This Weigh In Brought to You by Mozzarella Sticks

Happy Friday!

I am typing this from home as I took the day off to give John and myself enough time to get to D.C. today. I think I mentioned this, but this weekend we'll be attending the wedding of one of his old friends, so I get the interesting prospect of attending a wedding where I know neither the bride nor the groom. Another perk is that I get to see some college friends over the weekend, most of whom I haven't seen in years.

The goal I set out for myself last week was to track. It was a small goal, just focusing on this week. I think it would have been too much to make a goal of "start tracking today and then continue until you die or they invent some kind of autocounter."

I'm happy to say that I have been tracking this week! Even when I ate, dear God, NINE mozzarella sticks last night at our office happy hour for a departing colleague. Aside from last night, I've been eating at a good deficit this week overall.

This week's weigh-in:

	Start	6/8	8/19	10/29	12/31	1/28	3/31	4/21	5/5	5/12	6/7	6/18	6/24
Weight	200	191.2	182.6	181.4	177.2	174.6	168.4	170.4	172.4	171.8	174.4	169.8	169.8
Lbs. Fat		82.7	72.5	70.8	67.1	65.3	60.3	61.3	63.4	60.9	65	60.5	61
Lbs. Muscle		67.3	66.8	67.3	63.9	64.4	61.5	65	64	64.2	65.1	62.5	59.4

Aw, man, was hoping for something better. Keep in mind this weigh-in was before my private fried cheese party. But it's exactly the same as last week, except more fat and less muscle. Fail. Maybe the weekend before I started tracking was worse than I thought, or maybe it's one of another million factors. Either way, I need to work really hard this weekend not to go overboard. 

Even though I can see and feel that my waist has gotten smaller in the last couple of months, I still feel like I haven't made progress in months. My failure is consistency. I can be great for a few days, but those one or two crappy ones really throw me off. I need to be better, or learn how, to incorporate reasonable choices into those difficult food-moments - happy hours, weddings, and parties. 

Slow and steady wins the race, right? 

Weigh In and a Leaner, Meaner Leah

Life has been a bit busier around here. In terms of food, I would say I'm doing okay. That's the best I can describe. Not feeling out of control, not being tempted to eat a burrito for a second breakfast, but probably not doing as well as I can.

My most recent weigh-in:

	Start	6/8	8/19	10/29	12/31	1/28	3/31	4/21	5/5	5/12	6/7	6/18
Weight	200	191.2	182.6	181.4	177.2	174.6	168.4	170.4	172.4	171.8	174.4	169.8
Lbs. Fat		82.7	72.5	70.8	67.1	65.3	60.3	61.3	63.4	60.9	65	60.5
Lbs. Muscle		67.3	66.8	67.3	63.9	64.4	61.5	65	64	64.2	65.1	62.5

Woot! Back in the 160s - barely, but it counts. Now to just keep that trend going. Also, holy shit on apparently gaining and losing five solid pounds of fat. I'm assuming that's not quite accurate, but at the very least it shows how much I backtracked over those few weeks.

Some other highlights:

- At my Total Body Conditioning Class this week, the instructor told me that he saw a great difference in my body, and that it was inspiring for him to see someone doing that. I gotta say, that made my night. Since I've started taking his class, I've lost maybe a few pounds at most, but it seems that I'm still getting leaner!

- I've been the worst at bringing lunch. Not so terrible for calories, actually, since in midtown Manhattan, by law every third lunch place must be exclusively salads. However, it's very bad for my wallet.

- Next weekend John and I are going to an out-of-town wedding of a friend of his from high school. I've been to maybe 10 weddings in my adult life, but this will be the first one where I don't know the bride or the groom, let alone any of the guests. Should be interesting.

Guess which one I am?

        Number One Goal for this week: TRACK my food. My weight is down, so I must be doing something right, but I know that I'm not in a sustainable weight loss mode - plus, I'd like to lose a little faster. I need accountability, I need numbers and statistics so that I can make graphs.

Weight Loss - One Year Later

As of a couple of days ago, it’s been a year since I first started this journey. I technically started back in February 2014, but after losing little to no weight for four or five months, I looked at my Myfitnesspal tracker sometime last June and realized that I was eating a lot more than I thought. So I switched it up and got more careful.

Thus I think of June as my real “anniversary.” Despite certain weeks and even months during this year when I didn’t give a crap, and/or wasn’t eating well, I still think of this year as one coherent time of attempted weight loss. This is mostly because I never stopped, in my weird way, caring. Even when I didn’t give a crap, I did. I may also be biased because I hate the concept of “restarting on Monday” or similar second-chance plans.

So, one year later, what have I done?

	Weight	% Fat	% Muscle	Lbs Fat	Lbs Muscle
6/8/2014	191.2	42.8	34.8	82.7	67.3
6/9/2015	173.4	36.6	36.7	63.5	63.3
Difference	17.8	6.2	-1.9	19.2	4

In twelve months, I’ve lost just under twenty pounds of fat and also lost a few pounds of muscle. Percentage-wise, though, I’ve actually gained muscle.

If you told me a year ago that I’d lose twenty pounds over the next twelve months, I’d have been extremely disappointed and pissed. And it’s true, I really did want more from this year, and the “could have” and “should have” are dancing around my head. But twenty pounds is still twenty pounds, and even if it takes me a full additional year to lose another twenty, I’ll still make it eventually, right? Yes, it could have been forty or fifty, maybe it should have been, but I’ve realized that I could have just as easily ended the year with an extra twenty pounds.

It’s just so, so easy to be disappointed because I know I could have done so much better, but I know I still need to remember that it’s still progress - great progress, because virtually all the weight lost was pure fat - and that I should be proud of that.

All I can do now is focus on the next year. Of course, I’d like to get to goal, which is probably about another 45 pounds away. Maybe I can, maybe I won’t. But even if I don’t make it this year, I know I’ll make great progress towards that goal, and be in an even better place than I am now.

Right now, I’m doing pretty well. It’s weird, I’m not writing down my meals, just kind of going over it in my head. It’s easy since I’m not snacking. I know in the long terms I need to get back to tracking, but for now I’m feeling good where I am, and it’s working.

  I’m a couple pounds down from the gains of those few weeks, and confident I’ll be back in the 160s soon.

Beyonce Pad Thai vs. Liz Lemon - Feeling Food Conflicts

       I despise saying this, but... this is not working. If you're just tuning in, last week I decided to take the choice and planning out of weight loss and temporarily restrict my meals to just a few that I know I like and are easy to prepare. No sweets, either. For a month. This plan came about after a several week long screw-it-all where I ate everything. I'd reduced my 30 pound loss to more like 25 pounds.

He's safe though, right?

       In the past, when I've been all "Let's nail this thing down for a while," it's been great. Temporarily swinging to a stricter eating plan has always been a great way to jump start my work. This time is different though. It doesn't help that I've been feeling like my insides are rebelling, and demanding ransoms of any/all of the Ben & Jerry's Core flavors. (Hilarious dramatization here.) It's pretty bad actually. 

       The past week or two, all I've been feeling is conflicted. On the one side I have the confident part of me, who's probably named Beyonce Pad Thai, the one that knows I will reach my goal, that's encouraging and gentle and enthusiastic. It reminds me that I have done this, and I can do it again. This part of me is also really excited at the awesome future it knows will happen, and lets me fantasize about running into my old torturers while looking all svelte and hot. 

       On the other side, I have this self-destructive, do-what-feels-good-right-now baby, probably called Liz Lemon, who either doesn't care about the future, or has no confidence in my ability to change it. 

       And somehow, both of these sets of feelings exist completely simultaneously and strongly inside my head, so all I want to do is buy that ice cream, but all I want to do, at the same time, is NOT buy that ice cream. So what ends up happening is like today - I didn't buy the 600-calorie cookie, but I did buy a 300-calorie Frappechino. Better, but still not ideal. 

       I'm not sure what to do. For this week, I'm trying really hard to not go crazy, still do my gym workouts, and remember that I'm not always going to feel like this. I could even fit in a candy bar every day and still eat at maintenance levels. That's about a thousand times better than letting loose again and having to re-lose that weight too. I may also weigh myself, because the reasons I had for avoiding the scale don't apply when I'm not really trying. At this point, I actually should know where I really am. Then maybe I can regroup and try this plan again. Because overall I do think it's a good one, and one that I need. 

       Usually one voice is much stronger than the other, allowing me to eat or not eat the brownie, or maybe to eat the brownie but then stop at just one.  Or the actual me is able to take control, not be passive, and show them who's boss. 

       The kind of good thing about all of this though, is that I haven't given up. It's more like I'm in hibernation, and trying to do as little damage as possible while waiting for the weather to warm up. Okay, not a perfect comparison, but you get the idea.

       TL;DR - food monster winning, need to stick it out

Do you have your own Beyonce Pad Thai, or Liz Lemon?