The Best News I've Had Since 2014

So I must say, this has been a fucking amazing couple of weeks. I suck for not updating, even though I promised to do that - I will keep trying.

I've mentioned (i.e. complained) on here a couple of times about how I'm trying to find a job in the publishing industry and get out of paralegal work, so I'm thrilled to say that I got one! I'm going to be working in publicity for one of the major publishing companies, starting in a couple of week, and am absolutely ecstatic.

A good weight update, too: Last week, I was up .2. This week, I was down 1.4, which got me to my first ten pounds! It took me 13 weeks to lose 10 pounds, which is obviously longer than I'd like, but I know that it because of the times when I didn't make good choices.

I'm still digging Weight Watchers, though sometimes they try a bit too much to be everyone's therapist. Next week will mark 3 months since I started, and I'm hoping to take it to the end. A great perk of the new job is that it's pretty close to my current office, and therefore very close to my current Weight Watchers meeting. I'm really glad; that will make all these giant (but awesome) changes all the more easy.

Share your good news, please!

A Great Weigh In and How Not to Hate Your Body During Weight Loss

Good news! This week I was down 2 pounds. That puts me at 185.6. The previous week I was up .6, so I lost that plus another pound and a half.

I'm proud. I worked so hard last week to stay on plan, and I did it. I keep learning the lesson that I do much better with routine, and really struggle when not in my regular environment, whether that's vacation in Michigan or visiting my parent's. I'm not sure yet how to deal with that. However, most of life is, thankfully, pretty routine, so if I can get that down well, then those occasional vacation or party struggles won't matter so much.

Remember when I first started Weight Watchers, and my first weigh-in was 10 pounds above what my home scale was giving me? At the time, I figured a few pounds were because of wearing clothing and weighing in later in the day, and the rest was just the WW scale being off. For a while, I would subtract 10 pounds from every weigh in, and think of that as my real weight.

No more. There's no point. I'm now down, officially from weight watchers, 8.8 pounds. Maybe I can hit the big 1-0 this week?

My biggest weight struggle right now is trying not to be, essentially, grossed out by my current body. I know it's not that bad, and I don't look so terrible. But I carry so much of the weight in my stomach and thighs and I hate seeing it in the mirror and realizing that it will be at least several months of hard work before it gets better.

I know the title of the post makes it sound like I'm offering advice, but really I'm at a loss. I try to appreciate the things my body can do - do endless jumping jacks during our kick-ass Power Dance class, hug the people I love, or just generally give a cozy home to my brain and let me live with all my senses. I try. It's hard when I see my stomach sticking out. When something is too small on my stomach but too loose at my waist.

Frankly, I don't think I should love this body. It's not a healthy one. I should appreciate it, and probably be nicer when I think about, but I don't have to love it. I just maybe shouldn't hate it.

What do you LOVE about your body?

I do like my eyes (grey-green) and my hair. I also like that even at this weight, I have a shape with a curved waist and hips.

Showing My Face & Philadelphia Highlights (Prisons! Signings!)

John and I just got back from our trip to Philadelphia. It was really fun - we basically just let Tripadvisor tell us what we should do and see, and went from there. After some research, we decided to stay in an Airbnb apartment instead of a hotel near the city center, and it was fantastic - saved at least $300, and that’s for more space and a kitchen! Will never stay in a hotel again if I can swing it.

Highlights included:

The Liberty Bell

• They also had a really thought-provoking exhibit on slavery, and how its continued existence was in awful and highly hypocritical parallel with the slave-owning founding fathers (like George Washington)

Independence Hall

• Birthplace of the US, where the Declaration of Independence was argued, drafted, and signed. (Tours are free!)
• Also the site of National Treasure, a movie I unironically love

Eastern State Penitentiary

• A prison that had running water before the White House, this place was fascinating and the exhibits were so well done. You get a set of headphones when you start, and it’s all a self-guided tour and you can just wander around and see the cells, tunnel from the 1945 escape attempt, death row, baseball diamond
• We learned about how the prison changed over the hundreds of years in which it operated and how it was abandoned/condemned in the 1970s, and finally turned into a museum after two decades of arguments and politics

Jewish Museum

• Lots of interesting information, but I was hoping for more artifacts and first person accounts (i.e. things you can’t get online or from a textbook)

Unlimited Bowling at Lucky Strike

• Not special to Philly, but I wanted to memorialize that we played five games in one evening. Don’t ask for our scores, though.

We also walked about 25 miles over the time there - that was essentially our mode of transportation. By the end my feet hurt a lot (John was fine, weirdo) but it was overall a great trip, and all just a couple of hours away.

So, the burning questions - food and weight. As of Wednesday, I weigh 183.2, which is actually about half a pound down from a month ago. That’s good. On the trip I got a picture of what will make a good "before" or "during" of being at 183 pounds.

Thus, presenting for the first time on this blog, my face. Huge moment, I know. I figured that anyone reading this who knows me would figure it out anyway pretty quickly, so why not? And yes, I wasn't exaggerating about how pale I am.

With John’s encouragement, I started tracking again on MyFitnessPal during the trip and have now kept it up for the whole week! Baby steps, I know. I’ve mostly abandoned the whole “small meals” thing in favor of this. I didn’t seem to be working for me, or maybe I didn’t give it a fair chance, I’m not sure. I do know that it felt odder than I thought it would to eat basically a snack with my colleagues eating their lunches, and then have 2-3 snacks during the day.

My goal for the trip was just to stay at maintenance level - which, in part thanks to all our walking, I am happy to say I did.

I’m still really, really struggling with believing in myself. That I can still do this where I’ve failed so many times, regained so much weight, and use food as a comfort, a reward, and a punishment. That all the little bits will add up to weight loss. I’m trying. I know that probably everyone who’s had weight to lose has felt this way, even the people who ultimately succeed. I so badly want to be one of them. For now, I’m working really hard to at least track my food and stay at maintenance level, but I really want to up my game and get back into the 170s.

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.

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. 

Highly Exciting: The Next Thirty Days

Have you ever wished that someone would take the thought out of dieting for you? That’s the idea behind multi-million dollar programs like Jenny Craig. Simple: Just eat their food, don’t eat anything else, and you’ll lose weight. Except that you never learn how to actually eat right or how to live in the real world.

Let’s get real here. I did not eat well over the weekend, much like the last few weekends have also been. This morning I was in at 175 even, so at least five or six pounds UP. Some is bloat but some is unfortunately just gained weight. Yuck.

By about a foot.

I don't think buying all diet food is worth the cost. However, I’d like to take the thought out of losing weight, just a little bit, and just for a little while. To (for most of the time) not worry about choices. Food has been such a huge focus for so long, and not in a good way - I’m either doing great, losing weight, and spending a lot of time and energy on it, or I’m eating terribly, and still spending a lot of time and energy on it.

I am stopping starting today (well technically yesterday this point), this morning. For the next 30 days I'm going on a more restricted diet. Take away the choice and the thought. I'm also putting the scale away so I'm not focusing on my weight. These next 30 days will be hard, but  I’ll do it because I know it's temporary and also because I'm at my wits end and need to go to the other extreme. After the 30 days, I’ll decide what's next. My plan is healthy - plenty of calories, veggies, fat, etc -it's just not sustainable because it's so limiting. That’s okay, I don’t need it to be long term. What I do need is a short term plan that will let me lose a bit of weight without having to focus so much on food.

So, the plan: I’ll give myself two options for breakfast, two for lunch and two for dinner. These choices will be things that I’ve eaten over and over again and still enjoy. Coffee with breakfast, always. Then oatmeal or Greek yogurt with honey. A lettuce/random veggies salad for lunch, with either beans, feta cheese, and a salsa dressing, OR with ground turkey and beans. Dinner will always have a veggie, and then be either flatbread pizza or two all beef hot dogs on whole wheat bread. Alternate is a frozen Amy’s entree. If I’m feeling genuinely hungry, I’ll have an apple and/or a glass of milk for a snack. Most importantly - no junk food, lots of vegetables, and little to no snacking.

Hot dogs as part of a diet? Yes. I know these are not all ideal options in terms of processing or sodium level, but they are meals that are really simple, easy, and keep me full. I’ll be adding veggies so it’s not quite the dinner plans of an eleven-year-old. Overall, I’d like to give this plan a chance, at least a week, before making adjustments to portions sizes or food choices.

This plan, this making decisions now about food so that I don’t have to later, won’t work 100% of the time. I’m not going to turn down having dinner with friends, or go to a restaurant and request that they cook me a hot dog and some broccoli. So, my plan for those times, maybe one or two meals a week, is to set a high but not insane calorie limit, and just stay within that. As long as it’s not more than a couple of meals, I should still have a good calorie deficit for the week.

I can't wait until I'm feeling motivated or inspired because who knows when that will happen? Right now I just feel determined. I need to start. I need to start somewhere, even if I know it doesn’t make sense in the long term.

Day one, May 26. Day 30, June 25.

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.