Journey Updates
May 2, 2010 @ 05:51 pm
I have lost about 22 pounds this year. I've lost a whole heck of a lot of it in just the last 3 and a half weeks. That's something I've been reminding myself of over the last several days.
This may be the week my weight loss starts to slow down. That's good ... I guess. Frankly, I could get used to losing 5 pounds a week, but I know the chances are higher that regular high-losses is muscle and bone rather than
fat loss. And I want fat loss. Nevertheless, I really
want to lose five pounds a week. But it's probably safest if I don't.
The human body is a tricky thing, the subconscious actually a bit subversive at time. Our evolution has no idea what to do with modern society and at times the body adapts to what it thinks is going, but what it thinks is going on hasn't happened in a few millenia. So, we just have to be trickier than our bodie
s. Since weighing in at 285ish with a 5 pound loss on Wednesday, the next three days were really high calorie days. I ate, easily, well above the average I'd been eating at.
That doesn't bother me, really. I was eating all good foods - real food, nutritious food, nothing processed - but it happened to be high in calories. But I wasn't necessarily working out as hard as normal either. In the grander scheme of things, I was doing just find. But in the microcosm of my week, it felt like my body was taking a breather. Naturally, without me deciding to, it was scaling back the intensity a bit.
Yesterday (Saturday), my mid-week weigh-in was just about a half pound. And I'd planned to wear a particular shirt that a week ago was really loose on me, but now was tight around my middle again. It was a little discouraging, in a way. But it's been hot here, and I know I've been a little dehydrated, so maybe I was retaining water. Maybe I just needed a little break. Maybe my body was adjusting to the heavy program, low calories, and needs a change. I don't know, but I'm choosing not to worry.
Because if I just lose one or two pounds this week, that's healthy, that's fine. If I hit a plateau over this week and next week, then I'll make some adjustments and get through it.
But I made it through the six week mark of this Fourth Great Attempt - and though I faltered a bit there through vacation and faulty nutrition, I've not lost sight of where I'm headed. And I will not fail again.
0 comments | Topics: progress
Journey Updates
April 24, 2010 @ 11:21 am
This past week feels like it went really quickly. It also feels like I didn't get anything substantial accomplished. I felt "blah" for a lot of the days, kind of unmotivated, and occasionally my depression issues popped up. It was worst on Thursday, but like I wrote yesterday, I pressed through it, chose not to binge eat, and came through just fine. I've been working on using meditation to help get through the depressed feelings, but I'm not sure it's working all that well yet. I've had trouble focusing again, getting distracted by random sounds and what not. But that's okay, because the time I am able to spend is spent reinforcing a positive view of myself, my journey and my future. That helps in the long run.
This turn-around in my journey has been pretty incredible. Generally, I don't get too excited about anything - I have a very even-keeled and tempered personality. So I'm not bouncing off the walls with glee over all the weight I'm suddenly losing. But it's no less remarkable how fast my body has responded to proper nutrition. This morning's mid-week check-in was 287.5 lbs. It's like the weight is just falling off.
Though the numbers are falling and I can certainly perceive changes in my body, I find myself frustrated that I still look so fat. That's ridiculous, of course. I'm constantly reminding myself that I've always thought I looked fat - and I've always had quite the gut hanging down in front of me - even when I was 260, 230, or less. So I'm going to be struggling with this for a while. But the gut is shrinking ever so slightly - shirts are fitting - so that's something.
Since getting my nutrition under control, I've realized I
don't want to eat more than I am. I'm maxing out eating about 1500-1600 calories on a
heavy day. That's technically too low. But the fact is, I don't know how to eat more. When I eat a meal, I'm fully satiated. If I ate any more I'd just be eating for the sake of eating. I don't necessarily respond to every hunger cue but I do eat through the day when I need something. And I've been trying to eat more in the morning and at lunch than at dinner. But all in all, I simply don't know how to add more calories while eating real food. It's a little maddening if I think about it too much, but at the same time I'm not worrying too much about it since I'm listening to my body and retraining it to have a better relationship with food. If I continue to lose 3+ pounds a week over the next several weeks, I'll have to make some sort of adjustment because I want to be careful about losing just body fat and not other healthy tissue.
So that's where we are this week. Making progress, pressing forward. Onward and downward.
1 comment | Topics: progress
Journey Updates
April 23, 2010 @ 01:45 pm
It's been over two weeks since I last binged at night. Before kicking myself in the butt on April 7th about nutrition, I was frequently snacking like a madman. I'd have a "few" chips or crackers, "some" cheese, just "a little" ice cream, "a glass" of wine. It all added up - and in reality I was gorging myself. That all stopped ... and I feel just fine. In fact I feel better. I have one glass of wine a night to wind down with, and that's it. Occasionally some popcorn. But no more binge eating, no more emotional eating.
Last night I was having another rough evening. This whole week I've been off-and-on feeling a little down or frustrated about my looks, my weight, whatever. It's all silly and baseless, of course, it's just a resurgence of depression. But I recognize it and do my best to dismiss it. But last night was a particularly good victory.
Normally, when I'm having a depressy evening and I'm by myself (as I was last night with The Beau out on the town with a friend), I'm prone to eating. And eating. And eating. And drinking. And eating some more. And watching television mindlessly while mindlessly eating.
Well last night ... I didn't. I had one thought of it - I thought to go eat the extra food I had from dinner, or pig out on cookies and ice cream. In actuality I only had that thought after I realized I wasn't emotionally eating on an otherwise emotional evening. Then my brain said, oh - I should want to gorge myself! But really, no. And I moved on. I had had my dinner, I had watched some television, and then I turned it off and read my book the rest of the evening while sipping my singular glass of wine.
Yay for small victories.
1 comment | Topics: depression, food and eating, progress
Journey Updates
April 21, 2010 @ 07:52 am
Just taking a moment, here, to reflect and consider. This morning I weighed in at 290.8 lbs. That's 3.2 lbs off from last week, and puts me at my lowest weight in many, many years and certainly the lowest in all of my weight loss journey since June '07. Body fat percentage fell which means I burned fat. At this point, every weigh-in will be the "lowest I've been in many, many years."
Every weigh-in will be a milestone.
I started working in NY five years ago this week, moving from CA where I went to school and met The Beau. I weighed somewhere around 280 - 285 at that time. I officially moved into the city 2-3 weeks after I started working here so by the time it's been 5 years since I've lived here I should be right around the same weight.
And it's all downhill from here. (ha!)
0 comments | Topics: progress, self-respect
Journey Updates
April 17, 2010 @ 06:00 pm
Well it's been a good week, all around. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about this week, myself, or my weight loss journey. I'm in a good place. I'm learning to listen and be in tune with my body. I'm feeling better. My house is clean. That may seem weird but the cleanliness of my home reflects my state of self-respect and contentment. It's just how my brain works. So anyway ...
The scale is all over the map lately. A week and a half ago, I weighed in at 306 lbs - nearly the weight I started at 3+ months ago. This past Wednesday, I weighed in at 294 ... apparently I lost 12 pounds in a week. 12 Pounds! What the hell? I even checked the scale by weighing a five pound bag of flour and a bowl of water (a half gallon should weigh about 4.16 pounds). The scale was accurate. Who knows what was going on last week ... maybe it was water weight, maybe I was retaining a lot of gunk because I'd not been hydrating as much as I should, or whatever. But something between the 7th and the 14th made my body
whoosh! it all out.
And
that, ladies and gents,
feels really damn good. Because the normal safe track for losing weight is 2-3 pounds a week, tops, I had the potential at being stuck above 300 all the way through April. To basically get a chance to reset to where I was in a week, well, it's a relief. I wish I could lose those Biggest Loser-sized weights every week, but that's not safe and it's not going to happen. I'd rather lose weight, build muscle and get healthy at a steady clip than deal with the side effects of going too quickly.
Food-wise, I've been good. This is kicking in. I don't eat after dinner (
maybe some popcorn). I've had virtually no processed foods and I'm loving all the good tastes that natural, real food can have. I'm drinking tons of water and only about a glass of wine a night.
And I did a mid-week check-in this morning and was down 1.8 pounds, so I know I'm on the right track and it feels good to be movin' and groovin' again.
2 comments | Topics: progress
Journey Updates
April 10, 2010 @ 12:09 pm
Well this was a bipolar kind of week. I knew I had to finally weigh-in after going a long time avoiding the scale. I was feeling kind of good about it; I'd been working out hard, even extra hard on Tuesday before my weigh-in, and I felt surely that had been making up for nutritional indiscretions over the previous weeks. But clearly I'd wandered way off the ranch. Perhaps if I'd weighed in sooner, even if it was bad news, I would have readjusted my course. Instead what I thought would be an "okay" result was utterly demoralizing.
It's like stepping into a really bright room. At first I was blinded by the reality that my weight had ballooned again in spite of my gym efforts, and in spite of feeling good. Then as my eyes and brain adjusted I saw more clearly just how felonious I've been in the last few weeks.
- Eating whole pints of ice cream
- Cooking a lot more pasta than two of us need and going back for seconds.
- Cheese, glorious cheese. And lots of it
- Routinely 1/2 to 3/4 bottle of wine a day
- Snacking, snacking, snacking ... heavily between dinner and bedtime. Snack packs, cheese, cookies, peanut butter, anything especially refined breads and processed foods.
- Not drinking nearly enough water. Eating too little during the day so I binge at night.
- Not taking my vitamins and supplements, not eating enough real foods like veggies, flax, or nuts.
I've been moving the line. I've been getting 12-inch Subway sandwiches when a 6 inch is fine if I eat it slowly. I've been having just a little more and a little more.
Well that stopped on Wednesday. I've started analyzing more closely what I'm eating to understand better what's going into my body. I'm reeducating my brain on what proper nutrition feels like. I'm hungry at times, but I have fruit, nuts or veggies. I drink a lot of water ... I pee every 10 minutes (well it feels like that). I've calculated my basal metabolic rate, the number of calories I need to eat and burn each week. Over the last three days I've not eaten a lot of calories, actually, about 1300 - 1600 total not including exercise (which reduces net calories), and it's been fine. I've been satiated.
And most importantly I stopped eating after dinner. There were times after dinner where I would think "I'm peckish" but then I realized, no, I wasn't, and I didn't need to eat. I drank water, I had a glass of wine, and maybe a bite of ice cream if I was getting some for The Beau but otherwise, I've cut out eating so late at night. And by the by, my dreams haven't been as crazy either as a result.
So progress this week? I've done well over the last month of kicking my ass into the gym but eating has again been my Achilles' heal. That's changing again and I'm now focusing on training my mind as much as I have been training my body.
0 comments | Topics: food and eating, mistakes, progress
Journey Updates
April 7, 2010 @ 09:32 am
It's been six and a half weeks since my last weigh in. Today's weight:
306.2 lbs. That ... is not what I was expecting. Not even close. I thought
maybe I'd maintained around 297. I thought
maybe I'd even lost a little bit more. I've been hitting the gym
really hard - so hard I've frequently had to take quick naps afterwords just to see straight again. I feel better, even if my clothes aren't as loose as I'd like ... I guess that should've been a bigger clue.
Sigh. I'm not happy this morning; not at all. I'm shamed. I'm confused.
And clearly I've been eating way too much and all-wrong. I've known this. I've known I've been drinking too much, eating the wrong things, and most egregiously I've been eating
a lot late at night, whether I'm hungry or not. I can go all day and not feel a bit of hunger and forget to drink water and then I just binge come nighttime. I eat, and eat, and eat. I eat a bowlful of ice cream or a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's. I raid the fridge for leftover meat, cheese, and bread. I scarf down 100 calorie packs in a single gulp (well, almost) and then go back for more. I have a glass of wine, and then another, and then probably another.
I'm doing great at the gym, it's my routine, I feel good. But good exercise cannot make up for poor nutrition, and this morning I was hit upside the head with the fact my nutrition has been for shit.
Dingaling, time to wake up. Time to be tracking my food with the @
LWDFoodLog twitter account again. Time to stop eating after dinner just because I'm bored or have a craving. Time to cut back on the alcohol for the forseeable future. Time to guzzle 3-4 litres of water a day. Time to be taking my vitamins and supplements like I'm supposed to. Time to get back on track with meditation and stress-relieving visualization.
Basically, it's time to do the things I know I'm supposed to - beyond just going to the gym.
(Interestingly, the scale says my body fat percentage was unchanged ... maybe some of the weight is muscle, but then, body fat percentage is a difficult thing to track accurately so I always take it with a grain of salt.)
2 comments | Topics: exercise, food and eating, mistakes, progress, shame
Journey Updates
April 3, 2010 @ 01:54 pm
Well I was going to update over the last week with some various bits of news and a few thoughts on things, but ... I was busy. So I'll save some thoughts for future posts and relay the news right now:
I'm getting married!
The Beau and I have been together for 5 years and our anniversary was Thursday April 1. Well he had a half day off at work on Thursday (and a day off yesterday) so to enjoy the absolutely beautiful day, we went on a picnic in Central Park. After eating our food and chatting he pulled out a short story he wanted me to read. He's a writer, so I often read the things he's working on but I hadn't even heard that he was working on this so I figured it was a nice anniversary gift. By the end of the story, which had us as the main characters, his character had proposed to mine. When I'd finished, my boyfriend was proposing to me.
He's so sweet. Yesterday we went ring shopping and then to the gym together. Hehe.
The rest of the week was pretty good in the gym, not terrible food-wise. Food is definitely my Achilles Heel in this process, it's really easy to eat all the wrong things, snack myself to fatness, and completely ignore a fridge-full of veggies and fruit and opt for any bread-based carbohydrate I can find. It's a good thing I didn't actually make bread last week. But I'm not too broken up about it.
I feel good. The gym feels good. I feel like I'm pushing myself but I also feel like I'm always ready for more. We have some party-esque things this weekend where I am sure to eat bad stuff but I was in the gym today, I'll be in the gym tomorrow, and I'll do my best to eat right from Monday on. Then I promise I will finally weigh-in on Wednesday - the day before my birthday. eek!
2 comments | Topics: The Beau, encouragement, progress
Journey Updates
March 28, 2010 @ 02:17 pm
As a quick update to my "people who notice first" post from a couple days ago, I had another nice unexpected moment yesterday. The Beau and I were walking home from the gym and he was calling his brother (with whom he's running the
Hood to Coast this year). As he was bragging about a new milestone his brother asked if I'd been going to the gym too, because in the pictures from our vacation last week I looked like I'd been losing weight. It was a really nice moment, and made me feel good.
In other news, I have not been the most well behaved this week. I've worked out every day but Monday and really hard, too - hitting the same benchmarks as before I took a nearly 2 week break for vacation. I paid for it, though, because my legs are whupped! But that's okay. I did a day of strength training too.
The thing about the gym lately is that I've been working it really hard, like I should, and I'm diligent to keep going back but man, when I think about it in the morning my first instinct is "Damn, this is gonna
hurt" because it's been a really strong few weeks. So I'm always tempted to take a day off ... but really I think I'll just focus on more strength training since that's just as important as cardio in the long run.
But where I've really been naughty this week is in eating. I just feel hungry a lot. Maybe it's stress maybe it's just not sticking to what I know is best to do. But I've been snacking a lot, especially at night, and especially on things I ought not. I haven't been drinking as much water as I should, and frankly I've felt a little bloated or heavier lately. And I had two nights in a row that I went for drinks with friends. Oh well. I'm gonna get back on track with drinking all the water I should and also taking my vitamins and omega-3s. I can definitely feel the difference between when I take the omega-3, and thus feel the inflammation decrease, and when I don't.
So onwards. I will probably finally do a weigh-in this coming week. It's been a long time and I might as well bite the bullet if it's bad, or enjoy it if it's good. The Beau and my 5-year anniversary is this week, too, and about 2 weeks after that will be the 5 year anniversary of when I moved to New York. Five years ago I weight in the neighborhood of 280 - 285. I doubt I'll be back to that level by the anniversary but I hope I'm at least closer. I feel good, and that matters.
1 comment | Topics: progress
Journey Updates
March 23, 2010 @ 04:41 pm
I had a really nice moment at the gym yesterday (the first day back in about 11 days due to work and vacation). First the back story -
I don't tell people I'm working on losing weight. I don't tell people I'm trying to eat healthy or make a big deal out of going to the gym every day. I simply do it and if anyone asks I talk about it as if I've always done it this way. :) I don't like to draw attention to myself and more importantly I don't like to draw attention to the fact I am fat ... not that I'm fooling anyone. I also don't want anyone to ever feel obligated to congratulate me on my progress only because they know I'm trying - if they notice and say I'm looking healthier, then that means it's legitimately being noticed.
So since I never talk about it I'm always amused by who notices first whenever I'm trying to live healthier. Or at least, who notices and is nice enough to say something. When I first moved to NYC I put on some weight but soon started going to a gym and exercising. I didn't make a ton of progress but one morning at the office, before most people arrived it was just me and this one late middle aged lady from Accounting. I was settling in after getting back from the gym and she says "You're losing weight - You look good." Awww!
Later after I started my blog and made a real commitment to healthy living I started drinking water like a fish. A colleague says after a couple weeks "You look healthier - like a glow." Yay hydration!
A year+ later, after I started Weight Watchers and made some good progress, I was fitting well in a shirt and the Beau and I went out to NJ to visit my dad and he and his now-wife says "You're looking thinner - keep it up."
This Week's Story
It's these little encouragements, completely out of the blue, that really help in this journey. So that brings us to the story from yesterday. As I've said I've not been to the gym in a little while so I go back and have a good workout. As I'm wrapping it up and heading back downstairs to the locker room, one of the floor trainers looks over and says "How was vacation? ... You were gone for a while."
I was surprised. This guy was friendly with a lot of people but we'd never spoken. Neither I nor the Beau chat up the staff at the gym, but I guess he'd still managed to notice I'd been gone for a while. So I reply "Yeah we went to Florida - it was really nice." And then out of the blue he says "You're losing - you're looking less. I can see it. Keep it up."
It was out of the blue, it was really nice, and it made me feel good. The cynic in me says maybe he was just saying something encouraging because that's his job as a floor trainer, but the fact that we've never talked before and he still noticed my absence is encourage on its own. So sometimes, all it takes is a good word out of the blue.
5 comments | Topics: encouragement, progress
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
