Eating the Truth
By Alexsandra Sukhoy
I’ve struggled with weight issues all my life. Sure, baby fat eventually gave to growth, in fourth grade, and then I grew to my current height of 5’5″ by age 12. But between ages 12 and today, the roller coaster ride has had more ups and downs than John Travolta’s career.
As a teenager, I was an athlete, active in my Jr. High’s track, soccer and basketball teams. In the summers, I’d walk ~two miles to Oakton Pool in Skokie, Illinois, where I swam and entered diving contests all afternoon. And yet, even in those days of weighing 120 pounds, a person close to me approached me at the pool and said, “Your thighs are getting big. You should be careful with that.”
Ever since that moment, when my thighs and any other part of my body were far smaller than they are right now – or probably than they’ll ever be – I’ve been very self-conscious about my weight and how I look in the mirror.
You can always tell how I’m doing in life – especially financially and emotionally – based on how I look. Long before Suze Orman began preaching about the correlation between people’s weights and their credit scores, I could always sense in which direction both barometers of health were headed for me. The bigger the clothes, the smaller the bank account. The smaller the waistline, the stronger the financial base.
When I first moved to Cleveland, which will be ten years this fall, I looked good. I wasn’t the 120 pounds I was in Jr. High, but that summer, after the grad school diploma and before arriving here, I worked out a lot and made sure not to eat after 7:30pm. I got smaller and the clothes fit very well. Even the tight clothes.
My first year here I dropped a lot of weight (mostly from work-related stress) to the point where I wasn’t feeling well. But by the time the stress calmed down, I’d started to put the weight back on. So, as I did in Chicago my last year with trainer Tom LaClair – who helped me get into killer shape in my late 20’s – I hired a trainer here: Robin Wallace.
At the time, Robin was with Bally’s and her combination of discipline, humor and maternal instincts facilitated a very quick change in my body. In late November I told her that I was about to go to Israel with a large group of people and that I needed to get in shape. Robin, through her no-excuses attitude (and making me run uphill on the treadmill all the while attaching resistance ropes to my ankles) helped me achieve this goal. While I didn’t necessarily lose a lot of weight, the fat converted into muscle and with all the hiking and walking and partying we did on that life-altering trip, not only did I survive putting on a bathing suit (one-piece) when we floated in the Dead Sea, but I also had the energy to enjoy every minute.
Eventually, I moved and then I moved again. Then life changed, my income drastically cut and the cost of a trainer was cost-prohibitive. So I joined the local YMCA and at least there I was able to sweat off some of the food and stress that seemed to consume my daily, sometimes hourly, existence. But, in fall of 2011, for budgetary reasons, I quit my membership, and then it all span out of control.
From October 2011 to December 2012, I had put on almost twenty pounds. How? Well, for one thing, there are a lot of good places to eat in Cleveland. And that’s true of any budget. There’s culinary temptation on every corner, especially if you live in or near Lakewood.
In the midst of a very chaotic, uncertain and unstable period of my life, food became my reward, for everything. Good days, bad days, tiring days, happy days and everything in between. And, as I don’t smoke and in fall of 2010 had my last alcoholic beverage, food – which we need for nourishment and health – evolved into my one giant vice.
What also seemed on surface as a good thing but ended up working against me – due to my own lack of food boundaries – was that the man I was dating at the time was a real good cook. He knew where to pick up the best fresh meat and produce and then whip it into something yummy. He also didn’t know how to cook small portions, and wanted to make sure that I had lunches to take for my long teaching days. Seems like a good plan, except that I had no sense of portion control.
When you’re living your life in any sort of extreme, in any one particular aspect, the rest of the day-to-day goes completely out of balance. And that is what held true for me. No one made me live through anything I lived through in the past four and half years. I made all those decisions consciously, as an adult, aware of some of the consequences, naïve to the many others. And throughout all of it, I leaned on food to be there for me.
In the last few months of 2012, things got so out of control that by Christmas I was at my heaviest weight ever. Almost none of my clothes fit and what did fit felt so forced that no amount of Spanx could smooth it out.
Life wasn’t about being smoothed out. Life had to change. I had to change it.
In December of 2012 I had rejoined the YMCA, making it a budgetary priority. Even on some very cold days, assuming there was no precipitation, I’d walk to the facility, adding to my “time to get healthy again” regime.
The first week of January proved to be pivotal. I rang in the New Year and the following day went in for a physical as well as other others tests that I was nervous about. Despite the lack of care I showed my body, it was stronger than I was and the results all came back with good news. That week I also broke off my relationship, because we were two different people, taking life in two completely different directions. I’m sure the feeling was mutual and all that was once good and joyful morphed into constant tension, with both people questioning everything, where every word felt like a poison arrow.
Being on my own, yet again, was a bit terrifying yet it was also liberating. Suddenly, my time was mine. I no longer had to worry about a boyfriend’s unpredictable work schedule or his attention-demanding giant family. Sure, I missed the Saturday morning chocolate chip pancakes with a side of bacon breakfasts we enjoyed frequently, as well as monthly trips to Steve’s Gyro at the West Side Market. Like so many relationships, so much of ours was grounded in food and Cleveland’s gastronomic scene enabled my every emotional deprivation by subsidizing it with really good food.
What I hadn’t realized was how much that relationship – once quite happy and full of good times – had turned into something so negative and something so toxic that it was literally and metaphorically weighing down on me. Once the energy of that permanently exited my apartment, everything began to shift. Everything felt lighter.
By the time I visited Chicago in the first week of February, and within five weeks of being at my heaviest weight, I had dropped ten pounds. With the exception of my sister, no one else noticed, probably because as a percentage of my total weight, it was a tiny amount. But for me, that ten pounds was monumental.
It meant that I could start getting control over my life once again. It also meant that I could define my life. And redefine it.
Certainly not consuming chocolate chip pancakes with a side of bacon and Steve’s Gyro all the time helped. And so did going to the Y. But the first few weeks at the gym weren’t even all that productive. Because of my weight and because I was no longer conditioned, during my first attempts on the elliptical my ankles swelled up like Dizzy Gillespie’s cheeks. I had to ice and massage them after each workout, even lifting them up on the ottoman for better circulation. The elliptical time was only 10 minutes, then gradually I moved up to 15, then to 20. Today I can solidly do 30 minutes, plus a 5 minute cool down for 35 minutes total.
I haven’t started doing weight training yet as the first goal was to just get smaller. To fit into my body again. To recognize myself in the mirror.
The real key in the weight loss has been sleep. Good old-fashioned rest. Shvitzing hard at the gym makes me fall asleep at night quicker. And the more uninterrupted sleep I get, the better I feel. And the better I feel the less food I crave.
I still eat whatever I want. That includes the monthly Olive Garden trips with Daniel and Hannah Baxter, where we anticipate the all-you-can-eat salad and garlic bread sticks like little children around candy. Kristine Pagsuyoin and I get some terrific bonding time at Jammy Buggars, where my staple is The Ex (formerly The Susan), a delicious chicken sandwich that’s served with “fresh tomato, avocado, buffalo mozzarella, roasted garlic person on ciabatta.” And even as I type this, I’m desperately craving Steve’s Gyro.
The difference? I simply don’t crave as much of it. I’ve never been one good with restriction, so any time I have quit anything food-related – meat, carbs, dairy – it’s a matter of time, usually about a week, before I crave and devour three times what I missed out on the previous week. So taking things off my menu is neither viable nor necessary.
I know how my body reacts to different things and that I do watch. But, really, a good workout and a good night’s sleep have been the key to everything. By Mid March, I had lost 17 lbs. and two belt loops. Suddenly, I began to shop my own closet. Sure, the Spanx still came in handy, but it finally began to serve its purpose: to smooth things out. Because I was doing the work on my end to change things from within.
Some people began to notice, while others hadn’t. And for the first time in any weight losing experience, I started to just share it with people. I no longer had to wait for them to notice my weight. I wanted them to know and I would tell this to anyone who would listen.
Because losing weight to me is the hardest thing in the world. Correction. It was the hardest thing in the world. I hope the process continues. I’m working very, very hard to ensure it does. I’m finally starting to understand how I attracted all that negative energy, all those dead-end relationships and the cumulatively chaotic experiences into my life and, at least with me, all of it converted into pounds.
My food issues are independent of Cleveland. Cleveland just happens to be good at feeding them.
From mid March and through all of April, I started to get restless as the 17 lbs loss stayed consistent. I wasn’t dropping any more weight, but I also wasn’t gaining it. Then, suddenly, on May 1, in one of my bi-monthly weigh-ins, I saw that I had lost another 1.6 pounds. That’s 18.6 pounds total since Christmas. 18.6 pounds!
I was recently sharing this news with my writing partner and Life Coach Anita Myers on the phone and she said how when people keep the truth from being released, there’s a chemical reaction in the body that converts that silenced truth into stress. As she was explaining this, it dawned on me the week I lost that additional 1.6 lbs was also the week I released my third book, The ’90s: Diary of a Mess, a collection of poetry, writing and photos that I first began to write and create back in 1995. Back then I was living many non-truths about who I was, mostly because I hadn’t yet figured out who I really was, and all this time and all these years and all these cities later, it all finally came out. I let it out. I released all that pain and confusion and with it a little more of my weight.
“You’ve gone through and let go of so much. You’re going to lose even more weight now,” Anita told me. “Just watch.”
I hope she’s right.
[Pictured, top: Alex after. Pictured, below: Alex before.]
Alexsandra Sukhoy, a globally-networked creative and business professional with two decades of corporate leadership experience, is CEO of Creative Cadence LLC. Her career coaching skills have resulted in numerous success stories for her clients. Alexsandra teaches classes within the Media Arts and Journalism Departments at Tri-C and Business Environment at the Monte Ahuja College of Business at CSU.
She just released her third novella, The ’90s: Diary of a Mess. Her five-star rated novellas Chatroom to Bedroom: Chicago and Chatroom to Bedroom: Rochester, New York are now available on iTunes, B&N.com and Amazon.
Alexsandra is currently writing two new books: The Dating GPS™, with childhood friend and Relationship Coach Anita Myers and a memoir called Diary of the Dumped™.
Follow Alexsandra on Twitter: @creativecadence.