Status Report: 2.6 lbs. lost, 18 lbs. total

My first week (technically just six days) on my new program have drawn to a close.  I got weighed in last Wednesday night and was down 2.6 lbs. from the previous week which puts me at 18 lbs. total lost from my personal all-time high.  Average weight loss for week one on this program is usually around 6 to 10 lbs.

If a woman’s body can be equated to an ocean then one might say I got weighed in just as the tide was as high as it could go.  As I was driving home from the meeting, the tide turned and began to let out.  This means that I got weighed in at the worst possible time in an entire given month that I could have.  This is also why I watched with horror in the days prior to weigh in as the tide came in and my weight rose and rose from its initial six pound drop right back up to my starting weight.

Here’s the good news: on every other weight loss program I’ve ever done, the best I could possibly hope for during this week in my cycle was to break even and not gain weight.  That means on this one, I’m actually capable of a modest loss.

Trying to focus on the positives.  I’m feeling a little bit better mentally every day, and next week’s loss will be better.

On a side note: Ted has stolen and hid the bathroom scale.  This is probably a good thing.

Cocooned

I’ve spent three days now mostly cut off from fellow human beings that are not Ted.

It’s not that I’m precisely a horror to be around, but I’m not myself.  I’m headachy, a little dizzy, tired, unfocused and somewhat emotional.

Everyone keeps telling me I will adjust, and I admit that each day it’s a tiny bit better.  However on a calorie count this low I don’t get hungry, I get non-functional.  I went for five hours today without having anything and found it to be a pretty big error.  Walking through the grocery store with Ted I found it difficult to focus past the pain in my skull on what he was saying.

To explain – I’m currently taking in around 800 to 1,000 calories per day.  Most days I exercise, which removes almost 300 of those calories.  One day after subtracting my workout I realized I’d effectively had only 400 calories.  This is basically what the clinic defines as “VLCD” or Very Low Calorie Diet, and yes, you need to sign off on a lot of disclaimers and have blood tests before you attempt it.

You would think I might feel hungry constantly on this, but I’m really not – I’m simply never full.  Being not hungry and being full are actually two pretty different things.

So while I’m trying to get my head back together, I’m avoiding people a little bit.  Adding the energy expenditure of attempting to be engaging and social on top of everything else going on is just not something I can handle right now.

I also haven’t been able to resist the temptation to stay off the scale, I was curious.  After 48 hours I appeared to have dropped about six pounds.  However on the third day I appeared to gain a pound back, and as of tonight I am back to my starting weight.

The up and down going on is utterly mystifying to me and has bred a terrible fear that I’m going to go to the clinic for weigh in on Tuesday night only to find that after six days on fewer than 1,000 calories a day I’ve failed to have lost a single pound.

This is followed by more fear that they will accuse me of cheating (which I have not done) and the even worse pathological fear that there is literally nothing I can do to lose weight, no matter what extreme actions I take.

And all of this led to my first well and true flip out tonight, of course directed at Ted who has been a pillar of calm, strength, love and support since day one.  I vaguely remember it involving me yelling that I absolutely positively cannot sustain this program if I’m not rewarded with pounds lost every week.  Or something like that, maybe with crying.

Of course I realize all these hysterics may be the result of my very lousy digital bathroom scale being wrong, as anyone who owns one knows – those things aren’t exactly the definition of reliable.

So that’s where I am.  Cocooned right now and trying to find my equilibrium again.

 

Day One

To be brutally honest here, day one was scary and difficult and without Ted I wouldn’t have got through it.

The food replacement shakes I’m using as my primary food source contain a lot of protein, so they do prevent my stomach from growling – but I’m essentially living off of powder and water at the moment.  For someone as food-obsessed as I am this quite simply feels frightening.  I feel weirdly empty, not precisely hungry, but very unsatisfied.

I also have to explore ways to change up the flavor fast, because after a single day I’ve already grown a little bored with the way the shakes taste.  The vanilla one reminds me of a McDonald’s shake, which tastes okay – but imagine drinking a very heavily iced one… for every meal.

I think I may need to brush my teeth immediately after eating.  The things taste good at first but they leave a slightly weird aftertaste that tends to linger.

I keep reminding myself that an uncomfortable adjustment period is probably natural and necessary, and that many other people both bigger and more addicted than myself have managed to successfully do this.  I have to believe that today was the worst it will be and it’s all downhill from here on out.  But as long and hungry as today at work was, I will fully admit that I’m freaking out a little bit right now.

At the clinic they impressed upon me the vital importance of getting a strong start and sticking firmly to the program in the beginning.  If you get a weak start and cheat right away things only degenerate from there, so I’m determined to hang in there – but I’m no titan, tears were shed.

Awake at 3AM

It’s nearly three o’clock in the morning and I just woke up irrationally afraid.  Simple fear really, just that I will not be able to do this thing and will crack and hoover down a mountain of cookies while nobody is looking (I begin tomorrow… well, technically today).  So here I am, calming my thoughts by seeing them in comforting, neat rows of black text.  I also keep repeating a verse to myself as a reminder:

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13

It’s to remind me that strength comes from a place of infinite and inexhaustible resource.

Additionally, I keep seeing Matt Damon in my head.  No, seriously.  In the trailer for his new movie Elysium he’s lying on a table waiting for someone to do something horrifying and medical to him and he’s giving himself a short, straightforward pep talk: “This ain’t gonna kill me.”  You can see it at a minute and ten seconds here:

 What?  So my brain is a wee bit melodramatic.

I had my appointment with the endocrinologist who works in conjunction with the clinic tonight before my first class meeting.  He is a slightly owlish, dryly funny and soft spoken man.

He told me that since I’m such a healthy patient with no current weight-related complications or illnesses I’ll need minimal check-in’s with him and the nurse as we go along.  I think that means in a month or two they’ll just be making sure that no malnutrition or imbalances are forming rather than having to carefully watch me on a more weekly basis.

When I described to him my exhaustion from dealing daily with food addiction and my desire to detox for a while from everyday foods in order to build a better relationship to them, he said something to me in response that struck me far more deeply than he could have realized.  He told me, “these behaviors you are describing are not character flaws on your part, they’re just human nature.”  He said this so calmly and in a matter-of-fact way, and may or may not know what incredible comfort it is to hear from a medical professional who specifically works in the field of weight management that no, I’m not weak and flawed and wrong and different in some way – I’m merely human.  You know, like everybody else on the planet.

He explained to me that our focus is not going to stop me from eating during my “dangerous” time of day (ie. right after work – which he said is probably a piece of my permanent, mental hard wiring that was developed when I came home from school each afternoon as a child and had a snack).  Rather, we are going to work on retraining me to eat at that time without binging on unhealthy foods and provide me with resources that will be satisfying and filling to have – but will not derail my entire healthy eating day.

So that’s my diagnosis: normal person in otherwise good health who just needs a few habitual behaviors modified (not abolished) in order to achieve a personal goal.  Not a freak, not a glutton, not the sole source for skyrocketing health care costs in America: just ordinary me.

I think it’s time to go back to bed.