Phoebe jumps on the bandwagon

lanadefemme said:
Personally, I thought the only big benefit of being overweight was larger boobs. LOL.
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LOL! :)

From reading your blog, I suspect I could come up with another benefit for you, but a) I don't want to pick on you and b) it'll mean more to you if you catch it on your own.

A day or two ago, I bumped up the "Fear of Thin" post, which I think is worth a serious read (and a serious response, at least to yourself) for most of us here.
 
Thought I'd drop in and say hello.

Very interesting discussions as of late. :)

Sounds to me that you need to spend more time thinking about what maintenance really is.

Repetitive thoughts become realities for most.

If you are constantly thinking about gaining and losing weight.... that's what you're going to have.

Losing weight is a good thing.

But it's not 'sticky' until you allow your mind to make it so. And by that, I mean you have to 'program' into your thought processes the physical act of maintaining what you've already lost.

At least these are my opinions on the subject.....
 
Steve said:
Sounds to me that you need to spend more time thinking about what maintenance really is.
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Thanks for dropping by! :)

I agree, in the sense of "what I want maintenance to be for me." I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all definition of maintenance (beyond the relatively obvious "not gaining all that weight back again).
 
allyphoe said:
Thanks for dropping by! :)

I agree, in the sense of "what I want maintenance to be for me." I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all definition of maintenance (beyond the relatively obvious "not gaining all that weight back again).
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And I wasn't suggesting a one-size-fits-all definition.

I was simply saying it's a critical component of any plan IMO, regardless of what said 'maintenance' means on the mental level from individual to individual.
 
Oh, I didn't think you were. I've never seen you be a one-size-fits-all kind of person. Just rephrasing for my own benefit.

By my math, I've got about 3 more months to go before I get to maintenance, so plenty of time to work on what that means to me. But my experience with me says the bulk of the work will still need to be done in the first month or two of actually maintaining. (Same reason why I didn't do this current round of thinking when I was still safely 50+ pounds heavier. I need the pain of not doing the work to be greater than the pain of doing the work.)
 
Paydirt just posted wise words relating to this topic in another thread:

paydirt said:
I'm in the same boat, though I haven't had as big of swings in the past few years.

Maintaining a weight can be difficult. "Maintaining Weight" just doesn't sound as motivational as "Losing Weight." Once people get to their goal weight, they stop tracking things as closely and add back food without calculating the calories. Just as we put ourselves in a calorie deficit when we are in a state of losing weight, we ALSO need to be calorie neutral when we are maintaining weight. I think people (including myself in the past) focus so much on losing weight that they do not think in advance about maintenance.

My main goal is to BE healthy. Losing weight is a task of that goal, but once it's lost then maintaining weight will be the task. Losing weight is a state of DOING. Being healthy is a state of BEING. It's much more powerful and motivational to BE than to DO.
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Challenge goals from another board

Since I wasn't up for the BL challenge here, I've been following a different board's current challenge. More structured than the NY-Valentine's one here, but less structured than our BL challenge. This is the Friday 1-11 to Thursday 1-17 set.

Drink eight glasses of at least 8 oz of water each day -- 5 pts for each day you consume 64 ozs of water -- max 35 pts

Try two new fruits, vegetables or combination of either this week (new is one you have never tasted before) -- 5 pts for each set of 2 new-to-you fruit/veggie -- max 15 pts total for this task

Instead of snacking -- spend 20 mins engaged in a hobby or interest -- 5 pts for each conscious decision to get busy and skip that snack you are contemplating -- max 20 pts for this task

Eat a healthy breakfast every day instead of skipping this meal -- 5 pts for each day you eat a healthy breakfast -- max 35 pts

No eating of fast-food -- salads and Subway excluded -- 25 pts for the week for avoiding fast-food meals with the exception of salads/Subway
 
I'll also say this about maintenance from my perspective, which of course is not your own:

Our society is so centered on weight and losing excess of it that when people actually lose the weight they set out to lose, they aren't psychologically programmed to maintain said weigth loss. What's left to do at this stage. Mental programming goes a LONG way in fueling behavior.

I personally don't see the point of 'maintaining' or maintenance. Outside of planning maintenance eating weeks in terms of caloric intake, which are actually a dieting/fat loss strategy that allow for continued fat loss, what's the point?

I'm always striving to achieve some kind of physical goal - whether that be fat loss, muscle gain, strength gain, speed gain, etc.

The idea of just maintaining just doesn't 'do it' for me. For me that might imply I'm pleased with where I am, or maybe the word isn't 'pleased', but content or satisfied.

I'm never at a standstill, and I see maintenance as standing still.

And trust me, I certainly know not everyone is going to agree with that mentality.
 
I understand where you're coming from, and I suspect I agree on the substantive bits.

For me, learning to maintain and building that mental programming would be the goal. So by maintaining, I don't mean being at a standstill, but working on a mental / emotional goal, rather than a physical goal. That also doesn't mean that I wouldn't have any physical goals, but that I need my physical goals to not be scale-obsessive.

Expanding on that, because the way I've done maintenance of a low weight in the past has been very scale-obsessive. My underlying goal in the past has always been to get my weight down to the very lowest it could be, and to never let it get even a little bit higher. If I couldn't get down that far, or couldn't stay down that far, I reacted either by eating not nearly enough or way too much. That was nearly 20 years ago, soon after which I realized that eating way too much gave me the expected result much more reliably than eating not nearly enough. ;)

My goal for this time around is to (fix my head and then) eat within range, regardless of what the scale says that day, and keep my long-term trend within a pound or so of the arbitrary goal weight. If that stops working for me, because I put on muscle for instance, I'll revisit the plan. But it's important to me right now to know that I can be happy with a number on the scale that isn't the absolute lowest it could be, and to get a significant amount of practice being happy with that number.
 
4 miles in ~ 60 minutes. That's a nice brisk walk, except that it actually went more like this:
- 1 mile with my mom, walking slow. And even slower when we had a 15mph headwind. 20 minutes.
- a bit more than half a mile with mom and dad, still slow. Dad and I left mom behind when the headwind picked up, and both of them dropped off when we came back around. (Dad walked like 10 miles yesterday; he gets a pass on today.) Probably another 9 minutes.
- Jogged a mile and a bit without stopping. Go, me. :) Likely 11-12 minutes.
- Walked and jogged the remaining 1.5 miles, probably walking a bit more than half. So 18-20 minutes.

Shins too sore to jog more of it, and toward the end, the muscle on the top of my right thigh (quadraceps? Google says quadriceps - I'm amazed I got that close going on memory from 7th grade gym class) was getting tight. I've never been a jogger, because it's too hard on my knees, but it's a nice change from walking.

Swapped the juice in my post-walk smoothie to milk (and left out the yogurt). Also added more flax than normal. I like a smoothie, but it's hard to work into my macronutrient ratios if I don't have a meat-based lunch. (We do vegetarian lunches at work 2-3 times a week, and even lentils have a lot more carbs than meat does.)

Oh, and I had to go out to a client's retirement party this afternoon, and I wore a dress. A nice dress that fit well. And volunteered to be the person who goes and networks with the retired client's replacement. May as well work on everything at once.
 
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Review of the new fruits & veggies (for another forum's challenge)

This is what there was at the store:

Turnip greens - These were not bad, but I strongly prefer spinach. I ate a good 1/4 cup and called it a serving, but did not save leftovers for tomorrow.

Collard greens - Ick. I think they needed to be cooked more to death, because they taste like cardboard. One bite was enough.

Rutabaga - Like a potato, but a bit sweeter. Yummy with salt, pepper, and a little butter or ranch. Eaten all up. Probably not one I'd purchase again, because I'd rather use my carbs on something I like better, but if I were offered it while out, I'd happily accept.

Tomatillo - This is the one I was most nervous about, and it was delicious! Eaten all up. I'll definitely make tomatillo salsa over the summer when the prices go down.

Papaya - Eh. I don't like most melons, and papaya reminds me too much of a canteloupe in flavor. Over-sweet and perfumey, with no real flavor of its own. One bite was enough.

Quince - Another delicious. I didn't remember when I bought it if it was quinces I'd had before, or guava - it was guava. Pain in the neck to peel and core, but I've just left it in a pot of water on the stove, and it gets yummier every time I have a piece. Way too expensive to make a regular part of my diet, but if money were no object, I'd make quince paste.

Broccoli/Clover/Mustard Sprouts - Purchased because I wasn't sure the quince was going to count. I've had broccoli, clover flowers, and pickled mustard greens before, so I'm not sure this counts, but I've never had sprouts of any of them. I'll eat it tomorrow in a wrap with the leftover pork tenderloin from dinner tonight, and call the challenge met.

Oh, and super-picky DD, who never eats *anything* new, tried two bites of everything but the collard greens. Two teeny tiny bites, but bites nonetheless. And she professed to like all of them, then politely declined any further bites.
 
~3 miles slowly, maybe an hour. Once around the big park with my partner, who's got a pinched nerve in her shoulder bad enough that even after 3 weeks of treatment, the bit of leaning forward that comes naturally with walking causes pain.

A mile and a bit (probably not as much as 1.5 miles) with DD and my parents. DD in the stroller with me jogging, then her running and me jogging, then her in the stroller and me walking.

For lunch: Vietnamese spring rolls with peanut sauce, Hue-style pho (beefy for me, the variant with pig blood and knuckly bits for her). Yum.
 
Walked a lap at the park (which I've now measured twice, and apparently really is 3.25 miles) in 51 minutes. Never got the urge to jog, so I didn't. Felt a bit sore, in the "that's a lot of walking for a lot of days in a row" way, rather than the "some part of you is injured and would like you to stop" way. Did not feel done, so I went for a second lap.

About 3/4 of a mile from the end, I finally got the urge to jog, so I did. Yesterday the little bit of running after DD was making my shins hurt (in the "some part of you is injured" way, although I think it's just overuse following underuse). Concentrated on keeping my steps light and soft, and did not get sore, even a little bit, for the whole 3/4 mile. Walked another mile at a dawdly pace to cool down, just back and forth on the bit that adjoins the parking lot. So 7.5 miles total.

My mother begrudges me the raspberries in my after-walk smoothie (on the grounds that they are super-expensive compared to bananas), so I got my own bag of raspberries on the way home. ;)
 
Wow, I'm impressed with the times on your miles! Thanks for all of your advice! I really appreciate it! You seems to have a great food log too! Tried to get hubby to eat salmon last night,lol. It was funny! My teens ate it though!
Have a great day!
 
Hi eevee! Thanks - I've always been a pretty good walker, and I'd rather go faster than longer, so I work on speed. (Now, 8 months ago, I couldn't go up a flight of stairs without getting winded, so it didn't come overnight.)
 
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