Week 4 Weigh-In, and Einstein

Jun30

Today was my Week 4 weigh-in, and I’m happy to announce that I lost another 2 pounds, which brings me to a total of 16 pounds down.  Just in case you need a visualization, the lovely striper in the photo weights 16 pounds.

16 pounds of FISH!

I like having visual reminders of how much of me has dissolved into nothingness, so as long as I remember it, I plan on showing the occasional equivalent.

I was sharing with some friends, just this morning, that I have always believed in the Law of Conservation of Energy, which in part holds that energy holds constant over time and cannot be created or destroyed.  Einstein’s Theory of Relativity said that energy equals mass.

So.  I’ve lost 16 pounds.  Where did it go?  I used to maintain that I was overweight enough that I took up the mass that 45 other woman let go of.  It has to go somewhere.  It must have floated through the universe and attached itself to my ass.  Not that I’m totally against the universe bringing me good stuff, but let that fat drift somewhere else and attach its barnacle-like self to someone who needs it.  Please.

Having lost 2 pounds this past week, a number of volunteers stepped forward to profess that they had found my 2 pounds attached to their posteriors.  Friends, mass cannot be created or destroyed; it only changes form, so I cannot be responsible, mathematically, for releasing two pounds from my body and having it turn into ten pounds cumulatively on several other people.  😉

The last week has been a good one; once again, I need to improve on drinking enough fluid each day.  It really does make a difference.  How else do you think fat gets out of your body?  It has to be released somehow, and this is one of the ways it goes out.

On a final note, I have decided to set my goal at 20% of my total goal met, which means I will meet that goal when I lose a total of 28 pounds, or the total weight of 284 (or below).  I’d like to lose a total of 140 pounds, so each 14 pounds will mark another 10% gone.  I expect to meet my next goal on or before Week 10.

How It Feels: June, 2010

Jun23

From time to time, I’m going to record the common problems I have, and what my body is going through.  I’m doing this for a couple of reasons; first and foremost, it’s easy to forget what you went through in the past, after you lose a substantial amount of weight.  You get to feeling good, and the little things that bothered you slip away from memory.  I want to record the problems I have that are weight-loss related, so that as I lose weight, I remember.  When I’m mentally slipping, I want the chance to look back in time and think “oh, yeah, I remember that.  That was horrible.”

There are so many benefits to losing weight, but so often, we dwell on just the weight, and not all the great benefits that come along with it.  Even if you end up in a plateau, all of those benefits are worth fighting for and not giving up.

Many of the problems I initially had before my major weight loss in recent years have crept back in, and some are new or compounded problems.  Please note: this isn’t whining.  This is documentation.  I know all of these things will improve.  I also hope that if you’re reading this because someone you love is obese, you might have a glimpse into a part of their world that perhaps they haven’t shared with you out of embarrassment.

It’s summer and hot out; I have skin patches that are likely yeast related.  I’m currently taking probiotics, because they do help, but losing weight so those areas aren’t constantly moist will help.  The worst spots are the folds behind my knees; the skin there is red and definitely painful to the touch.  I am usually seated, so the backs of my knees are kept in skin folds from fat.  In the past, when I was heavier than I am now, I also had these patches underneath my breasts, but those have not returned.

I have severe arthritis in both knees.  The arthritis hurts more when I am retaining water.  One knee is bone-on-bone and is often sore, but I have already noticed some relief, thanks in part to losing weight.  Although the arthritis will never go away, it will feel better as I continue to lose weight.

I cannot cross my legs when I sit.  My thighs are too big.

I find it disconcerting to have to find a chair in a public place that will either fit my girth or support me.  It’s embarrassing to have to even consider it when out and about.  Last year, I was out to eat with my husband in a diner that had old chairs and formica tables; I sat down in a chair and the whole thing folded under me. 🙁 I was so incredibly embarrassed.  I also find it difficult to sit in bar stools, and I have to swallow my pride and tell wait staff to not seat me in a bar stool.

Whether it’s true or not, I often feel as if I’m the biggest person in the room, and that silent judgments are being made about me.  I know how it is.  Heck, I’ve been on the other end, pitying some poor man or woman who was grossly overweight, and thinking that they should just do something about it.  How sad is that?  Maybe they are doing something about it.  Maybe I’m seeing them 100 or more pounds less than what they were before.  Just because someone is extremely obese does not mean they’re doing nothing, but I know how many people jump to that conclusion.

Although I have started my weight-loss efforts, they aren’t noticeable, yet, and I’ve only told one person outside of immediate family that I am losing weight, again.  I only said something to her because we were talking about healthy weight loss methods as opposed to unhealthy ones; several of our friends have currently been trying fad methods, and a couple of them have decided that they were, in fact, a fad.

I am hesitant to talk about weight loss for several reasons; first, I have had several failures lately, and I fear failure, again.  While a failed diet may not be a big deal for someone who has 20-30 pounds to lose (“Yeah, it didn’t work, I’ll try again later in the summer”), it’s nearly a moral indictment if you’re obese and fail.  I’m not sure why that is.  People, the reason many people are obese is because it’s harder to lose weight and keep it off, not because we’re lazy.  Some are; I won’t deny that.  Some are gluttons; again, I’m not going to deny that, either.  But generally speaking, if it were as easy for me to lose weight and keep it off as it is for an average person, I’d be thin.  For whatever reason, it’s much more of a challenge.  Is it unfair?  Sure, but if it can’t be changed, then you deal with what you’re given.

I hesitate to talk about weight loss, too, because I feel awkward when well-meaning people who have much less of a weight problem than I do want to give me advice or recommend a diet.  I want to succeed at the method I’ve chosen, so when it becomes noticeable to them, I don’t have to listen to “have you tried HCG/acacia/Alli/whatever?”  My weight loss will probably not become noticeable to the point of mentioning it until I’ve lost around 50-60 pounds.  People might think I look different before then, but they will hesitate to mention it.  As a side note, please don’t hesitate to mention it.  I like having hard work acknowledged.

Back to my body… movement is difficult.  I feel very prone to falling; not just because of the weight I’m carrying, which sometimes makes me feel off-balance, but because of arthritis.  I can’t move quickly and decisively; I have to think about movement.

Getting up from a seated position can be awkward and painful.  I snore when I sleep.  Shoes that I wore when I was thinner  no longer fit, because my weight is flattening my arches and increasing the length of my feet.

I have occasional back pain and hip pain, as well as ankles that crackle and knees that pop.  These things will improve with weight loss and with muscle strengthening.

And that’s how I feel right now.

Manageable Bits: Week 3 Weigh-In

Jun23

This morning was my Week 3 weigh-in, and I met my first weight goal.  I had hoped to meet the goal by the end of this month, so meeting it with a week to spare was quite nice.  I’m now down a total of 14 pounds for this weight loss effort.  It’s not enough weight for anyone to truly notice; I think it’ll take another 50 or so for that to happen, but it is enough for me to notice a change in how my clothes are fitting.

Just a quick observation about goals: I believe in short goals.  Realistically, I have 150 pounds to lose, and although I did previously lose 140, I know from that experience that looking at the full number can be quite overwhelming.  When it’s easy to get discouraged, it’s just better to break the overall goal down into bits that seem doable.   Later on, when I have several goals under my belt, and when the rewards of weight loss are more apparent, such as being able to move easier and wear smaller clothes, the path ahead won’t seem like quite as much of an imposing journey.

I really do recommend this method to anyone, regardless of how much weight they have to lose.  If the total amount seems like a lot to you, no matter what anyone else thinks, then breaking it down into smaller chunks can help get your mind in the right place for continuing on.  Walking a marathon to someone who hasn’t been off the couch in the last decade seems insurmountable.  Walking around the yard a few times probably seems like a much easier thing to do, but if you walk around the yard enough, the distance will equal a marathon.  It’s all in how you think about it.

I haven’t decided on my next goal, yet.  This goal was special; when you weigh over 300, it’s difficult to find a standard home scale that will weigh that much.  My digital scales at home wouldn’t report anything other than an error, so I have been weighing at the gym.  This morning, just to see if perhaps I’d gotten under that magic 300 number, I stepped on the scales at home and saw 298.  There will probably be a little variance between switching scales, especially since I weigh unclothed at home (just try doing that in a gym, when the scales are out in the main workout room!), but I am not worrying about it.

Things that went great this week: I did well with my eating.  I did a good job of keeping track of what went into my body.  I also moved more, thanks to getting a new puppy last week; she has to be walked a lot, so I have to get up and go outside for her to take care of her business.  This is good.

Things to improve upon for next week: water intake.  I can do a better job of making sure I’m getting enough.  I also need to start structuring my exercise.

Week 1: A Success!

Jun9

I’ve completed one week, for a total loss of 8.5 pounds.  Granted, a good portion of that is water weight, but even water weight is still weight, and I’m glad to have it off.  I’m also a lot closer to my first goal than I thought I would be; my first goal is to get under 300 pounds, and I had set an initial one month time period in order to do that.  Hallelujah!

I did go through some trials during the first week.  By my own error, I had scheduled  and bought tickets for an event on Thursday night, the second day of being back on plan; the tickets were for a tasting event for a number of restaurants.  I wasn’t able to entirely stay low carb, because there just wasn’t that much selection.  I did, at least, keep my food intake reasonable.  Other than that, my only real challenges were that I was hungry for the first few days, which I expected, and that I needed to be more mindful of drinking water.

I use FitDay to record my meals.  I fixed the water problem by adding water as part of my meal entry, and updating it as I drank.  Yesterday, I made it to 144 ounces, and was sloshing.  I’ve always gone by the rule of drinking half as much of my weight, in ounces.  Right now, I weigh 302.5 (as of this morning), and so my target for drinking water is approximately 150 ounces.

Over the past few days, I have been working on cleaning out the drawers in my bedroom.  I have a dresser and chest of drawers; I’ve done fairly well at keeping the dresser filled with clothes that fit, so it wasn’t much of an effort to go through the drawers, since most of the changes were seasonal.  My chest of drawers, however, was another matter entirely.  Just about everything I pulled out of there was in size 16, 18, and one case, size 14.  I am currently wearing size 26 in most things.

It was only 2-3 years ago that I was wearing these clothes items; and I love them.  I look forward to wearing them, again; I’d forgotten how many of them I really liked, and that I missed wearing. It also reminded me of how fit and how good I felt in that size, even though there are many who would still consider size 16 to be huge.  Not me.  Size 16 was reason to rejoice; I was officially out of plus size clothing.  Now I’m on the upper side of plus size clothing, again. I guess the good news is that this time, as I lose weight, I have every size in between and won’t need to go clothes shopping. 😉

The lowest weight I managed to get to in recent years was 197.5; that was roughly 4 years ago.  I managed to maintain but not lose, and got stuck in the plateau to end all plateaus.  Still, I looked at myself critically, and while most of the time I felt pretty good about how I was doing, there was still a part of me that screamed “not good enough!” when I’d look in the mirror.  How absolutely silly of me.

This time around, I want to love myself more.  I want it to be a much more positive experience.  I want to feel good about myself every step of the way.  I think it’s automatically assumed that the moment you start losing weight, you should start flogging yourself for being a fatty, and for ever letting yourself get to the point where you reached out in desperation for any method that would work.  While I agree that your head must be in the right place to be successful, and sometimes that means bottoming out, I also think that we’re being unfair to ourselves if we look at ourselves in disgust.  We are all wonderful creations in progress.

During the next week, I’ll start adding exercise back in.

By the way, if you’re reading this, and you happen to keep your own weight loss blog (or whatever), I’d be happy to link to it.  Just let me know.

About Last Night: What’s sustainable in the long run?

Jun3

In my 48 years on this earth, the vast majority of them spent overweight, I’ve bounced around to various diets. Lots of them.  In fact, it’s probably a pretty obscene number of them.

I remember being roughly 14 or 15 and convincing myself that I needed to lose weight.  In retrospect, I didn’t, but self-perception when you’re that age is pretty awful, usually.  I decided that my diet should consist of Tab.  Yeah, anyone remember Tab?  Horrible stuff.  That’s all I consumed, and I did lose weight; of course! I wasn’t really eating anything.  I don’t remember how much I lost, but I was on my special Tab Only Diet long enough that my body objected and it made my cycle go off kilter.  Mom took me to the doctor. (I can only imagine what she was thinking!)  I finally told the doc about my awesome diet plan, and he told me to stop it, that I’d made myself anemic.  Wonderful.

In my late teens, I tried lots of stupid crap, which probably contributed to crappy metabolism later in life.  I lost 30 pounds when I was 19 and looked pretty good.  I won’t say how I lost it, but suffice it to say that it wasn’t a good thing in the least, and likely not quite legal. Backing up a couple years, I remember secretly sending cash in the mail to get some diet pill that I hoped would work, and it never showed up.  Someone probably tucked that very hard-earned money in their pocket.

I tried low fat 51,903 times.  The most I could ever lose while eating low fat was 40 pounds.  I tried the tuna fish diet, and the friend who suggested it called me within a week to tell me to stop it, because it made her horribly sick and she didn’t want the same thing to happen to me.  I did Weight Watchers, the really old version.  I remember doing diet shake substitution for real meals.  I tried SlimFast.  I tried… oh, heck, I don’t remember how many more I tried, but if you look back over the last few paragraphs, you can easily see that each time I tried something, I gained back the weight I lost, and more.

My most successful weight loss effort was with Atkins, but I didn’t do it right.  I stayed in the induction phase so long that I believe my body adapted, and I couldn’t break through that adaptation.  I gained back weight despite continuing on low carb and exercising, usually two hours a day minimum.  Knee problems cut back on the exercise drastically, and then — yeah, I’ll admit it — I lost my mojo.  It seemed so grossly unfair that I should have to do cardio and weight training for a minimum of two hours, just to maintain my weight, which was still 60 pounds above my goal.  Some would say that perhaps I should have increased my strength training or cardio, but I was to the point of hurting myself.  I was 45 years old and doing 350 lb. squats, and embarrassing many of the young studs in the gym. I walked for over an hour a day.  I felt like I was in training for the Olympics.

Fast-forward to last night, the end of my first full day back doing low carb.  We were at a restaurant with a bunch of friends, and all but one of the women was on a diet.  One was starting phentermine.  Two others are doing the HCG diet.  Now, should my friends ever happen to read this, please understand that I love you, but my first thought as I was watching one put homeopathic HCG under her tongue before ordering dinner, another opening a Walmart bag to pull out things to put on her plain lettuce and grilled chicken salad so it would taste better, and the final one who asked how much meat was actually on her pizza… was that none of these methods are sustainable in the long run.

That’s my real quest: to find something that gets me healthy, and that I can live with for the rest of my life, without having to resort to dragging extra stuff into a restaurant to make food that I’m paying cash-money for palatable, without having to analyze every last thing that goes into my mouth, and yeah, without having to take hours out of my day for exercise just to maintain.  Eventually, all of those systems fail.  This time around, I am determined to pay closer attention to the signs; the ones that indicate that I need to make a change in what I’m doing before my body counteracts me.  That’s what the human body is designed to do: to protect itself and adapt to its environment, so if you stay in one environment for too long, what worked before no longer works.  Exercise physiology also shows that exercise routines must be changed up for maximum benefit, for the same reasons: the body adapts.

A couple of my friends are well-meaning and they know I am frustrated with my weight.  They’ve suggested a few of the trendy diets.  They might work to lose 20 pounds, but certainly not 200.   They are not sustainable in the long run, not only because it would be pretty tough to stay on them for the length of time required to lose 200 pounds, but it also doesn’t get to the bottom of why a person is overweight.  Unless there are real changes made, especially in the fat that’s between a person’s ears, it won’t work.  I’m convinced of that.

Oh, last night?  I ate dinner before I went to the restaurant.  We were there for an activity that had nothing to do with eating, so I did my eating early, didn’t worry about what was on the menu that would work for me, and drank several Diet Cokes.  No pressure.

In the beginning…

Jun2

Today, June 2, 2010, is my restart day.

I started off today by dreading my weigh-in.  Naturally.  I knew it wouldn’t be good news.  When I finally got myself down to the gym to weigh, though, I was surprised; the number wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  After all, I haven’t been a very good girl, lately.  I’ll be sharing that number, as well as my other stats, in another post.

In this post, I’m laying out how I’m approaching this journey.

Having already lost 140 pounds once, I learned some valuable information from that experience.  Here are some of the things I learned, and what I will take to heart this time, which I am determined to make my last time.

Acceptance.

I have to accept where I’m at, right now, right at this moment.  My current situation, whether it’s today or a year from now, was a result of my past, but my past keeps happening at every moment, and I am capable of changing.  What I am, today, is not what I am capable of being ten minutes from now, ten months, ten years.  Accepting myself and doing my best to remain objective will do me more good than bitching and carrying on about how fat I am.  That solves nothing, and just makes me feel bad.

Diligence.

Habits are formed by repetition.  I must be diligent about each day, about taking the care to do it right, and in the long run, diligence will show results, whether it’s in feeling better, a loss on the scale, the ability to walk further, the ability to walk away from something unhealthy.  Diligence creates strength, and the stronger I am, the more likely I am to succeed.

Diligence also means planning and record keeping.  For me, that means approaching weight loss as a scientific experiment, and a willingness to see what is working, and what isn’t.  No diet plan will work unless you’re willing to work the plan, and that means evolving as your body adapts.

Discipline.

Hand in hand with diligence, discipline will make me mentally strong.  With discipline, the constant internal fights decrease in volume.  The little voice that says sleep in! You don’t really need to exercise, now, when you can do it later in the day! doesn’t win. The reasoning that says just this once won’t hurt goes away, because with discipline, as with diligence, comes habit.

Honesty.

If I fudge on a serving of something so it appears I’m within my calories or carb count for the day, who am I kidding?  I have still put in more fuel than my body can use for that day.  If and when that happens, I have to be honest with myself, because lying to myself or anyone else does not change what I just put in my mouth, or the exercise intensity I backed off on, or the water I didn’t drink, or the vitamins I didn’t take.

That also includes being honest with myself about the reasons why I’m fat, and not making excuses.  Yes, I have metabolic issues, but they are not insurmountable, and they are not an excuse for having let myself slide. Making excuses is just a way of trying to get around the hard work involved in getting healthy.  Regardless of whatever problems are present in my body, I can either sit around and bitch about them, or do something about them.  I’m choosing to do something about them.

I can choose to better my situation, no matter what that situation is.

Hard Work.

There’s nothing easy about losing as much weight as I need to lose.  There’s no short cut for building the muscle I need to build.  It takes hard work, and most of us want to take the easiest route possible.  Believing that there’s some magic bullet, some pill that will help, some hormonal treatment that will magically just melt off the pounds — well, that’s just so much BS.

Ever notice how most of these miracle supplements come with the recommendation of a diet plan and regular exercise?  My goodness.  That negates the reason for the miracle pill, doesn’t it?  One popular diet has people taking a hormone and eating a 500 calorie a day diet.  500 calories!  My bet is that if you just ate 500 calories a day, that would produce the exact same weight loss with or without the hormone.  And honestly, there’s nothing even remotely healthy about eating 500 calories a day.  Get into enough of a calorie deficit for a long enough amount of time, and your body will act to protect itself and weight loss will come to a screeching halt.

Food As Fuel.

Understanding food’s actual role in fueling the body means being selective about what you choose to put into it.  I will be choosing “whole food” options as much as possible.  There may be times when this isn’t feasible, such as when dining out, but whenever possible, I will choose the whole food option.  This means staying away from “frankenfoods”, or highly processed foods, including foods designated as diet foods.  That also means cutting out diet sodas, artificial sweeteners, and the like.

This is the plan.  My base diet plan is low carb in nature, because my body seems to respond to it best.  I’ll be posting specific goals along with stats at a later time, but for now, this is the first step on the journey.

I’m Lisa. I’m glad you’re here. It’s intro time.

May25

I’m Lisa.

I am 48 years old, female, pretty much sedentary, self-employed, with a number of medical concerns.  I am noting this because I expect all these things to change as I boogie on down the road toward getting healthy.  I have struggled with weight my entire life, but was able to lose the most weight while using the Atkins diet and exercise (cardio and strength training).  How much?  140 pounds of me gone — most definitely an entire person — and that was not my goal.

I failed.

I’m not beating myself up about this; well, not at the moment, but I assure you, I’ve gone through my pitiful share of self-loathing and criticism.  This blog is, more than anything, an exploration of using that failure as feedback and how to turn it around to success.  I don’t intend to berate myself or make excuses, because no matter what you say to someone else, it doesn’t change what a person does to derail themselves or to keep themselves from succeeding.

If you’re here before June 1, 2010, congrats! You won’t see any stats or anything yet.  😉  That’s the date I’ve given myself for making the jump to a healthier lifestyle.  Yes, I could start tomorrow, or this moment, and I’m a big believer in that, but I’m giving myself until that date to come up with the plan I’ll use, instead of just jumping in for a couple weeks and dropping off, again.

I invite you to read the About Lisa and Lisa’s Progress pages.  I’ll be adding a gallery that shows my current success as well as my past success; stay tuned!

I’m interested in hearing from you, too; with some caveats.  Because weight loss is a hot internet topic, I will be previewing comments before they go public.  Anything that’s an ad or some sort of a come-on will not be posted; nor will comments that are counter-productive.  Or… I may post the comment and my reply to it.  Which could be fun.  Right?  Right.

I’m Lisa.  This is what I think.  And I think this is going to be a wild ride!