Just the way you are*

199 pounds

It finally feels like summer is fully here—school is a distant memory, my days are my own, and it's hot enough that I sweat too much every day.

Thankfully, I'm sweating because I'm working out all the time. Two-a-days are now a regular part of my routine. The only problem is that my weight isn't budging. I keep telling myself that all of this hard work will pay off in the long run, but it's hard to be patient, you know?

Then I ask myself, why do I care that my weight is up? I feel good, I look good, so what's the problem? Aren't I the one who always says we shouldn't worry about the number on the scale? And that we should love ourselves the way we are?

So why has my recent weight gain been so hard on me emotionally?

I think it's because I accepted myself at 192 pounds, which was really, really hard to do and took years of working on how I saw myself and thought about my body. It wasn't easy to look in the mirror, know that I weighed over 190 pounds, and be happy. But I did it. I really did it.

The only problem is that once I accepted myself at that weight, I became unhappy as soon as I inexplicably started gaining weight.

But why should I care if I've gained a few pounds as long as I'm still healthy and attractive? I'm the one who always says it's just a number, right?

I wish I could say I simply believed this without any difficulty, but the truth is that it's been really hard over the past few months to learn that practicing what I preach means accepting myself at any weight, not just a weight that I've accepted in the past but also a weight I have to accept myself at now.

Fortunately, two things happened over the past few days to get me to the place I need to be with my new weight:

1) I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and was surprised to see that my body was rocking the curves. They didn't look bad or flabby or gross. They looked hot.

2) And then today, Dave and I were hanging around the house when he looked at me appreciatively and said, "I don't know why you worry about your body. You look great."

I guess I have no choice now but to listen.

*In honor of accepting myself the way I am, I've included a smoking hot picture of Colin Firth as Mark Darcy, Mr. "I like you very much—just as you are."

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today

199 pounds

In my last post, I talked about an amazing dress I just found at Old Navy, and one of the comments I got about that blog came from my dear friend Emily (pictured in the self-portrait above), who said this:

"After I surfaced from the ridiculous stress of the last six months, I realized that I've gained some weight. Rather than beating myself up over it and refusing to buy myself new clothes until I slim down, I went out and started buying dresses. I'm convinced that they're much more flattering than jeans. I feel better, and I know I look good, because people keep asking me where I'm shopping."

I'm repeating what Emily said here because embedded in her words is one of the most important things I could ever say on this blog: if you want to feel good about yourself, you MUST get yourself some new clothes.

Not tomorrow.

Not when you lose five pounds.

Now.

They don't have to be expensive clothes or even completely new clothes (raid a friend's closet if you have to), but they have to be new to you and they have to fit your body the way it looks TODAY.

It's a common misconception that if you've put on a few pounds, you should deny yourself the luxury of buying new clothes, punishing yourself with a too-tight wardrobe until you reach your goal weight. But this notion is completely misguided. Because as long as your clothes don't properly fit, you'll feel lousy. And as long as you feel lousy, you're more likely to take those emotions out on a super-sized Extra Value Meal.

No, when you are feeling bad about the reflection in the mirror, you shouldn't deny yourself flattering clothes. Instead, that's the exact time to engage in some serious retail therapy.

Another reason this is crucial is because until you feel good about yourself in the present, you will most likely never ever be able to feel good about yourself in the future . . . at least not for long or in any lasting more-than-superficial way. And, honestly, nothing makes you feel better about yourself than a slimming pair of jeans that actually fit and flatter your bottom half rather than turning your waist into a muffin top and stretching your thighs to thunderous proportions.

Trust me, I know.

Explaining the unexplainable?

197 pounds

In my last post, I talked about the fact that I've recently gained five to six pounds even though I've been continuing to eat well and exercise, which usually causes my weight to go down rather than up.

Well, I have some moderately good news . . . I may have found a culprit: my partial hysterectomy last November.

According to the Mayo Clinic, many women gain weight after this operation. And it's not unheard of for these women to gain twenty to forty pounds in the months after surgery. Twenty to forty pounds? Sheesh. And I thought I had it bad.

What's even more interesting is that many of these women didn't have a problem with their waistline beforehand but report that they struggled with belly fat afterwards.

Uh, hello? That's me!

I have always been big on the bottom—I've got thighs, hips, and butt to rival JLo. But I've always, always had a relatively small waist—it's something that's been a point of pride for me. Until now. I'm not saying my waist is huge, but it's definitely less defined than it used to be.

Still, I've got to look at the bright side—I may have figured out WHY this is happening to me. And now that I know some women gain twenty to forty pounds, I feel like maybe, just maybe, all of my hard work has actually been paying off.

Why I will not give into temptation

196 pounds

I guess it's time I talked about my recent weight gain. I was hoping the pounds would have disappeared fast enough that I wouldn't have to admit they were real, but that seems out of the question now that they've been here for almost two months.

This isn't to say that I'm feeling defeated by these five or six pounds, but I am being more honest about it.

As I said back in late March, I thought that I had picked up four pounds over spring break because I had been traveling a lot during that time and having a harder time sticking to my routine. I even asked my doctor about it, and like everyone else, he told me it was probably water weight and that once I was home for a few weeks, my weight would go back to where it was before.

So I did what I always do—eat well and exercise as much as possible. School is still in session right now, so it's pretty hard to exercise twice a day, but I did fit in a two-a-day at least once a week after that. And, as always, I was exercising at least an hour a day when I couldn't do that.

But the scale wasn't budging.

And a couple of times it moved up a pound or two more, which really, really frightened me.

In fact, it has gotten to the point where if I indulge even once a week (which to me is the minimum), that indulgence shows up on the scale the next morning in the form of a pound or two. (A punishment I've noticed is never doled out to my husband for some strange reason.)

This isn't typical behavior for my body. Whenever I eat well and exercise, the number on the scale always moves down or basically stays the same. I've prided myself on this for years. I've always told myself that even if I am overweight, at least I'm moving in the right direction.

But all of a sudden things have changed. The numbers are moving in the wrong direction. And what's infuriating is that the only other time I have EVER gained weight is when I've almost completely stopped exercising—either because of an injury (after I tore my ACL in the winter of '96), a diet (in the fall of '98 after my only diet), or stress (during the 2007-2008 school year when I was worried about the future of our jobs). Otherwise, as long as I've exercised, I've been able to keep the numbers going down.

Obviously I've become pretty concerned over the past few weeks when I finally realized I was living the way I should be, but my body wasn't listening.

So what do I do know?

I'm not entirely sure. More two-a-days once school is out, for sure. Even a few three-a-days. Maybe more prayers. (I'm kidding, by the way.)

But definitely, no matter what happens, no dieting. I won't deny that the idea is incredibly tempting right now, but I keep telling myself what happens when you diet. The last time I went on a diet—the ONLY time I EVER went on a diet—I gained thirty pounds after the diet was over.

It just cannot be worth it.

Doctor's orders

197 pounds

My weight was up again this morning, and since I happened to be going to the doctor's office for something else, I decided to ask about the fact that I've gained six pounds in the past few weeks.

I was REALLY worried about bringing the issue up in the first place. My fear was that once I opened that door, my doctor would walk right through it and tell me that I needed to lose weight. After all, my BMI is in the obese range, and I've always figured a medical professional would be all over me if the subject ever came up. To be honest, it's something I've been waiting for a long time—for one of my doctors to look at my weight and say, "Wow, you really need to do something about this."

So I could not have been more surprised when my doctor's response was completely laid back.

"It's probably water weight," he said. "You don't need to worry about it."

I was completely shocked. I thought for sure he would look at the number on my chart and ship me off to fat camp.

"But six pounds in three weeks?" I said. "Isn't that something to worry about?"

Yet again, he didn't seem worried. He pulled up my records on his computer and reminded me that I had just had a slew of tests run in January, and that I was in perfect health. He assured me that I had nothing to worry about.

"You exercise, right?" he asked, and when I told him that we try to exercise for at least an hour a day, he said, "Wow, that's great."

The truth is that I had been worrying a good deal about my recent weight gain, but after hearing the doctor reassure me that it was nothing to fret over, I remembered that I'm the one who always says we should be more concerned about our health than the numbers on the scale.

I guess over the past few weeks I've forgotten that. I've been so obsessed with those numbers that I forgot how little they really mean. So I will try my best to stop obsessing, but I'm not going to make any promises that I'm not sure I can keep.

Everything in moderation . . . including moderation

195 pounds

More good news... not only are cheese and dark chocolate good for you, but now alcohol might be too!

As it turns out, light to moderate drinking might actually help us stay fit.

According to HealthDay, "New Research found that women who drank the equivalent of one to drinks a day were least likely to gain weight—30 percent less likely, in fact, than teetotalers."

Let me repeat that: women who did NOT drink in this study gained MORE weight than women who did.

This flies in the face of the don't-drink-your-calories logic that I hear so often. And come to think about it, I do usually feel a little bit leaner, a little bit lighter, the day after I've had a single drink. Yes, when I have more that one drink these days, I usually feel sluggish afterwards, but there's just something about having one cold beer that makes me feel a little bit rejuvenated after the fact.

Since some studies also show that alcohol may decrease heart disease, this is just one more reason not to shy away from alcohol. Still, you should be aware that another study found that alcohol is linked to breast, liver, and other cancers.

I think the key is moderation . . . no, we don't need a glass of wine every night, but clearly once in a while alcohol has its benefits.

Can anyone tell me how this happened?

196 pounds

I've been on the road about 14 of the past 21 days, and during that time, I've pretty much stayed away from the scale. But this morning, I decided to brave it and step back on that magic number box.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that I had gained four whole pounds. Four pounds in three weeks. WHAT THE HELL?!

How does a person gain four pounds in three weeks?

Admittedly, I wasn't exercising as much or eating as well as I normally do when I was on the road, but it's not like I was spending my days sitting on my butt eating bon bons and potato chips. In fact, I ate almost nothing of the sort—or at least not any more often than usual. It almost seems like I gained four pounds just because I was away from my routine, and that doesn't seem right. Four whole pounds? Give me a freaking break!

I had really hoped to break into the 180s before the blog hit the one-year mark in a few weeks, so I have to say that I find this news pretty disheartening. Still, I'm not giving up. I have almost two full weeks left to get back where I was and drop another pound or two. Who says I can't do it? If I can gain four pounds as a result of being away from my routine, maybe I can lose that much from getting back to it.

The Optimist's Club

192 pounds

If you haven't already noticed, my weight has gone up a few pounds over the last month even though it's supposed to be going down. There are two simple reasons why this has happened.

First and foremost, as some of you know, I had surgery just over six weeks ago, and afterwards, I lost six pounds without even blinking.

On Tuesday, December 8th, my official weight on this blog was 189 pounds. (Though I actually hit a low of 187 the weekend after my surgery, which is technically six pounds less than the 193 I weighed before surgery.)

Sure, it was wonderful to see the scale dip into the 180s, but it was an artificial low caused by the fact that I was eating next to nothing and loaded up with medication that made it hard to keep anything in my body. I was back at 190 within a couple of weeks, and I think my weight might have leveled off there if it hadn't been for one other thing . . .

. . . the holidays

I'm not one of those people who buys into the idea that we should all be super careful about what we eat during the holidays. My feeling, as I said in my "Season of Indulgence" post, is that the holidays are a time to have fun, and we should enjoy that once-a-year reprieve from thinking about every calorie that goes in our mouth. I'm a firm believer in the idea that we should all give into our indulgences from time to time—usually once or twice a week—and Christmas, Hannakuh, and New Year's are no different.

Another reason we gain weight during the holidays is because of the added stress of traveling, seeing family, buying gifts, etc. I know that I definitely ate more food between Christmas and New Year's precisely because I was dealing with family and other holiday commitments.

No, feeding our emotions isn't the healthiest response to stress, but it's a fact of life. I'd rather admit that than ignore it. Yes, like everyone else, I sometimes use eating as a way to cope. But as long as I know that, I can make sure I don't do it too often.

And if that means I gain a pound or two (the national average) during the holidays, so be it. We all need a little extra lining to keep us warm through January, February, and March, right?

Studies have shown that the issue is not that measly pound so many people pick up over the holidays. The real issue is not dropping that pound before spring sets in. In fact, as long as we lose what we've gained within the next few months, there are no long-term consequences for having a little bit too much eggnog for a few weeks each December.

Yes, real problems occur for the people who don't shed the weight they put on each year during the holidays because the pounds start adding up over time. But I guess I prefer to see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty—as long as we get our collective act together after January 1st, it's really not a big deal.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I kind of hate it when people beat themselves up after the holidays because they ate a little too much. I would rather that we all recognize how easy it is to gain weight over the holidays and how much more important it is to focus on being healthy again than sitting around crying into our new desk calendars about it.

So that's what I have to do now . . . get my act together and drop the two pounds I picked up over the last month. It won't be easy, but I know it can be done.

Delusional Girl

194 pounds

One of the reasons I started this blog in the first place was to dispel the notion that we should be ashamed of the numbers on the scale and that they have anything to do with how good we look or how attractive we feel.

For years, I believed that I had to keep my weight secret because it was so different than the numbers we hear women talking about in the media. Granted, most of these women are celebrities, but I still felt—even when I was in perfect shape—that my number was somehow wrong and, thus, conveyed something ugly about how I looked.

When I meet people now or when readers check out my blog, I get the feeling that they imagine that I have always struggled with my weight. But that's not the case. This misconception might be my fault because I've talked before about how, even as a kid, I weighed more than everyone else. And though that's true, I was never overweight. I was not even a few pounds overweight. Not as a child—when my BMI was around 21—or as an adult when my BMI was 24 from the time I began college until I hit my later twenties. I was, at around 150 pounds, very fit, and I stayed that way by exercising regularly—something I have done all of my life—though I never worried about what I ate because I was still young enough that I could eat whatever I wanted. In truth, I was in perfect shape until I had a skiing accident when I was 26 years old that kept me off my feet for three months. I know it sounds silly, but the only reason I weighed a little bit more than other women my size before that was simply because I was big boned.

Still, when people found out I how much weighed in my twenties, they would act appalled. All the time, people would say to me, "You don't look like you weigh 150!" and I would enjoy the compliment to some degree. But deep down I felt like my weight was something to be ashamed of. I had the sense that every other physically fit woman my age weighed less than 125 pounds, that I was the exception, and that I would never be attractive until I hit that magical number.

Since my skiing accident, I have learned a good deal more about women's bodies and now know that there aren't very many adult women who weigh less than that magical number, and recently I had a chance to put that theory to the test.

Some of my students have been reading a Joyce Carol Oates' novel called Black Girl/White Girl about a delusional college student. One of the more disturbing things about this character is that she believes that, at 5'8" and 140 pounds, she is unattractive and overweight. At my age, most of us know that's not true—a woman that height and weight has a BMI of 21—but what surprised me was that my students—most of them between the ages of 18 and 22—knew that as well. They repeatedly get offended when the protagonist calls herself—and her similarly sized roommate—fat. I was thrilled by their skepticism about her weight, but for weeks, it didn't occur to me that it was because most of them weigh more than the characters in the book. I think this was because I still cleaved to the idea that attractive, thin women—because most of my college students are super thin—have to weigh less than 140 pounds.

Then it hit me: maybe my students were shocked by the protagonist's attitude precisely because they don't weigh that little either.

So I decided to put this theory to the test and asked those who weighed less than 140 pounds to raise their hands. I was SURE that half of the girls in each class would raise their hands, but only two girls in my first class raised their hand and only one did in my second.

I was shocked. Apparently, I still bought into the idea that super thin = super light.

And what surprised me even more was that the young women who did raise their hand were really, really, really tiny people. Not just thin, but also pretty short. They were, in truth, petite little girls.

And many of the women who didn't raise their hands are in great shape and very attractive. Like I said, it shocked me to realize that even though I think and write about these issues all the time, deep down I still believe that all of the thin and fit women I see on a daily basis are tipping the scales at little more than 100 pounds.

This is, of course, good and bad news. Bad news because it means that somewhere deep inside of me, in a place I don't even know is there, I still buy into unattainable standards of beauty. But the good news is that it also means that those standards really are both ridiculous and incorrect.

So when I get on the scale tomorrow morning, I'm going to remind myself that I can finally let go of that magical number, a number I've I always known I'd never achieve, but a number I've nevertheless been obsessed with all of my life.

The glass has to be half full

195 pounds

At the end of my post called “Are you still with me?”, I mentioned some advice my friend Al gave me, and I think his comments bear repeating.

As I explained before, Al is a psychologist, and I know him from St. Andrews College in North Carolina, where we were both members of the faculty before Dave and I moved to Kentucky.

One day Al came by my office and listened to me venting about the fact that I had eaten way too much the night before. I was basically going off on my bad behavior, and Al told me that beating myself up for a mistake I’d already made and couldn’t undo was causing me twice as much harm. He said that, instead, it would be healthier to own up to my bad behavior and move on, focusing on what I could do right in the present rather than what I'd done wrong in the past.

Of course, Al was right, so right that his words have stayed with me since that day nearly four years ago. Not only that, but his advice has helped shape my new and much healthier attitude about the way I see myself and the way I approach weight loss.

Unfortunately, there are still so many people who don’t see it that way.

I was talking with my friend Laura recently about her weight. Laura is really unhappy about her body and completely down about the fact that she hasn’t been able to drop any pounds even though she has wanted to do so for a while now. At one point during our conversation, she told me that she knows that her problem is that she eats too much.

I hate it when Laura is hard on herself, and on top of that, I know she was wrong so I immediately took issue with what she’d said. Since her weight gain occurred before I met her—and I’ve known her for over a year—I know she really doesn’t eat too much anymore. It’s possible that she ate too much in the past—when she picked up the pounds she’s now trying to lose—but I know her well enough to be sure that she is no longer eating more than anyone else. Besides, if she really were overeating, she would be gaining weight rather than maintaining. So the fact that the number on Laura's scale hasn't gone up recently tells me she’s actually doing something right.

But rather than give herself credit for not gaining weight, Laura is only able to see that she’s not as thin as she once was. Because she has to look in the mirror every day and see the extra pounds she’s still carrying with her, she truly believes that she’s still eating too much.

In this way, Laura is equating the size of her body with her current eating habits . . . even though that’s not an accurate equation. In a sense, she is beating herself up every day for something she did years ago, and I wish there was something I could say or do to get her to understand what Al told me back in North Carolina, but my words don't seem to help.

What worries me is that I don’t think Laura is alone. I think many people who are unhappy with their bodies do the same thing. They look in the mirror and see something they don’t like and think, “God, I’m such a pig!” Or “Why do I always have to eat so much?!” even though the reflection they see in the mirror may have nothing to do with their eating habits for a long, long time.

I know that other people do this because I do it too. Yes, I’ve learned to control how hard I am on myself most of the time, but every once in a while I still slip up, go back to my old ways, and see myself through that really harmful lens.

The problem with continuing to beat yourself up for things you did months—sometimes even years—ago is that doing so doesn’t allow you to give yourself credit for what you’re doing in the present. Because if, like Laura, you’re not gaining weight, that means you really deserve praise, not criticism. Unfortunately, it’s one of life’s cruel realties that it usually takes a long time for our hard work to pay off. If life were really fair, we'd all look like Heidi Klum the morning after we spent a whole day sweating it out at Boot Camp and crunching our way through bags full of celery and carrot sticks. Or we’d resemble the Bride of Frankenstein after a long night of downing plate after plate of nachos and spinach dip over half a dozen whipped cream-topped strawberry daquiris and two packs of Kools. Unfortunately, it takes much more time to see the results of our hard work (or the consequences of our mistakes), which is why we have to look for the positive rather than wait for it to be pointed out to us in the mirror.

I’ve been working hard at trying to lose weight for almost five months now, and I’ve really only lost a handful of pounds in all that time. And I’m also not sure that my body looks any better than it did back in March when this whole thing started. It would be really easy for me to get down on myself about this, but what good would it do me? If I had spent the past five months thinking about how little I’ve accomplished, I think it would be very difficult—if not impossible—for me to stay motivated and keep working on being healthy. And that’s the reason it’s crucial that we all take Al’s advice and focus on what we’re doing right in the present rather than what we did wrong in the past.

Are you still with me???

196 pounds

As I mentioned in my discussion of the recent Time magazine story on exercise, my grandfather had a massive stroke Friday, August 7th and died a few days later on Monday, August 10th. As soon as we heard about the stroke, Dave and I got in the car and headed for Ohio, where we spent Grandpa's last three days, staying until we had to leave in order to get back to Kentucky to teach our last few days of summer school. Hours after we left for Kentucky, Grandpa died, so as soon as we were finished with our classes on Thursday morning, we got back in the car and returned to Ohio for the viewing and funeral, a trip that was extended with side trips we had to make to Indianapolis and Cincinnati on the way home.

When all was said and done, we were on the road for three days, home for the next three, and then on the road again for five more days, meaning we were traveling eight of those eleven days. It was obviously exhausting, and I can't remember the last time I felt so happy to come home.

The day before Grandpa's stroke, I weighed 194 pounds, and the day before that, I'd bottomed out at 193—a full ten pounds less than where I started back in March. Since I hit 193 on a Wednesday, I didn't get to post that number with my blog. I also knew full well that the first time you hit a low number like that, you're bound to go back up the next day and fluctuate numerous more times before that low number becomes a reality. So I didn't make a big deal out of it on the blog—though I was happy to mention it in passing.

But now that I'm back from the trip, I find that my weight is back up to 196 pounds.

Sigh.

I don't spend a lot of time talking or complaining about the numbers on the scale because, as I've said before, one of the goals of this blog is to demystify those numbers, to send the message that the numbers don't matter as much as how we feel about ourselves and how healthy we are.

On the other hand, I also started this blog to document my weight loss. So when I have to admit to the world that I weigh 196 pounds almost five full months after I started trying to lose weight, I feel more than a little bit frustrated. I guess in some ways I feel like I'm letting you all down.

I don't want to send the message that my only goal is to lose weight because it's not. And I definitely don't want anyone to think that I believe that losing weight has to happen on a timetable because I believe that's one of the worst things we can do to ourselves. In fact, for years, I've believed that as long as the numbers on the scale are going down—even if its only by one pound a year—instead of up and the doctor says I'm healthy, then I'm doing well.

At the same time, I have to admit that I first hit 196 pounds back in April, only weeks after I started trying to lose weight, which makes me feel like I haven't accomplished anything in months. And if this is frustrating to me, I imagine it must also be frustrating to the people who tune in merely to see how many pounds I've lost.

(Mom, are you listening?)

Seriously, if you read any of the weight loss columns in women's magazines—or, God forbid, watch shows like The Biggest Loser—you're used to seeing the pounds drop pretty quickly. And if you're disappointed by how long it's taking me to get back to a healthy weight, I apologize.

But at the same time, I don't want you to give up on me. I want you all to believe me when I say I know my plan will work. It's worked in the past, and it will work again. Yes, I've had some setbacks this summer—first with my knee injury, and then with my grandfather. We all have setbacks (that's how I gained 27 pounds in the 18 months before I started this blog), and I don't want to use them as an excuse, but I do want to acknowledge them.

And maybe that's all I—or any of us—can do: acknowledge that sometimes the unexpected happens, and we can't blame ourselves if we are forced to backtrack a little when dealing with the unexpected.

A few years ago, my friend Al, who's a psychologist, listened to me flagellating myself for eating far too much after a long day at work, and he wisely pointed out that if I beat myself up for making a mistake, then I'm only causing myself more misery. Better to let mistakes go than to rehash them, Al said, and it was this advice that eventually led to my belief that we must allow ourselves indulgences from time to time.

Obviously, the important thing is to keep going, keep improving. During those eight days I was on the road, I only exercised twice, and I ate a lot more crap than normal—visits to Skyline Chili, Graeter's Ice Cream, and Frisch's Big Boy come to mind. But I've been home for three full days now, and it took me two of those days to get back to the person I want to be: a person who eats delicious home-cooked meals, a person who gets plenty of rest, and a person who exercises like a kid let loose in the schoolyard. I'll keep doing this until the next setback comes, and maybe, just maybe, in the meantime the numbers will prove that not dieting really can help people lose weight.

I believe. Do you?

Get some sleep!

196 pounds

I always talk about how we’re too obsessed with the numbers on the scale and the numbers on the BMI chart, but one of the numbers we obsess about that I have yet to mention is the amount of hours we sleep each night.

I have always been a night owl—something you might have guessed by the time of day I write my blog posts—and I like to stay up until all hours and get out of bed later than most people. I try my best to get nine hours of sleep each night when it’s possible, and in an ideal world, I would stay up until midnight and sleep until nine. But there are some nights when I find myself still awake past one, forcing me to sleep even later if I want to feel rested.

But when I tell people that I like to get nine hours of beauty rest and sleep until nine or—gasp!—ten in the morning, they act horrified and say things like, “I wish I could do that!” which seems to be a passive aggressive way of saying that they think I am a bit lazy at best and a slothful loser at worst.

This raises the question, why do people think sleep is bad? Why are those of us who like to sleep late so maligned???

All of the research clearly indicates that not getting enough sleep is DIRECTLY related to weight gain, health problems, and longevity. In fact, a 2006 study by the American Thoracic Society “showed that women who slept 5 hours per night were 32% more likely to experience major weight gain (an increase of 33 pounds or more) and 15% more likely to become obese over the course of the 16-year study, compared to those who slept 7 hours a night.”1

Why does this happen? For two simple reasons:

1) When we’re tired, we look for ways to help get through the day and one of the coping mechanisms we rely on is food and drink—often high-calorie junk food and sugar-filled, caffeine-laden beverages. I like nothing better than a cold soda and a bag of chips after a late night, and I’m sure all of you could easily name the poison you use to get through a nasty sleep hangover.

2) But I bet you didn’t know that not getting enough sleep also affects “the body's ability to metabolize carbohydrates and causes high blood levels of glucose, which leads to a greater body-fat storage.”1 Once you understand that, getting nine hours of sleep doesn’t seem so crazy after all, does it?

Nevertheless, most people seem to believe the old maxin that “the early bird gets the worm” and far too often translate that to mean people who sleep more than six hours a night are also not getting the worm or are lazy, which is a dangerous message to send given how directly sleep affects our health.

It’s also not true that older folks need less sleep, a myth that I often hear repeated by my dad, who likes to get up as early or five or six in the morning and then wonders why he’s tired and cranky before noon. The truth is that “the need for sleep doesn't decline with age” though it may be harder to stay asleep longer without waking up.2

If you do have trouble sleeping, you might try some of these techniques the American Psychological Association recommends for better and longer sleep:

• Keep a regular sleep/wake schedule

• Don’t consume caffeine four to six hours before bed and minimize daytime use

• Don’t smoke, especially near bedtime or if you wake up at night

• Avoid alcohol and heavy meals before sleep

• Get regular exercise

• Minimize noise, light, and excessive hot and cold temperatures where you sleep

• Develop a regular bed time and go to bed at the same time each night

• Try and wake up without an alarm clock

• Attempt to go to bed earlier every night for certain period; this will ensure that you’re getting enough sleep2

I've also heard that it's not a good idea to read for long periods of time in the bedroom. Reading to fall asleep is okay, but if you spend significant time doing more than the two things that beds were designed for, you are basically training your body to stay awake while in bed.

So the next time someone scoffs over your desire to sleep late or catch an afternoon nap, take a step back and ask yourself if the person wagging a finger at you looks like he or she could use a better night’s sleep too.

1 http://ezinearticles.com/?Free-Fat-Loss-Tips---Get-More-Sleep-to-Avoid-Obesity-and-Other-Health-Problems&id=2057121

2 http://www.apa.org/topics/whysleep.html