One day at a time

D

dawnball

New member
The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post. ~L. Thomas Holdcroft

I don't live in the moment well. I can analyze the past. I can model the future, magnifying my hopes and fears all out of proportion. But living now, enjoying the moment without thinking about what's next on my checklist? I struggle, and am now struggling.

So where am I now? I'm 33, which seems both unbelievably old (I still instinctively think of my mother as 35) and so young that my future stretches incomprehensibly far ahead of me. I have a wonderful husband and a six year old daughter. I'm 5'4 and weigh 217 lb, which is enough that it impacts my quality of life, but not so much that the thought of losing 72lb to return to a "normal" weight seems impossible. I have a job I love and both support and time to work on being healthier and losing weight.

I also have an autoimmune disorder. I'm gluten intolerant, and currently recovering from an inflammatory cascade of completely unknown origin. Movement and eating both still cause abdominal pain, but on a very simple diet with very light activity, the pain is both manageable and improving.

I'm terrified, because I have no idea what caused this (dietary, environmental, hormonal, etc) and the waiting list to see a GI means I will probably never know except by trial, error and guesswork. But that fear is for the future, and I'm trying very hard to live in today. Today I eat foods that don't seem to make it worse, and there's no rush to experiment.

However, I can say that being overweight doesn't help the situation. Losing weight means less stress on my joints and organs. It means less food for my intestines to process. It means less fat to probe through for imaging and physical exams. It might mean that my hormones will find a better balance.

Now, when I'm very focused not just on what I consume, but on how my body reacts to it - seems to be a good time for self evaluation. What do I eat? Why do I eat it? In the last week it's become very clear that I eat when I feel pain. Even if I'm not hungry, even if that pain is from my stomach being too physically full to hold more. I'm not good at differentiating between hunger pangs and "ouch, no more!" although I'm doing well today.

While I can't "exercise" right now, I am tracking my intake and doing as much yoga and stretching as my body seems ready for. It's ok to start slow. Life is about momentum, not acceleration.
 
I need neither future nor past, but to learn to take today not too fast. ~Jeb Dickerson

Last night I learned that grapes bother my gut. I had grapes and pineapple with dinner, then grapes later - and it was certainly the grapes. I feel like I should be more upset than I am. But really, I only like -good- grapes, and those are hard to come by most of the year. I'm also fairly sure that it's temporary, and by this time next year, I'll be able to eat grapes again.

That brings the running total of foods to avoid to:
Gluten, dairy, nightshade (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers), beef and grapes.

And the foods that don't seem to bother me:
Pork, Chicken, white rice, sweet potatoes, apples, blood orange sorbet, green beans, onions, garlic, ginger, wheat free soy sauce, refined sugars (white and brown), eggs, Udi's gluten free bread, sesame oil, peanut oil, canola mayo, lemon juice and honey.

Unknown foods include:
Pineapple, water ice (sour cherry and grapefruit flavors), nuts/peanuts

At least the "OK" list is growing faster than the avoid one. However, I've eaten rotisserie chicken for three meals in a row (I couldn't face eggs this morning and had cold chicken, mmm) and it's getting a bit boring. Not in the "I don't want to eat this again" sense, but more in the "meh, I could take it or leave it, but I'm not eating it if I'm not hungry" sense. Not all bad, but I should look for another option soon.

Halfway through breakfast I got tired of eating and thought "I always talk about drinking coffee outside, and I never do it" - so I went out and sat on the steps with my mug. I saw two squirrels (stumpy and one with a full tail), a bright red cardinal and no stray cats (rabid or otherwise). I finished my coffee and reflected on what my new food limitations were, and what I should test next. Sure enough, looking at the marshmallow made me hungry. So I had a few more bites of breakfast, felt full again and put the rest in the fridge for later.

I can see the appeal of planning out a whole day (or week's) worth of meals, but between the flux of digestion-safe foods and our tendency to accumulate leftovers, a week is too much. I might try planning out a day for tomorrow though, and see if that keeps me from focusing on food.

In the meantime, I've got work and a couple of books to keep me happy. And I can start planning my lifting routine for once I can start lifting again.

ObWeightLoss: Down 5lb today. That's water. And it's weighing first thing in the morning instead of in the middle of the day. But water has to come off sometime, and a more accurate weight is all to the good.
 
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We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it. ~John Newton

I went out to lunch with my Husband today, and I learned two things. 1) Green tea with Chinese food really is pretty good 2) I'm pretty. Neither of these is likely to be earth-shattering news to anyone else, but I'm calling it a pretty good day.

I've tried green tea many times before, and always found it unpleasant. But when I was drinking water with my lunch and really savoring my food - focusing on how it tasted - the astringency and bitterness of green tea complemented the sweet and unctuous dish. I'm pleased with my discovery, and I think we might have to buy a teapot for stir-fry night at home.

After lunch, I went to return some shirts for my husband, and realized I had a little extra time, so I went shopping for me. Now, I think of myself as fairly solidly in plus sizes. I'm really only an 18, but "normal" sizes seem so very far away. And the plus-size options at Belk today were the usually horrendous old-lady sacks. I have a waist. I actually have that .7 ratio of waist to hips that's so popular. But all the clothes in my size want to cover my belly like it's unfit to be seen my civilized people. "Long, smooth lines" - yeah, that make me look like a sausage. But I persevered, and found three dresses to try on.

The first was regrettable. It clung to every lump and bulge. I -felt- like a sausage. The kind that you might make when you're first learning to stuff sausage casings; lumpy and uneven.

The second was almost perfect. It clung to my breasts without making them seem twelve sizes larger than the rest of me. I had a visible waist. I had shoulders and arms that didn't seem outrageously sized for the rest of me. I just stared at myself. I was -pretty- in that dress. And I could look at the dress and identify what made me pretty in it. And what its failings were (it clung rather too much to my hips, where I go from flat hips to wider thighs and a bit more structure/fabric weight in the skirt would help) I don't have to be the fat girl. I can be a pretty girl who happens to be fat.

And then I remembered. When I was 8 or 9, I had a friend. My best friend, who lived down the road. At that age, I was normal weight, and she was obese. I didn't think of her as obese. She was the prettiest girl I knew, and her weight was irrelevant. But she used to make jokes at my expense. "You're pretty..." "Oh, tha-" "pretty ugly" and even though I knew I wasn't ugly - I wasn't fashionable either. My hair was always flyaway, my clothes were both cheap and dated and frequently stained. I didn't think of my appearance much at a ll then, but having "pretty" dangled in front of me and yanked away - it hurt.

And when I hit puberty and started gaining weight - I felt fat, because I started my period in 4th grade. I was 10, the first of my grade, and I had terrible menses where I overflowed the pads every month until all my pants were bloodstained. I was bigger than the other girls. I had hips and breasts and I hated them. I remember thinking "if I was just -really- fat, I wouldn't have to worry about what I wore - it would be easy, because nothing would be flattering so I wouldn't have to try." I never thought of myself as attractive, and as soon as a man in my life talked too much about be being pretty or sexy or whatever, I was done with him. My husband only slipped past because he was -such- a geek it wouldn't have occurred to him to compliment me.

Well, darn it - most of the clothes in my size might not be flattering to my body shape. I might wear men's cargo shorts and IT-swag t-shirts most days because they're easy. But I -can- be pretty. No, I -am- pretty.

So, I'm giving myself an assignment. By Thanksgiving I will:

1) Find a way to style my hair that is both easy(because I know I don't have much time every morning) and attractive. This will likely involve a haircut, and that's ok. I'm allowed to spend money on my appearance.

2) Find/buy an outfit that I think makes me look pretty. Just one, but it needs to be complete from shoes to accessories, either purchased or from my closet. Not fancy, just pretty and somewhat practical (I'm not ready for drycleaning yet)

3) Getting all dressed up and wearing it for Thanksgiving with my family. I'm not going to stuff my stress down this Thanksgiving, and feeling proud of the way I look is a good start.
 
Hi, You have a great attitude and you are absolutley right. There is no reason why somebody can't be pretty just because they weigh more than they want to. I've lost about 3/4 of the weight that I want to lose and it's only now that I have started to take an interest in clothes and hair. I guess I thought that I couldn't look pretty or didn't deserve to look pretty before so didn't even try even though it's silly not to make the best of yourself. I used to cry everytime I went out anywhere special as I would end up borrowing one of my mum's dresses and looked frumpy as I didn't own anything nice myself.
I've lost 42 lbs so far so it is not impossible and with your attitude I'm sure you will do it :)
 
No man is rich enough to buy back his past. ~Oscar Wilde

Don't I wish I could, though. I didn't journal yesterday, which is probably just as well, because I wasn't very coherent. I'm gluten intolerant, and somehow (which we still can't fathom except as a fluke) my dinner on Thursday had gluten in it. I woke up in the middle of the night absolutely ravenous and ate, then on Friday morning I was distracted and my belly was sore, but it's been more or less sore for the last two weeks, so I didn't worry too much. After lunch (mmm, dinner leftovers!) it got markedly worse, and we realized that my husband was also showing symptoms of having eaten gluten. The diffuse abdominal pain became sharp and pointed, and was accompanied by ravenous, insatiable hunger and a lot of foggy thinking.

I had so much swelling that my belt (which is normally tightened about 6 notches) would barely buckle on the first one, and my wedding ring (which is normally a size too large) was painfully tight.

At dinner time, I just lost my self control. I had no sense of fullness, because everything from my ribcage to my groin hurt immensely. So between 6pm and 10pm I ate about 1200 calories. Mostly from white rice. I didn't want to log it. So I didn't. And this morning I thought to myself "Yesterday didn't -really- count. It all passed through me so quickly, I can't possibly have absorbed all those calories. It's ok to just not log them."

And that little voice has a reasonable argument. I did have terrible diarrhea, and my body doesn't absorb nutrients well in that state. On the other hand, I didn't ever have the characteristic weight loss from celiac disease, and I know that every other time this has happened - I haven't logged that food, and from there it's an easy step to not logging on bad days. To focusing on making the calorie count numbers low. Lower. Lower. And those really low numbers are unsustainable. So I logged the rest of yesterday. And yesterday ended up at 2800 calories. Ouch.

HOWEVER - My 6-day average calorie intake (I haven't been logging long) is 1575 calories. The LOW end of my calorie target is 1500. I weighed myself, and I'm up 2lb from Thursday. But I put it into the Hacker's diet curve-fitting, and my curve is still going down.

One bad day does not undo all my work. One day when I ate too much (even if I knew I was doing it at the time, and did it anyway) doesn't mean that today I can't listen to my body.

I feel better. Not perfect, but better. The toxic sludge is out of my body. I'll spend today out in the sunshine at the fair. I'll take care of my body. I'll drink plenty of water and take healthy snacks. Nothing will bring yesterday back, so I may as well make the most of today. Speaking of - I'm supposed to leave in 10 minutes, and still need to pack lunch!


Thanks for stopping by, folks. I kind of ramble to myself a lot, but you're always welcome to comment. Especially if I seem to be feeling sorry for myself. ;)
 
hey Dawnball - welcome to the board! Just stopped in to encourage you to keep journaling - it is really helpful to the whole process and also allows us lot to get involved with your daily life and ups and downs and give some support.

It sounds like you've got a lot to figure out on the food front with the gluten intolerance and stuff thats going on. Good luck on your weight loss journey and hope to see you aroudn here lots!
 
People are always asking about the good old days. I say, why don't you say the good now days? ~Robert M. Young

The fair was all kinds of fun. We spent 8 hours there, and I'm not really impressed with myself for not eating junk. I couldn't eat 90% of what they sold there, and what I could eat wouldn't have been terrible for me. I -am- impressed that I let go enough to have a good time. I didn't worry about how quickly we were using ride tickets, or if any individual ride was a "good deal", or if my daughter could ride more rides if she went alone. I rode things that I expected to be terrified of, and while some of them were scary, none did any harm worse than a bruise, and they were all better than I'd built them up in my head. Clinging to bucking ride vehicle and laughing until my stomach hurt, then laughing some more surely burned more calories than sitting at home, but it's the memories that I savor most.

It was a -good- day, and I enjoyed every moment of it. I ended the day at 1300 calories, which is a little low, but not disturbingly so. I was just having too much fun most of the time to think to stop and eat.

Chronic autoimmune disease really is a rough thing. I've been gluten free for 8 years, and when it's going well - it's really easy for me by now. Once your system is out of balance (something about fall on the East coast gives me a nasty flare every year) it's every little mistake that you'd normally not notice makes it a little harder. But it's slowly coming back to normal again. I had no pain yesterday at the fair, and pretty minimal pain this morning. In a few weeks I'll start re-introducing foods that were too difficult to digest during this flare, and hopefully none of them give me problems.

I probably ought to come up with some way of dealing with the acute phase of a gluten reaction, but it happens so rarely that I tend to just eat whatever comes to mind at the time. Maybe journaling what I eat will help with that.

Thanks for stopping by, jjjay. :) I'm journaling mostly because it helps me sort out my relationship with food, dieting and stress, but a little help and encouragement when I get locked in the same patterns is all to the good!
 
We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it. ~John Newton


I'm a worrier by nature. I nurture stress. I sweat the small stuff. I prepare for what might never come, even though I know that once it gets here, all my plans will go out the window and I'll fly by the seat of my pants.

But today, right now, I'm sitting in the sunshine, sipping a cup of coffee, and the world is good. Fresh and clean and sweet-smelling. It's a morning of opportunity. Where would I like it to take me?

First, the week in +/-.

+ The scale says I lost 5.5 lb this week. And while I know it's mostly water (and switching to weighing first thing in the morning),
+ The hacker diet's moving averages say I lost 2.5 lb
- I had a day where I ate more than twice my current average calorie intake
+ It was only one day, and my caloric intake had been lower than I prefered until then.
- I'm probably still eating too little, the last two days I averaged 1300 calories, and my trend is only 1434.
+ I'm not feeling ravenous, for the most part I eat when I'm hungry, and just haven't been very hungry.
+ My intestines are healing, and I'm feeling a little better every day.
- No official exercise this week, and only one day of the hacker diet rung 1.
+ I walked around the fair for 8 hours carrying 20ish lb on my back, then carried the 40lb child a half mile out to the car when her legs gave out.
- My cleaning lady quit, and I'm not usually a very good housekeeper
+ I realized that the caulk around my tub was cracked, and repaired it.
- Now it's evident how much of the caulk in the bathrooms ought to be pulled up and replaced.
+ Picking and choosing what I eat and how much of it from the family meal is a viable means of weight loss right now. This makes it much more sustainable on a daily basis, and means that my diet shouldn't alter radically once I'm not trying to lose weight.

This week swim class starts, so I'll work on the exercise component. Mostly because moving feels good, and I'd rather not loose too much muscle along with my weight. And I'll look for something pretty to wear for Thanksgiving. I think that's enough of a mission for Monday morning.
 
You have to wake up a virgin each morning. ~Jean-Louis Barrault

It's been almost a week since I last posted. Not intentionally, it's just that I've sort of settled into a routine and there wasn't much to say about it. I'd like to continue posting though, if only to form the habit in case things get harder.

I haven't really talked about how I'm losing weight, so that seems like a good topic for this post. I read "I can make you thin" and while a lot of it struck me as mumbo-jumbo and self-hypnosis (which I wasn't much interested in) I did take away a few lessons that have seemed useful.

1) Don't eat when you aren't hungry.
2) Stop eating when you're full.
3) Don't eat while you're doing other things (watching TV/surfing the web, etc)

Then I read a -ton- of information on weight loss and muscle building, and I added a few more techniques.

1) Aim for higher protein intakes (my goal is 30% of calories before I start lifting weights)
2) While obese, exercise for pleasure (to find things that I like to do that involve motion) and form (get good at lifting weights before I start piling on the plates)
3) Monitor everything (at this point I'm not monitoring exercise, just nutrition, but I'm planning strength training with nearly the same level of obsession)

Every day I tweak my spreadsheets a little more, so that I can better track the information that I care about. That seems like as good a thing as any to talk about today.

Currently I enter scale weight, calories and grams of fat, carb and protein. The spreadsheet calculates my trend weight (using the hacker diet's exponentially smoothed moving average), my trend calories (from the same formula) and my percent of calories as each macro-nutrient. Then it graphs weight (scale and trend) over time, with calories on the secondary axis. Another graph displays daily % of calories from each nutrient and the trends of those values.

It also calculates average loss per day, average loss per week, and an estimated calorie deficit that's calculated by assuming a 3500 calorie pound. The estimated calorie deficit is used to estimate my maintenance calories. I compare those maintenance calories to the calorie estimate from the Mufflin equation (men: (10 x w) + (6.25 x h) - (5 x a) + 5 women: (10 x w) + (6.25 x h) - (5 x a) - 161 where w is weight in kg, h is height in cm and a is age in years. ) This is mostly to satisfy my curiosity (and answer any concerns) about excessive calorie reduction decreasing my metabolic rate.

Currently I'm at a 48% calorie deficit, and my nutritional targets have a range of 47% to 21%. My loss per day/week calculations all use the weight trend information, and after 2 weeks they show an average weight loss of 2.6lb/week, which is just slightly over 1%/week. That's a much more mentally comfortable number than the scale numbers. The scale claims a loss of 4.5lb/week, which is slightly more than 2% of my mass/week. I've been indoctrinated well enough that the idea of 2% of body mass or 4.5lb/week makes me uncomfortable.

All of that said, I'm not worried about the speed of my weight loss.

A) I'm obese, and obese people can lose more weight and lose it faster with smaller metabolic effects than people who are merely overweight or of normal weight.
B) I'm eating when I'm hungry, and for the most part, I'm eating whatever I want. I do moderate that with my six guidelines, so I don't eat cake until I've had a meal with some protein in it.
C) I'm incorporating weekly refeeds (or free meals, if you prefer) - this helps me raise my trend average some.

I keep accidentally falling into ketosis, with the accompanying foul taste in my mouth, lack of appetite, muscle ache and unquenchable thirst. And that's with carbs trending at 155g/day. It seems to happen on days that I get more exercise, which sort of makes sense. Last night I had a piece of cake to get out. Since I'm losing weight without ketosis and ketosis isn't my goal, I may as well indulge in something I had an interest in to get back out of ketosis. My husband suggested OJ, but for the same number of calories, I'd rather have cake.

So, in absolute terms, where am I?

My weight trend is 211.9lb (Down 5.1 lb, woohoo), my calorie trend is 1380 calories (estimated maintenance of 2660) with 35% of calories from fat, 45% from carbs and 23% from protein. You'll note that adds up to more than 100%. That seems to be an artifact from my calorie tracking website. Their macro-nutrient breakdown tends to calculate to a higher calorie intake than the calorie total (I've seen 97%-106%). I chose not to worry about that, since I'm fairly sure it's rounding error. Even though I weigh most of my food, I'd guess my errors are at least 10% anyway.

I'm due for a refeed. My calorie trend has been dropping steadily without one, and I'd guess would end up around 1320 if I don't add one in. Maybe I'll go out for Chinese food this week.

On balance, I -like- this level of recordkeeping and analysis. It lets me weigh myself every day (actually, it requires it, or I have to interpolate data), but there's no fussing about the actual scale weight, since I'm conditioning myself not to think of it as "real". My weight today was the same as yesterday's weight, but the trend showed a .4lb loss, which matches my average daily loss. Even on days that the scale as shown a gain, the trend keeps dropping.

It also requires me to track everything I eat, but having an empirical estimate of my maintenance calories and watching the calorie trends also keeps me from flipping out about any one day being particularly high. Yes, I had a 2770 calorie day last week. It temporarily brought my trend average up to 1462, which is barely above the lower bound of my target calories. Big Whoop. Now, if I was doing that -every- day, the trend would rise quickly, and I'd know there was something wrong. But I can -see- that a one-day indulgence isn't a big deal in the scheme of things.

Reading-wise, I'm loving Lyle McDonald. I'm also occasionally reading Testosterone Nation and Leangains and slowly working my way through "The New Rules of Lifting for Women." I can't really do any of their recommended diet plans (I don't tolerate protein powder, and too high of a % protein causes -severe- appetite blunting and then I start getting woozy in the shower/clumsy and end up quitting), but I can apply their science and exercise recommendations to my chosen diet.

Oh, and in 2 weeks, I've lost a band size on my bra, and am fitting into shirts that used to be too small. Progress feels really good.
 
One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us. ~Michael Cibenko

the week in +/-

+ A 6 year old on a bicycle is an excellent drill instructor for interval training.
- That -hurts- the next day.
+ I got the intestinal pain (mostly) under control and I have a regime that works.
- You eat more when it doesn't hurt to eat.
- Saturday to Saturday I've gone up a half pound.
+ Most of that is probably water weight, I'm pretty sure I'd depleted my glycogen (and accompanying water), because I was really dragging around and sleepy all the time.
+ I feel better this week than I did last week.
+ My trend line still looks good, and is running just about on target for my predicted weight loss curve.
+ I can put my face in the water, and kick with a kickboard the length of the pool (and back, although back was much slower)
+ My unweighted squats are getting lower and easier.
- I'm still not getting enough protein to do real lifting
- There's a creeping trend of junk (mostly sweet) that I need to keep an eye on and focus on switching to higher-protein options. We're roasting a pork butt this weekend that should help with that.

Seven day calorie average - 1390
Estimated Maintenance calories - 2610
Seven day trend-loss - 2lb
 
Today is the greatest
Day I've ever known
Can't live for tomorrow,
Tomorrow's much too long....
~Billy Corgan, "Today," Siamese Dream (Smashing Pumpkins), 1993

I joined the Valentine's day challenge, and my goal weight seems so very far away. That's what the spreadsheet predicts though, and I've been on target so far, so I'll just take it one day at a time.

This week's challenge was to try one new form of exercise. I've been reading The New Rules of Lifting for Women lately, and trying to get my protein numbers high enough that everyone felt comfortable with me lifting. My protein trend is above minimum for muscle maintenance, and I've had a couple of high protein days that indicate I'm capable of ingesting enough protein for lifting, so I decided that today was as good a day as any to pull the trigger.

I adjusted the routines slightly for my equipment, so I ended up with:
dumbbell squats (ATG, or as close as I could get)
60 degree pushups
dumbbell bent-over rows
step-ups
Prone jackknifes (with a stability ball)

In general, my quads are fried, and I can feel the muscle ache settling in, but it felt -really- good to do. Jackknifes are super-hard for me, and the only exercise that I couldn't complete the reps of. I could do about one fewer each set. It took about 20 minutes to do, once I found everything I needed. The 60 second rest between each set felt longer than I expected it to, and while I was gasping for breath through most of the breaks, and my heartbeat was fast - it wasn't ever "too much". I got a really nice endorphin rush afterwards, and got a good feeling that I'd worked hard.

After showering and catching my breath, I had lunch. My servings were so big all the food I wanted didn't fit on my plate, but I went ahead and loaded it up anyway. I easily ate everything except my rice, which I ate about a third of. I also had 3 glasses (16 oz each) of water, because even though I had another 2-3 glasses while lifting, I was really thirsty.

Yesterday's food:

Breakfast: coffee, krill oil, pineapple juice, balsamic chicken
Lunch: balsamic chicken, green beans, rice
Dinner: Balsamic chicken, butternut squash soup with some chex-mix as croutons.
Snacks: a clementine, 2 old fashioneds (It was halloween!), and a couple of ounces of the pork shoulder roast when it came out of the oven at 11pm.

(1540 calories, 16% fat, 34% carb, 31%protein, 14% alcohol)

Today's food:

Breakfast: coffee, krill oil, apple cider, pork shoulder, pineapple
Lunch: Balsamic chicken, broccoli raab, clementine, rice, krill oil

(620 calories so far, 20% fat, 35% carb, 37% protein)

I'll tell you, logging 200 calories from bourbon was a sobering (pun-intended) experience. It never occurred to me how many calories alcohol had. However, I enjoy a social drink, and it was my holiday treat, so I don't really regret it. I'd been considering a lara bar as my treat, and that would have been 220 calories, as well as far less mentally satisfying. Either of them is a better choice than digging into the halloween candy, because I don't have a working "off" switch for that.

I think I need another protein snack, so I'm off for more chicken!
 
Hey dawnball,
Just dropped by to say hi and to say that i really love reading your blogs. Some are a bit technical but you have such a great attitude. It's inspirational. Plus I love the cool quotes :D. All the best! Hope you keep writing
 
Island Girl said:
Hey dawnball,
Just dropped by to say hi and to say that i really love reading your blogs. Some are a bit technical but you have such a great attitude. It's inspirational. Plus I love the cool quotes :D. All the best! Hope you keep writing
Click to expand...

Oh, thanks! I don't intend to be technical, but I guess it can be that way sometimes when I'm focused on something. Feel free to come by anytime!
 
Today's quote is from and kind of long, but worth re-reading (at least if you're me, and it's today)

When you eat, ask yourself what your food is doing for you, not whether someone or something is allowing (or preventing) you eating it. Ask yourself how much distress this project prompts in you.

When you work out, feel the pleasure of your body moving, and the thrill of emergent power, not how many calories this is burning.

Are you going towards joy or away from it? Understand that drastic restriction, control freakery, and rigid rules will always come back to bite you in the ass, whether that’s an hour from now or a year from now.

Are you present with this body of yours? Aware? Mindful? Thoughtful? Are you caring for your insides — all your insides — mental, emotional, and cognitive? Do you bullshit yourself? Tell yourself lies? Yell at yourself? “Should” yourself?

Does every choice you make say “Yes, I will love and nourish you, self”? or do your actions really say: “I hate your guts and I will do everything I can to beat you into submission”?

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I sort of overdid it yesterday. The weights were good, but really pushed me to my limits. Then I went out for a stroll that the kid changed into a trembling, shaky jog. Ouch. All day long today, everytime I stand up or sit down, that's what I say. Ouch. "Could you run ahead and open the door? I mean, hobble ahead." Yeah, thanks dear.

But it feels good. It was about stretching myself and now it's time to recover. I hit the pool this morning, and that wasn't feeling good. It felt like too much, like abusing myself so that I'd do well in that challenge. And then I wanted to eat, but didn't want to eat, because I wanted to do well in the challenge.

I'm -on course-. I set a goal that's on course. I don't need to change something every day to make myself lose a little faster. I need to stay the course. I need to have fun. I need to enjoy life and my body in motion. I need to not feel guilty about boneless, skinless chicken breast and greens. I need to not feel guilty about the sliver of chocolate cake I can fit into my calorie budget.

I need to feed my body for it to grow stronger. I need to listen to my hunger, look at my food and activity log and give my body what it needs. Sometimes what it needs is tough love. To be reminded of how good motion feels, how good healthy food tastes. To be reminded that hunger isn't always the most important thing.

Today it needs aftercare. It worked hard for me, pushed itself to its limits. A long warm bath with a mug of hot black tea to sip. Plenty of protein and a portion of healthy carbs. Gentle stretching and enough cardio that I don't stiffen up.

I am on course. This is a journey, not a race, and I can enjoy the process. I should enjoy the process, or I'll have to keep doing it again until I find a method that I can enjoy for the rest of my life.

Note: It's not that the challenge is bad, or that thinking about something healthy you can do every day is bad for people. It's that there are only so many new things I can do at once before I start dropping balls, or the motion accelerates out of control and I'm left staring at empty hands - trying to figure out what happened.
 
Oh yeah, I forgot to post the rest of my food for yesterday.

Dinner:
Butternut squash soup, pork shoulder, rice - and a couple of clementines for dessert.
1400 calories for the day, which is not too shabby.
 
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
-- Albert Einstein

I think I'm going to say that lifting on Monday was a dreadful, terrible mistake. Not that I shouldn't ever lift, but that it was premature. 60+ hours later my legs still buckle occasionally when I walk. I'm itching to get out and -move-, but I just can't get past the pain.

I've also been ravenous, and feeling guilty about being ravenous. This sucks. Yesterday I said "I'm hungry, I should eat!" and ate 2100 calories (instead of my normal 1400). I felt no better. Today I worried all day long about high calories, and at dinner time, as I was carefully weighing out what I "ought" to eat, I just flipped out, because it didn't look like enough food. So I made a deal with myself - I'd eat just what I craved, in a reasonable portion, and go from there. I hated to "binge" two days in a row, but I felt terrible, and was having serious control issues.

100g of boneless, skinless roast chicken with some honey mustard dressing. *gulp* *smack* Mmm, I'm hungry. Another 100g of boneless, skinless roast chicken with honey mustard dressing. *gulp**smack* HEY! This chicken is raw in here! I guess there's no more chicken for me. Took a break, thought about it. Wanted some ice cream. 2 bites of ice cream. Bleh. No ice cream! I want dessert! Cranberry-pecan not-pie. Took 45 minutes to make. 20 minutes to cool. A good-sized serving with a big mug of tea. Ahhhh, that hit the spot.

Bedtime came. Don't want to log. Feel like a fatass. A much less-stressed and food-obsessed fatass, but still, a fatass who fell off the diet wagon twice in a row and used "I worked out, I deserve it!" as an excuse. *Grumble* Fine, I'll log. *fiddle* *fiddle* 1615 calories. WTF? I gorged! I ate -crap-. 44% of my day's calories were from -fat-. And... it's OK. 1615 calories is well within my normal range. My trend is up to 1500 calories. Whoopee. That's still 1000 calories per day below maintenance. Even today, when I felt like I ate my head off - I was below maintenance!

So, what have I learned?

Something went wrong with the lifting. Too much too soon, not enough protein and carbs day-of, not enough protein in general... something. My hunch is that my gut isn't recovered enough to process enough protein. Which is too bad, because the lifting part? Was -so- much fun.

My weight stagnated a week and a half ago, and has been going up and down the same half pound to a pound ever since. Something changed then, and while I thought it was just my body adjusting, now I'm not so sure. My calories were really low for the first 4 days of that, and now are higher than I'd like, but they average out to 1500, which is/should be a significant deficit. What changed?

I started to exercise. Not just a little, but hard, and mostly all at once. My kid had me run intervals. I started kicking to exhaustion in swim class, I added in the lifting. And my calories have remained fairly low. The trend is up 150 calories from when I wasn't exercising so much. My body's been sore and I've been tired.

Too much exercise at once, maybe not enough food to support it. Leads to me having a mini-fit about gaining weight on boneless, skinless chicken breast while my muscles are incapble of performing tasts of daily living. WTF?

So, if this mini-experiment failed, where to now? Back off the calories and exertion or bump them both up? I love lifting, but I hate being incapacitated afterwards. I love running intervals with my kid, but I can't do that if I'm not eating enough to recover. How much do I want to become proud of a number on the scale vs become proud of myself and what I can do.

And how much does this challenge I've enrolled in affect my decision? How much does aiming at a number control me? What are the target numbers there? We have 9 people, looking to lose 100lb in 15 weeks. That's 11lb each.
It's OK if I don't lose the 27lb my spreadsheet says I will, or that I listed as a goal. It's OK if I have a couple of weeks where I don't lose at all. It's ok to experiment and see what works for me.

I want to be able to exercise. I want to be stronger and more capable, not a skinny fat person. Maintenance for me should be about 2500 calories/day. So an intake target of 1800 is perfectly reasonable. I will love and nourish myself. I will eat healthy food, and not begrudge my body the nutrition it needs. I will eat mindfully. I will be in the moment as I exercise. I will find joy in as many aspects of my life as I can.
 
So, I went back and -read- NROL. Like, the nutrition part. Where it says I'm supposed to eat 2200 calories on a non-workout day and 2500 calories on a workout day.

Ummm, yeah, on Monday - when I kicked my ass up and down the weight bench? 1399. On an average day? 1500. Oh lookie, I have all the effects they said I'd have from trying to cut calories and start their exercise program at the same time!

And I used weights that were too heavy. Go me! I recall telling myself quite distinctly that the low calories were a great way to lose weight. As long as I wasn't exercising! Then when I stopped losing weight from just low calories, I could change things up and exercise more. So what did I do? Slash calories and pile on the exercise. :rolleyes:

Ugh.

Eat more, you idiot!

Mmm, I wonder what we have for protein in the house. And some vegetables, I'd really like some broccoli.

Four weeks they say before adjusting calories. I've been overweight for 20 years. A month of following the directions of someone who knows what they're doing? I can do that. Besides, the workout was -fun-.
 
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