Keeping up on a Hike (2011 Week 4 Update)

My weight took an upswing at the beginning of last week, up to 341.2 again, but by the end of the week I am back down again and another pound lighter. That's not keeping up with my weekly goal but I am still ahead of my year goal by about 4 pounds, which is doing well for the end of January.

So I'm at 337.8 now. I'll update my loss graph below.

I did a hike on Friday with a group of people. I did pretty well keeping up with the crowd, but had some GI crampiness part way through that made it really uncomfortable. A couple of days ago I adjusted my daily calorie goal up to 2800, which is about what the fat2fit BMR calculator says I should be eating, and is on average about where I was eating during the week I lost over 5 pounds.

I've been having some issues with my mood in the last couple days taking a dip. I am hoping it's just a matter of my sleep schedule being off (I slept in until noon yesterday and today)..which could be either a cause or a symptom I guess. Last night I started feeling energetic again around 9:30 but was pretty low when I got up again today.

Today I bought a new workout dvd to try. It's the biggest loser one with Bob and Jillian. My walking buddy has been talking about doing the Wii fit version... and I have a wii but I think buying additional games for it is pretty expensive. Plus, thought I am getting closer, I'm still over the weight limit to use the balance board. So I just got the workout dvd version. I will probably give it a try tomorrow.

I still haven't been back to the gym. I keep putting it on my calendar. With my financial situation right now it might make better sense to just cancel the membership and try to do more at home or outside. I really haven't been using the gym enough to justify the monthly payment.

Next week my tutoring job starts back up again. I am going to try to use the breaks when students don't show up to either study and really get schoolwork done (rather than goofing online) or go for walks if it is nice out.

The Woes of Chairs and Mirrors (2011 Week 3 Update)

I lost an amazing 5.8 pounds this week, going from 344.6 to 338.8. It was pretty surprising, because I was well over my loseit calorie budget almost every day of the week -- but, as I've been hearing on fat2fit radio, I am supposed to be eating 1.2 x my bmr, which currently would be putting me around 2800 calories if I am being lightly active (up to about 3200 if I am moderately active, exercising 3-5 times per week). My loseit calorie budget is only 2300 calories. So, maybe, I accidentally found out a calorie range where my body is happier right now.

The reason I kind of let myself go higher on the calories last week is because I lost my new job. I was sad about it, and doing some emotional eating, letting myself have a little more ice cream because it was comforting, etc. So it really was a nice surprise that all that weight came off instead of the scale going the other direction. Another thing to note is, yesterday for the first time all week I hit under my loseit budget again and this morning my weight had held constant. So... maybe I need to be aiming toward that higher range with my calorie budget and just make sure what I'm eating is more nutritious.

I had kind of a self esteem hit last week. It was the first week of classes for me. With some exceptions, I am usually able to fit into the normal sized student desks. I do always have to ask for a seatbelt extender on the airplane, but in the classroom I have typically been alright. However, my psychology class was in an old building with very old fashioned student desks and there was just no way it was going to work out. I had to go ask the teacher if it would be alright for me to take a separate chair from the front of the room to sit in. It was embarrassing, but I think I handled the situation a lot better than I would have a couple years ago. By the end of the night I was glad to be sitting in the comfy padded chair instead of the hard plastic student chairs.

I bought a new over the door style mirror today. My current mirror has just been messing with my head. Maybe you know what I mean. It makes me look much thinner than every other reflective surface I see... extremely so, and it only leads to let-down later on in the day. I just want to see the real me.

I'll update my weight loss graph below. I am currently 5 pounds ahead of where I need to be for my 100 lbs lost in 2011 goal. That's good, I should be getting ahead of myself now because I know as I get smaller the loss rate will probably slow down.

Quiznos: A Disaster of a Meal (2011 Week 2 Update)

In the last week, I've lost another 3.8 pounds, which I am really excited about. My current weight is 344.6.

This week I again did not make it to the gym. I did a half hour walk on a work break one day and an hour walk today after my weigh in, but otherwise no work-outs. However, it was my second week working my new job that has me on my feet and running around all the time, so essentially I am getting 8+ hours of cardio and occasional weight lifting every day. I'm not logging that exercise to my loseit account, so I expected some additional weight loss surprises beyond what I was budgeting for, and 3.8 pounds down in one week is a pretty good surprise.

I was good on food; brought my lunch to work every day but one. I did by a couple of snacks at a convenience store but I stuck to things like juice and power bars, and didn't go over my calorie limit. My one lunch out was at Quiznos, and when I logged it at the end of the day I found out their regular tuna melt sub has over 1200 calories, plus I had a regular dr. pepper, so that was a disaster of a meal but didn't end up setting me back too much in the end.

I have been seriously stressed out this week, mostly due to stuff going on at work. My body doesn't respond well to stress, in very obvious ways; during my last year of grad school I had chronic unexplained vomiting issues (not intentional purging), and I often get migraines or other GI issues that come up when I am super stressed out. This month although I'm on b.c. pills which usually regulate my cycles pretty well, my period was 8 days late. I am hoping that the various sources of work stress will calm down over the next couple of weeks but in the mean time I need to be really conscious of taking care of myself and getting enough sleep to get through it.

I've updated my weight graph at the bottom of the screen. Feeling good, felt a little stronger when I went for a walk with my friend this morning (though I really need to remember to bring water!). I'm considering canceling my gym membership if I continue to feel like I'm getting all the cardio I need at work. I feel like the weight training aspect is something I'm more likely to do at home with just pushups, crunches, etc. I am going to give it a while before I make that decision though and see how it goes once I feel more in control of things with the new job, new semester starting, etc.

So I'm 37.6 total pounds down from my highest weight. I think when I hit 50 I'll take another comparison picture.

Fat Girl on Her Feet All Day (2011 Week 1 Update)

I just weighed myself this morning and I'm at 348.6, a perfect 2 pound loss since January 1st. At the end of today I will only be about 1500 calories under my loseit calorie budge for the week, but I haven't been logging all the new extra calories I've been burning at work due to running around all day. I actually would have expected a greater weekly loss after all that @work exercise change but I'll take what I can get, and 2 pounds is right on target.

With all the routine change of weird shift work and the exhaustion of starting a new job (excuses, excuses), I did not go to the gym or exercise at home all week. In the coming week I'm going to be working mornings instead of nights, so I think I can change that pattern around and head to the gym for some weight lifting right after work.

I have been doing a good job on my meals, though, and mostly due to pre-planning. Last weekend I made up a big batch of vegetarian chili and it was all stacked up in the fridge ready to bring to work in my lunch. I also had bananas and apples for snacks, and tortilla chips as a treat to sprinkle on top of the chili.

There was one day last week that I packed up my lunch all carefully before leaving for work and then somehow left it at home. I had a hard day, and it was difficult to go get something elsewhere during a 1/2 hour "lunch" break at 7:30pm.

I think using those 10 minute breaks twice a day at work to get in a nutritious snack is going to be key, because otherwise I end up desperately foggy in my head and starving at the end of the day. I actually stole someone's half a donut that was left in the office at night --- wtf? Not the food I want to be putting in my body and not the impression I want to give during my first week at a new job. Eeep.

Anyway, on target with weight loss and getting by in most respects.

Greek style yogurt = YUM

Some truly healthy foods you might expect to taste blah or cardboard or tasteless, but there are others that really are surprisingly good. I went grocery shopping tonight on my way home and happened to pick up some non-fat greek-style yogurt that a friend mentioned that she liked over a year ago, and wow!

Check out this nutrition label:
Calories: 130
Total Fat: 0
Cholesterol: 5mg
Sodium: 45mg
Carb: 20mg
Sugars: 17g
Protein: 12g

I've been looking for ways to increase my protein intake, and I think this might help that goal right along. It's thick & creamy and nothing like the typical watery nonfat yogurt I'm used to. I only got one serving of it, and ate it tonight for dinner with some honey wheat pretzel sticks for dipping and some almond butter for variety. Yum.

New Job has fitness benefits!

So, I knew in taking this new job that I was going to be spending more time on my feet than I have in the past, but it turns out there is more to it than that in terms of fitness benefits. The company I am working for has a "START!" program in place, designed by the American Heart Association.

During a normal 8 hour shift, I get 2 government-mandated 10 minute breaks, one for each 4 hour time period I work. But with the start program (and the okay from my supervisor & provided it doesn't cause problems with workflow), if I use those breaks to get outside and walk, they will give me 2x the paid break time, ie instead of 20 minutes of paid break time per day I get 40.

And there's more: if I do this program, keep track of the miles I walk, and turn them in to my HR manager, at regular intervals depending on number of miles I've walked I will get prizes; a free pedometer, gift certificates for coffee or smoothies, etc. Once the miles get higher, the prizes get bigger, as much as $50 or so in a gift certificate to local businesses.

I will have to see if this routine works out with the way things run at work, but I think this program could be a great addition to my fitness routine! I am pretty sure this is a nation-wide program that several companies put in practice, but if yours doesn't, maybe you could talk to your management/HR and have them implement it too.

It was a nice surprise for my first day at a new job.

Looking backwards, and forwards...

I am starting this bog on January 1st, 2011, but before I get started with my plan from here I want to review what's been before. These pictures shows me at close to my heaviest weight of all time (left, 382.2) and my current weight as of today (350.6), a weight loss of 31.6 pounds over about a year and a half's time. At my heaviest I was a size 30 pants, had bad back pain when I would try to walk for more than 5 minutes, and felt terrible all around.

I have tried many times to lose weight in the past, but had trouble sticking with any exercise plan for long enough to make a big difference, and my diet, well, it's an area I struggled with too. I'm vegetarian but I wasn't doing a good job of eating a balanced diet with natural foods and keeping my calories under control. Plus, I struggle with emotional eating & depression, and when I would go through low periods I'd hit the ice cream harder than I care to admit. But the evidence was all over my body.

Here's a graph of my weight record from about age 22 to 30.

I've kept notes on my weight over time, sometimes with more frequent measurements than others. Always hoping that I would start seeing the numbers go down. When I got above about 300, the scale I had at the time wouldn't work anymore so I would only have an occasional data point when I went to the gym at school and used their electronic scale or something. Watching the numbers go up and up over these years I've felt alternating desperation and resignation.

I think I was first told I needed to slim down when I was about 9 or 10. Looking at pictures of myself then, I don't see a chubby child. In my eyes I am lean and athletic looking until around that time, and then when I started developing I got a little chubbier. Nothing extreme though. When I graduated high school I was about 180. Somewhere I have a record of all of those numbers too, because I was always self conscious about my body.

But this blog isn't going to be about looking backwards, it's going to be about looking forwards. I'm about 30 pounds down from my heaviest, so I'm moving in the right direction, but that came off over about a year and a half, and I really want to kick the rate up a few notches now that I feel like I'm on the right track.

I don't believe in weight loss pills or surgeries or any quick fixes. What has been working for me so far, and what I intend to keep doing more of, is increasing my exercise and making healthier food choices that I can live with for the rest of my life. I'm not on a diet, I'm changing my lifestyle.

So, on this blog, if anyone ends up reading this, I'm not going to try to sell anybody anything, or convince you that one method is the best. Nothing like that. This blog is going to help me with keeping my motivation up and accountability. And if someone can pick up on something that's working for me, and it works for them too, great.

Here are some tools I've been using so far:

- Group aqua-aerobics classes (especially at the beginning when walking was very painful)
- LoseIt! iphone/ipod app to track my diet and exercise, and their online community for social support
- Fat2FitRadio, a podcast I've been listening to that has very healthy and reasonable philosophies about losing weight gradually and permanently
- Exploring new recipes online. I learned to bake growing up, but didn't really know what healthy cooking looked like until the last few years.
- The Gym - I got a low-income discounted membership at the YMCA. I mostly walk on the treadmill and sometimes lift weights there. I'm trying to increase the amount of weight-lifting.

And here is my plan for the coming year:

What & When:
1 year goal: to 250 lbs by this time next year (that's a 100 lbs weight loss over 1 year)
that's almost 2 lbs per week
3 month goal: 325 by 4/1/11
6 month goal: 300 by 7/1/11
9 month goal: 275 by 10/1/11
non-scale goals: more energy, clothes fitting better & smaller sizes, more confidence

Weekly goals:
no more than 1 meal "out" per week
increase protein to at least 20% of calories, then re-evaluate
cardio - 3 times per week, weights - 2 times per week MINIMUM

Why (Things that will happen if I don't lose weight and get in shape):
Continuing shame about my body
Diseases associated with weight like diabetes and arthritis
Decreased lifespan
I may never have children
It will be hard to find a partner

How
Weight Training - 2x per week no matter what
Cardio - at least 3x per week
listen to Fat2Fit radio consistently whenever they come out
preparing most of my meals in advance
eating more "negative calorie foods"
eating a lean protein with every meal
keep going with loseit or other support group
Update this blog regularly with my progress