Weekly Weigh-In: Charts

You know how they say time passes more quickly as you get older? I’m only in my mid-twenties and I’m feeling it. I don’t even hate Mondays anymore, because I know the weekend will come (and then be over again) in what will feel like only a couple of moments. What is happening??

Existential crisis aside, this week was okay, but unfortunately included a few extra treats at home that I didn’t plan on. I’m still avoiding all the office treats, but that doesn’t mean as much if I turn down the fresh-baked cookies at work only to purchase one on my way home… Most of the blame for the bad choices is squarely on me, but I’m blaming a bit on PMS and thinking about food too much over the last holiday. Tracked it, trying to move up and on, but still analyzing, as is my personality.

When I got back from Michigan, I felt that too much time and energy had been spent on food - what to eat, how much to eat, how much I’d eaten - despite a good weigh-in. So when I got back, I was sick of making food decisions. Bottom line, I need to think of a better strategy for the next holiday, which will be starting this Wednesday night. Zero new ideas so far, besides “eat everything.” I’d like to eat more intuitively, but don’t know how. I’m open to suggestions.

On official weigh-in day, I weighed the same as the day before:

	6/8/2014	8/4/2014	8/19/2014	9/3/2014	9/17/2014	9/30/2014
Weight	191.2	184	182.6	182.8	180.4	181
Pounds Fat	82.7	74.5	72.5	73	72.1	70.3
Pounds Muscle	67.3	68.2	66.8	67.2	64.4	65.2

I was moping around about not being in the 170s yet, when J looked at my charts and pointed out that I have lost twelve pounds of fat. If I’m off about how many calories I burn every day, or if that number has decreased in the last ten pounds lost, then that actually makes sense. Twelve pounds seems like more than ten. Maybe my goal should be to have less than 70 pounds of fat on me instead of weighing in the 170s.

J also made a chart, because he likes making charts and he's helpful like that.

The orange dots show fat loss over time, and the grey dots represent calorie deficits, assuming a lower metabolic rate of 1800. As you can see, they match up pretty well, implying that my whining isn't warranted since I am, in fact, losing fat at a reasonable rate for what I'm eating.

No matter what though, I’m definitely getting too focused on the scale. Weighing in every day only helps if I can take the number in its context, and right now I’m not doing that. So for the foreseeable future, I will only weigh myself on weigh-in day once a week.

Eat the Damn Donut

There are plenty of food-based activities at my company. We use it to welcome people, to say goodbye, to celebrate Friday, to mourn Monday, to discuss important celebrity issues over lunch, or just because. Employees occasionally leave treats in the kitchen for people to share, and the firm sporadically buys bagels and lox for all. These events are a good way to bond and get to know people outside of the office setting in which I usually see them. However, inevitably, there is always, always, at least one comment like these when it comes to the actual eating:

While taking a bagel: Haha, I should not be eating these, but they look so good!

While enjoying some fries: This is why I have salad for lunch!

Eating a cookie: I think this is okay, I had such a great workout this morning, right?

On taking a second cookie: Ugh, why am I doing this! This is like my second cookie, someone take them away! I’m getting fat!

On appearing dazed and with blood on their clothing: So I was just… at the library.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore my co-workers and I’m lucky to work with such great people. This is a larger criticism of our reflexive belief that we need to either justify or condemn ourselves for any bit of unhealthy food. This isn’t limited to my co-workers, but to everyone who thinks they need to explain the donut in their hand. I’ve heard customers justify their coffee or pastry orders to Starbucks cashiers, who truly do not give a shit. Skinny, slim, average, and overweight alike, most of us have done it.

I used to be much more sensitive about what I was eating in public. Perhaps struggling with my weight made it worse. Getting some French fries? I hoped they didn’t think I was just another fatty gorging on fries. Ordering a salad with grilled chicken, dressing on the side? I hoped they didn’t think I was just another fatty on a diet that would never work. Check a fake text at Potbelly’s when buying a sandwich AND a cookie to make sure that I’m getting the correct type of cookie for my “friend”? Been there.

Then I finally realized that if someone is judging me for what I'm eating, then quite simply, they are the ones with the problem. And if I am judging someone for what they're eating, then I have a problem. Unless they stole my lunch from the fridge, the food choices made by a fellow adult are none of my damn business. So when people laugh about how they can’t believe how many pieces they’ve eaten of the fancy French chocolate that someone bought while in Europe, and how they need to stop, I just shut up. Even if they probably shouldn’t be eating that third donut, it’s between them and the donut.

I think part of why we assume others are judging our food choices - hence the need to justify or condemn them - is because we’re doing it to ourselves first. It ties into the larger problem that so many of us have, which is feeling guilty about our food choices. I’ve ranted about this before, about how feeling guilty over something I ate is just an utter waste of time, serves no purpose, and is often used as an excuse for inaction or to continue eating. It’s not going to change anything and I didn’t actually hurt anybody, so I need to move on and forgive myself for my mistakes.

Wisdom.

That’s part of why I started a blog. How many people want to hear my debates over 1300 net calories vs. 1100 net calories, or about how I’m deciding whether or not to count vegetables in my daily totals? I write here so that anybody who is interested can read, and anybody who’s not isn’t forced to listen to me describe the controlled experiments I conduct on my heart rate monitor. Similarly, nobody wants to hear about why their co-worker is or is not eating something.

We feel like we need to justify all these things, forgetting that nobody cares that much, and it’s none of their business anyway.

Leah's Proposed Alternative Eating Commentary:

- "This is/that looks delicious.”

- "In my studies on the planet Thorcrondeux 92, I learned that humans get energy by putting particular substances into their unattractive face gaps and I feel that I am fitting right in. Shall we talk about the lack of water falling from the sky, or the current temperature?"

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.

Weekly Weigh-In: Work Events and Revelations

This is coming a bit late, but I've been trying to put some thoughts together from my results this week. Frankly, I've been doing this for three months and I'm not making close to the progress that I want to be making. I'm working out, I'm tracking, I'm trying. It's frustrating.

The positive side is that from this frustration came a much needed wake-up call. I looked over my history from myfitnesspal (I'm leahb423, feel free to friend me!) and here, did the math, and figured out some important things about my habits and (lack of) progress. The bottom line is this: despite tracking and working out, I’m just not eating on the calorie deficit I thought I was. I need to face that, and step the hell up if I want to stop maintaining. More on that later.

J and I spent the long weekend upstate with my family, and then I went to two different goodbye parties this week, one for a couple of departing co-workers and the other for a friend of ours who’s moving out of the country.

Overall it was a busier week than we’re used to - we’re usually at home most evenings - but really fun. I wasn’t as careful as I should have been over the weekend with my family, but we took a couple of lengthy walks and I tracked everything. 

I also felt pretty good and in control of myself at the two goodbye parties, aware of what I was eating and if it was worth it. I tried to focus on the people I was with and enjoy that instead of thinking about the delicious bar food available. Though the firm pays for an open bar at events like these, I stopped after two reasonably low calorie cocktails and switched to diet soda.

This is the opposite of our office motto.

In related news, due to the recent departure of two of my colleagues, I am now the most senior person of my position at my workplace. It’s not that strange, since paralegals usually cycle out after 2-3 years to go to law school or other jobs, but it’s a little unnerving that all the people I started with at my job are now gone and how quickly it changed. Thankfully, the people that have replaced them over the last year and a half are awesome, and I know how lucky I am to have a job, let alone a job with great people and that pays decently.

So here are the numbers from the week:

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

While I was not happy that my weight as a whole was up, fat and muscle numbers stayed the same, so maybe some of this is bloat. I worked out three times during the week, and am starting to add weight when strength training. Now I’m pushing/lifting/pulling more in the 40-50 range instead of the 30-40 range, so that’s progress.

Onto a new week, where we have ANOTHER Jewish holiday, celebrating when God gave the Jews the Torah (Bible) on Mount Sinai. How do we celebrate? Cheesecake, mostly. And blintzes. Thankfully this is the last one until the Jewish New Year in the fall.

February

Things that have happened:

- A few days ago, I officially signed a gym contract. Previously we were signed up for a 30-day "pass" to see how we like the facilities and how crowded it is during peak times. It's a good gym, with a lot of locations, including one right near my office and one close to home. So far we've gone about 3-4 times a week, a pattern I really want to keep up. They also have classes, and despite always having been interested in Zumba, I've never tried it.

The best part, besides the convenient locations, is that they have individual monitors attached to most of the cardio machines. I love feeling virtuous while watching reruns of CSI.

I don't look like this.

- The scale hasn't been moving, and I've recently realized the obvious. It's a classic eating-tracking-exercising Sunday through Thursday, followed by indulging too much and thinking too little on Friday and Saturday. I usually slip on tracking those days, so I need to just accept that I must be eating more than I think, and it's enough to stall the progress from the other days.

- I have had some minor victories of which I'm proud: Not ditching my lunch for the bagels in the kitchen at work, thinking (more) about what I'm eating, and why I'm eating it, and cooking and freezing things so that I have options when I'm lazy and hungry. I've also stopped feeling self-conscious about weighing food at work.

- I put a bunch of too-small clothes into a box. No constant reminders that I'm larger than I used to be taking up precious space in a tiny closet. I'll hopefully bring them out again in a few months.

I know it's either keep going or stay the way I am, so I'm going to keep going.

Delicious Combinations, and Work is Busy Again

I'm going to try not to weigh myself for at least a month. Though I'm feeling good, I have a long way to go and I need to just focus on the next day so that I don't get frustrated if I don't lose as much as I think I should have. Now that I'm on the right track, I'm even more impatient for what seems inevitable.

Would you like to see my belly button? 

Tonight I enjoyed one of the best combinations known to man - vanilla ice cream and peanut butter. Try it. This delightful treat was also a good reinforcer that I can fit in a nice dessert with normal meals if I plan a little bit - basically, just not eat random crap during the day, and then later realize that it added up to way more than I originally thought.

On an unrelated note, work has been busy this week. We slowed down a lot over the holidays, but once mid-January rolls around everyone seems to start remembering everything they were supposed to do over the last few weeks. Since my work is based mostly on short-term projects from other people, it's also the end of weekdays with two or three hours of work followed by five hours of getting paid to read the entire Donner Party wikipedia entry and three months of Zits comics.

A bonus for busy times is that I really appreciate getting out of the office at the end of the workday, instead of just being happy that now I can go home and surf the internet in sweatpants. I'm also really, really lucky to be employed.

How I feel in sweatpants