Status? Don't ask

I'm starting to emerge from the two months of all work and no workout, so I decided to take a long hard look in the mirror.

Eeeeek!

Okay, on second thought, screw the mirror. I'm going to put a cover over all the mirrors in the house.

It's amazing, in a depressing way, what two months of stress, fast food, no exercise and almost no sleep can do to a woman. I used to have a pot belly. Now it's not so much a pot as a cauldron. I haven't actually been attending Weight Watcher meetings. I usually found time to dash in and get weighed, but some weeks I couldn't even do that. Tracking my food? Yeah, right. Even exercise has been lost in the shuffle.

The ideal long-term solution to this would be to get a new job, one with more pay, less work, and with a gym in the building. A gym staffed by lithe nubile tanned gym instructors with an endless supply of biceps and patience.

A more realistic solution -- for now, anyway -- is to dig myself out of the hole again.

Goals for this week:


• Buy fruit, vegetables, fish. No meat/alcohol/sugar in the house


• Cook enough food so that I can bring food to work


• Bike or walk every damn day


• Get back to attending meetings, reading blogs, and in general trying to find my lost motivation.

I'm putting these goals up here for all the world to see.
Probably all the world has better things to do with their time, but that's not the point.
I am a strong independent occasionally self-deluded woman who is making herself publicly accountable. So there.


Exercise du jour: 30 minutes on the exercise bicycle.

Walked instead, but it's still exercise. (Didn't get the exercise bike set up. Something to look forward to tomorrow.)





My portrait courtesy of Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/axinar/ / CC BY 2.0

Status check: month 3 of Weight Watchers

Weight lost
This week: -4.2
Yeah, but last week I was "officially" up 3 pounds, thanks to Mardi Gras. (I think I actually gained/lost about 6 pounds last week.)
So far: -14.4 (Would 6 more ounces be so much to ask? Pleeeeease?)
Average weight loss per week: 1 pound

Total inches lost
Arms: - .5 inch
Bust: -.25 inch
Waist: -4.5 inches
Hips: -3 inches
Thighs: -.5 inch

Yes, I'm disappointed at how slowly I'm losing weight.
I can understand that it might not seem like a slow loss to someone who doesn't go to the meetings I go to. I see people there losing 5 pounds a week. Each friggin' week. It's not a bad group of people, I'm not saying that, but I'm a little miffed.

What bothers me most, I think, is that I am exercising three times as much as anyone else there, and losing far less. (Mind you, I have calf muscles that would do a calf proud. Wish I'd thought to measure them from the start.)

The other night, one woman spoke about how she struggles to exercise for 15 minutes a day. Since December, I have averaged 50 minutes a day of exercise. (I've been tracking my exercise since then. The actual average is 51 minutes/day.) Is she losing more weight than I am? Of course she is. Silly question. ("Hello, my old and familiar dilemma. Stop exercising and lose muscle as well as fat? Why yes, you are a tempting idea sometimes.")

Last week I couldn't make the meeting and had to go to another location instead. I was amazed at the people there who said it had taken them several months to lose 15 pounds. Why aren't these kinds of people going to my meeting? (Maybe they are and just don't say much.)

I want to keep going to this meeting because it's within walking distance of my house, I like the woman who leads the meeting, and the group is basically quite nice. The other meeting would require driving my car, and has the very grave drawback of being right next door to Powell's bookstore. So we're talking serious bucks spent each week. (What's that? Who said oh, just don't go to Powell's after the meeting? You don't know me very well, do you? I can skimp on cake,* I can skimp on doughnuts.* Don't ask me to skimp on books.)

*Except during Mardi Gras. But that's once a year. I haven't been binging on a regular basis. Honest.**

**Oh all right. I binged 3 times. Once over Christmas, once because I had a hissy fit after not making it to 10 pounds, and once at Mardi Gras. There. That's honest.



Exercise du jour: Cycle 5 miles
Semi-FAIL. I honestly did try. Even though I ended up working a 12-hour day, I ended up walking a whole mile. Oh boy.

Status check: month 2 of Weight Watchers

Are you really curious about this? Okay then, here are the stats after two months on Weight Watchers.

Weight lost
This week: -.8
So far: -9.6 (9 point friggin 6. All it would've taken would be 4 ounces more for me to be just a leeeetle bit happy.)
Average weight loss per week: 1.2 pounds

I am not pleased. Another woman, who joined the week before me, has lost 20 pounds by this weigh-in. (Yes, okay, she does weigh more and work out less. I don't care. I am Not At Home to Ms. Reasonable right now. Everybody is losing weight but me. I'm pissed.)

Total inches lost
Arms: -1/2 inch
Bust: -1 inch
Waist: -4 inches
Hips: -3 inches

What, you think I should cheer up because I'm fitting into smaller pant sizes? Was that Ms. Reasonable I just heard knocking on my door? Sorry, not answering the door. I sat through that WW meeting absolutely starving. I couldn't stand that everyone was talking about food, food, food!

Look, I know it's silly, I know I'm paying too much attention to numbers. I'm still bummed.

Exercise du jour: Cycling to work and back. For that matter, walking at lunch. I'm not working out hard enough, damn it.

Update du later on: Sorry. I wrote most of that last night right after I got home from the meeting. I was tired and ab-so-lute-ly starving, and that tends to make me wear the cranky pants.

I kept it up there because it was honest. Yes, I do want to lose weight as much as the next person, even if the next person is also losing water and muscle as well as fat. I want the weight to come off quickly and stay off forever. I also want a pony, with a pink glittery bridle.

I'll settle for a healthy body that's progressively moving downward on the scale, albeit at the speed of a slug on prozac.

Uncomfortable truths

It's almost the end of the year. I have to confess that I have not accomplished what I wanted this year. I have gained a whole lot of muscle strength (100 push ups, 200 situps, a whole lot o' walking), but I haven't lost the weight. I lost a little, but not much.

I know I should be glad for the gifts that I've got (stronger, fitter), but even so there's a bit of disappointment mixed in with the gratitude. Yes, I'm healthier and in many ways much better, but I'm being honest here. I wanted a bit more.

But hey! I got a beautiful shawl for Christmas...

Exercise du jour: I was going to bicycle to work, but since it's all snow and ice 'round my place, methinks I'll stick to walking. Maybe I'll build a snowman. That will use up some calories!
I Yoga'd, I Walked. Okay, if you want to be persnickety, I did not Snowman, but two out of three counts for something. Especially walking on slushy/ice/snowy sidwalks while dodging traffic across intersections.

Status check: 1 month on Weight Watchers

Self portrait? Why certainly!
Of course it is!
Would I lie?
To you?
Oh, come now...*

Okay, so I've been doing Weight Watchers for a month now. Lost just under 5 pounds, which is much lower than should be the case -- usually when you start writing down everything you eat, you lose a lot of weight early on. If I were typical, I would've lost closer to 2 pounds a week this month. But then again, the people who do best on Weight Watchers always have the blurb "results not typical" next to their pictures.

[If you're keeping track, which I seriously doubt, I have also lost 2 inches off my waist, and 1 off my hips. My pants fit a lot better, and I feel better. But the scale reflecteth this not.]

What I have not been doing is restricting my caloric intake at all. I've merely been recording it. I wanted to get an idea of how I eat normally before I tried to change anything. One thing about the WW e-tools, it is fairly easy to look back and see the patterns in your regular eating habits.

What I'm doing wrong:

- Eating too much in the evening
Cure: eat something hefty at about 4 pm, so I'm not starving by the time I get home. Go British and have a tea time meal. Jolly good idea.

- Not planning ahead for things like parties
Solution: at the start of the week, review the social calendar. Also prepare food for the week, like baked salmon or something filling & tasty of that ilk.

What I'm doing right:

- Bringing food from home. I love my little Mr. Bento Japanese food-in-a-nifty-thermos lunch jar. The thing is so darned cute! The lower two compartments keep the food warm, and the upper two are good for vegetables and fruit. I originally balked at the price, but it paid for itself very quickly. I love it so much, it doesn't occur to me to go out for lunch. (If I go out during lunchtime, it's to walk, not to eat.)

- Planning the day's meal ahead of time. Packing Mr. Bento is a way of looking ahead for that particular day, which helps me keep on the straight and narrow. I don't always put the best protein into the containers -- there was That Episode with the Pizza, and a Fried Chicken Incident, but let's not talk about that here, this is the section for what I did right. At least I brought them from home. With vegetables and fruit.

- Exercising. That, I give myself credit for. The inner slug has not been ruling the roost. That one time when I skipped exercising for two days in a row? I found myself getting very nervous, almost antsy, at the thought. The slug is down, but not out. I don't want to give him any reason to try to make a comeback.

1-1/4 hours of yoga


*Yeah, I didn't think you'd buy that story. Photo is actually courtesy of flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/helga/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Struggles with statistics

Hey, it's Friday. That requires a Hugh Jackman photo, right?


Just a note to self here (because everyone else is still looking at Hugh). According to the Sparkpeople statistics I'm managing to eat enough protein and fat every day, but I'm invariably short of the number of carbs I should be consuming.

I'm caught between trying to please both a computerized nutritional program and my stomach. I don't want to eat pasta, or rice, or bread. Need to start eating potatoes. They're starchy enough.

Exercise du jour:

Week 4 of the (full) 100 push up challenge
Day 3
(90 seconds rest in between)
Set 1 - 23
Set 2 - 28
Set 3 - 23
Set 4 - 23
Set 5 - 33

Week 4 of the 200 sit ups challenge
(60 seconds rest in between)
Day 3
Set 1 - 35
Set 2 - 42
Set 3 - 35
Set 4 - 35
Set 5 - 50

Done! Damn, but that was close to a DNF. It's 8:30 pm, and I just finished the last set. I did sets 3 and 4 at work, and I thought I'd injured a couple of muscles. A different muscle in each arm, to make it more confusing. I almost didn't finish that last set. I'm off to do some serious ibuprofren. I'm not even going to take the end-of-4th-week test. I figure it's better to rest the arms completely for a couple days and then repeat this week.
Know what's weird? I feel like a loser for repeating. Keep telling myself that it's not like repeating kindergarten or something -- it's allowed to take it easy if something's hurting. I don't want to end up with arms so sore that it's painful to comb my hair. Last time I did that, I couldn't do any arm exercises for months. Caution, Grasshopper.
Plus, 1 hour forty minutes walking.

Don't thank me for that photo. Thank

http://www.flickr.com/photos/barbaradoduk/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Another reason to love Hugh Jackman: he isn't afraid to ask someone to turn their cell phone off.

It's better to have sweated and lost... but I'll settle for 'I told you so'

Summary du week: I exercised and ate, lost and gained pounds.

In the past week:
average calories eaten: 1783
average calories burned: 634
(average minutes exercised: 80)
weight gain/loss: -1.0

I lost 3.5 pounds and then, while exercising and maintaining a calorie deficit, gained back 2.5 pounds. (I gained most of that back before the dreaded s'mores incident, otherwise the gain would have made more sense.)

Given a BMR of 1944 (which seems high in my opinion, but all these numbers are based on estimates from Sparkpeople, so at least I'm being consistent), my average weight loss per day is 794 calories, which means my average weight loss per week should come to a bit more than 1.5 pounds. Close enough to my actual result.

HOWever,

I lost the weight early in the week. If weight loss is a simple equation, if the number of calories coming in is less than calories going out, then you get weight loss, then why did I gain back two pounds if I kept up the exercising and kept down the caloric intake?

There was only one day last week where I ate more calories than I burned off, and even then the difference (taking into account BMR) was 200 calories. To gain 2.5 pounds from eating I would have had to ingest an extra 8750 calories. And I haven't been drinking much water; in fact, I've been dehydrated much of the time.

Weight loss may average out in the long run, but it ain't a simple equation.

I'd rather be thin, but if that isn't possible then I'll settle for feeling smug. (I told them it wasn't simple mumble, grumble...)

Exercise du jour: none. Nasty allergy attack. Even with drugs, I was sneezing and blowing my nose every ten minutes. Seems like all the drugs did was make me woozy as well as sneezy and grumpy and all those other dwarves.

Calories in: 1476
Calories out: none, zero, zip, zilch

The only way I'm going to lose any pounds

I've come to the conclusion that the only way I'm going to lose pounds is if I meet a pickpocket in London.

Still, I shouldn't complain. I am, but I shouldn't. It's not my body's fault if I'm not losing weight.

After the visit to the nutritionist, I dutifully stopped eating mostly fruits and vegetables and tried eating more cheese and chicken and saturated fats. I don't like it. It's a much easier diet -- two bites of chicken and I'm feeling full -- but I miss feeling healthy.

Bit of a conundrum there. The mostly veggie diet made me feel light and full of energy, but it irritated my digestive system. My innards are a lot happier on this saturated fat diet; even after several months my body hadn't adjusted to that high fiber stuff. Even so, I want to go back to the veggie diet. I'll find some form of protein that tastes okay and doesn't require a lot of a) cooking b) expense. Perhaps there's a brand of tofu out there that I would enjoy. I'm sure my body will adjust to a healthy diet eventually. Maybe several months is not enough time.

Switching the diet hasn't caused me to drop any pounds. On the other hand, I haven't gained any pounds either. Something else has changed lately. I used to fluctuate wildly, gaining or losing up to six pounds in a week. Thought that was normal. For the past couple weeks, I have not gained or lost a pound. (The fluctuations weren't caused by the high fiber veggie diet; I've been that way for years.) I'm recording it here because I want to try to figure out what I did to cause the change.

I've been writing down my daily calories. Haven't bothered to put them into Sparkpeople because I'm too lazy and I hate tracking calories it's been too hot in my home office. Yeah, that's it, the heat. Can't use that excuse now that my laptop is back in the land of the living.

One thing about summer living in a home without air conditioning; I've eaten 100 calories today. No interest in eating any more. I would worry about this, but the past week has shown me that I'll make up for it during the week in my oh-so-air-conditioned office.

All this makes it sound like I'm not getting anywhere. I don't think that's true.

I'm certainly stronger; even with the hiatus from the push up challenge, my arms look more toned. (Not that Michelle's going to see me as a threat, but I can see a difference.) I think I've got more stamina to walk or bicycle longer and faster than before. I've been taking it slow because that's what the body felt like doing, plus I'm paranoid about injuring something so severely that that I'd have to stop exercising completely. But with this extra muscle, maybe it's time to go to a higher level of intensity. More sprints, less sauntering.

Exercise du jour: 20 minutes walking, 40 minutes aerobics, 50 very sweaty minutes kickboxing with a DVD. I do appreciate how positive Patricia Moreno is.

Calories in: 1401
Calories out: 1073*

*Not counting basal metabolic rate

Poster Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/renaissancechambara/ / CC BY 2.0

Progress: wrestling with discouragement

And so we go on.

I meant to post a status report. I've been putting it off, since it's not that encouraging. But Scale Junkie just wrote a post about how to keep going even when things haven't been going well, so I thought maybe I should come clean about things. (Odd expression. Is lying dirty, and therefore telling the truth is seen as clean? Mary, stop dithering and go confess what you came here to confess.)

Inner Slug: You've been trying to eat healthy stuff and work out since July. I don't see any results on the scale. Why not give up?

Me: Whaddya mean no results? I've lost over fifteen pounds.

Inner Slug: Yeah, from stopping that medication. You're at the weight you were before you started taking the stuff.

Me: So I haven't gained any weight. Probably I've gained muscle.

Inner Slug: C'mon. This is the weight you are supposed to be. Accept it.

Brief, not pretty, struggle of a woman wrestling with her inner slug. Finally the slug is subdued with the use of metaphorical duct tape.

It's a good thing I'm so stubborn.

This month (the past ten days, actually) I've gained back six pounds and only lost two of them again. I'm tempted to blame this on the thyroid, simply because gaining six pounds in a single week is very hard to attribute to an increase in fat or muscle. I know I should go get blood tests done, see what my TSH level is at. Sigh. I'd rather go jogging.

Good news: I invested in a watch/heart monitor. (I could not persuade anyone at REI that watches exist with two different timers so you can run two different times.) I've learned a lot from the heart monitor already. All my video workouts? Not getting the heart rate above 50% or so. No wonder I've been getting bored with them lately. I was still raising a sweat, and I'd always feel good afterwards, but perhaps I'm getting too used to them. One thing I love about running (never thought I'd use that phrase) is that it gets my heart rate up there. Sometimes too high, but that's something I can control.

Also, the NOVA program on marathon running made a good point. If you want to lose weight, you have to diet. Exercise is good for maintaining, making sure you keep the muscles while you lose, but diet is crucial for the actual loss. I need to focus more on being Good.

I have great faith that using the heart monitor will show some good results on the scale this month. And I'm putting that statement out here so that I will feel held to it.

This month:

- I will make sure when I work out, I'm really getting a work out.
- I will concentrate on eating them green leafy things before I walk into the kitchen at work, so the sight of all those cupcakes and brownies will not make me hungry. The next eight weeks are going to be dangerous.