losing 12 pounds in 3 weeks challenge

[pavicnat]

I weighed myself at 121.2 this morning. The scale has to read 110.0 on christmas morning. Some of you may laugh but I'm trying to lose weight while not really fat. I'm trying to take off the last 10 pounds. Since I started on this weight loss path I think 3 years ago I have come from 185pounds to 121 pounds. I lost 20 pounds in the first year. I lost the next 30 pounds in the year after that, and then I lost 14 pounds from 134 to 120 from January 2012 to June 2012. Now I have been stuck around this weight for more than a year.

Some of you may say, but that's OK you are maintaining. But the fact of the matter is, I gave up before I lost the last 10 pounds, and I have been floundering aimlessly for over a year not really trying and not really succeeding. For the record I did manage to get down to 114.8pounds earlier this year. I had made plans to lose another 5 pounds but I had some personal issues and could not focus on dieting. Unofortunately in that time I have gained 7 pounds.

So here I am before you today, I have 3 weeks and 12 pounds to lose. It's alot, it's very fast, but it's doable, and I feel like if I focus all my energy on it at once I can get it over with, I will just have to be very very strict with myself.

Here's the plan:
- no carbs at all (not at all not even for a second) - no cereal, no bread, no potatoes no pasta
- protein protein protein for breakfast lunch and dinner (yes breakfast too)
- no snacks...... fruit portions allowed when included with meal

specifically this is what it means:
- egg whites or single egg for breakfast and no more than 100 calories in fruits (sometimes I have a slice of melon or half a banana and a couple of prunes)
- meat from leftovers or lunchmeat for lunch and one of a portion of vegetables or a portion of fruit. This can include a lettuce salad or just like some peppers or an apple.
- a dinner with meat and vegetable only, removing any carbs

that's ok how many calories will I use up there?

well you've got under 500 calories for breakfast and lunch and hopefully around 300 calories maximum for dinner so I am looking at around 800 calories a day.

ok so you're saying well you can't eat less than 1000 calories a day well ok yes I can, and I will actually have to for this goal. I am eating supplements minerals and vitamins FYI - I am having an omega 3 pill with diner (classic dieters miss omega 3 a lot, I actually lost a lot of hair before I started doing this), I am taking vitamin D (to prevent depretion and obviously most people lack sunlight) and I am taking a multivitamin pill in general. So I believe I am well rounded there.

I do drink yes, so I do drink diet stuff. coke zero etc. this is full of aspertame. Aspertame is gods gift to dieters. You may say well aspertame is dangerous zomg noooo. well guess what it's not. It's the substance that has been most studied by the FDA. It has been more studied than any other chemical or any other substance at all! wow. and every single one of those studies has concluded that it is not dangerous at all. So I encourage you to cut sugars out. put sweeterned in your coffee. use sweetener to bake goods and reduce calories, never drink anything else ever again with sugar. buy sugar free chocolates (ZOMG yes there is such a thing). never use sugar again! why? whyy are you eating it??

I drink water, tea, and coffee. Caffeine is actually good for weight loss, it causes your body to be jittery and burn calories. Although conversely I've read that it causes dehydration and bloating (at the same time)? It doesn't make sense.

What do you think about coffee? Anyway I NEED coffee for my job that is the primary way in which I stay awake and make it through the long commutes.

Excercise plan
- I can't go to the gym I don't have the money for that now
- I cannot run outside because it is winter weather
- my treadmill broke (it's pretty bad)
so it sucks. I used to run a lot, anyway this is what i've come up with.
- weights at home and crunches and whatever other excercises I can come up with that I can do in the limited space I have available.
- 1 hour walk during lunch hour outside at work. This is good for a couple of reasons, because it's cold it'll actually force my body to work harder to generate that heat. also it's a way for me to use my lunch hour without effectively wasting time at the computer. (I'm not very social and never have lunch with my coworkers, although the converse argument could be made that they also are not very social beause I can see them eating lunch at their desks here) Anyway the bottom line is I should have done this a long time ago, instead I wasted a lot of good lunchours looking up crap on the internet.

Ok so FYI it's day 4 of my plan. It's not clear how much weight I lost yet. I will have a better idea Monday if I keep this up. The last recorded lowest weight was 121.7. that could mean I lost 0.5 pound in the last 4 days or it could mean I may have gained some in the process so lost more or it could mean, I was mostly shedding waterweight.

Here's the big problem with this - most of the weight I will lose has got to be waterweight. I just want it to read 110pounds, I don't actually have to contain 110 pounds of mass by then. So the biggest challenge will be losing water. I need to lose water lol.

I imagine fasting towards the end, or fasting on the weekends having only fruit for breakfast and lunch and having then a real dinner. I hope I can make it.

My problem is my base metabolic rate is only 1328 calories. That means if I do nothing all day (which is very easy given my office job and extra long commute spent in the car) that is all the claories I will burn. THAT'S IT. Do you see how hard it is to maintain this weight??? Not only that but, in order to lose 4 pounds a week I have to lose 14000 calories a week or have a net negative of 2000 calories a day. That means, even if I ate nothing and did nothing, I still wouldn't reach my goal.

Here's my question? how the heck do those guys that do lose 2000 calories a day???/ What happens? They have to spend HOURS working out. even if I run for an hour I only lose 400 calories!!! I have to run for 5 hours (we're not talking slow we're talking 6mph) to lose 2000 calories!!! I can't run 5 hours. I don't even have that much time to spare in the evenings! I only have 4 hours from 6-10pm which is bedtime!! and I need to eat, brush my teeth, prepare breakfast too. So I can't run for 5 hours.....


my bmr is 1328, my consumption is 800 calories, differnece is 528 calories. I need to burn another 1500. I'm walking for an hour - 200 calories. and I'm doing weights another probably 200 calories. So that's an extra 400 calories burned a day or a deficit of 928 calories. not the 2000 I need. That's 2 pounds a week not 4. that means I'll be at 116 by christmas not 110.............. what to do???

I could lose an extra 1000 calories on the weekends which would give me a loss of 2.7 pounds a week or 8.1 pounds a week total which would bring me down from 122 to 114...... but then how to lose an extra 4 pounds.

anyway yours truly help appreciated.

 

[pavicnat]

I have to say this is not a very active forum. I've posted this in a week and gotten no replies. Anyway though the experience is cathartic for me.

So I have good news. Today I am 117.8!! That is I did actually manage to lose 3.5 pounds in a week! Woot. I was not seeing the ability to lose more than 2 pounds in a week so this is great. Anyway so it looks like I will actually achieve my goal I am so happy.

I am undergoing a very drastic change in eating habits which I don't recommend for very long periods of time. I am only doing this crash diet for 3 weeks. The point is once i"m there it's done it's over I've achieved my challenges and overcom my obstacles. oh this is so wonderful I cannot tell you.

I actually stuck to my plan for the first time ever for a whole straight 8 days. Wow. You know before I was on a diet but I always ended up cheating somehow. I'd have a little snack here, I'd have a little snack there. But now, no nothing, it's really amazing.

It's not that I have little monkey thoughts and brain farts and snafus. I do. I think about the snacks. I fall into the pitfall of thinking about all the food that I am missing. But I have a little mantra that keeps going on in my head over and over again. And it's, just three more weeks.

I am really looking forward to that christams dinner. See here's the thing. Most people make new years resolutions. They are resolutions they plan to start on in the new year. And most of them don't keep em. Why is that? Maybe the problem is the setup. You are making plans..... to make plans later. This falls into the category of excuses. The way new years resolutions are setup is in the form of an excuse, I'll do it later.

So I thought this year, instead of making a post-new years resolution I'd make a pre-new years resolution. That's right, a resolution to be achieved prior to the new years celebration which I would start on immediately. Now warranted it took me a week to get in the mind space to do this, but so I am here now in front of you after seven days and I am on my way. Just three more weeks.

Really this christamas there will be a couple of snafus. A couple of events leading up to the 25th where I am in danger of breaking my oath. They are - this Friday's coworker lunch. Visit to my mothers next tuesday. My bf's brother's birthday dc 22. My mother's bday dec 24th.

The problem with these events is typically people chose very unhealthy foods and they expect you to eat them. You look weird if you don't, but they dont' give you any options. So this year I made some plans. In addition what I will have to eat doesn't jive with my diet plan which is very very little for breakfast and lunch (more emphasis on dinner).

So this friday coworkers lunch I am plannign to stick to salads and protein. This is actually not what I am eating right now.

I got this idea from my bf. He told me once that when his muslim coworker fasts he eats fruit only during breakfast and lunch and waits until dusk for a proper dinner. I always thought that fasting was an interesting cultural way to keep a culture slim. It is like a self imposed societal diet. So it forces everyone to go through this experirence and as a result I think they are better for it. They learn to control their impulses and the food they eat. I dont' agree with the underlying reasons, but I certainly see the benefits for those cultures that do incorporate fasts. Most prominently the jewish and islamic peoples.

But my bf said to me, because I am a fan of fruit, he only has a small single portion of fruit not like an unlimited helping of fruit like you do. So it occured to me. I like fruit. The fructose in fruit totally qualms my sugar craving, it's also why I eat a lot of it. So if I just controlled my portion I could have more fruit.

So then I did a test, I did a self imposed fast this past weekend. I ate just fruit for breakfast and lunch. And then awaited dinner with much anticipation.

And it worked miracles.
I dropped a couple of pounds. no really I really did. wow.
SO I looked it up. There's something called a frutarian diet. this is where at least 75% of the foods you eat are fruit. I'm not going on a full on 100% frutarian diet, but some of it is resembling.
Anyway I figured out that I could really decrease the calories in my breakfast and lunch if I just ate fruit. I cheated a little and put a little bit of protein in lunch. I was missing it.
So actually I am able to keep my breakfast and lunch respectively under 200 calroies, although more often than not under 150 calories. You will be amazed how few calories fruit has while tasting absolutely delicious.
For example - a cup of blueberries is only 85 calories. Have that and an egg and you are under 150 calories.
But fruit is not all that. You can achieve the same thing with vegetables. Why am I eating fruit? Because it takes care of my sugar cravings. I actually eat the fruit and I add sweetener....... yeah that's right that's how sweet I like it, but HEY that' what got me in this situation in the first place!! chocolates, and deserts, and muffins oh my lorde.
so, take a cup of blueberries and DOUZE them in sweetener and you wont believe you will feel like you are having dessert, have this for breakfast, you'll have 25 % of the calories you usually have.
But there is a catch with fruit. It has fructose, which does increase your blood sugar level. If your blood sugar level is high enough for long enough periods of time it gets stored to fat. this is why vegetables are better. But hey I didn't say my diet is perfect, it just works.
So there is a way I am mitigating this. Look for fruits with a low glycemic index. Those are fruits that dont' raise your blood sugar level as much.
So I did, and much to my delight some of my favorite fruits was in this category. did you know the following have a low GI?
cherries (WHAAAA cherries are like gods gift to earth, as soon as I foudn this out I went and bought some)
all kinds of berries (somtehing about blueberries makes them especially nutritious too)
figs (grew up with figs, love em, got em)
apples and pears
peaches
grapefruit (if you don't know how to eat grapefruit the key is sweetener. Cut it up and douze it in sweetener it will taste great!)
I find grapefruit actually the most filling for the least amount of calories. 1 grapefruit has only 40 calories. It's very big, so I only have half, and btw, it's full of fiber so it fills you up. half a grapfruit? do the math 20 calorises! that's 25 % of the already 25 % reduction in caloric content. Sometimes I have berries sometimes I have grapefruit.....grapefurit is better but hey I maintain a variety. I just can't have a full grapefruit trust me it's too much.
high gi:
- bananas (never having another one like ever again
any kind of melon ( I want to cry because my favorite is watermelon and cantelope, I guess you figure everything is my favorite again)
mango (also feel like crying)
pineapple
any kind of tropical fruit
Right so if you're going to go on a frutarian diet make it more effective by picking fruits with a low GI and high nutritional value (such as blueberries).
Now I added a couple of things to this. Prunes. Look. I just have to ok? I can't do number 2 very often. granted this is probably due to low consumption of food, but oh boy it collects in there for THREE DAYS> i like to nudget it along so I have some prunes. Also prunes are delicious so I don't mind.
Ok I added something else....... supplements. So I am on a no carb, no dairy, no cheese, mostly fruit and low on calories diet. This means a coupel of things. I have omega 3 with my dinner, yes I am missing that. I have vitamin d and multivitamins at night.
But also because I'm not really having dairy I would be missing out on calcium and b12 apparently. Looked it up. So I got some of those supplements to have with lunch.
I didn't cut out dairy on purpose. It just happened.
Cheese is very high calories high fat so I didn't include it in my breakfast and lunch plans. I have it occassionally if the dish calls for it on dinner. But I am not having an all cheese dinner.
Milk I stopped having because I stopped having cereal in the morning. Also I don't drink glasses of milk because it's got too many calories as a drink (90 for skim milk that is like the caloric content of my breakfast). So milk does not make you feel as full as other foods. it's not the most efficient source of protein either calorically speaking.
So I am losing out on calcium and I did take care of that.
I pick little meats to eat for lunch. (i'll have legit meats + veg or salad for dinner) but I have a special selection. I have these pepperettes. they are 60 calories. they are delicious and have some fat. I also can hvae an egg, or a little lunch meat, or a little leftover meat. BUt mostly I should just have fruit. But I don't oh well it's not perfect.
Anyway this is all very extreme and I would sustain it for longer than I am doing which is three weeks.
Now i know I am getting something very large for christmas so I am super excited I'm looking forward to earning it. I also plan to go shopping for new clothes and plan on several splurge sessions with lots of chocolate. I actually bought chocolate it's in teh basement sitting waiting.
All of this is keeping me going. I'm trying to keep on a positive attitude. I think about this all the time. It's obvious I'm posting it here. BUt I'm keeping positive. it's working, just a little more, just wait for tomorrow's number. Soon you'll have the dinner today.
i watch online clothing catalogues and pictures of models for motivation. I'm almost there it's so crazy. This whole trip has been so crazy. But when I'm there I'm done with dieting and this is all over. It will feel great.
mind you dieting is very very difficult. I find it very very hard to resist not indulging. When I hit that goal it's all over I'm not going on. But for myself I have to get to that goal.

 

[pavicnat]

HI - ok so my weight has stalled a little bit it is 118.0 this morning, it was 117.5 yesterday and 117.9 the day before. This is all within the same range so it seems that my weigh has changed little over the last three days. I didn't change anything, I maintained my diet. This is not necessarily bad, but I did have a little freakout. Just 1.5 more weeks left to get to my goal I hope I can make it. I am going to keep on going.