The personal trainer was determined to be my new helper. “Call Me! I can help you with your eating plan! We can do a resting metabolic heart rate test right in my office!”
“Can’t wait!” I replied, putting plenty of yippitee skippitee in my voice.
Then I scrambled out of there. Yeah, I’m never gonna call that woman. I totally believe that she could put together an effective eating plan for me. I’m sure that she could make me lose so much weight that I could hang from a wire hook on my own Christmas tree.
Yet I will not be calling her. Because my metabolic resting heartrate is not in fact, my weight problem. Neither is it in the legume/sesame seed/ wheatgrass cocktail she is brewing. Nor is it my particular body type.
My weight problem is, in fact, a wait problem. I am one of those people who put on weight when my husband is gone.
This is not at all his fault. This is the natural result of these three behaviors that naturally occur while waiting for a beloved to return.
So I am thinking that if that personal trainer could discover the solution to these three problems, we military spouses could storm her office. Hoist her to our shoulders. Carry her off to BUMED where they would crown her Official Wait Loss Consultant to the DoD.
But first she would have to solve these three little challenges to thinness so many of us face:
Leftbehinders. Civilian families often have leftovers after a meal. My military family has leftbehinders. When my husband deploys, I know that he will not be coming home to dine. Somehow that does not change my shopping habits or my cooking habits. It goes something like this: Look–there is all this food still in the dish! And it tastes really good, doesn’t it? YES! So why is there so much left over? Better taste it again to make sure it is still good. AND IT STILL IS!!! Gosh, I feel like my behind has left me bigger than ever.
Procrastineating. According to the Urban Dictionary, procrastineating is the consumption of food undertaken to avoid a dull or arduous task, irrespective of hunger levels or the time of day. Since I think of every duty day, work-up, or deployment day as a dull and arduous task to get through (sinful!!), I count the moments in little bacon sandwiches, bleu cheese crumbles and anything manufactured by FritoLay. Time does pass while procrastineating, so this must be an effective measure, right? Right. It effectively puts the weight right on — like a trowel.
Leash Bindage. I know that weight loss never occurs without exercise. Dog walking works for me when my husband is home. After dinner I snap leashes on the dogs and we trot around returning bright eyed and bushy tailed. When the ship is at sea, the dogs are squirrellier than ever. To walk them, I have to convince my son that walking around the block will not fracture a femur. That takes half an hour. I have to force everyone into adequate garments for the weather. Another 15 minutes. I snap leashes on dogs and they proceed to run around us in circles, effectively breaking any spare femur any one of us has going. So far my exercise routine has taken 45 minutes I do not have and I have not yet burned a calorie and must wear a cast.
OK, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. I know my weight loss problem won’t be solved by bringing the deployment to a closet.
But the end of my wait problem sure makes it seem like all things would be then possible. Sometimes I just want the guy to come home.
About Jacey Eckhart
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Losing weight is so much harder when your husband is gone! 6 months into a 12 month deployment I realized the baby weight wasn't going to take itself off, so this is what I did:
Totally changed my shopping habits. No more treats, potato chips, or anything I liked to snack on. If it wasn't in the house, I couldn't eat it. The kids survived with just having graham crackers for snacks (poor babies). My dinner plans were lighter and healthier. I was less concerned with taste and more concerned with calories. Hey, my husband wasn't around to complain that the veggies didn't have butter!
Quit snacking. My worst deployment habit is putting the kids to bed and eating because I was bored. The new rule was that nothing was eaten after 7. I bought a bunch of yummy sugar free gum and I would chew on that if I wanted a snack.
2 cups calorie-full liquids a day. i.e. juice, soda, and milk. (yes milk! I ate yogurt and cottage cheese to get my calcium). The rest of the time I drank water or Crystal Light.
Started exercising more. This was the hardest one for me because I have no motivation to do it at home. I got a gym membership and paid extra for my kids to go to the play center while I worked out with a friend. (I'm a national guard wife far from base so I couldn't use on base childcare). It was expensive, but it got me out of the house three times a week and I was able to shed the 20 pounds I needed to in about 5 months.
Hope that helps!
I started gaining weight when I went from single girl with very little junk food in the house to being with a steak & potatoes guy who loves potato chips & protein shakes. While he still maintains a fabulous physique and works out daily, his eating routine was not so great for me. Add to that the sudden loss of my dearest friend, career stress, family and financial stress and I was eating to relieve my stress and it wasn't looking good in the mirror at all. I knew I needed to learn to deal with my stress in a better way than through food, which only made me feel worse, physically and emotionally. By the time he deployed I knew it was seriously time to do something different. But it didn't come easily at first. The first week after Mr. Hart deployed my meals consisted of homemade milkshakes: strawberry, orange, peach, whatever fruit I had on hand. Then I switched to whatever fast food I wanted. I deserved it, right? After a couple of weeks I was feeling really gross.. But still it took me 4 months to really get fully on board with losing weight and eating healthier. I don't have any junk in the house. The fridge is full of protein and vegetable options. I cut out most carbs. I plan what I am going to eat throughout the day and plan my workouts with the same importance I would any other commitment. Things started changing for the better very quickly. I feel like a different person and have so much energy that I'm a little worried I've turned into a too spunky bunny. haha. I get pretty giddy from a workout high apparently. Something I didn't know about myself before. But being totally committed to my health and well-being has dramatically changed the way I feel about myself, my life and our future. It's fantastic and I don't want to lose this. I still have a long way to go, but it's great to already be a few miles down the path than standing at the starting line looking for more reasons to stall. I hope it will be a nice surprise for my love when he comes back. I know it will be a blessing for both of us. Deployment hits us all differently. We do the best we can, in the ways we can. It's important to not be too hard on ourselves or our bodies. But it's great to push when we can too. Sending wishes for good health, peace and happiness to all my fellow spouses.