Weigh In and Continuing with The Plan

The good: I did not gain any weight over the last six weeks. I lost a little gained a little and it evened out.

The bad is of course that in July and August I gained between 10 and 15 pounds, putting me at 180-183.

I also barely worked out. Literally every Jewish holiday fell on a Tuesday night this fall, Tuesday is my night with my gym buddy, where we see the great instructor in the great class where we strength training and power dance for two straight hours. So for basically five out of six weeks I could not go to class and I stupidly or whatever did not make the effort to go a different night. My gym buddy and I both dropped the ball. I'm of course not happy she's struggling, but I'm happy to know someone who understands.

But now all the holidays are over. I know for most people this is kind of the start of the holiday season, but for me it is actually, finally, the end. Thanksgiving might be hard, Hanukkah might be hard, there might be a few holiday parties. But they will either be just one day or one meal in the evening in the middle of a mostly normal workweek. 

This is quite contrary to the recent Jewish holidays. For those who don't know that means, it means that I don't go to work, I don't use electricity at all, no car, no subway. No writing or drawing. What do we do? Eat, pray, board games, read, walk, nap. Emphasis on eat. I liked spending so much time

with family as friends, but I am honesty thrilled to be getting back to a normal schedule.

The last time I tried my eat small meals plan, I did it for just four or five days. Then it was part 2 of 7: Jewish holiday edition, and I gave up. Now I need to try again. Yay for maintaining, but at 181.8 pounds as of this morning, that's not even close to good enough.

I'm also thinking of getting rid of the scale. Maybe just weigh in once a month, or maybe not at all. Why? I think it's hurt more than helped over the last few years. Because the truth is that if I'm tracking, whether calories or weight watchers points, I know how I'm doing, good or bad.

When I was consistently tracking for that year or so, John had helped me make numerous graphs where we overlayed my calorie intake over my weight.

The result? They matched up pretty perfectly. So the point is that the scale won't be telling me anything I don't know. Either it will validate my efforts, efforts of which I'm all too aware. Or, it will show me a gain that I can blame on bloat or "bodies are weird sometimes" syndrome. In fact, perhaps the real times I need the scale are when I'm not tracking, not doing well, so that I don't get into denial about gaining like I'm want to do.

Bottom line is, maybe the scale isn't a useful tool right now. It makes me mad more often than not. As of yesterday morning I'm at 181.8 and 38.7 body fat. I'll decide next month if I feel like looking at the scale.

To anyone reading this: I hope you have not given up on me because I have not given up on me.

Insert cliche about weight loss being a journey and success being a crazy squiggly line. End with super clever, topical joke.

Weigh In and I Got My Cheese Back

Weight first:

Currently at 176.6, which is six pounds down from my August 21st weight of 182.6 and one pound down of my last weigh in, two weeks ago. Not sure of body or muscle fat.

Last week I intended to continue on my no carb/sugar/legumes/dairy plan for the rest of the month. But the idea of that was so, I don’t know, icky, that I realized just how much I wanted to stop doing it. I missed beans on my salad, and milk in my coffee, and nothing in the world will convince me that those things are bad for weight loss. What also happened is that I thought of a better plan for me, one that felt more fitting. Also, how can a blog with this title not have dairy?

My highest weight was 200 pounds, during the first half of college. I’ve written a little about how my parents sat me down, told me they were terrified for my health and that I needed to lose weight. That was a wake-up call that still gets to me, and I think it’s part of why I never got back to 200 pounds again. (Though, full disclosure, I got to 190.)

Back at sophomore year, I lost those first twenty pounds quite easily. I took the number of calories I wanted to eat - in that case, 1200-1400 - and split them into 200-250 calorie mini meals. Six or seven snack/meals a day, and I lost twenty pounds that semester without feeling hungry or deprived. I aimed to have at least five of those “meals” be healthier and nutrient rich food, and then one or two could be whatever I wanted.

A day might have consisted of a Larabar, a slice of toast with 1 tbsp peanut butter, a cup of homemade black bean soup, a turkey burger patty on a salad, a whole milk latte, and a Milky Way. I didn’t eat enough vegetables back then, but overall I felt great. I’m pretty sure I ate a candy bar every day that semester, and that was a big reason I stuck to it. No need to go off plan to eat something sweet, it was already part of the plan.

I liked how it broke down the 70 pounds I needed to lose into this little 200-250 calorie slots. It really worked for me. Sometimes I’d end up eating 7 or 8 or these mini-meals, but in that context it didn’t seem like a disaster.

So I’m trying that again now. Sunday was my first day, and so far it’s going pretty well! I’ve been keeping track of everything on the Notes app on my phone, though trying to think of a better system. Six or seven meals a day, ideally maximum only one of junk food, and lots of veggies.

This is definitely working better for me than the previous diet, but I think I still needed it for those 2-3 weeks to get out of the “eat everything and then feel like shit” pattern I had been on.

So, this is it, right? I’ll just lose a perfect pound per week until I hit my goal weight, then I’ll be featured in a few magazines for my new hotness, and life will be perfect? No? Dammit.

Results & The Things Everyone Can Agree About

1. Water is good
2. Vegetables are good
3. Refined sugar is not great
4. Oxygen is important

Those seem to be the only four things that the nutrition community can agree upon. And that’s with the third one being debatable and that fourth one being a joke. So really, there’s only two things we can agree on. Are eggs good? Does butter raise the good kind of cholesterol? Do we need carbs for energy? What minion of Satan marketing executive made up the terms ‘superfood’ and ‘foodie’? Whoever you are, you superfood-curating foodie, I hate you.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I found myself back at the lowest and worst junction of weight loss. This is where I’ve completely faced the consequences and results of my recent bout of not caring and subsequent weight gain, and want to do something about it, but haven’t yet started.

This is the worst part because before this, I was eating terribly and had gained weight, but didn’t care and/or was in denial, so it was okay in a way. Past this point, I might still feel like crap about the gain, but will have lost a couple of pounds and feel like I’ve really started to do something. But the in-between of these two things? When you’re on the bottom between the twin peaks of weight gain and accomplishment? They suck.

I tried to figure out where to start. I’ve been at this point, even written about it here. Last time, I decided that I needed a slap in the face, to cut out the food groups that I couldn’t control myself around, so that hopefully, eventually, I could come to a middle ground of sustainable weight loss and maintenance. I’ve written about going to the other extreme to find moderation. God, that’s depressing to think how I’ve been on this exact pathway.

In the end, I decided to try a modified kind of Whole30. Why Whole30, a “cleansing health food plan” that I genuinely think is mostly fear-mongering pseudo-science? I’m… not quite sure. It was something that cut out carbs and sweets, the areas where I have the most trouble. It’s really similar to Atkins, except Atkins is a diet and Whole30 is some kind of “reset” that most people end up losing weight on.

On Whole30, you can eat: meat, fish, eggs, vegetables (including potatoes), nuts, oils, and fruits

That means you’re supposed to cut out: Dairy, legumes (so peanuts too), grains, soy, sugar in any form except fruit, and alcohol. I might be missing some stuff for the 30-day plan, but that’s the gist of it.

I’m not following it perfectly - I’m still having a teaspoon of sugar in my coffee, and haven’t cut out soy sauce. But other than that, it's been good. I'm eating a lot of meat and vegetables, mostly. The hardest part has been breakfast. I don't think I'll ever be able to face meat for breakfast, so it's either eggs in some form, or a banana with almond butter. I miss my yogurt.

How they see my sugar consumption, I assume.

This weekend wasn't great though. I had some sweets at a wedding and then some more crap at a BBQ we went to yesterday. I was angry at myself, trying to remember that guilt is useless, and focus on 1) how I’ve been doing pretty great otherwise and 2) It would have been 10x worse. So far it's mostly working.

I have just under two weeks left, and I’ve really been digging this whole not-tracking thing. I’ve know I’ve spouted tracking as my personal good path to weight loss, but at this point I like cutting out some foods more than tracking all of them.

Weight update:

	Start	2 Weeks	Change
Weight	182.6	177.6	5
Lbs. Fat	70.9	68	2.9
Lbs. Muscle	Unsure	63.8

A cool five pounds in two weeks! I’m really pleased with that, which is a weird feeling since it’s overlaid with enormous annoyance that I’m back in the 170s. But moving on, and down.

First Week On Flexible Plan - A Great Weigh-In

This was a really good week, and I think a large part of that is due to the changes I made to my eating plan. I’ve said in the past that I think one of the keys to weight loss is to forgive the inevitable errors because guilt is pointless, and I still think that. However, in this revamped plan of counting calories weekly as well as daily, I can actually make up for my mistakes a bit instead of just letting them go.

The final plan was simple: eat a minimum of 1000 net daily calories, with 2000 weekly calories that could be used however I wanted, restarting every Wednesday. Still averages out to 1300/day, but much more flexible. For the record books, I’m not counting the calories in non-starchy vegetables because, let’s get real, I didn’t get fat eating too much lettuce and I figure it’s highly unlikely that I could consume enough broccoli to impede my weight loss.

I got a little snacky on Saturday (Snacky On Saturday - romcom coming February 2015). We ate lunch with some friends and there was just a lot of food around. But what got me, calorie-wise, was the picking at leftovers once back home. “Picking” is definitely one of the things I struggle with, especially at home, and I am working on it (kind of). But the great thing is that my estimated 2100 calorie Saturday - a full three hundred above even the regular maintenance level and an impressive 1100 above my minimum - actually fit healthfully into a week in which I had a 3500-calorie deficit. Balance!

On that topic, for now I’m still only eating back exercise calories on the same day that I burn them, but maybe in the future I’ll throw that into the pot.

This is the net calorie breakdown by day:

Wednesday - 1200

Thursday - 1300

Friday -  1500

Saturday - 2100

Sunday - 920**

Monday - 925**

Tuesday -1500

It was quite great, and not as annoying to keep track of as I thought. I felt more in control of my weight than ever because I was confident that whatever challenges presented themselves, I could figure them out and fit them into the week.

My positive feelings were reinforced when I got on the scale this morning.

Weigh-in:

	6/8/2014	8/19/2014	9/3/2014	9/30/2014	10/15/2014	10/29/2014	11/6/2014
Weight	191.2	182.6	182.8	181	181.6	181.4	179.6
Pounds Fat	82.7	72.5	73	70.3	70.8	70.8	70.3
Pounds Muscle	67.3	66.8	67.2	65.2	67	67.3	65

Remember when September was going to be the month I got into the 170s, and how I thought it would be so easy? And then October was going to be the month? Well it turns out it’s November. I don’t even care, I’m just glad to be here.

Now that I have finally (finally) hit the goal that I’ve been after for months, it’s time for a new one. I’m going to aim further this time, and set a deadline. I joined the gym last February, right at my 25th birthday, with the dream of losing a significant amount of weight by my 26th. While I won’t be 50 pounds lighter on my 26th birthday, I am going to try to be below 170. In order to make this goal, I need to lose ten pounds in the next 14 weeks - totally doable, with room for a plateaus or a few bad days. From now on I’ll weigh in with this particular goal in mind.

One-seventy would be a great accomplishment since this was the highest weight I looked okay i.e. my weight might not be the first thing you notice when you look at me. If this weight loss is like the previous time around, these ten pounds will come out of my face and hips.

Just because I love these.

**Please don’t freak out, Internet. These are net calorie counts, not gross. On each of these days, I ended up burning 500-600 calories at the gym and just didn’t feel the need to eat them all back.

Complimenting Weight Loss and Weekly Weigh-In

This has been a pretty good week - I went to the gym almost every day, and pushed myself in the workouts. My Zumba friend and I had a blast at our class, and I’m thinking of trying another one during the week. I’ll say for the last time - I am so happy to be back to regularly schedule programming. The holidays were hard, and I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped, but they’re over now so I’m focusing on what I can actually influence.

This week’s weight, and last week's that I didn't get around to posting:

	6/8/2014	8/19/2014	9/3/2014	9/17/2014	9/30/2014	10/15/2014	10/22/2014
Weight	191.2	182.6	182.8	180.4	181	181.6	181.6
Pounds Fat	82.7	72.5	73	72.1	70.3	70.8	71.3
Pounds Muscle	67.3	66.8	67.2	64.4	65.2	67	65.4

Quite frankly, I’m thrilled. I think the not-so-good holidays managed to be balanced out by really successful in-between days. Normally I would have said “screw it, why bother to get back on track for four days when it’s just going to be another holiday?” This time, though, I realized it was worth it. Weight loss is really all about the long term, so if in the long term I gain a pound or two over a holiday period (because really, that’s all it is) and then back on track the rest of the time, it doesn’t have to have such an effect. Maybe October will be 170s month? Probably not, but considering that it was about 1/3 holiday, I think it's good.

Speaking of weight loss (which in this space, is most of the time) - a while back, when I was heating up my breakfast in the office kitchen, one of the managers politely asked me if I had lost weight. I may have hugged her. She is the first person who doesn’t know that I’m trying to lose weight to notice. I still don’t see a huge difference, but this shows that something is changing.

Complimenting weight loss can be a tricky business. For a while there in 2012, I was steadily losing weight. Thus for people who only saw me every so often, like my gap year abroad friends, I was smaller each time we would get together. They would usually notice and make a comment about it. Some people do not like to be complimented on their weight loss, but I’m not one of them. I like when my hard work is noticed, and it validates that I’m actually accomplishing something tangible, a good reminder for harder days.

I got a little uncomfortable when I started gaining weight, and not just because my pants were too tight. Rather, I would see the same people, and it would be clear to all that I had definitely not lost weight since we’d last seen each other. One memorable time, I saw some friends and when we were greeting each other, one of them said how great I looked, almost in a habitual way. This was unfortunately at a point where I had regained about twenty pounds since the last time I saw them, and was rocking out at about 175. It was a little awkward because I said “Thanks,” but was thinking “No, I don’t, and we both know it."

Despite that, I’m still for weight loss compliments. Almost any accomplishment can be undone, so to speak - weight can be gained, jobs can be lost, medals can be rescinded, governments can fall - either by the person who accomplished it or outside forces. Maybe I'll gain back the weight, but I still enjoy someone noticing on the way down.