Journey Updates
February 14, 2010 @ 03:56 pm
This week kinda sucked. The whole "not-going-to-let-travel-screw-me-up" thing was a bust. I didn't make it to the gym at the hotel. I drank way too much. Ate too much. Ate the wrong things. It generally was a busy, high-stress, not-good experience. I didn't really enjoy the trip or the project - things were just not going right - and now I have to go back. On the plus side I could have gotten stranded there this whole weekend. But now it's uncertain when I'm going to have to return and it's generally just annoying.
Oh well. I should get back on the horse and take this one positive day at a time. But I think I'm just enjoying my weekend home with The Beau and not worrying too much about anything else. Plus I tripped while I was on-site at the client and sprained both ankles and pulled my thigh muscle. So I feel a little like a mess. But tomorrow I'll get back into the gym and get back to my routine and all will be right with the world.
I don't know if i"m ever going to lose weight. My weigh-in on Tuesday - a day early because I was flying out of town that day - was the same weight as the week previous. This week I'm certain my weight will be higher again - maybe even above 300. But that's okay. This coming week, in addition to work and working out and eating right and all that good stuff, I'm going to try to spend some time working on this whole meditation and emotional healing thing. I'll probably update and blog a little about that - it's a long journey. This whole thing is a long journey. And I just have to keep remembering that.
I'm kind of in a weird state today. Slightly bored and unmotivated. May go on a Valentine's Day walk to Barnes & Noble with The Beau. Seeing as it's after 4pm I should figure out something :)
0 comments | Topics: evalutation, mistakes, progress, travel
Journey Updates
February 6, 2010 @ 10:29 am
When I think about this week, I have competing thoughts. On the one hand, it was kind of a tough week in that I'm not really seeing the results I want to see in either my weight or even my behavior. On the other hand, I feel okay about the overall journey, in spite of its slow-going.
Food
The week started off rough. I didn't drink nearly enough water and was most certainly dehydrated. That was combined with going to some friends' house for dinner. They served a pasta dish that was actually okay health-wise (white pasta, tomatoes, brussel sprouts), but I just ate too much of it, and too much bread, and of course my weakness for wine kicked in. By Monday morning I was up 2 pounds from Saturday. It took Monday and Tuesday to rehydrate, eat right, and drop those 2 pounds again.
Wednesday and Thursday and to a lesser extent last night (Friday), I binged again. Way more than usual. I don't really understand it but before I know it I've eaten a bunch of carb-heavy food for no reason other than being bored. That's gotta stop and it's probably why I'm at a mini plateau here.
This is the first week I've reintroduced Weight Watchers ice cream sandwiches as a treat ... but knowing they're in the freezer makes my brain think about them and last night I had TWO, because I could. My thought is that they are jacking up my blood sugar right at the end of the day, inspiring me to try to keep it up for some reason and triggering my mind to want more carbohydratey food. One sandwich bar as 28 grams of carbs and 11 grams of sugar - geeze! Not going to buy those again, they are clearly a problem for me.
I'm out of wine. I'm not going to buy more of that either, not for a while or unless we have guests. While a glass of wine is healthy and I do really enjoy it, I usually end up having two, not drinking water at night, and the alcohol screws with leptin and makes it easier to overeat. So I'm going to back off the bottle for a while.
Exercise
I
have been going to the gym ever day for over a week. It feels good, I'm changing things up to keep it interesting, and best of all my heart is getting stronger. I have seen a definite drop in my heart rate while exercising. The calories burned is staying roughly the same, and I'm most assuredly keeping my intensity up and pressing harder and harder with greater resistances. But my maximum heart rate has barely crested 180 for about a week, and I've seen much longer times inside the "Zone" for weight loss + cardiovascular training. (In the past, I would routinely crest at a max rate of over 190 - even up to 199).
This is significant for me - in past chapters of this journey I've suspected my heart was getting stronger but I couldn't confirm it over several workouts and several machines (each one is different). Now I can definitely see the trend. Which means something is taking root in this journey, even if I'm not seeing the pound-over-pound weight loss I'd like to. I went for a week+ without strength training, focusing mainly on cardio and eating right. That's all well and good but the fact is I need muscle to burn more calories in the off times; so I'm going to start focusing on strength training more. I did it this week and used a slow-go approach MizFit described on her blog. 10 seconds up, 10 seconds down. It's a different kind of work out - I think I like it.
Results
My weight isn't dropping. I'm at a weird plateau of about 270 and change. I don't like it but there are other things to consider as well. Generally I feel good. I can feel all these minute changes in my body, in my clothes. My belt is on the fourth hole - and it's not cutting into me. That's new. I think my underwear is looser - it rides up a little more easily while working out (I'm sure you want to know that, but hey, it's a change). My heart rate is dropping. I'm taking my supplements every day and after several weeks of ratcheting up the omega 3 I haven't had as many headaches as I was having four weeks ago.
So maybe my weight isn't moving. That will probably change if I can get this high-sugar-binging-at-night thing taken care of. But something I want to start focusing on in my mind and will try to work into some meditation, is that I need to accept the positive aspects of this journey I
am seeing. I'm eating better, cooking my meals, resisting processed foot, not eating out. I'm taking supplements and feeling better. I'm going to the gym every day. My heart. My belt.
Et cetera. I need to learn to be more satisfied with the whole journey and not just my weight. A part of that is probably accepting myself at this weight ... something I've never been able to fathom.
Onwards we go.
2 comments | Topics: evalutation, progress
Journey Updates
January 30, 2010 @ 12:00 pm
This week we had house guests. Normally that's a dicey thing, but one of them was a friend from California (
alma mater) who we get along quite well with. We had a lot of fun. And it was a successful week for him as well (he was here for grad school auditions). And despite having a friend in town which often leads to a variety of dining out or just dining poorly, I still got to cook most meals and eat healthy. Well, for the most part.
I took a few more licenses in the first part of the week than I would have liked. Sunday we had a full day and so I chose to not go to the gym and sort of have a cheat day. But even in my "cheating" I tried to remain faithful to healthy eating and we ended up walking well over 2-3 miles around the city getting from one thing to another. Brunch with friends, then a play written by one of them, then to a bar where I had some nachos but only wine.
Read the rest of this post
0 comments | Topics: evalutation, progress
Journey Updates
January 27, 2010 @ 12:24 pm
Today I weighed in at 299.5 pounds. That's under 300 (yay!) but a half pound up from Sunday morning (boo!). And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed in it. It's fabulous to be under 300 after just a couple of weeks. In the past that used to take a month or more IF I ever got below 300. But I'm skirting the edge, there, and I'm hesitant to take too much pleasure in it without waiting for additional, confirmatory results as they say in science class. At just a half-pound off from the Big Bad 3, I could easily end up back above the mark next week.
What was it, I think to myself. Was it going out for Brunch on Sunday (despite walking in excess of 2 miles all over the place immediately after)? Was it eating that whole personal pizza I made a couple days ago when I should have just half? Was it the 2 (3?) glasses of wine I drank last night? Is my body reacting negatively to the supplements I've been taking (nothing big, either, just omega-3 and some green tea)? Or is it just ... a slow week?
I learned from The Biggest Loser a couple weeks ago that the second week is awful for weight loss. I thought "hrm, really?" and then wham! Here we are with a 1.5lb loss. Yeah, I guess that could be true.
But there are glimmers of hope in today's weigh-in, too. Because I AM below 300. I. Am. Below. 300. Take it, own it, embrace it. A little loss is still a loss. But perhaps more importantly, my body fat percentage was a full 8/10ths of a percent lower than last week. 39.5% - versus 40.3% last week. Now
that's significant! It's a big drop in body fat, bigger than any previous week-to-week change in this journey. Which means, assuming the measurer thingy on my scale isn't just wildly off, that
something is going on inside my body and gearing up for weight loss. Perhaps I did actually lose a good amount of fat this week, but I also gained muscle.
Let's look at it this way. Last week you could say I was lugging around 121.3 pounds of pure, globby, bouncy-castle FAT. This week, I'm lugging around 118.3 pounds of fat. That's actually 3 pounds of fat loss (I'm probably taking some liberties here with the maths and science, but it works for me). I actually feel better about that. It's a full 1% of my body weight. And it means I've gained some muscle.
So I feel good and bad about the weigh-in. But that just goes to show you why you can't rely solely on weight as an indicator of health or progress.
0 comments | Topics: The Biggest Loser, body fat percentage, evalutation, progress
Journey Updates
January 25, 2010 @ 08:55 am
So I kind of forgot about doing my weekly check-ins over the weekend. Here's how week 2 went (which was last week). The week was good.
Thanks, the end.
Thinking back through it I don't know as there's a whole lot to report. It actually seems a long time ago that I did my weigh-in (Wednesday) and was 6 pounds or 2% down. I was really happy with that. I'd wanted to break through 300 on the first week since I was so close, but I've only ever lost 7+ pounds once, so should expect more modest gains. Since the second full-week weigh in is coming up this week, I'm not really sure what to expect. They made an interesting point on The Biggest Loser (from which I'm learning a lot, which is surprising, actually) that the second week is tougher to get good gains. It's something I knew but that codifies it. A quickie weigh-in on Sunday showed down 2 pounds, which
is under 300 finally.
So we'll have to see what happens. It's not all about the weight, either. One day a week I'm doing some good strength training. Nothing too focused, just enough to build a little muscle mass to counterbalance the fat. That should help my body fat percentage drop, too, which is just as important if not more important than the weight number itself.
We have a friend visiting this week. I took Sunday off from the gym and sorta from the "diet." I didn't really binge or anything, though. I had a normal breakfast, and then we went to brunch with some other friends where I had an omelet and some potatoes. It was more than I would normally eat but I tried to be as judicious as one could. I
didn't stuff myself or force myself to clear my plate - which is new! Progress! I'm
learning! And though I didn't go the gym I did kind of force us to walk the two miles from the restaurant to the theatre. Welcome to New York, my Californian drive-everywhere friend! (Meh, he's fit and in college, he can take it.)
Every morning I've been doing some meditation and visualization. It's a tool I haven't really talked about yet, so I'll not give too much away just yet but suffice it to say it does make for a more relaxed and peaceful day.
I'm now facing a work week where I have puhlenty to do. Deadlines coming up. Travel starting next week. It's gonna be a busy couple of weeks but I'm happy that I've gotten a solid start to this journey before dealing with the perils of traveling-while-fat. I'll continue to hit the gym. I'll continue to meditate. I'll continue to work on my healing. And I'll continue to lose weight.
0 comments | Topics: progress
Journey Updates
January 16, 2010 @ 08:05 pm
So it wasn't a full week, since I
really only started on Wednesday. But I was working on this blog before that, and that kind of counts. How many calories do typing and clicking burn, anyway?
I think the most remarkable thing about this week is that I started at
only 307 lbs. Heh, "only." But every other time I've started it's been more like 315, 320, or so heavy I didn't bother moving my then-rickety knees all the way over to the scale. 307 feels like the 200s are just around the corner, like they're attainable once and for all, like I don't have to spend the first 3 or 4 or 6 weeks just getting out of the threes. So I was pleasantly surprised with 307.
And not to give spoilers, but a mid-week check in was lower than that (yay!) so things is okays.
I started in on the gym again. I thought it would be rough those first couple of days but really, the first day back was like hanging out with an old friend. I stuck to the same benchmarks I had before I stopped going last Fall, and got a full half hour in on the first day. And again on the second day, and the third day. Each day I thought I wouldn't be able to go because of work or maybe I should ease myself more slowly into it, but I went anyway. Today was a mac-daddy workout: 10 minutes warm-up on the elliptical, 20 minutes or so of strength training (ouch, been a while), 30 minutes on an elliptical-like thingy that makes you feel like a gazelle.
I'm taking tomorrow off. Because I'm probably going to hurt. Also, it's good to take a break from the gym and I don't really want to push too hard too fast or I'll just burn out. I can feel myself needing a little break, from stiff muscles to near-chafing issues, Sunday is a good day to rest. Plus I have a small cut on my heel from dry, cracked skin and it's taking a while to heal, so I'm going to try to minimize the stress I put it through for a day to get it all put right again.
Other than that, I feel pretty okay. The Beau decided today that he would join his brother and sister in running the Hood To Coast - the mother of all relays at nearly 200 miles from Mt Hood to Seaside, Oregon. The race is in August. He thought he couldn't do it (his 2 miles today was a bit rough, apparently) but I convinced him that there's more than enough time to train and get prepared for running 4-8 mile stints every few hours. His svelte, trim, highly metabolic body will do just fine. Maybe I'll join him in 2011.
But for now I press forward trying to lose weight. Day by day.
0 comments | Topics: The Beau, gym, progress
