A new chapter begins

MONDAY

Very good day with regards to food. I am very happy with my food intake. Here's what I had today:

B: Watermelon, banana and 1/3 of a really yummy mango
S: An apple and two cups of mint green tea
L: one small bowl of salad- cucumber, carrots, tomatoes, onions with lemon juice, little bit of salt and black pepper
L#2: Okra and tomatoes cooked
S: Two plums and one mango
D: Cooked cauliflower, 1 and half piece of cooked salmon and some rice.
Dessert: small piece of chocolate
S: low calorie popsicle

I feel very very good today. I wanted to go for a run today, but it was over 43 degree C today and I just couldn't even dare to venture out. I will try to wake up early tomorrow morning and go for a longish run. I am determined to finish this week strong. I need to have at least one week that I look back on and say that I made healthy choices.

Next weigh-in is Friday 28 May. I have also decided to measure myself every month. Last measurements were 19 May.

Hope everyone is off to a great start to the week. Leave me some love if you visit my journal!! :)
 
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Ugh, I am so with you on not being able to run in the heat! I tried to wake up early this morning so I could get out on the road before the sun started beating down and the air got warmer, but I didn't quite wake up soon enough! And even though I still woke up pretty early, it was too hot to run! Your mango ice cream sounds sooo yummy. I want some!!! :)

~ Sarah
 
Perplexed

So the promise I made to myself yesterday didn't really pan out as I had hoped. I went on the scales this morning and it wasn't pretty. I am not sure if it is due to the bad week I had last week or what. I thought I was doing fine foodwise and I have been getting my running three times a week.

Last week I stepped on the scale and it said 142.3- that is a week after being 139.4 lbs for over two weeks. Today when I stepped on the scales it said 144 lbs. Now this is HUUUGELY disappointing even though I have decided not to let it ruin my day and focus on all the good things. I am only trying to understand what I am doing wrong here. Instead of the needle moving down, it is moving up. What gives?

Yes, I had really bad week last week but the weekend was fine (apart from the ice-cream and two glasses of wine). Yesterday was a fantastic day foodwise. And I have been guzzling water like crazy (I had five litres of water yesterday- is that crazy or what? it is before noon today and I have already had 2.5 litres of water in my system). I don't like a lot of salt (both my parents have high blood pressure and i avoid salt as much as possible). I have been having variety of fruits and I thought I had carbs under control. I have no idea what is going on with my body.

When I saw the scales moving up last week, I took measurements. They are exactly the same from a week ago, and exactly the same as late october. I really really do not understand what is going on here.

Now from what I have read I understand that once you start working out you gain muscle and muscle weighs more than fat. But how can it be that I was 139.4lbs two weeks ago and 144lbs two weeks later? Can a person gain 5lbs of muscles? And it is not even like I just started working out. This is my eighth week with the couch to 5 k program, so I have been running for more than nine weeks three days a week. I am out and about for at least one hour when I go for a run (15 mins to get to the park and then 15 mins back).

I know I need to add strength training, which I will do once i have more stamina. But I come to this forum and I see everyone losing weight, or maintaining, it feels like I am the only one who's not doing things right. Yes, I have read all the stickies on scale mentality etc. But somehow I feel like what I am eating is not right. I am looking at the pie chart for the month of May on Fitday and it tells me that I am averaging 1390 cals this month. Which is what I need to healthily lose 2lbs a week. My food may be still carb heavy but I eat lots of fruits and lots of veggies. What am I doing wrong?
 
Hi Juni. I doubt it is even possible to gain 1 pound of muscle in 2 weeks let alone 5. It could be all the water you drank yesterday. I know how you feel though. You want to be losing weight, not gaining. I'm not sure what could be going wrong. Have you felt uncomfortable at night, a hungry uncomfortable? When I was consistently losing 2 pounds per week for months on end, I "felt" it almost every night. I had to get used to falling asleep feeling hungry. It got easier as time went by but I still felt it every night. That's why losing weight isn't easy. On weeks that I felt comfortable every night, I usually didn't lose any weight.
 
Derrick said:
Hi Juni. I doubt it is even possible to gain 1 pound of muscle in 2 weeks let alone 5. It could be all the water you drank yesterday. I know how you feel though. You want to be losing weight, not gaining. I'm not sure what could be going wrong. Have you felt uncomfortable at night, a hungry uncomfortable? When I was consistently losing 2 pounds per week for months on end, I "felt" it almost every night. I had to get used to falling asleep feeling hungry. It got easier as time went by but I still felt it every night. That's why losing weight isn't easy. On weeks that I felt comfortable every night, I usually didn't lose any weight.
Click to expand...

Derrick, your message just about made my day. Im so glad you are back and going strong. Makes me really really happy. Thank you also for the message in my inbox.

One of the problems, I think is that I have been listening to my body so much. Haven't felt the discomfort at night but now that you mention it, I will be more aware. Going to up my runs this week and add some push ups and situps. Really need to figure out strength training also.

Hope you are well. Going over to your journal to see how you are doing.

PS: Have I mentioned how adorable Nathan is?
 
Hi Juni, imho it would be to your advantage to track your results using
the scale and body fat measurements. This will show you exactly how
much of your weight loss is coming from unwanted body fat, and how
much is coming from lean body mass. If this was what you were using
now, you would see exactly where this weight came from and wouldn't
have to guess. This is why the process of tracking your progress using
the weight scale is more or less flawed.

In addition to this, you are not aware of one very important detail, and here
it is. The last 10-20 pounds for a woman are very, very, very hard to lose,
especially if they are to come from unwanted body fat and not muscle and
water. It might be that at 120 pounds, your current goal, your body fat
percentage will be below 15%, and this is almost impossible for a woman
to maintain unless she has a very fast metabolism, or does some serious
cardio training every day, while following proper nutrition 100% of the time.

There is no doubt that the weight that you seemed to have gained is either
because the scales aren't working, or it is the weight from the water that
you have been drinking. This is another reason why going by the scale is
not the best approach. Think about it, if you had the perfect body, would
you really care what you weighed?

As far as proper nutrition, from the daily meals that you have posted in this
diary, it seems that you are not really using a moderate macro nutrient
ratio, and this might be causing your body to slow down your metabolism,
and simultaneously increase your hunger and cravings for all kinds of food
that is not that healthy, or at least not the kind that should be eaten
when your primary goal is to lose excess body fat.

In reality, since you don't have that much weight to lose, you will have to
use a more advanced weight loss strategy where you eat an almost perfect
diet on a daily basis, and use cardio training and weight traning regularly.

Otherwise your body will not release the fat that is stored inside your fat
cells, and will fight your attempts to lose weight. Obviously your body will
win this fight every time, because eventually it will start to raise your
hunger in order to get you to eat more food, hoping that you will provide it
with what it needs to function properly 24/7.

And, here I think is the root of the current problem that you are experiencing.
The food that you are currently eating doesn't have the right balance of
healthy carbs, lean proteins, good dietary fats, vitamins, and minerals, that
your body needs to do everything that it must do on a daily basis.

We, as humans sometimes simply forget that our organism can get what it
needs "mostly" from the food that we provide it with. And, if, for example
don't provide it with enough amino acids on a regular basis, it will
convert our protein tissues and use them to do what it has to do!

...and it is a well known fact that this will slow down your metabolism, and
your body will burn less calories during the day, which means that what
was once your "daily maintenance calorie intake" will become a "surplus"
 
AlexPlatups said:
As far as proper nutrition, from the daily meals that you have posted in this
diary, it seems that you are not really using a moderate macro nutrient
ratio, and this might be causing your body to slow down your metabolism,
and simultaneously increase your hunger and cravings for all kinds of food
that is not that healthy, or at least not the kind that should be eaten
when your primary goal is to lose excess body fat.

Otherwise your body will not release the fat that is stored inside your fat
cells, and will fight your attempts to lose weight. Obviously your body will
win this fight every time, because eventually it will start to raise your
hunger in order to get you to eat more food, hoping that you will provide it
with what it needs to function properly 24/7.

And, here I think is the root of the current problem that you are experiencing.
The food that you are currently eating doesn't have the right balance of
healthy carbs, lean proteins, good dietary fats, vitamins, and minerals, that
your body needs to do everything that it must do on a daily basis.

We, as humans sometimes simply forget that our organism can get what it
needs "mostly" from the food that we provide it with. And, if, for example
don't provide it with enough amino acids on a regular basis, it will
convert our protein tissues and use them to do what it has to do!

...and it is a well known fact that this will slow down your metabolism, and
your body will burn less calories during the day, which means that what
was once your "daily maintenance calorie intake" will become a "surplus"
Click to expand...


Interesting. I try my best to get the right balance but I'm not sure what you mean by micro nutrient ratio. I agree that my protean intake is low and I have larger carbs intake. But I thought that I was at least getting my veggies and fruits right. Can you please clarify what you mean for the above points?
 
Want2Lose said:
12 minutes is fantastic. It looks like you have the eating right too. Congratulations!
Click to expand...

I thought I was getting it right, but looks like there's something I'm doing very wrong with all the gain that I have seen in the last few weeks.

But I went through your journal. Fantastic work! Your motivation is very very admirable. Thanks for dropping in and saying hi.
 
skkroll said:
Ugh, I am so with you on not being able to run in the heat! I tried to wake up early this morning so I could get out on the road before the sun started beating down and the air got warmer, but I didn't quite wake up soon enough! And even though I still woke up pretty early, it was too hot to run! Your mango ice cream sounds sooo yummy. I want some!!! :)

~ Sarah
Click to expand...

Sarah, so good to hear from you. The heat is worse here today. I got up around 5am hoping to go for a run and the sun was out and it was so frigging hot. I just hope that it will get cooler by the evening so I can go for a longer run.

That mango ice-cream is going to be my downfall. It is sooooo f***ing good (and I don't even like ice-cream that much- im more chocolate, cake, cookies kinda girl) I am going to stay as far away from it as possible. I had 1/2 box left and I threw it out because I know I won't be able to resist it. :)
 
juni said:
Interesting. I try my best to get the right balance but I'm not sure
what you mean by macro nutrient ratio. I agree that my protean intake is low
and I have larger carbs intake. But I thought that I was at least getting my
veggies and fruits right. Can you please clarify what you mean for the above
points?
Click to expand...

Sure, every person's organism runs efficiently on a certain amount of macro-
nutrients. For example, I was born with a very slow metabolism, and because
of this I reached 285 pounds and had 44% body fat when I was 24, currently
I am 175 pounds and have 10% body fat.

Sixteen years ago, a trainer from a gym next to where I live, (Latvia, a small
European country) helped me to lose 110 pounds of unwanted body fat, and
he accomplished this by teaching me to eat the right food.

Today, this is known as macro nutrient ratios. It is very simple.

The macro nutrients are carbohydrates (simple and complex), proteins (the
lean kind are the best, and good dietary fats (ratio of omega-6 to omega-3
of 2:1 is optimum)

This trainer specialized on helping natural body builders to build muscle while
maintaining a very low body fat percentage and also helped women to lose
excess weight permanently. He didn't want to work with me in the beginning,
but eventually I convinced him (i.e., paid him really well)

Here is what he taught me, and he said this works for men and women, the
only difference is a person's metabolism, and the goal that he or she is after
in the area of health and fitness.

Anyway, he recommended that every meal that I consume have all three
macro-nutrients in them. And that I start with 4 average meals per day,
eaten every 4 hours, and then as soon as I can to start eating 5 small meals
per day, every 3 hours.

The ultimate macro-nutrient ratio (the percentage of the calories that come
from carbs, protein, fat) for a person that has a slow metabolism, is this:

...by "ultimate" I mean ultimate for my slow metabolism!

Anyway this is what I started with 16 years ago, and to this day continue to eat
the same way, the only difference is now I eat more variety!

60% carbs -- these should be split up into veggies (complex fibrous), fruits,
(simple fibrous), and grains, legumes, plus starchy vegetables like potato,
sweet potato, yams (complex starchy)

...I personally split these up like this (50% of carbs calories come from
vegetables (fibrous), 25% from fruit, and 25% from the starchy carbs

25% lean protein -- this is all lean meat, including lean pork, which by the
way has less fat than chicken breast, poultry, fish, and shellfish.

15% good dietary fats -- this is a tricky one, because there is quite
a lot of fats in the protein sources, and also some in the carbs, this is why
it really helps to know the whole breakdown of the foods that you are
eating and know from where the calories are coming from in each food.

...but basically the best dietary fat comes from fish and walnuts, IMO,
because while flaxseed oil, Omega-3 capsules, etc. are considered high
quality dietary fats, I personally prefer to get my dietary from food, it's
a lot more delicious...lol...and plus I don't know what the hell is "really"
in those supplement products...know what I mean

...when I see fish, or a walnut, I know exactly what I am eating!

...I have my meals broken down into calories, and also where all the calories
are coming from, i.e. -- I know the amount of my calories from carbs, proteins,
and fats, and keep them the same. But, it is very important that you take
into account that I eat "only" whole-foods, I don't eat anything processed,
except for my three weekly cheat meals!!! But these I eat in the morning
with my breakfast, so those calories get burned up by the end of the day,
because I use HIIT (high intensity interval training) three times per week,
for 45 minutes per session (and this burns MASSIVE calories!!!)

Hope this helps some, if not, ask, and I will explain in even more detail.

P.S. micro-nutrients are the minerals and vitamins that are in the food
that you consume daily, the more variety, the better it is for our bodies!
 
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Hi Alex,

Thank you for your inputs and for sharing the info. You have had an amazing journey. Congratulations for that.

Frankly, what you have written above is too complicated for me. Esp when I am taking baby steps and trying to get necessary nutrients in. In an idea world, the 4-5 meals a day plan works (for me), but I am in an extremely demanding job that requires that I travel a lot and in some of the most remote areas of very very geographically diverse country. You have tried it and it worked for you, even if I started it would be impossible for me to include micro-nutrients in all my meals. I need goals and plans that are attainable, otherwise there is just no incentive to follow them.

Thank you. Really appreciate you trying to help.
 
I started on my weight-loss journey last month (early April), and I am being impatient. Perhaps my metabolism is slow but I don't eat processed food, dont smoke, consume a lot of alcohol and run 3-4 times a week. For now i'm gonna stick to that. I am beginning to loove running, and I want to run some more, run a 10k, half marathon, marathon. I think that will make me happy. In the process if I lose some weight, that is great.

I will continue to eat well, track changes in my body through measurements and scales once a week but will not obsess over them. It is hard to come here and see everyone losing and me gaining (its human nature, right?), but I need to learn to let go of this scales mentality and obsession with numbers.

I am having a fantastic day foodwise. I want to make it another fantastic week.

Dear friends, I'm sorry that I have meltdowns once in a while. You guys don't need that drama at all. :) It is still very nice to come here and share/vent/rant. Then I log off and mull over things and realize how stupid I've been and come back and apologize. Heee...I feel like a 5-year-old sometimes. Thanks for reading/listening.
 
Juni, maybe I made it sound too complicated, in that post I wanted to
give you the details so when you have the time maybe you can read
it to understand it fully.

But in very simple language, here is what this means:

every meal of the day, 4 is easiest for you, because of the travel,
you simply eat meals that look like this (these are only examples)

-turkey breast, potato, veggies, small fruit
-salmon, brown rice, veggies, small fruit
-lean beef, broccoli, small fruit, walnuts
-chicken breast, brown rice, beans, small fruit

you can replace the turkey, salmon, lean beef, or chicken breast with
any other source of protein (any lean meat, lean poultry, fish, shellfish)

you can replace the potato, brown rice with any other starchy vegetables
or grains, legumes

and same with fruit

...if to these kinds of meals you add cardio (running, fast walking) on a
regular basis, and drink plenty of water you will break through the plateau
that is currently holding you back and will reach your ideal weight

hope that was simpler, than that long explanation

P.S. if you love running, and do that on a regular basis, you will reach
your ideal weight for sure, even if you don't eat a perfect diet,
simple because it burns so many calories from body fat
 
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Thanks Alex. Now that you have broken it down, it makes more sense. :) I'll try doing that- will follow it as much as possible. What would you suggest for vegetarians though? Aren't they limited with options? How many times can you eat tofu, or cheese?
 
juni said:
I will continue to eat well, track changes in my body through measurements and scales once a week but will not obsess over them. It is hard to come here and see everyone losing and me gaining (its human nature, right?), but I need to learn to let go of this scales mentality and obsession with numbers.

I am having a fantastic day foodwise. I want to make it another fantastic week.
Click to expand...

I think that sounds like a great plan! It's definitely important to not get overly obsessed with the numbers and such.

And it's awesome that you love running! I do too. Have you got any specific plans for a race in the near future?
 
I like the new plan!!! I am rethinking my plan too I probably won't be where I want to be in August but that's ok!!!!! Just keep getting healthy and fit that is the point right??? Losing weight is just a positive side effect from that new life style!
 
hanabi said:
And it's awesome that you love running! I do too. Have you got any specific plans for a race in the near future?
Click to expand...

Not as yet. But I am looking. I am in a different country, different continent right now. I finish C25K this week, and then I am going to train on OHR but work on my speed and distance. I move to the States in August. Will probably sign up for one for Sept/Oct when school is not too busy. You have any specific races in mind?

Thanks for dropping by Hanabi. Means a lot.
 
Verobc said:
I like the new plan!!! I am rethinking my plan too I probably won't be where I want to be in August but that's ok!!!!! Just keep getting healthy and fit that is the point right??? Losing weight is just a positive side effect from that new life style!
Click to expand...

That's what I'm talking about. Glad there's someone here who understands. I am actually thinking about taking my ticker off just to feel less stressed with numbers. Lets see...
 
Hello lovely people,

I had a LOT of free time at work today. Just handed in my report last night, so I could take it a little easy. After the meltdown this morning, I researched and read (almost all day) about health, nutrition, weight loss (thus multiple postings here as well). By lunch-time I was feeling ok because I had reassessed myself and my goals. Now I have decided to be happy with running and eating well. I will take measurements and continue to go on the scales but WILL NOT let it rule my life. I am thinking if I should take the ticker off, but I want to sleep on it and think a little bit more (I don't think I need to be any more dramatic now, do I) :) :)


Good day food wise

B: 1 crepe with bananas and watermelon
S:An apple and a cup of mint green tea
L: Sauteed cauliflower with a few potatoes and 3 puffed rice cakes
S: two plums, three small cheese crackers
Before my run I ate a mango, small whole wheat crackers with PB
D: zucchini in tomatoes, one small chappati, two very small apples
Dessert: two pieces of dark chocolate (80 cal)

I woke up at five this morning but he sun was already up and it was really hot so chickened out and went back to bed. After work at around 6.30 I ventured out after a long stretch. I wanted to run 45 minutes, but it was soooooo frigging hot I could only manage 30 mins. I felt like I was breathing fire, literally. Its like 43 degrees here (in centigrade). But this week was my LAST week of c25k (yyayayayayay!).

I don't know how I am going to be able to run outside this week. May have to get a gym membership but there are non in the city that I really like that much. What to do. Will figure something out. May have to run out in the heat this week...

After graduating from c25k I want to do OHR. Really work on speed. Thinking about signing for a 10K in the fall. Anyone know any good ones in New York?

Hope everyone is having a wonderful week.
 
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