Diary of a fat ass

H

HHackney

New member
34 year old mom of three, twin 14 years olds (boy and girl) and a four year old girl. In January I decided to get some new clothes to go with the new career I’m working on. I decided to go back to school to earn a degree. Wonderful life change! I was high on the idea that I currently carry a 3.9 grade point average. Not bad for a 34 year old eighth grade drop out.

My accomplishment high lasted right up until I started trying on new business clothes. I ended up running out of the store to go cry in my car.

That was when I decided I need a change. Since I’m already changing so many other parts of my life why not take it all the way.

Weight when I joined the gym: 198 lbs @ 5’6”

In February I joined a local gym. We don’t make a lot of money so I always used this as an excuse. But this year, when we got our income tax return, I paid for a year up front. This was good for me since I can’t stand to waste anything. Having that gym membership hanging over my head will be a good motivator.

I also found out that personal trainers aren’t near as expensive as I thought they were. I found one through the gym that gave me a two week trial and cost about the same as my cigarette budget a week.

Routine: Six days a week, an hour a day cardio and minimum weight training on Mondays and Wednesdays

Weight after a month and a half at the gym: 215 lbs

REALLY!? Ok, so I didn’t give up smoking, so I can’t say that the extra weight came from quitting smoking. I’m not eating anymore than usual. My trainer warned that I would probably put on a few pounds before I started losing anything because of muscle weighing more than fat, blah, blah, blah. But close to twenty pounds in six weeks is a bit much!

My measurements are still the same, but my weight has jumped.

I drink two cups of coffee, extra cream, no sugar, every morning. Maybe a low fat cheese stick for breakfast…sometime around 1pm. Then a healthy dinner around 6pm. Except for the coffee I drink nothing but water. How the heck have I gained nearly 20 lbs? Both my trainer and my doctor are at a loss to explain this.

Better yet, why are some of the ladies at the gym telling me I am starting to look better when I have an extra 20 pounds on me?

I started to keep a food journal, but after two weeks of: coffee, cheese stick, chicken breast, and veggies, I just gave up. :banghead:
 
Maybe you need to be eating more? I don't know how many calories are in your dinner and such but maybe having a breakfast with your morning coffees, a big salad for lunch and then a healthy dinner might give your body a metabolism boost?

I just wrote a whole paragraph about measurements and then realised you'd said they hadn't changed. It's really very odd :/ Maybe slow down on the gym? 6 times a week is an awful lot. Maybe just try going 3 times a week and changing up your foods.

Obviously something needs to change for you. If you have the exact same food routine every day, mix it up a bit. Have something other than cheese sticks for lunch. Switch to green tea instead of the coffee? Have a bigger lunch? Have a big (but healthy) breakfast?
 
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I did a little research:



"Overall daily calorie intake isn't enough to subsidize your physical activity level. If you're exercising a lot, but that 1,400 calorie-a-day diet has suddenly stopped working for weight loss, it's because it's no longer enough to adequately fuel your body. Thus, metabolism has slowed down to compensate. Increase calorie intake and your metabolism will fire back up, causing more weight loss."
 
Sunflower: Thanks for the link! I already know that a lot of the problem is that I don't eat. Especially not when I'm stressed. Like a couple of weeks ago I went for two days without eating while I was going back and forth to the hospital for my dad.

I intake less than 900 calories a day...the same amount I burn off at the gym...so maybe I should force myself to eat more often. That seems to be the general consensus.

Skkroll: No, it's not the scale. I don't bother weighing myself but let my trainer do it. (I measure instead) It was his scale that said I gained almost 20 pounds. He thought it was broken so he hauled me around the gym and plunked me onto every scale in the building with the same results.
 
To really gain 3 pounds per week, you would have to be eating like a horse. It wouldn't be because you have gone into "starvation mode." That's just laughable. An extended calorie deficit (we're talking more than 6 weeks for sure) could cause your metabolism to slow down, and you wouldn't lose as fast. But you wouldn't gain weight. I still think there is something off on the weights. Maybe the initial 198 number was incorrect. Are your clothes fitting any different?
 
Harold14370 said:
To really gain 3 pounds per week, you would have to be eating like a horse. It wouldn't be because you have gone into "starvation mode." That's just laughable. An extended calorie deficit (we're talking more than 6 weeks for sure) could cause your metabolism to slow down, and you wouldn't lose as fast. But you wouldn't gain weight. I still think there is something off on the weights. Maybe the initial 198 number was incorrect. Are your clothes fitting any different?
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No, my one pair of jeans that I can still pull on without involving a shoe horn and a pair of pliers still fit the same. It's not really a full 20 pounds, more like just over 16, almost 17. Sorry but I estimate and don't get real exact. I'm lazy like that. It also might be true that the initial 198 may not have been right.

my trainer didn't weigh me until I started paying him, so what I thought my initial weight was may have been wrong. Maybe I just don't want to think that my squat little frame actually got over 200 pounds before I started doing something about it.

On another note:

Tonight for dinner I took advantage of living a short drive from where most of the strawberries in the grocery stores comes from. For ten bucks I got a flat (+/-64oz.) of fresh strawberries. So dinner tonight was whole wheat pancakes topped with fresh strawberries. I actually ate more berries than pancake.

The rest of them will be used for various smoothie applications come breakfast time.
 
I guess I should have put a goal in there somewhere, huh? My goals...

a pair of size 11 jeans that I bought last year and still have not been able to wear comfortably. (I can get them on with about five minutes of work, help from my daughter, and a pair of pliers to zip them up if I move all my belly fat up over the waistband first.)

wear a tank with a shelf bra without looking like I have back boobies

Buy something in a size medium with a straight face

Stop having to buy mom jeans for the extra ass room

Or just get back down to 150. Because of my height (or lack thereof) I guess it should be 120-130, but I got down that low once and I hated the way I looked. I looked sickly and lumpy from all of the extra skin. So 150 (a maintained 150) by this time next year.
 
HHackney said:
my trainer didn't weigh me until I started paying him, so what I thought my initial weight was may have been wrong. Maybe I just don't want to think that my squat little frame actually got over 200 pounds before I started doing something about it.
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This sounds like the problem. You probably weighed at least 20 pounds more than you initially thought. Just continue what you're doing and see if you weigh less than 215 next time. You should also be eating more than 900 calories though!! Your weight loss percentages are going to skew less from fat and more towards muscle if you do that which isn't a good thing! Remember there's not a huge rush to lose this weight. You're not going to get your degree in just a few weeks or months...so don't expect to drastically lose weight quickly. Slow and easy does it. :)
 
Instead of using a calorie counter I measured out my creamer by the package suggestion and added it all up myself. Turns out that the counter I was using and I have a completely different idea of what "extra cream" means. My morning creamer alone is closer to 160 calories, so I'm probably getting more calories than I thought.

OK, We've now established that I probably can't count, and am possibly in denial about my weight gain, so for now I'm not going to pay much attention to calories or to my weight. I'm obsessing over these points and stressing myself out. I already know that I don't eat too much, and I don't eat a lot of junk, but I still eat badly. Instead I'll take little accomplishments where they come and be grateful for them.

Like this morning for example. I dragged myself out and bed and pulled on an old pair of bike shorts to lump around the house in. I walked around my house doing mom things for about two hours.

Then I suddenly realized that in two hours I hadn't stopped once to pull my shorts back down over my legs.

Now if the shorts are loose I'm still having to do the sideways leg shake thing to put them back where they belong every couple of steps. And yes, my thighs still rub together. But for now they aren't rubbing together so much that my bike shorts crawl into my crotch every few steps.

Maybe it's just me, but I kind of think that's a little awesome.
 
Don't worry, everyone is different and it will take you a while to figure out what works best for you. Livestrong.com has a program called "my plate" which I use to measure my calories for the day. I plan the next day ahead of time and plug in everything to see what the calories would be. If I need to adjust then I can and it won't trip me up the next day.

Also, they have it set up where you can put in your weight, height, age, how active you are and how many pounds you want to lose a week to see how many calories you should be eating. I average 1200 calories a day and never go over 1300, but that is as low as I am willing to go on a consistent basis. Good luck and I know that soon you will have the hang of a routine that is right for you.
 
Thanks! I used that one and got a much more believable estimate! Also found out that while I am staying under 1200 calories a day, most of them are fats...more precisely about 50% of my calories are from things like butter, cream, cheese, and the like. I almost never drink milk, and rarely eat things like ice cream, so I had no idea I liked high fat dairy stuff so much.

I thought I was doing well by doing things like making my own whipped cream...because then I know exactly what goes into it...but turns out that I didn't have it so right after all.

This probably helps explain why I haven't seen any results in six weeks. I guess it doesn't do much for you if you keep your calories down, but only get them from whipped cream and cheese sticks.
 
I JUST ATE BREAKFAST!!!! :hurray:

Ok, so that's a really weird thing to scream. But for me that's one hell of an accomplishment.

Normally my breakfast is a low fat cheese stick sometime between 1pm and dinner.

Every morning for the past few weeks I've gone into the kitchen for breakfast and been completely grossed out by the idea of eating so early in the day. Today I struggled through it and ate most of a bowl of cereal.

3/4 cup of multi-bran Chex cereal, 160
1/4 c whole milk, +/- 37

Plus my two cups of coffee with extra cream, 164

breakfast total: 362

If I start making a habit out of this breakfast thing I'll go buy some skim milk for myself. I know I should get rid of some of these extra fats and I refuse to give up my half and half in my coffee; but unfortunately, all the other people in my house (Read: all the other annoyingly skinny people in my house) refuse to drink anything but whole milk. Since that stuff is getting really expensive I won't waste milk until I'm sure I'm going to be using it.
 
70 calorie string cheese stick for lunch and excessive loafing around on the internet when I should be actually doing the two assignments I have due today.

OK, everyone stop being so interesting so I don't want to read everything on this board and can get some work done. :)
 
Hi there. It's great that you're starting to figure everything out and that you're starting to get on track for what's best for you. Breakfast is definitely important. It's a foundation for the entire day. Congrats!! I've come to love breakfast. Even if it's just a glass of orange juice and a banana, which is what I tend to eat every morning, with the occasional toast.

Good job!!

Although you have seemed to figure out where the extra pounds came from, you still might be interested in this article I seen this morning...
 
Holy sweatstains Batman!!!

Color me 197!!!!!

Unfortunately, this means that if my corrected weight of 215lbs was correct then I'm losing about three pounds a week. Since I'm not seeing visual results to match that kind of weight loss, I'm going to say that at two pounds a week lost I started at about 210 instead.

So let's start over today and just say 197 and see what the scale says next month.

Also tried to do something kind of like HIIT today at the gym. I went full throttle on the elliptical for 20 seconds, then slower pace for a minute. I did this for about twenty minutes. After I was done I felt like I was going to pass out. But I also felt great.
 
Hey thanks for the link! After reading that I believe that going to the steakhouse and gorging with my husband once a month isn't causing half as many problems as worrying about going to the steakhouse and gorging with my husband once a month. Ok, so maybe the steakhouse gorging may be a problem. But at least now I know that worrying about it is as well.
 
Well, there goes my high.

I just plugged everything I've eaten today into the nifty livestrong counter that disneymomof4 pointed me towards (I've been doing so every time I eat anything as soon as I eat it). Even after doubling the amount of margarine and brown sugar...because it's better to err on the side of chubby...I put on my sweet potatoes tonight, and the dairy queen small hot fudge sundae, I'm only at 1167 calories so far today. If I had gone with the strawberries I was going to have instead of the sundae I would have only been at 944. And this is all I am going to eat tonight because I feel stuffed right now and it's almost bedtime.

The same thing on livestrong also calculates my calories burned at around 600, but the machines at the gym were closer to 300, so I'll go with the lower number.

I'm going to have to watch those numbers a little more closely tomorrow. It's been said that I'm underestimating my intake, and I probably still am. Especially after this comment:
Jericho said:
The human body burns more than that by existing.
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I'm trying to pay closer attention. But this time if I wasn't sure I went with a larger portion size. Like for example the spoon full (one generous bite) of sweet potato I had wasn't really a full 1/4 cup, and it didn't really have a whole tablespoon worth of margarine and brown sugar just in that serving, but that was what I entered anyway, and I didn't actually eat a whole cup of grilled potatoes either, but that's what I entered. (I know I didn't have a full cup because three medium potatoes and half a red onion fed five people.) I did skip the butter on my potatoes though, so that was a plus. Butter is my downfall. But I'm not sure if half a grilled chicken breast really is 4 ounces. So tomorrow I'm going to break out the measuring cups and get a bit more accurate and see how that goes.
 
Wow I had a bad night! I was plagued by nightmares all night. I finally gave up trying to sleep when I forced myself awake from a dream where I was burning my husband's face with a lit cigar. Seriously, ok I was a little annoyed that he went out and bought a couple of fancy cigars for himself, but not THAT annoyed. That was sometime around 5am because the light was on in the living room meaning my dad was awake. So I gave up and got up a bit before 6am.

I had my 2 cups of coffee, extra cream...though instead of 8 tablespoons I only did six between the two. 1/2 cup of applesauce. 214 calories so far.

I don't know why, but I just felt driven to get to the gym. Usually I go around 9am, but even while I was still in bed this morn...just after the nightmare...I just wanted to be at the gym. So I was there today before 7am.

It was nice actually. Being in a really small town means that no one else was there at 7am on a Saturday. So not only did I do a quick warm up on the treadmill...without having to wait for a free one...but I also got a chance to try out some of the weight machines on my own without anyone looking at me funny. I did my quasi HIIT on the elliptical (30 sec all out and 1 min walk for 20 mins) a few of the weight machines, and another spin on the treadmill for cool down. By the time I was done with everything I felt like I was going to hurl. Not including the weights I burned 236 calories.

I consider that pretty stellar since when I started going to the gym in February I was dieing after 20 mins of normal walk speed on the treadmill. A week later I tried five minutes on the easiest setting on the stair climber and almost passed out. February 12 is when I joined the gym and couldn't even do 20 mins of work without feeling like I was about to die. And now on April 10 I feel like I HAVE to go and can do an hour of moderate work at a time. That's pretty cool if I do say so myself.
 
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