much exercise I can tolerate.  Sometimes a trip to the grocery store is all it takes to send me back to bed for the day.  I know that increasing my strength and endurance would improve my quality of life, though.  This process will be a lot of trial and error.

My preferred weight-loss plan has always been Weight Watchers, so that’s what I’ll defer to if I decide to start formally planning snacks and meals.  I love to cook, but that’s another taxing activity—will I be able to cook every day and still get my paid work done?  Will my medications allow me to lose any weight?  All these things and more will be answered in the next twelve months.  I really, really want to work hard to achieve my goals, but if I can’t reach the goal, I’ll get satisfaction from knowing I did all that my body will allow.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/21 at 12:21 AM
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