Status Report: 1 lb. lost, 33 lbs. total

Just a pound this week. Which I was expecting because I lost five the week before. I think it’s common for most to go out of the gate fast, slow way down, then settle into something resembling a groove.

This week went pretty well. No binges and I’m on day 10 of hitting my goal of getting in at least 10,000 steps per day. It gets a little easier the longer I do it because as time goes by I have a better awareness of where I need to be step-wise at what point during the day. The hardest bit is getting steps in at work because I have a desk job, and even getting up and wandering the long way around the office on the way to the bathroom doesn’t add much. Days when I don’t have Zumba class are also harder. Owning a treadmill helps a lot because I can get on there, turn on the TV, and just zone out until the buzzer goes off to tell me I’ve hit the goal.

I also noticed this week what a big difference healthy food makes in how I feel.

Normally on weekdays, I have what I call my “super food oatmeal” for breakfast. ½ cup plain oatmeal, ¾ cup frozen blueberries, ¼ cup milk, ¾ cup water, 2 teaspoons chia seeds, 1 tablespoon semi-sweet chocolate chips. I let it soak overnight in the fridge so the chia seeds can plump, then heat it in the microwave at work the next day. It clocks in at around 300 calories. After eating it I feel content, but not stuffed, and I’m good to go for energy until my lunch break at 1PM.

Yesterday one of our suppliers dropped off a metric ton of Panera Bread treats for breakfast, and I selected an asiago cheese breakfast bagel sandwich with egg and bacon. Afterward I looked up the nutrition info – 580 calories and 25 grams of fat, yikes! It was super tasty, but I could feel it sitting like a rock in my stomach all morning. When lunch rolled around I wasn’t even hungry, I just felt kind of heavy and bleh. And of course, I ate that the day before my weigh in. Derp.

I’m still debating whether it was worth it. It truly was a good and tasty breakfast sandwich but I really didn’t like the way I felt after eating it. The same thing happens when I have a bagel for breakfast, it’s like having a glue ball in my stomach for most of the day.

Status Report: 5 lbs. lost, 32 lbs. total

I’ll be weighing in on Fridays and today’s weight was 263, down 5 pounds from my regain weight of 268 and down 32 pounds from my starting weight of 295. That’s a bit fast, but my first week making changes usually sees a big drop, and I know it will slow down considerably quite soon.

I managed to make myself sick yesterday eating too much crappy food for lunch, then working out a lot when I got home. My stomach felt so bad I wasn’t even hungry for dinner so I skipped it – and that NEVER happens to me. Also with my health anxiety issues I can’t get indigestion without suspecting I’m having a heart attack, so… that was fun.

My last status report like this was dated September 10^th, 2014 and I was at a 74 lb. loss back then. Boy howdy, it’s hard to have been knocked this far back.

You’ll also notice that I disclose my weight pretty freely. I’ve long been annoyed by the stigma surrounding body weight and that’s my own small, personal way to fight it. Are you horrified by my weight? Do you hate me for how much I weigh? I’m guessing the answer is no. Largely, you probably don’t care what I weigh other than vaguely being happy for me when I lose some. Just so, nobody really cares what you weigh either (unless they’re a fat-shaming jerk). As the saying goes, “those that mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind.”

Nowhere to go from here but down.

Coming Clean

The reason there have not been steady status updates in a while is because it has now been officially a quarter of a year (three months) since I lost any significant weight.  I’m not gaining, I’m holding steady at around a 75 lb. loss.  I go up a pound, I lose two, I gain three, I lose one a week for two weeks, I gain one, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

I’m not quite ready to call it a day and decide that life at just over 200 lbs. is good enough, but I also haven’t yet cracked the code for shedding that final 45 to achieve my goal weight.  After losing as much as I have, it feels tantalizingly close, and yet as stubbornly slow as my metabolism has become it also feels endlessly out of reach at the same time.

Sometimes I’m highly motivated for three or four days at a time, sometimes I’m spending three or four days firmly wedged back in my old habits.  The problem is half metabolic slowdown due to extended starvation conditions, and half a motivational loss.

I haven’t found the secret to getting back on track, but I am glad that I’m maintaining and protecting the investment of all the work I’ve done so far.

If anybody has a suggestion for getting things moving again, I am all ears.

Status Report: 2 lbs. lost, 74 lbs. total

I am now firmly ensconced in a period that I am referring to as: the long, slow slog.

At one point I was the rabbit, taking off an average of two to three pounds every week.  Now as I approach the 200 lb. body weight mark I’ve slowed waaaay down and become the tortoise, losing a fairly steady pound per week.  You may (or may not) notice that I’m only giving status reports every few weeks these days, since reporting in with that same one pound loss every week is kind of boring.

I’m aware that it’s a healthy rate of loss, but I honestly could be doing better.  I’ve been really struggling with maintaining my motivation and not sitting down every now and again with a bag of chips or too many slices of pizza.  These slip ups are happening once a week or so – which isn’t often enough to make me gain, but is often enough to cause the extremely slow rate of loss I’m seeing now.

Also, I’m not so sure it’s very good for me to average 1,300 to 1,500 calories most days and then jump up to 2,200 once a week or so.  Although there is some compelling evidence to support the idea that this zig zag method of calorie intake does trick the metabolism out of getting really sluggish due to perceived starvation conditions, I think the higher days should really involve something a bit healthier than pizza.

Status Report: 2 lbs. lost, 72 lbs. total

So I had to adjust my daily calorie goal.

I use the Daily Plate to track my nutrition, and I’ve had my account set up so that it steers me toward losing 2 lbs. per week assuming I stick to the calorie guidelines it provides.  This was giving me a daily calorie goal to aim for of 1,010 calories.

I have no idea why it took me this long to realize that me trying to consume barely more than a thousand calories per day is a very bad idea.

For one thing, it’s just not possible for me.  Unless I’m sick with a cold or the flu I simply do not have the emotional fortitude to be that hungry and deprived all day long.  The end result of this is that I was failing, every single day, to meet my goal.  This was demoralizing.

On top of that, assuming I were capable of hitting such a small number, I don’t think it’s actually healthy for a 5’7” adult female of large Scottish build to eat such a small amount of calories each day.  I don’t know if the Plate’s calculating algorithm is off or what, but everything I’ve ever read has strongly stated that the bare minimum for any average adult female should be no lower than 1,200 calories.

So I re-adjusted my settings to have it guide me toward a 1 & ½ pound loss per week instead, and that gave me a new daily calorie total of 1,330 per day.  Still pretty low, but at least somewhat within my grasp as doable.

In other news, I’m three pounds away from my next set of progress photos.  Looking forward to that!

Status Report: 2 lbs. lost, 70 lbs. total

This update, as well as regular posts in general, are very far behind.

There’s a couple of reasons for this:

1)      I've been a bit down lately for reasons that are complex and too personal to go into here.  When this happens I lose touch with creative energy (or any energy for that matter) and tend to fall asleep very early each night as a form of mental escape.  Writing of any kind feels impossible.  Regular exercise also hasn't been happening.

2)      Another unfortunate side effect of feeling down is turning to food for comfort.  The desire to comfort-eat mixed with my generally high hunger level has made it very, very difficult to shave off any weight, which is why my cumulative weight loss for the past month has been only two pounds.  So basically there hasn't been much to report, or rather nothing tremendously positive to report.

That being said, I can still say a couple of good things about the past month:

1)      I got to go on one of the most wonderful vacations of my life, details of which (and pictures) to follow.

2)      Despite some emotional struggles, I did not gain weight and still lost two pounds!  When I've had this much of a difficult time in the past I've been known to give up and my weight skyrocketed as a result.  This time was different, and I’m really proud of myself for maintaining my weight loss through a tough stretch and even continuing a slow trend downward toward goal.

3)      As of my last weigh-in I was 219 lbs.  I know the numbers shouldn't matter that much, but I was super-excited to be in the teens.  Getting under the two hundred pound mark feels like it’s really and truly within my grasp!

4)      I have become a pro at saying “no” to desserts.  This is largely because I get so much practice at it.  Cakes, cookies and doughnuts appear at work several times per week, and ignoring them has become such an ingrained habit that I barely think about it anymore.  People who are totally satisfied with, “just a bite” can’t understand this – but for me that single bite is exactly like an alcoholic deciding to put a drop of bourbon on their tongue.  Its pure torture, and I’m much happier not knowing how something tastes so I can’t obsess over wanting to stuff myself with all of it.  It’s also incredibly touching and sweet how my family always makes sure there’s fruit salad on hand for me at family dinners, so that I have an alternative for dessert that’s safe for me.

So overall, a lot more positives to report even though this hasn't been the best time in my life of late.  I have things to be proud of, and more importantly things to be grateful to God, family and friends for.  If I can focus on those even in my darkest moments, I know that I will always be carried through. 

Status Report: 3 lbs. lost, 68 lbs. total

I’m not going to pretend that I now only desire fruits and vegetables and that my love and cravings for sugar and fat combined is a thing of the past – but – I will say that walking into the produce department at Wegman’s does now produce a feeling akin to being a kid in a candy shop.

It’s because I genuinely do love fresh, ripe fruits and vegetables and when I walk into that department I know that I can safely run wild, take home and eat what I like, and my body will be healthy and strong as a result as my weight loss continues.  A beautiful produce department is a safe, delicious, dare I say decadent place for me to be.

This week I brought home white nectarines, plump round Brussels sprouts, sweet rich grapes, curly kale, crisp romaine, beautiful sweet multicolored grape tomatoes, fresh melon that collapses and melts across the tongue, crisp cucumbers, earthy maitake mushrooms… I could go on.  It’s mine all mine.  And I am so grateful I live somewhere with access to these wonderful foods and also possess the resources to buy them.  A lot of people out there struggle due to lack of access and the extremely high cost of eating healthy.

So… three more pounds off!  That’s a few weeks of work, not just one, because I’m overdue to check in.  Closing in on the 70 lbs. lost mark doesn’t feel real.  I don’t feel or look different enough to myself for that to be possible – I look down and go, ‘oh man… there’s still such a long journey left!’

On the other hand my clothing sizes are very different, ranging now from 12 up to 20 instead of up in the 28 range.  I am pear shaped, so my upper half has shrunk down already to a pretty average women’s size large while my lower half continues to retain most of my body weight, I would assume this extreme size difference continues to make dresses impossible for me, but since I haven’t tried one on in over a year I can’t be sure.  Also that tells you how dumb women’s clothing sizes truly are.  For example in pants I’m wearing mostly what they call a 20, because when I try on size 18 I can’t even pull them up over my hips let alone zip them.  So why is there such a huge size difference between 18 and 20?  I discovered it’s because there’s also 18W in there between the two, which, by the way, I can fit into.  It’s just so, so stupid and completely arbitrary.

I have also noticed that my back is almost completely smoothed out, whereas it used to have a couple of fat rolls.  That’s really nice.  I catch myself reaching back to run my hands down my own back, noticing that difference.

I always thought that this far in I’d be spinning in a grassy, sunlit field with glee with my arms flung out in ecstasy – but the reality is it happens so slowly that it’s sort of anti-climactic.  It is really nice though being closer to finished than to the start.  And other people can more easily see what I cannot (and they are nice enough to tell me, thank you!) so I know things are changing, I guess I still just need better eyes to see for myself.

Does anybody else think that when I hit goal I should get a snail tattoo on my butt or something?  Seems appropriate.

Status Report: 3 lbs. lost, 65 lbs. total

Those three pounds up there are actually two weeks’ worth of loss since I missed checking in last week.  Too much life stuff going on = very slooow writer’s brain!

A few things of interest to note though.

I got through Easter with no dessert!  I asked my family to please not purchase any chocolate for me or make any dessert with me in mind.  The end result was that my Mom made one small dessert and nobody got any chocolate!  That’s not what I was asking them to do, but I was so, so proud of them all for getting on-board with the healthier (albeit less flavorful) choice of still having a wonderful holiday without too much added sugar involved.  Granted, my Brother-in-law did accuse me of, “ruining Easter” but he was just joking.  I think.

Also regarding sugar, I had an interesting experience last weekend.  At one of those cute 50’s style burger joints I ordered and enjoyed a sensible egg white omelet.  These days eating out healthy is easier than it’s ever been on account of the American obsession with weight (I think that’s the only thing about the obsession I’m grateful for, but I’ll take it).

A friend of mine ordered something called a “chocolate grilled cheese” for dessert.  That amounted to two slices of pound cake with a Hershey’s bar melted between, smothered in chocolate syrup, whipped cream and strawberries.  I really, really wanted a bite – so I had a bite.

Now that I’m not constantly swamping my palate with sweetness every single day, I find that I’m more capable of determining what a really good, worthwhile dessert is.  That dessert tasted good (how could it not?) but it wasn’t worth the calories involved in eating the whole thing, or even half of it.  I swiped a few of the strawberries and found that I was done.  I’d had enough food – and I was okay.

I'm not saying my food addition is gone, that's not possible.  I'm just saying that me and the ugly monster might be learning to live together a little more peaceably.