NBD, Just On a Classic Blogger Weight Gaincation

Hi. How does this usually work? Do I explain that I’ve been just so busy with my super duper busy life, gained between three and forty-three pounds, but now I’m back on day three of “The New You Diet”TM and totesOMG ready to do this again this time it will stick I’m so motivated?

The truth is, I’m not even sure what happened. I ate like it was going out of style through July and most of August. It wasn’t like freshman year of college, when I got to 200 pounds by eating unhealthy foods at mealtimes and just refusing to think how many calories I was consuming or how my clothes weren’t fitting. It was more like, “What have I eaten today that’s at least 90% empty calories? A cookie? That’s not enough, I need half a pizza!”

On June 25, the last time I posted here, I weighed just under 170 pounds. That was already a couple of pounds gained. In general, I was frustrated and struggling to eat well.

On July 20, I weighed 172.2. A couple of pounds up from June, but not too terrible. But on August 20th I weighed 182.6. I gained ten pounds in a month. The “in one month” scares me a lot more than the “ten pounds” part. It terrifies me. To have gained that much weight in a month, I would have had to eat an extra 1100 calories per day. That’s scary. And impressive in a horrible kind of way.

On the other hand, it was actually pretty easy. A piece of cake and a muffin together have about 1000 calories. So do two slices of pizza, or a proper burrito. A couple of calorie-bomb snacks or a couple extra slices turns an okay maintenance day into a ⅓ pound gain. It’s so, so easy to gain weight. Lesson for maintenance. 

 I keep thinking about the few people I know, or know of, who’ve lost weight and kept it off for at least a few years. There’s a girl I went to camp with, who lost something like 75 pounds when she was 22. She maintains her weight by only eating carbohydrates or sugar on her birthday, having a healthy living focused job about which she constantly updates on all available forms of social media, and by posting at least three weight/food related articles per week on facebook. I’m assuming that last part is required by her diet, but who knows. There’s my old college roommate, who averaged a pound or two lost per month… for all four years of school. He graduated two years ago, and still looks great. There’s my sister, who lost about 20-25 pounds a few years ago and has since been paranoid about gaining it back, watching her food intake with a diligence I thought was reserved for middle-aged Hollywood actresses trying to stay fuckable. (Please watch Amy Schumer’s amazing sketch on this.) 

And as much as I’m mocking some of them them, the truth is that I’m jealous. Jealous that they’ve gotten to a place that seems impossible for me. I’m also wondering if it’s possible to maintain weight loss without being crazy diligent or restrictive forever. Can I ever have a normal relationship with food? I know, technically, it’s not impossible. My body can go down in fat just like anybody elses. And it HAS. I have. Lately though, I’ve felt doomed to the same shitty pattern. It’s not good for my body, my heart, or my health. Maybe I’m finally starting to face what every weight loser, dietician, and lose-now-book-of-the-month laments: You need to fix your relationship with food, how you see it and how you relate to it, in order to make any real or lasting changes. I think - I hope - I can do that.

I feel like I should mention, in the end of a post whining about how eating less is hard, that my grandfather died on July 30. My father’s father, my genius, stubborn, witty, generous, insisting on buying peanuts for the squirrels, showing me the mint that grew by their house, WWII veteran Grandpa, who worked at his business until the age of 81 (ten years ago), and only stopped because he had a stroke. He and my grandmother were part of every Memorial Day, Labor Day, July Fourth, Thanksgiving, graduation, and Jewish holiday. My family is tiny - I don’t actually have any first cousins or aunts - and his death has left a shitty void where an awesome, sarcastic old man used to be.

I don’t know if this belongs here, and I draw the line at these paragraphs because, in the end, this is a weight loss blog and I prefer to mourn with the people who knew him. However, I miss him so tremendously and it feels wrong to not mention him when writing anything about the last couple of months.

I’m in a much better place than I was a few weeks ago, which is good. This time I’m turning it around at 180 pounds. Last year I had to get to 190 before I woke up. I’ll come back soon with what I’m doing to undo this damage, but for now I wanted to check in and say hi. 

Weigh-In: Clouds and Clouds

Feeling a bit blah the last couple of days. You know the feeling? Just a little cloud over me, less energetic. These moods suspiciously coincide with PMS.
My goal is just to give myself a few maintenance days until I don't feel like shit. I don't want to put pressure on myself to lose, but would really hate to go backwards. So if I don't buy a pint of ice cream tonight and eat most/all of it, this evening will have been a success.

This week's weigh in:

	Start	6/8	8/19	10/29	12/31	1/28	2/25	3/24	3/31	4/7	4/14	4/21
Weight	200	191.2	182.6	181.4	177.2	174.6	177	172	168.4	170	168.6	170.4
Lbs. Fat		82.7	72.5	70.8	67.1	65.3	66.5	62.7	60.3	60.8	58.8	61.3
Lbs. Muscle		67.3	66.8	67.3	63.9	64.4	68.2	62.7	61.5	61.5	62.7	65

More fluctuations, yay! (Not.) At least I'm still two net pounds down from last month, but frustrating because I expected to be closer to the mid-160s now. Ah well, I'll get there eventually. 

I hope you're having a better week than I am!

Six Weeks Done: Re-Losing and Average Calories

One of the things I struggle with is that I’m re-losing weight I gained over the last year or so. I’ve talked about this - how I lost fifty pounds and walked and felt like a badass with my bicep lines and singular chin. Then I got cocky, or lazy, or something, and found my way back to 190. Now I’m trying again. Old news.

The funny thing is that it’s not necessarily about feeling guilty or punishing myself for gaining back the weight (though that’s there too), it’s about being annoyed and impatient knowing that I already crossed this bridge. I did this part already, so when will I be done catching up and start making “real” progress?

I know rationally I need to just stop focusing on it and be glad I took control now, instead of after another fifty pounds. And that it was me eating those extra calories and gaining back that weight. Nobody else. Would I rather be relosing down from 190, or be dieting from at even higher weight? Besides, any progress is real progress, regardless of how many times I’ve made that same progress in the past.

I also need to apply this same reasoning to my lack of progress at the beginning of this year. I was all gung-ho tracking/working out, and then getting more and more frustrated at my lack of weight loss, only to realize that - whoops - I was actually eating way more calories per day on average than I realized. In some ways, I wasted March-May being annoyed and impatient instead of actually looking at what I was eating.

That brings me to the last six weeks, the “Reboot” edition of my plan. I started out at 191 with a plan to commit to tracking everything I ate and to work out at least four times a week. The results?  I’ve tracked my food and exercise every single day for the last six weeks - even the three or four crappy days I wish hadn’t happened and wanted to forget. (And good news, those crappy days weren’t as crappy as the crappy days of the past.)

I tried really hard to listen to my body, to decide if I wanted a snack at 3:30 because I was actually hungry, or just kind of bored. In short, I felt good and focused.

So my average calorie intake for the last six weeks is...drumroll...1330. A bit higher than I was originally aiming for, but still enough to lose at least a pound a week. Plus it’s a full 500 calories lower than the average from earlier this year. I’m in such a rush to just make some progress because of how uncomfortable I am in my body right now, but 1330 calorie days add up to 4.5 pounds lost per month. It will happen, this is real progress.

And with zero segway, this is my meal plan for this week, week 7:

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Breakfast	Coffee	Coffee, yogurt	Coffee, yogurt	Coffee, oatmeal	Coffee, yogurt		Coffee
Lunch	Pizza	Tilapia, pesto, linguine	Potluck Luncheon - TBD	Tilapia, pesto, linguine	Tilapia, pesto, linguine	Bubble Up Enchilada Casserole
Dinner	Chicken soup, hot dog	Corn tortillas, beans, cheese, salsa	Taco salad	Enchiladas	TBD	Chicken, potatoes, brussel sprouts	TBD
Snacks		Fruit, string cheese	Fruit, string cheese	Fruit, string cheese	Fruit, string cheese	Fruit, string cheese

On Sunday I took a giant bunch of basil and made nut-free pesto. Nutless because that’s the recipe I found, and also because I decided that they’re not worth the calories in this particular dish. I’d much rather focus on the basil, garlic, olive oil, and Parmesan. It came out a bit creamier without the nuts, but delicious. Also hella-caloric.

In two weeks, I’ll take my final weigh-in and some new measurements. I love the idea of having a solid six weeks of food, exercise and weight data to use. I can explore fascinating/naval-grazing questions such as: how did the average calories/day relate to the weight loss? Was there a pattern of gains and losses? What weeks had the most weight loss, or the least, and how did it compare to the calorie deficit?

In that time, I’ll also figure out the next stage of the plan in terms of daily calorie allotment and how often I should be weighing in. If I can get my head straight and not be affected by normal fluctuations, I’d like to track daily for a while.

Week Three: I Peeked, But Didn't Peak

Week two is over. I confess that I stepped on the scale on Friday morning, and was delighted to see 185.7. Since I weighed in at 191 just before starting this “reboot,” I’ve lost about five pounds in two weeks, right in the healthy weight range for the beginning of a diet.

Even though I am happy to know I’ve made progress, I’m a little disappointed because I messed up the whole point of not knowing my weight: to avoid focusing on it. Right now I’m re-losing weight that I already lost - twice - and then gained back - twice, three times if you count the initial gaining. No need to be reminded of or focus on that. 

No more weigh-ins. When I get tempted to dig out the scale, I’ll remind myself how great it will be to see a (hopefully) double-digit loss for these eight weeks, and that eating well and working out are just as important, if not more, than how much the scale has moved.

As my sneak peek indicated, this was a good week. Work was very slow, as is typical for summers. I will never, ever complain about not having much to do at work. I kept tracking, and we worked out four times plus a really long walk around Central Park in the lovely breeze.

Another good part of the week was that I’m learning that a day without a treat is not the end of the world, and that even if I can have something, doesn’t mean I need to do so. Shocking, right? Last night, I was debating whether to have a flatbread pizza or a loaded baked potato with the 400 calories left for the day. I realized that I could make a small dinner, somewhere around 250-300 calories and have room for a couple of pieces of chocolate. 

Just as quickly I asked myself, What are you doing? Two hundred and fifty calories is a snack or breakfast, not a dinner. I used all the calories for dinner, skipped the dessert, and the world kept turning and I didn’t go insane from lack of dessert and eat the candy aisle at the nearest drug store. So I will try to keep in mind the lesson here: Notwithstanding the occasional ice cream for dinner, a treat is something extra to have after a meal, not instead of it.

Looking ahead, tomorrow is our company’s annual summer outing, which basically translates to a relaxing day at a country club, where people bring their families and there’s an open bar by the pool. I’m trying to get the courage to go swimming, since it’s really fun with J and there’s not that much else to do besides sit by the pool and drink. I really don't want to let my own insecurity stop me from enjoying a pool on a hot day.

On Tuesday, we’re attending a goodbye dinner for J’s dad, who is moving across the country. It sucks that he won’t live so close anymore, but I guess now we have an excuse to go to California. Silver linings. And in one week, we’ll celebrate my amazing grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary.

Below is this week’s meal plan. Once again, strawberries feature prominently in the snacks. At 50 calories a cup and now $2 a pound, they will probably be a summer staple.

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Exercise	Gym	Pool - laps	Gym	Off	Gym	Gym	Walk
Breakfast	Coffee	Coffee, oatmeal	Coffee, yogurt	Coffee, yogurt	Coffee, oatmeal	Coffee, oatmeal	Coffee, yogurt
Lunch	Oatmeal pancakes, strawberries	Firm outing	Lemon chicken over salad, baked potato	Lemon chicken over salad, baked potato	Veggie burger, cheese, on English muffin	Veggie burger, cheese, on English muffin	TBD
Dinner	Frittata	Firm outing	Out with family	Loaded baked potato, broccoli	Flatbread pizza	Chicken, broccoli, bread
Snacks	Cheese, FroYo, fruit	Fruit	Hard boiled egg, fruit	Cheese, fruit	TBD	TBD

Today was the first day of week three, and it was a good one. Sunday is our day to have a longer gym session, and I felt like I’m continuously better at pushing myself. A while back, I wrote about how I couldn't do even one rep on one of the strength training machines they have, the overhead press machine, even on the lightest setting. (Ignore the stupid URL title.) I tried it again today and did ten reps at 25 pounds! I'm definitely getting stronger. 

After I burned an excellent 750 calories, J and I stopped for some frozen yogurt and it was delicious, especially knowing that I knew I could enjoy it, go home and have a nice dinner, and still have a great "loss" day.

I'm feeling good about this week, and the next six (thousand) weeks.

Learning to Say No: Default Settings

There are many questions to which I have automatic answers. It’s when the mouth and vocal cords bypass the brain and the response comes automatically. They're the Times New Roman of the brain - the default setting. “Would you like to hear about a wonderful timeshare opportunity?” “Do you want to get into my van?” “Would you like to hold a puppy?” No, no, yes.

Auto responses are kind of like habits, but so ingrained they’re practically unconscious. And for most of my life, there was a particular query which always got a yes from me: An offer of food.

When food was offered, I always needed to have some. I would say yes first and think about the rest - if I was hungry or even wanted it - later, or not at all. If I didn’t have something when it was offered, I was missing out. It was unthinkable to watch other people enjoy something and not partake myself. Why should they get it if I don’t? Why on earth would I even need to think about saying no to something that looks good?

It turns out those auto responses cost me some pounds and willpower. I recently realized that during my many weight losses and gains, one of the things that those successful times have in common was that I did actually consider an offer of food and stopped being on autopilot.

I learned that it was okay to say no when a treat was offered. I wasn’t going to die, nobody would be insulted or even think about it for longer than a split second, and I myself would forget about it soon after, too. I discovered that saying no was an option, and had a power of its own as well. It meant that I was in control of my body and what I ate.

During the glory days at my lowest weight, when I was rocking a size 8-10 and enjoying being fifty pounds lighter, I realized that I couldn’t think of a single particular time in which I turned down food. There must have been hundreds of instances, because I was in environments where food was plentiful and yet I had lost a lot of weight. In college, it had been used to lure students to events. At work, it had been offered by generous colleagues or management. But I really had forgotten about them, and it was the ultimate proof that saying no to food is okay. (Funny, because later I would also forget about the things I said “yes” to. Hello again, thirty-five pounds.)

This auto response also comes into play when it’s my own brain making the suggestions. In fact, my brain comes up with more delicious ideas than the people in my life do. At 11:30 PM, I’ll remember that there’s some ice cream in the freezer. Or at noon on Sunday, I’ll remember that I’m an adult and perhaps this adult would like to make a huge stack of chocolate-chip pancakes from scratch with strawberries and whipped cream? Bad brain! No!

I need to learn how to control those internal auto-responses too, to grow the part of me that can acknowledge that while ice cream and pancakes are awesome and - good job brain, great suggestion - I don’t need them right now and that’s okay. When I’m not in the best or most health-conscious of places, I make an ice cream sandwich out of chocolate chip pancakes. In comparison, when I’m doing well, I let the thought slide away.

Sometimes I note how the healthy people I know make decisions about food, and most of them don’t have auto answers at all. If offered something, they actually consider it and make a decision, and move on with life. Maybe it turns out that it wasn’t the “right” decision, and they’ll decide that they shouldn’t have eaten that, or maybe they even regret turning it down, but most of the time it’s just the tiniest blip on their radar. Oh well, there will be cookies again.

So now that I’ve found myself on the wrong end of the scale again, I’m working to change my auto response to “no.” I think my true healthy relationship with food would involve considering offers like the people I’ve observed do. However, for now, when I’ve been at auto-yes for most of my life, I’m trying to swing to the other extreme. Then I can hope to find some balance in the middle, in the magical world of moderation. A cognitive place where I’ll allow myself a moment to decide what I want and what I need.

Its mode of transportation.

Reboot Week One: Weigh-In and Meal Plan

Sunday was the first day of my “weight-loss reboot,” as I like to call it. I’m feeling good about all of this - finally realizing what’s been holding me back (spoiler: me) and changing it up. Most of all, I’m just looking forward to making some progress. It will be good for my health, both mentally and physically.

I’m on day 3, and so far feeling good. J (my husband) and I are still consistently going to the gym, and I’m learning that I can lift/push/pull more than I think, and also that consistently challenging my body will yield the most results. We’re also trying to increase the days per week that we go, from three or four to six days a week.

Food-wise, I made a tentative meal plan for the week and went grocery shopping. I like the idea a meal plan as it solves the nightly question of what to have for dinner in a way that’s much less likely to lead to a dinner of frozen french fries, baby carrots, and a veggie burger that’s been in the freezer since Thanksgiving. I can also make at least one big dish and structure the week around it - quinoa with black beans, feta, red onion and bell peppers this week, pan fried mahi mahi next, then turkey burgers, etc. Who knows?

It helps that this stricter plan of having just 1000-1100 net calories per day (plus non-starchy vegetables) is only for the next eight weeks. When I’m tired of doing it, or it gets really hard, I’ll remind myself that even though I’ll probably never be able to stop spending a certain amount of time and effort on weight-loss and maintenance, these will hopefully be the only days where there's so little room for indulgences.

Over the next couple of months, there will be a few happy but food-challenging occasions, including a bridal shower and my firm's annual outing at a country club. I’m going to make a plan, think about what foods are worth enjoying and what foods are better to pass on, and do my best.

Here’s the Tentative Weekly Meal Plan, with Sunday-today showing what I actually had:

	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday -TBD
Breakfast	Coffee (sleep late)	Coffee, Greek Yogurt with honey	Coffee, Oatmeal with whole milk	Coffee and oatmeal	Coffee, Greek Yogurt	Coffee and oatmeal
Lunch	Oatmeal with peanut butter	Quinoa salad with feta, red onion, black beans, and bell peppers	Same as Monday	Vegetable soup with grilled cheese	Same as Monday	Same as Wednesday
Dinner	Garlic gnocchi with tomato sauce	Hot dogs on WW bread, pickles, carrots	Loaded baked potato	Veggie pizza	Loaded baked potato	Challah, roasted chicken, veggies
Snacks/ Prework	Chocolate milk, apple	Strawberries; toast with PB	Strawberries; string cheese	Strawberries, string cheese	Nectarines, string cheese	TBD

There may be more vegetables, we’ll see. My meal plan isn’t the most creative right now, but it’s foods I like and a plan I can follow.

While the good news is that I’m feeling confident for the next months (and years), there was a week or so gap between when I realized why I wasn’t losing weight, and finally starting this stricter plan. Unfortunately I got a little too much of the cursed “diet starts on Monday” mentality. I knew that I was still on my standard 1300/day plan, still working out, and there was no reason to go up in weight before I went down. But alas. I used the future diet as an excuse to have unnecessary indulgences and more than one “last hurrah” treat since I knew there wouldn’t be much room for treats, if any, on 1000 calories.

This brings me to the final weigh-in until August. J is going to log all the weight data, but I won't see it. As much as I would love to get to the 170's by the end of this, I don't want to get discouraged if the numbers don't follow.

Measurements	4/23/2014	4/30/2014	5/7/2014	5/14/2014	5/21/2014	5/28/2014	6/9/2014
Weight	188.1	188.3	185.8	187.2	186.5	187.8	191.2
Pounds Fat	79.5	81.5	78.3	79.1	78.5	78.6	82.7
Pounds Muscle	67.4	68.4	67.4	68.6	67.1	67.1	67.3

Not good at all. I hope some of that is bloat, but honestly I’m ignoring this number. It’s a “new” starting weight. Like I’ve said, feeling guilty about food and weight gain is utterly pointless (and is often an excuse for inaction). For the next 8 weeks, my focus will be on working out, eating well, and improving my eating habits.