Cultivating patience

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Madonluku

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I'm just gonna copy what I wrote to the newcomer section.

I'm glad to have discovered an active board with a section for journals. My weight had been steadily going up the past three years or so. A lot of it is due to diet, but a lack of exercise is another major factor. I used to go to the gym regularly. Now even going for a walk feels like a chore. I started having problems with anxiety and panic attacks. I was in danger of becoming a shut-in and that kept me from exercising. Getting a job is what saved from that.

I've been diagnosed with a fatty liver and the doctor was also worried that I will develop diabetes if I don't lose weight. The final straw was a recent knee injury. It's hard to say how much the weight contributed to it, but it probably did. I still haven't fully recovered from it. I can now walk short distances without a cane. This makes weight loss a bit of challenge, given that I can't exercise much.

The plan is cut back on the carbs. The soft drinks should go, the caffeine is not good for anxiety anyway. And all the stuff with tons of calories and little nutrition. It's not a mystery where that weight came from, which is a good thing. As my knee recovers, I'll add exercise to the toolbox.

I guess that's enough to jump start this. I'm at a point where I know what to do, but it's hard to stay motivated. This is what journaling will hopefully change.

And I will add that I'm feeling really optimistic about the whole thing. As the title suggests, I've had trouble with being patient about the change in the past. I think I've learned my lesson.
 
Hello Madonluku and welcome to the diaries! The biggest part of weight loss happens in the kitchen, so take the time to really let your knee recover. Your plan sounds sensible and achievable to me, but I´d suggest you look for ways to keep your life pleasant and rewarding despite cutting back on the comfort of your usual foods. The only weight loss program that works long term is one you can keep up long term.
Best of luck, LaMa.
 
Hi, Madonluku & welcome. I'm so glad you have come to the diary section & started a journal. I really think this helps with motivation. I know that I have friends here who care about me & what I am doing & can say what I feel & get support. Feeling optimistic about the whole thing makes such a difference. I agree with LaMa that it would be good to look for ways to keep your life pleasant & rewarding. I try to think of the things I can do (& eat) rather than the things I can't. Make a list of what being slim & healthy would mean to you.
Welcome to our little part of the internet :)
 
Thanks for the replies. I agree that I need to find ways to not feel deprived of my former diet. I try to see this as a positive challenge, like trying out new kinds of food. I don't think the sense of deprivation is inevitable, or at least inevitably a strong one. I mean, there's some pretty good low-carb food out there as well. I try to see this as an opportunity to give them a try.

My physiotherapist said that I'm at a point where my knee needs to be used a little bit. She suggested using the cane outdoors, but whenever I'm at home or in the office, I should walk around without it. So all heavy exercise and long walks are off the table for now. I agree that diet is ultimately more important.
 
Is swimming on the cards? It's great to have your body supported in a pool. Also great that you seem to have a good physio :)
 
you want to talk about knees? i have two of these + a hip replacement. by severely cutting back on sugar/ added sugar (i try to limit it to 6-8 gm/day) and through intermittent fasting, with very little exercise i have dropped 50 lbs in the last 6-7 months, from a BMI of 32 --> 24.5.

knee x-ray.jpg
 
I'm impressed with your weight loss. I'm not sure how low I'm trying to with the sugar. I'll try to take baby steps now. The withdrawal symptoms I've had in the past weren't unbearable, but still something I'd like to avoid now. The first thing that needs to go, I think, is the stuff with lots of calories and very little or not nutrition. The really sweet stuff needs to go or be very occasional. Intermittent fasting is something I definitely want to try at some point. I've heard great things, one of them being the fact that when you do eat, you don't have to worry so much about portion sizes. What is your fasting like, how many hours a day or how do you do it?

This is tough. I'm dealing with other things at the same time, like the anxiety. It feels a bit overwhelming at times. Even a little exercise helps with the anxiety and this makes the knee injury suck even more. To be on the positive, I've started writing fiction again. Just completed a short story and about to start work on another one. That's one thing you don't need a functional knee for.
 
Madonluku said:
To be on the positive, I've started writing fiction again. Just completed a short story and about to start work on another one.
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That´s great! Being creative can be such a great outlet for unpleasant feelings - not to mention a distraction when the cravings hit.
 
Anxiety & depression can be overwhelming, but it's excellent that you have started writing fiction again. Keep thinking of rewarding distractions. You are doing something positive & life will get better :)
 
I guess I started this journal with unrealistic explanations. I thought I had gotten past the idea of finding instant motivation, but I still found myself a bit disappointed that the idea of healthy eating does seem like a deprivation to some extent. Not all of the time, in fact I'm happy to be eating lighter much of the time, especially at work. The evenings are the toughest. They're the only tough time of the day. I'm sure routine plays a big part here.
 
Motivation ebbs and flows for me - rarely is it instant lol!
I've been planning my meals the day before and prepping them and logging them in to MyFitnessPal that morning. It's definitely helped me stay more focused in the early evenings because if I diverge from the "plan", I have to delete and re-enter stuff...my laziness kicks in and I just eat to the plan lol
 
If the evenings are tough for you AND you feel deprived maybe you can use that time to try out new recipes? New stuff often helps with the feeling of deprivation, even if it´s light, and cooking by recipe usually takes more time, keeping you distracted.
 
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Madonluku said:
.... Intermittent fasting is something I definitely want to try at some point. I've heard great things, one of them being the fact that when you do eat, you don't have to worry so much about portion sizes. What is your fasting like, how many hours a day or how do you do it?

....
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your statement about portion size is generally true, but the reason i like intermittent fasting is that you don't have to be very exact. regardless, you still have to obey the law of thermodynamics. recently on my lazy days (winter...BAH, Humbug!) i'm sure i'm not burning more than a few 100 calories over my BMR. why it works for me is that i really find it hard to pack in that many calories into a ~6 hour daily window. not saying it cannot easily be done, but not with the food i'm eating these days and especially when you cut back on sugar and i suppose i also try to keep carbs low, though that's not a major priority with me. again, with something like Keto, you have to constantly watch the portions/ percentages whereas intermittent fasting merely relies on the fasting time to keep your insulin level low for a good deal of the day.

if you are starting off, i would suggest you simply find the best way to not eat for at least 12 hours a day. when i started, i stopped any nighttime eating after dinner stopping at ~6-7pm. the next step would be to push your breakfast later into the morning. this was easy for me since i have never been hungry first thing in the day. so i stopped eating at 6pm and did not have breakfast until 10am (this is actually late in the morning for me as i get up VERY early.... 4-5am typically). without too much effort, i was almost immediately on a 16/8 intermittent fasting schedule... an eating window of 8 hours and a fasting window of 16 hours. anything over 14-16 hours is intermittent fasting.

for weight loss, i wanted to be a little more severe, so i gradually decreased my eating window to 4-5 hours; sometimes as low as 2-3 hours (very close to the One Meal A Day - OMAD plan as some diets call it). for the first 3-4 months i averaged 2-2½ lb/ week loss. now that i'm closer to a normal/ healthy BMI, i'm finding that intermittent fasting is still doing ok for maintenance, but i need to throw in more exercise if i want to drop any more weight. we'll see what happens when spring eventually warms things up.
 
Ok, thanks for elaborating. I'm not pursuing intermittent fasting right now, but maybe later. One of the reasons why I'm not doing it now is in the past couple of days I've had these episodes of massive fatigue. They've come in the afternoon, around the time I was leaving work. Suddenly the short walk home feels impossible, like I might collapse. Can it be just carb withdrawal? Or is it a sign that I already have diabetes? I think I should see a doctor soon anyways.
 
Seeing a doctor if you feel like you might collapse is rarely a bad idea. I wouldn't expect a "lack" of carbs to be the problem unless you're going so low you're dipping into ketosis but it's quite possible that you've lowered your general calorie intake further than you think and your body's struggling as a result. Do you know (roughly) how many calories you're getting through on the intake an output side at the moment?
 
I haven't been counting calories, but I'm nowhere near a restrictive diet. I don't think I'm approaching ketosis either. I've cut back a lot on carbs, but I'm not eating what could be called a low-carb diet as such. I haven't even quit eating white bread yet. I was thinking the other day whether these episodes might've been just really bad panic attacks. Withdrawal from carbs and caffeine might make the attacks much worse, or perhaps the withdrawal symptoms triggered the attacks.

Then another possibility hit me. Blood pressure. I realized how much liquorice cough drops I've been eating. The package even warns about them raising blood pressure. Eating cough drops has been a sort of calming ritual for me. I munch on them when I'm feeling stressed at work. It's something I learned from my dad, who also used to suffer from panic attacks. I'm seriously considering the possibility that my overconsumption of these particular cough drops have caused a temporary increase in blood pressure. That would make sense, since I only started eating this brand very recently. And once the symptoms appeared, it might have triggered panic attacks, which would've made it much worse.

I think I'll make that appointment with a doctor anyway. But the liquorice is gonna go. I had my blood pressure checked last spring. I can't recall the exact numbers, but I remember it being a little high. The doctor said it wasn't yet a cause for concern, but something to keep an eye on.
 
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I didn't have such an episode yesterday, which might indicate that the liquorice was the culprit. I went to sauna, which is supposed to lower your blood pressure. Maybe that had something to do with feeling good and getting a good night's sleep. Getting enough sleep is a bit of a challenge for me sometimes. That's another reason I'd like to get more exercise.

The knee is rehabilitating nicely. I try to walk around a lot without a cane. Not long distances, but frequent walks. Just walking around the flat helps. Whenever I remain seated for a long time, it hurts a little getting back up.
 
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