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.