Simple baked eggplant recipe

Recipe for baked eggplant:

1 eggplant
Salt
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups tomato (pasta) sauce
4 oz mozzarella or other cheese

Cut off the ends of the eggplant and discard. Cut the remainder into rounds about 1/2 inch thick - yield about 8 slices. Coat with salt and leave to sit about 20 minutes, until a brown liquid leaches from the eggplant (I hear this removes bitterness). Rinse the salt off of the eggplant. Coat eggplant with olive oil on both sides and bake on a cookie sheet at 350 F for about 15 minutes, until it displays a soft, spongy texture when poked with a fork. Remove eggplant from the oven and top each slice with 1/4 cup tomato sauce and 1/2 oz grated cheese. Return to oven until cheese is melted. Serve with bread or pasta.

Serving size 2 slices, servings 4, about 210 calories per serving.

Sugar binge

Monday 12/27

Toast, scrambled eggs with chard and swiss, and 1/2 grapefruit (90+140+30+100+100=460)
2 chocolate truffles (210)
2 caramel waffle cookies and coffee (250)
1/2 TLC sandwich and tangerine (90+110+100+30+40=370)
Mini cupcake, pistachios, and chocolate (100+160+150+220=630)
Skinny Cow ice cream, 2 bars and 1 cup (200+150)
Chicken vegetable soup and a stroopwafel (500+125=625)
2 mini cupcakes (200)

460+210+250+370+630+350+625+200=3095

This is the diet of someone who has had too much sugar sitting right in front of her face for too many days in a row. But I tried! I started off with a healthy breakfast, see...

Hoping for better luck tomorrow.

Merry Christmas

I'm not weighing in this week because the number is unreliable - I had a super low weight yesterday due to special circumstances on Thursday, and a fairly high number today due to special circumstances yesterday, also known as Christmas Eve dinner.

However, I will talk about today a little. I figured I'd go to my parents' house, eat lots of chocolate and some teff muffins and also a real breakfast, stop by home and eat salad if I was hungry, and then go the dinner and not eat a ton of appetizers because I would have either eaten salad or not been hungry in the first place.

Unfortunately, my parents' plans did not involve a real breakfast and so until one o'clock pretty much all I ate was sugar. I'm sure the fiber-y, protein-y teff muffins helped a bit, but they were still basically a sweet carb-based food. So I was really pretty strung out by the time I got home and I ate some leftovers with my salad for lunch. I got myself back on basically the level, but it wasn't a good foundation for the day and I also ate a little cupcake on my way out the door and I did not have particularly good calorie control at the dinner.

I ate enough today to gain half a pound. I don't feel bad about it, but I'm a little worried about tomorrow. We're out of eggs, as well as many other things, since we usually shop on Saturday, so there isn't an evident protein source to get back on track with a healthy wholesome breakfast. I don't want to end up eating the waffle-pressed caramel cookies with coffee for breakfast. Maybe I will have a rice cake with cheese?

Solstice dinner observations and low calorie muffins

Last night my parents hosted Solstice dinner. I had allotted 1500 calories for dinner and I'd planned out my meals in the day and gone to Bikram in the morning such that even with the big dinner I'd have a small deficit for the day.

Solstice dinner is always a root vegetable soup, lots of bread and fancy cheese, and often a dessert that varies. I also made an appetizer that was on sample at the grocery store with chocolate and sea salt melted over oiled baguette. So I had a couple pieces of chocolate bread, then sat down to dinner. Starting off with a bowl of soup, and the various cheeses made their way around the table. I took a few pieces of bread and took small samples of each cheese that was available. There was a lot of cheese, but I didn't think I'd have trouble putting it away. I certainly had less on my plate than I've eaten in previous years. But this year, I was barely halfway through my cheese when I started to get full! I slowed down, sipped some wine to cut through the fat, and had another bowl of soup for nutrients and fiber. I managed to sample each cheese without becoming uninterested in food, but I was totally stuffed (a phrase I never truly understood the meaning of before now) by the end and only had a few bites of the funny raw-food "cheesecake" that was for dessert.

So that's the downside of losing weight and the dietary changes that come with it. You get used to eating small portions, and then when you get to an event where there's lots of good food you want to eat, your body has forgotten how to take it in stride. I used to have a similar problem with Thanksgiving anyway - after having a little of everything, I was too full for seconds of the things I really loved. Anyway, it's interesting to see the internal changes as well as the external changes to my body. I'll have to come up with strategies for satisfying my mouth and my eyes without taxing my stomach too much at events like these. Fortunately (or not?) there will be plenty of practice this week.

In other news, I tweaked the muffin recipe and achieved my goal of yummy, 150 calorie muffins! Now I have to do it all over again with teff flour so I can bring something gluten free to my mom, but here is the wheat recipe:

Low-calorie multigrain wholemeal muffins:

2 Tbsp white sugar
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp oil
2 eggs
1 cup applesauce

1 1/4 cups whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup oatmeal, crushed
1/4 cup cornmeal (polenta)
3 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

300 calories' worth of add-ins, for instance:
- 1/4 cup dried cranberries, 1/4 cup chopped walnuts, and zest of 1 orange
- 1 diced banana, 1/4 cup chocolate chips, and 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup cubed butternut squash, 1/4 cup sunflower seeds, and a few Tbsp grated ginger

Preheat oven to 375 F. Mix dry and wet ingredients separately, then add dry to wet. Fold in the add-ins. Divide into 12 muffin cups and bake for 15-25 minutes.

Notes:

* Calorie content will vary slightly depending on the add-ins and also things like the brand of flour you use. However, as written, this recipe should give 12 muffins at about 150 calories each.
* A high volume of add-ins will result in slightly bigger muffins, and high moisture add-ins will increase the cooking time. So your cranberry-walnut muffins will be smaller and cook more quickly than banana or squash muffins.
* Some possible substitutions: use skim or 2% milk instead of applesauce (approximately calorie equivalent), use another kind of vegetable or fruit puree in place of applesauce, use all-purpose flour instead of whole-wheat, use more oatmeal or less cornmeal to lower calories further (I would keep 1 cup of wheat flour), use all white/all brown/raw sugar, use honey or agave syrup instead of crystalline sugar while cutting down the applesauce/milk a little, vary spices.

Day 99, round 2 - conclusion of phase 2 (posted late)

Yesterday was the last row of my second spreadsheet and my weight was 144.4 pounds. At 29.9% body fat, even! This means that in the past 99 days, I've lost:

18.4 pounds
6.3% body fat
2.5 inches off my waist
a little more than 1 pant size

as well as another 1.75 inches off my thigh. I switched my hip measurement to where it's supposed to be during this phase, so I don't have comparable measurements from beginning to end, and I haven't changed my bra size since the end of last phase.

I can't post a graph because the new Google graphs are funky and don't save properly, and my boyfriend's computer (my power cord broke) doesn't have the program I use to take screenshots. So, no eye candy - sorry.

I've refined my spreadsheet again for phase III. The biggest difference is that I split the exercise column into "calorie burn exercise" and "strength/toning exercise". I need to keep track of them separately, because I need to see clearly whether I'm doing my strength exercises or not. The sheet may look a little more confusing sometimes because certain things, primarily yoga, apply to both - but since it's my sheet, as long as I know what I'm talking about and put the right numbers in the right boxes, I think it's fine.

It's super awesome that I'm only 10 pounds away. I hope that I can meet the next microgoal - 139.6 - by the time school starts back up at the end of January. It will be a little slow-going during the holiday week, and my Europe trip will be a total wildcard, but the final week of winter break I have all the space I need to push for a couple more pounds.

How'd that happen?

Today I weighed in at... 148.8? How did I gain 4.2 pounds in 2 days? Certainly not from the extra calories I've eaten. If I was up to 145.0, I'd understand. I kind of binged over the weekend. But this is clearly a load of crap (well, that, and water).

I've been reluctant to use the word "binge" for my episodes of overeating. I know that true binging is a much uglier affair. When I "binge", I eat about 2500 calories in a day. Many bulimics and binge eaters can eat 2500 calories in a sitting. I also don't have the sense of uncontrol that characterizes problem bineing... I think. I don't feel like I can't stop myself, just like I don't care. I will think "damn it, this is going to put me over maintenance calories, but resisting what I want is just not worth it right now." So... that happens sometimes, and I am reluctant to use the word "binge" not only because it may trivialize a more serious issue, but because I don't want to start thinking of it in terms of that more serious issue, i.e., feeling like I start to lose control simply because I'm using a word that implies that. I brought it out though because I don't know a lighter word for it.

I look back at this weekend and think, what happened? On Friday we spontaneously stopped for a Peanut Buster Parfait after Bikram yoga. I actually thought that was great, because I'd been feeling an itch to have some ice cream, and also chocolate, for a while. I'd been trying to figure in a time when I could afford those calories, and as we were riding home from our 670-calorie workout my boyfriend commented that the 700-calorie dessert sounded real good. I figured - yes, great exchange, I'll still be in deficit for today and this'll satisfy my ice-cream craving so I don't have to think about it anymore. And that seemed to work out great. I don't think this was the trigger. I just bring it up because this was my idea of working to avoid a "binge."

I would be in denial if I didn't acknowledge that pot has something to do with it. Pot causes munchies, and it always seems to cause more irresistible munchies when I go back to it after a break. I don't always go over calories when I smoke pot, but it makes it harder.

I usually "binge" on particular foods, but they aren't "trigger foods" because most of the time I eat those foods in normal amounts. Bread and cheese, particularly mozzarella cheese for some reason, ice cream or chocolate... and then peanut butter is in a special class. Peanut butter is my food that I eat when I'm craving something, but I know I will feel satisfied after just a tablespoon of it.

I might have been pushing it with the carbohydrates in the past week. We did have enriched-flour bagels during the week, and I had made those muffins which, while whole-wheat, obviously contained sugar. Boyfriend wanted to make pizza Saturday night, so that contributed some carbs. And I had eaten random food from the library and coffee on campus earlier in the week. Once I realized I was on the decline, I tried to at least eat protein-heavy foods rather than carbs in the hope of helping to terminate it.

What really I think screws me up though is going off my routine. I get routinized easily, and so I end up forgetting things when the schedule changes. Exercising is harder to make sure I do when it doesn't automatically fit into a slot in my day. I got that intro package at Bikram to go to over the break, but there are two things that aren't working great about my plans to go almost every day: one, I don't actually like Bikram enough to want to go often, and two, their schedule sucks for me. They have classes at 6/8, 9:30/10, 4/5, and 6/7 depending on the day. It's hard to go to class before eating in the day because it's such a hard workout, but it's also hard to get up early enough to eat breakfast, digest, and still go to 9:30 class on a relatively empty stomach - and then you've spent the whole morning. It feels terribly inefficient. By four o'clock, though, I'm not interested in exercise anymore. I would go all the time if they had, say, a 12 noon class. The other problem with falling out of routine is it's very hard, even just on weekends, for me to remember to drink water when I'm not at school. At school, I sit down with my backpack in front of me and my water bottle ready to jump into my left hand while I take notes with my right about four times a day. At home, I leave my water bottle or water glass in one room, wander into another, and forget about it. Finally, without a schedule of tasks, it's easy to think it's time to eat sooner, because there's nothing I have to accomplish first.

So here I am, four spurious pounds up, and tomorrow is the end of phase 2. I really want to shed most of this by tomorrow to get an accurate view of how much I've lost in these 99 days. I took a Cascara Sagrada this morning, which may sound a little bit bulimic, but it's really not, because the calories are long since absorbed - I just want to get the poop out. I'm also going to drink at least 4 bottles of water today (what I was drinking during the cleanse, 3 being typical for a schoolday) to flush out the bloating. I'll check my weight throughout the day and possibly take another Cascara in the afternoon, pay attention to fiber and salt content, etc. I admit it's rather shallow to be so concerned about my weight on a particular day, but okay, I care, and to be fair, it's as much about accuracy as anything else.

What's a little disturbing about these "binges" is that they tend to peter themselves out between 2000-2500 calories. Why should that be disturbing? Because the "that's enough" response is neither totally overridden nor occurs at an appropriate level. My body naturally stops me between 2000-2500 calories in a day. There's evidence of adaptation, because I usually feel rather stuffed and not entirely comfortable after that large amount of food, and also, if I am eating slowly and have been eating good food and gotten my exercise, I notice the cues coming in at the level I want them to - feeling satisfied at each meal at a point that lets it all add up to 1500-1800. But it appears that some aspects of my appetite are resistant to change. I just hope I am not fighting the urge to eat 2300 calories a day and weigh 165 pounds forever.

Cranberry-orange walnut muffins

So I made some delicious kinda-low-calorie muffins today, adapted from a few different recipes I found on the internet:

Dry:
1 1/4 c. whole-wheat flour
1/2 c. dry oatmeal
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp. cinnamon

Wet:
1 egg
1/3 c. sugar
3/4 c. unsweetened applesauce
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp water

Mix dry and wet, then fold in:
1/3 c. dried cranberries
1/4 c. chopped walnuts
Zest of 1 orange

Drop into muffin cups and bake 12-20 minutes at 375 F. I was expecting to get 12 muffins from the recipe, but it only made 8, and at that rate these are 205 calories apiece. They are really good, but I'd like to get a muffin of similar size down to 150 calories. If I could do that, I'd probably bake a batch of muffins each weekend and have them as an alternative to toast or bagels at breakfast, and take them to school for afternoon snacks.

Skinny fat and the next two weeks

I'm still fat.

I don't mean that I'm big, wide, or round. Definitely not. I look thin enough that overweight people tell me I shouldn't lose any more weight, my mom told me I carried 150 pounds very well, and would probably start looking skinny by 135. Shirts that fit my B cup chest hang loosely over my abdomen and I wear "petite" pants. I'm relatively small, apparently, and shapely enough - it's just that a lot of that shape is made up of fat.

I think "skinny-fat" is the appropriate term for my condition. It's odd that it's easier to see how fat you are when you're actually less fat. It's not a body image distortion, either - it's the fact that you can actually feel bones and muscles, so you can tell where the texture changes and you have a fat roll. When no matter where you poke there's an inch or two of fat cushioning, held in tightly by the skin, you don't realize how small your lean core is.

I have 10 pounds to go before the end of this weight-loss project. I suspect that when I get to 135, though, I will just switch my focus from straight weight loss to finer tuning of my body composition. The next two weeks, there are at least four undoubtedly high calorie days: Solstice (bread and cheese and wine), Christmas Eve (likely celebration dinner), Christmas (lots of chocolate), and New Years Eve (alcohol). Since two weeks from now will be New Year's Day, I don't expect the reading to be terribly reliable. So I want to say in the next 17 days - until I leave on Tuesday the 4th to travel - I want to lose between 1.0-1.8 pounds, for a leaving weight of 143.6-142.8. That keeps me making measurable progress while allowing for the season, y'know. Then I'll probably set something like 1 pound for my vacation loss goal, but we'll see a little later about that.

Quick weigh in

144.6, 30.1% body fat. Up some irrelevant amount from last week, but down 3.0 pounds since 2 weeks ago, before the cleanse. I'm satisfied with that. Hopefully I'll read a few more 29-point-somethings for body fat soon.

Gotta go, more thoughts later.

Oh yeah, and MICROGOAL. Another 5 pounds down. Only 10 left! Pretty exciting.

First body fat goal!

Aiee! Today I'm 144.6 pounds, which has me straddling the 40/10 line, and 29.4% body fat, which (1) IS LESS THAN 30% and (2) gives me an mLean of 102.1 pounds, making me think I'm probably at the top of my rebound curve. We'll see about that one, but as per my usual policy, the first day I see the number I like is the day I count it. I'm less than 30% fat now!

Am I back up?

So I'm back up to 144.0 today, back within my usual lean-mass range at 99.6 pounds, and my ticker says 40 point something pounds lost. I'm going to hold off declaring that microgoal, though, since water might want to bump me back up into the 145 range: I consider 99-103 to be my typical lean-mass range, but 100-102 comprises even most of that. Once my weight either stays steady for several days or goes down again, I'll consider the cleanse rebound over and celebrate if warranted.

I'm tantalizingly close to breaking under 30% body fat. I weighed in at 30.8% this morning and a) I might get another pound of free lean-weight from water, b) even assuming no more lean, that means I only have to lose about 2 more pounds of fat to break under 30%. Can I do it before Christmas? Possibly maybe!

I had super low calories all last week during the cleanse, and I ate up yesterday, having a delicious greasy breakfast and lots of yummies at my parents' house decorating the tree. Now it's time to buckle back down, eat right, eat light, and work out during finals. Don't let up in this last stretch toward the holidays - there will be a couple of particular days that will be sacrificed as break-evens or even surpluses, but that doesn't mean the whole week has to be a stall-out. Let's say 143-142 by the time I go traveling in January, eh?

Cleanse summary

So day 6 was... meh. About the same as day 5. I ate a banana, an orange, some almonds and some greens right before my Bikram class and felt pretty much fine during the class.

Day 7 I was surprised at how hungry I wasn't. I drank about 600 calories' worth of juice before dinner and wasn't really that hungry. I learned that if you make your own juice, you should peel your citrus before putting it in the juicer. My mom said I could just put it in with the peel, so that's what I did at first, but it imparted a disagreeable bitter taste and made my stomach feel not so good.

I was actually a little worried my metabolism might slow down due to the low calories all week and the fact that I was getting suspiciously not-hungry, but I kept exercising all week and have eaten two quite-large meals now, so I hope any slowing will quickly reverse itself.

I doubt I will do something quite like this again. The individual components (liver support herbs, laxatives, various diet restrictions) might be useful, but the salt restriction in particular (which my mom said was the most important part) really didn't do much for me. I felt crappy when I stopped eating salt, and yeah I got used to it, but I felt weaker than usual the whole week and now that I've reintroduced it, I feel much more robust and am experiencing no ill effects at all adapting the other direction. If I do the raw thing again, I'll have to prepare ahead of time, looking up raw recipes and making sure we have a food processor and maybe a dehydrator and sprouting some beans and such. People who live a raw lifestyle have those additional tools to help them get good nutrition, especially protein, which was very much lacking in our raw phase.

For the sake of interest, here was my diet during the cleanse. The last dinner on Saturday was obviously breaking the fast, and the Saturday before, not shown here, we had a psyllium shake as well as our Cascara sagrada after dinner:

---END CLEANSE---

Saturday 12/11

12 oz apple-lemon-ginger juice (180)
12 oz carrot-orange juice (235)
6 oz unsweetened blue/cranberry juice (60)
8 oz apple-tangerine-lime juice (120)
Tofurky, yams, greens, and chocolate (500+150+20+105+40=815)

180+235+60+120+815=1410

-BEGIN JUICE FAST-

Friday 12/10

Banana, soaked almonds, and 1/2 small apple (100+200+40=340)
Banana and unsweetened blue/cranberry juice (100+60=160)
Banana, orange, almonds, and greens (100+100+200+10=410)
Greens under avocado, dried cranberries, and sunflower seeds (20+150+130+50=350)
Psyllium shake in water

340+160+410+350=1260

Thursday 12/9

1/2 green pummelo, 1/2 pear, and sunflower seeds (30+50+210=290)
Unsweetened blue/cranberry juice (60)
Peppered large tomato (60)
Baby carrots (35)
Dates with coconut butter and grapes (130+140+75=345)
Tangerine (40)
Psyllium shake in water
Spinach and tomato salad with avocado, apple, and sunflower seeds (60+100+40+50=250)
Dried cranberries (130)

290+60+60+35+345+40+250+130=1210

--BEGIN RAW PHASE--

Wednesday 12/8

Apple with unsalted peanut butter and 1/2 grapefruit (100+180+30=310)
Salad with nuts, raisins, avocado, and a rice cake (30+65+100+100+70=365)
2 tangerines and a rice cake (80+70=150)
Psyllium shake with grapefruit juice (90)
Nutritional yeast (25)
Rice, sweet potatoes, and broccoli (320+150+50=520)

310+365+150+90+25+520=1460

Tuesday 12/7

1/2 grapefruit, 1/2 apple with unsalted peanut butter, and unsweetened blue/cranberry juice (30+50+90+60=230)
2 tangerines (80)

Rice and beans (160+115=275)

Dried cranberries and walnuts (200+130=330)
Psyllium shake with dilute apple juice (60)
1/2 tangerine (20)
Rice cake (70)
1/2 acorn squash filled with rice, raisins, and almonds (85+120+30+50=285)

230+80+275+330+60+20+70+285=1350

Monday 12/6

Oatmeal with unsalted peanut butter and raisins (150+90+65=305)
Apple (100)
2 rice cakes, walnuts, almonds, dried cranberries, and date pieces (140+200+130=470)
Psyllium shake with grapefruit juice (90)
Baby carrots (35)

Rice and beans and broccoli (160+115+50=325)

305+100+470+90+35+325=1325

Sunday 12/5

Rice cake with unsalted peanut butter and dried cranberries (70+180+65=315)

Date pieces (130)

Vegetables and chopped nuts over rice and dried cranberries (150+200+130=480)

Unsweetened blue/cranberry juice (60)
Psyllium shake with dilute apple juice (60)
Rice noodles and tofu in seaweed broth (200+200=400)
Grapes (100)

315+130+480+60+60+400+100=1545

--- BEGIN CLEANSE ---

Weigh-in

My weight this morning was 142.2 pounds at 31.7% fat. This is... erm... 5.4 pounds down from last week which tells me that in the next few days about 3 pounds should be coming back. This is confirmed by the fact that my lean mass is about 3 pounds under usual. However, my calories have been very low so I should have lost around 2 real pounds this week. I'm hoping that by next week, when my water weight will have re-stabilized, I'm still under 145.

I'll post later about the conclusion of my cleanse, and what I ended up eating during it.

On the cleanse

Last paper is now turned in and I have a few days of breathing/studying room before exams, so I finally have time to talk about my cleanse. The funny thing is that this ended up being the "lets celebrate end of classes with yummies" week (perfectly predictable, I just wasn't thinking) and so I had the unique opportunity to observe my reactions to unusual temptation under unusual restriction.

Day 1 was horrible. Note to self, if I need to withdraw from any substances taper off BEFORE the cleanse starts. I had a nasty caffeine headache and basically took naps all day, which compromised my ability to do work I needed to do. It would have been okay, though, if it wasn't on top of the salt withdrawal. There's plenty of sugar and fat in natural foods, but it turns out there's not a whole lot that naturally grows with significant salt. I felt thirsty and drank and drank but water hardly helped, my skin became dry, and I felt so sluggish and hungry. I felt like I was starving on a perfectly normal amount of food and calories. My body suddenly had no help holding onto its water. At the end of the day, I saw a packet of ramen seasoning in the kitchen and involuntarily twitched toward it. I had to just walk myself away.

Most of those salt issues were gone on day 2. I felt kind of rundown and messed-up physically because I took too much of the laxative herb the night before, but mostly I was just frustrated at all the food I couldn't eat. "This must be what it's like to be on a restrictive diet", I thought, and then realized, oh wait, I AM on a restrictive diet. It's just not one that has weight-loss as its primary aim. But seriously. I went to my conference class where people bring snacks and it was the last class so lots of people brought something, and you know what the menu was? Baguette, cheese including BRIE, crackers, jams, lemon curd, and mixed nuts. All delicious, and not a SINGLE thing on my fucking diet. I was so annoyed.

On day 3 I pretty much felt normal. Donuts appeared in one of my classes, which brought back a brief wave of "god damn it why did I do it THIS week," but there were also tangerines so I took a couple and ate them, allowing me to save the one I'd brought from home until after my workout. I didn't particularly want the donuts at the moment, just regretted passing up the opportunity, so I considered wrapping one in a napkin and putting it in the freezer, but then I decided what did I want a calorie-bomb like that for? If there had been a cream-filled donut I probably would have, but I didn't see one. At this point I began to notice that I was eating only as absolutely necessary, and really not caring very much, because food I was allowed to eat just tasted so boring.

By day 4 I just felt like a weirdo, or maybe an anorexic, as I accepted chocolate kisses from my yoga teacher and cupped them to my nose to smell them, then put them in my pocket knowing I wouldn't eat them until Saturday. I was merely amused as I passed over the donuts, bagels, cream cheese, and coffee outside my 9am class for a cup of Tazo Wild Sweet Orange, which happens to be my favorite herbal tea on the planet. On the way out I grabbed a cup of chamomile. There were kisses at the front of my 10am class too but I didn't take more. This was the day I remembered why I chose this week: next week is finals when I can't be compromised, and the week after is Solstice.

It wasn't until day 5 that I started fantasizing about off-cleanse food. Cheese bagels with asiago cheese-flavored cream cheese, Annie's macaroni and cheese from a box, Caesar salad, Indian curry. And coffee, oh my, I would love my coffee back (funny enough, I haven't thought much about pot in the course of all this). Yet it was in such a way that if someone put it front of me, I'd feast my eyes and my nose and not be tempted at all to put it in my mouth. This was the first raw day, and it was just so hard to eat enough. Coming to dinner and realizing our only chance to top off our calories and get some protein was avocado and a shit-ton of seeds on the salad... well, okay, it works, but geez, no rice and beans even.

It's now day 6. It's not a moment to moment struggle or anything, but I'm ready for this shit to be over. Honestly, I don't particularly feel cleansed - I feel nutritionally depleted. I need some fucking protein (among, I'm sure, other things). My strength in my workouts has been on the decline this week, and I just hope the bananas and almonds I'm going to eat today will pump me up for the Bikram class we're gonna go to this afternoon. I have lost a ton of weight, but I'm not saying how much until tomorrow when I weigh in officially, because I know it's largely bullshit, that is to say, water that was attached to salt.

Today is one more raw day, and then tomorrow will be the juice fast until dinner. I'm actually looking forward to the juice fast a bit, it's just so extreme, I think I can't help but enjoy it for that reason. Also, I'll know that at the end of the day I get to eat Tofurky and yams, and it will be amazing-delicious. Until tomorrow...

Late weigh-in and first day of the cleanse

Yesterday I weighed in at 147.6 pounds and 31.1% body fat.

I went to a Bikram class and got the introductory package, as planned. I went to my mom's birthday dinner, which was Ethiopian food, and had this yummy bread called injera made from a gluten-free grain called teff. After dinner I had a psyllium shake, which was disgusting and should probably only be taken on an empty stomach, and some Cascara, to kick off the cleanse. We (my boyfriend is doing most of it with me) were too tired to wait an hour between the shake and Cascara, so we took them together, and I think the Cascara might have gotten absorbed by the psyllium because it didn't seem to have much effect, but we'll solve that later by taking the psyllium midday.

This morning I took a milk thistle and dandelion supplement and had a delicious rice cake with unsalted peanut butter and dried cranberries. I also had a piece of kombu (a kind of seaweed) steeped in hot water. I've had a little bit of a cold (just some sore throat/itchy nose in the morning) which I think is making me want salt more than would normally be the case. More than that, I'm feeling very low energy, which is partly because it's cold and probably mostly because I'm not having caffeine.

The official program, then, is this:

Liver support herbs with breakfast
At least 1 psyllium shake per day at any convenient time
Cascara sagrada before bed
Nothing with added salt, sugar, or oil (my boyfriend is allowing honey, I'm not)
No meat, eggs, dairy, or wheat
No mind-altering substances

Sunday-Wednesday: just wheat-free vegan
Thursday-Friday: raw food
Saturday: liquid fast until dinner (my boyfriend will just continue on raw)

Going back to Bikram yoga, and next semester plans

Today I got 147.8, another new low. I hope that it continues on its way down tomorrow for official weigh-in, although my period is coming up and sometimes that causes a loss and sometimes it causes a gain, so I don't know what will happen. That's not the main point of this post, though.

I want to start doing Bikram yoga again. I did Bikram for 2 years in high school - somewhere between daily and weekly, usually closer to daily, and I did a double (two classes in a day) maybe twice. I quit when I felt it was no longer rewarding, my academics were becoming more demanding (this was the beginning of junior year), and the teachers' answer to me was "come more often and work harder."

I've been back for a drop-in class at my old studio a couple of times since then. I also took a yoga class at my high school senior year, and have been taking yoga for P.E. credit all this semester. I do like yoga. The reasons I'm thinking of going back to Bikram are: first of all, the yoga class I'm taking is MW or TTh, which leaves you getting rusty over the weekend. Second, I'd like to exercise more on the weekends, and Bikram is a huge shot of calorie burn that would be useful for my weight loss efforts. Third, I like the two kinds of yoga for different reasons. I like Bikram because it is long, hard, HOT, regimented and predictable. I like my morning school-yoga because, in contrast, the poses vary with each class, and it's more focused on breath and making transitions so that the poses flow into each other. Both approaches are valuable.

Most studios, including the one nearest my school and current place of residence, have an introductory offer of $29 for 30 days unlimited yoga. So I plan to sign up this weekend for that, which will give me lots of yoga over the end-of-semester and break, when I will have more time and less access to the campus gym. Then I'll go traveling, and when I get back for the semester I'll get a 10-class card and just come once a week. It's not what the Bikram cult recommends, but it's what'll work for me.

Which brings me to next semester's plans. I intend to keep going to my morning yoga class, and I'm going to start going to Bikram on the weekend - so far so good. The thing is, there are other PE classes that are interesting and could replace some of my cardio or supplement my pitiful level of strength training - but I can only register for one class at a time for credit. My yoga teacher says I don't have to be registered to come to class, so I think I will try to take one of the other PE classes. The second thing is that the class I most want to take - step aerobics - conflicts with my lab lecture Thursday night. I will have to ask my chem instructor, then, if he will approve the conflict and allow me to take it anyway. Another option is Pilates. So I'll get that worked out. Finally, I don't really know where to look for this, but I'd really like to find a place that will teach and then host dancing on a weekend night, and go with my boyfriend regularly.

Thursdays

148.2 is a new low. It's odd - I don't get to do my hard workouts for the week until Thursday and Friday, but I usually start showing my losses for the week on Thursday morning. Will I break into the 147's by Saturday? Stay tuned.

Diet is going well this week

So far, I am proud of my diet this week. It has been good quality and my calorie counts have been 1740, 1335, and 1500. Today is planned between 1310-1510 (depending on whether someone brings snack to my conference class) and tomorrow is planned at 1415. My strategy has been to eat a fairly low-calorie (~300), but delicious and balanced breakfast, bring two snacks that together would constitute a balanced meal (combined ~500), but eat them separately at about 11am and 3pm so I don't get "bogged down" or distracted by lunch, and then eat a larger, balanced dinner (~500). If I'm doing cardio in the morning, I'll bring an extra post-workout snack and reduce calories in other places. Altogether this adds up to 1300, which leaves room for the 15 here and 10 there that go over the targets, for a coffee-with-milk I didn't plan on, or for a random cake to appear in front of me.

... I didn't talk about the cake yet, did I? On Monday, I walked into my 10am class and there was a half-eaten cake at the front of the room. No explanation was given. My instructor didn't say anything about it at all. Before he started lecturing someone from the back of the room came up and spooned some of it into a jar, so after class, I broke off one bite for what I called 50 calories. By 2pm when I had another class in the same room, it was gone. I have no idea why it was there.

So hopefully this week will go well and show results. I am certainly pushing enough deficit to merit them, and I will get to work out hard tomorrow and Friday. Then it's my mom's birthday, yummy dinner, and next week I start the cleanse! I'm excited about that for the most part, although it will be hard to stop using caffeine and pot. Hopefully determination and elation from the restricted diet and detoxing will carry me through.

Late weigh-in and more "new plan"

Yesterday I was 149.8 pounds and 32.1% fat. It's true that by the numbers I should have gained about 0.2 pounds this week, but not a whole pound, so I'm calling it largely water fluctuation.

However, I've decided I need to re-tune. In this vein, a few things:

First, go back to really paying attention to my dietary quality. This morning I again ate an egg on toast with half an orange and a glass of milk, which is basically my ultimate yummy-healthy breakfast. No more leaving out the complex carbs, or leaving out the protein, or eating junk food for a while.

Second, I'm going to do a cleanse/fast from the 5th to the 11th. It will involve liver detoxing herbs, psyllium shakes and Cascara sagrada each day, starting after dinner on the 4th. There will be no mind-altering substances and no foods with added salt, sugar or oil throughout. The diet will be vegan for four days, raw vegan for two days, and liquid fast on the last day until breaking for dinner. Hopefully this will a) jump start my weight loss again, b) be fun/get me high, and c) produce the benefits people usually cleanse for. I picked the particular week because my mom's birthday is the 4th, so I will be going out to dinner, but the week after has half a week of school, so by the time the harder part starts I won't have those responsibilities to deal with.

Third, it's time to tighten down again on the calories. I have three weeks and change until Solstice and I do believe I can lose 3 pounds in that time. If the cleanse has its hoped-for effect, I may be able to push it to 5. I won't sweat it too hard (literally) on weekends, because it's hard to resist snacking, hard to get out for exercise, and rest & repair time is important. However, I will insist on staying beneath the magic 1888 and maintaining quality on those weekend days and think about trying to get a run in on Saturdays. On weekdays, I want to keep calories really buckled down by eating a good breakfast, bringing a light lunch to be eaten early and an afternoon snack or 2 large snacks, depending on how you want to view it, as I was talking about recently. Exercise will happen everyday, which shouldn't founder now that the below-freezing mornings have gone away. The goal is to have a 500-700 deficit every weekday, one way or another. I hope to be able to maintain diet between 1400-1600 with 200-500 cals of exercise, for a total range of 550-1050 deficit (my maintenance level being about 1950 right now).

The last 15 pounds

People always say the last 10-20 pounds are the hardest. Yadda yadda. Evidently it's true. So why is there such a dearth of information on losing them - or else, it parrots the advice for just starting out?

The thing is, it's easy to lose 15 pounds. It's incredibly easy to modify your diet and exercise habits when they are not very good. You can lose 15 pounds just by cutting out soda, if you drink soda every day. You can lose 15  pounds just by taking a walk every day, if you're not active. And if you go onto any internet forum looking to lose 15 pounds, you'll get these suggestions, as well as cut out fast food, junk food, add cardio 3-5 times a week, avoid processed carbs, eat protein with every meal, and don't eat things dripping in fat but don't avoid it like the plague either because it's filling. Oh, and eat 4-6 times a day.

The trouble is, how do you lose 15 pounds when you've already lost 35 pounds? How do you make a change that your body will respond to when you're already doing most of the right things, certainly all the obvious things? How do you cram in more exercise when it's already putting a strain on your responsibilities to do your now-regular workout? How do you cut your calories further when even with well-studied macronutrient ratios you are starting to get hungry? And how do you get people on the internet to pay attention to the fact that you've already been at this for a while and thus don't need the idiot tips?

Thanksgiving convos and other recent experiences

Went to my boyfriend's best friend's parent's house for dinner last night. I didn't count calories because I didn't want to be doing mental arithmetic all night, so I just gave it an upper-limit estimate of 3000 calories. There were some cheesy appetizers, a plate of actual dinner that was moderate (probably not more than 600 cals), a couple glasses of wine and 2 mugs of cider with brandy, and not even a whole piece of pie because I was too stuffed by then, but also some chocolates and caramels.

The aforementioned parents have been on a diet recently. It was actually quite strange to sit there and hear them talking about their diet. Apparently they've been doing MediFast for about a month and have lost 14 and 13 pounds respectively. I was pretty quiet through most of the discussion, but I asked a few questions, said I didn't really like the idea of prepackaged, engineered food, and volunteered that through simple calorie counting I've lost 35 pounds in 24 weeks.

It did make me think about how I need a kick start. Recently it's been hard to keep my calories down. When I exercise more I get more hungry, and I'm often hungry not long after I've eaten what has been a normal meal for the past several months. The past three days, however, have been instructive.

On Tuesday, I started off with a sensible breakfast, packed a wrap, and planned to get a coffee at school. When I went for my coffee, however, I got suckered by the donuts and got a maple bar, which turned out to have a colossal 460 calories. Eating when I'm not actually hungry screws everything up, so I ended up eating my wrap during my first class. I then had nothing else with me to eat, so I subsisted until dinnertime on more coffee. After dinner, I was still SO hungry, and also had been wanting ice cream for about a week, so I finally said fuck it and ate most of a pint of ice cream.

On Wednesday, I felt like all my bad choices had been spent the previous day, and found no difficulty in achieving a low calorie count. I had breakfast, brought two snacks to school, ate them when I was hungry, and worked out after class (usually I work out in the morning, but I switched up my schedule on account of the weather). Then I went out to dinner and had a salad. My calorie count was very low and my deficit was quite good.

Yesterday, of course, I ate tons because I wanted some of everything and I expected that. But I was reminded of how heavy and full and really not so pleasant it is to overeat.

So, the take home lessons are: I don't want to go back to overeating, I am still capable of eating low-calorie comfortably, and maybe if I have a frustrating craving, giving in really will get it out of my system. The questions are: why did I get derailed by a donut right after a perfectly good breakfast, and is it possible for me to schedule things so I work out in the afternoon?

I need to find some information on set-points and how to re-set them. I think it's pretty clear that my body is not used to weighing less than 150 pounds, it really never has since reaching my current height, and while the first 35 pounds were easy, now it's saying "hey, WTF are you doing?" It's equally clear that borderline-overweight, over 30% fat is not a state in which I'm going to just leave myself. If my set-point is between 150-165 pounds, then my set-point is screwed up, and there must be a way to fix it.

And I need to pick some kind of kick-start. One thing I can do is re-institute stricter calorie targets and try to take advantage of the good day I had this week as a model: eat breakfast, 2 snacks, workout to boost my endorphins later in the day and moderate dinner. But I'm also thinking of something that can barrel through these next, say, 5 pounds. I know low-carb diets are supposed to be a good kick-start, and I've read people who say they maintained everything they lost, despite the fact that the only theory I've heard about the quick beginning loss is glycogen depletion. MediFast is expensive as fuck, but the general idea of designer diet food is another possibility. And finally, I'm thinking about a "cleanse." Winter, admittedly, is not the easiest time to do this, but cleanses are helpful in a number of ways: they usually force low calories, they involve foods that are high in water, fiber, and antioxidants, all of which are healthy, and they supposedly clean out your system. I'm skeptical of the idea that there's anything hanging out in your colon that can be cleaned out, but that's where many of the claims lie. I am much more sympathetic to the idea that by giving your body only light, unprocessed plant foods, and also certain detoxifying herbs, metabolic processes are given a rest and made more efficient. So that's another idea.

On Thanksgiving I am grateful for...

The plentiful society I live in that makes it possible for weight to even be an issue.

The success I have had so far, losing 35 pounds in 24 weeks.

The availability of delicious fruits and vegetables that make this journey so much more pleasurable.

The availability of so much information through the internet, which makes the process so entertaining.

All the things I am learning about my body, mind, and culture as I do this.

Magic number: 1888

That is the number of calories, according to my current formulas, that are needed to sustain my ordinary level of activity without any formal exercise at my target weight.

Let's just try to stay below that number each day for now.

(Nevermind tomorrow.)

Ew

I just ate a maple bar and looked up the calories. I thought it would be something like 300.

It's fucking 460.

Combined with the fact that I forgot my gym clothes as I went out the door and was NOT going to turn around and get them once I was halfway to school (the ground is icy today), looks like it'll be another wash today. Why did it suddenly get so hard?

New tack

I'm trying a new tack which hopefully will help me both cut calories and be more academically productive.

That is to replace my large lunch and 2 small snacks with 2 larger snacks. That way, there is no "lunch" meal to distract me and I can use all my between-class time to do homework and the like. Then, I can have something like a bar in the morning and a smoothie in the afternoon, and I will hopefully cut my total at-school calorie intake that way, while leaving nutritious dinner and breakfast unaffected.

Incidentally, I saw this recently:

http://calorielab.com/news/2010/11/20/twinkie-diet-results/

It's hilariously stupid, of course, but it makes me smile and want to try it. I remember in high school one time our English teacher had an alcohol-influenced idea at a party and had us all write list of 100 things to do before we die, and one thing I wrote on mine was to follow a series of weird diets, with an example given: 'like "foods that start with vowels".' Anyway, this would be a good time for something like that, wouldn't it? Obviously not during this season, but during the mostly holiday-free stretch after the end of January, maybe. I could use it as my aid to not getting bored in the last 10 pounds. Just come up with 10 weird diets and try to lose a pound on each one - the guiding principle, of course, being calorie restriction within the arbitrary framework of the diet coupled with continuation of good exercise habits. I can think of three already: foods that start with vowels, the Twinkie diet, and SlimFast. The research aspect would be seeing how each one facilitated or hindered sticking to the diet and feeling healthy in the process. Oh my God I'm such a dork. I may actually do this.

Weekly weigh-in

I'm getting rather tired of all the archiving I do here of food journals and exercise log and everything, so if someone starts following who is interested in seeing it, I'll consider posting it again, but for now I'm going to stop because it's kind of tedious.

Today I weigh 148.8 pounds at 32.1% body fat. That's 1.0 pound down from last week, so, good, I guess. I have to remind myself not to jump my mind ahead the whole 15 pounds but instead to just focus on losing 5 pounds before Solstice. If I pay attention, that's really not too slow to notice. It would have been a few months ago, but each pound matters more when you're lighter. In 140s, 5 pounds is actually a relatively visible amount.

My lean body mass, as I said recently, seems to be stabilizing. If it stays the same as it is now the whole way down, I will hit my final weight goal at around 26% body fat. That's not too bad. Only a little bit of further loss, or reshaping, would be necessary at that point.

I've really been slacking off on my pull-ups - I haven't done any in probably a month. It's hard to find the time when I have my yoga classes and try to push the cardio on other days. However, I have made some progress in push-ups, because yoga involves plenty of plank work. I haven't been recording my extra practice, though, in part because I do very few at a time. I need to get back to recording every strength exercise I do - even if it's only a few push-ups - so as to keep my motivation and keep doing them regularly.

An inflection point

The title is a little bit of a math reference. When a graph changes from concave to convex or back, that is, when its second derivative changes sign, that's an inflection point. The function itself may not go from positive to negative, and it doesn't even change from going-up to going-down, but it's still a perceptible, subtle change.

That's what it's like lately. Things are changing about this weight loss process, just a little.

The first thing I've noticed is that, before, I was losing about 2/3 fat to 1/3 lean mass. For the last 7 or so pounds, my lean mass has remained constant on average. This makes sense because I'm now past my lowest previous weight. When I was coming down from 185 to 165 and even to 155, I was losing excess skin, superfluous vascular tissue, weight-bearing muscle that was no longer needed. But the amount of lean mass I have now (about 99-103 pounds) is an amount my body has had for a LONG time and has good uses for regardless of my fat level.

Thus it makes sense that I'm also losing weight more slowly. When my average deficit is about 500, I scrape off a pound in a week, because I'm not getting extra credit.

And who knew that exercising could make you more hungry? Not me! Until now, that wasn't the case. Unless I pushed myself hard all day like on that bike trip, a good workout wouldn't make any difference for how much food I wanted to eat. Now, I'm noticing that I am hungrier on days when I exercise a lot. If I exercise not at all (maintenance intake ~1975) I can deal with eating only 1500-1600 calories. If I burn 200 calories (MC 2175) I'm good for 1600-1700 calories. If I burn 600 calories (MC 2575) then I feel okay on 1800-1900 calories. Obviously this is still a net benefit, but there was a time when I would eat the same number of calories whether I burned 0 or 600 in exercise.

Being hungry after exercise makes it harder to push the same kind of deficit I could before, as well as the fact that I'm burning fewer calories to begin with. You can only scale back your intake so much - for me, between the mental demands of school and the social occasionality of meals, it's not practical to eat fewer than 1500-1600 calories on a typical day. It's starting to strain a little. I haven't had ice cream in almost a month (I don't count the spoonful on spice cake at my parents' dinner, that's not the same), or many other treats recently. All the time I put it off, saying I won't have ice cream today, I'll have it some other time, because that would be 150 or 300 calories cutting into my deficit, which is certainly not 800, and even if it's 650, wouldn't I rather have 650 than just 500?

And mentally, my body image is in a strange spot. I feel SO skinny some respects, yet I observe the fat that remains. My collarbone is concave above, concave below, and sticks up a little around the shoulder. I go to massage my neck and feel one, two, three, FOUR vertebrae protruding in what almost seems like an unnatural way. When I lay on my back, my hipbones feel scarily close to the surface of the skin. Yet I'm still 32% fat. My belly still squishes into rolls when I slouch. My thighs and butt still ripple when I walk (not that you can tell when I'm wearing pants, but there's a full length mirror in the locker room).

Just have to have patience and perseverance. 5 more pounds by Solstice. Take what I get for January. A few more by the end of February, and 5 more before spring break, brings me right up to goal, right? Part of me wants to go on some sort of extreme diet, say, Slimfast and super caffeine pills, or at least a highly regimented, planned diet. I probably would if not for social concerns. But my boyfriend already thinks I'm too inflexible about food. If he would offer me high-calorie food at 8am instead of 8pm when I've already eaten most of my calories for the day, he might get a different impression.

Normal weight, overweight

Normal weight, overweight, normal weight, overweight...

It's just a number. In reality, the difference between 149.6 and 150.2 is completely trivial.

I think it's hilarious that I'm at the "overweight" boundary, with >30% body fat, wearing a size 6.

I went to the gym this morning and it wasn't enough. I burned a fine amount of calories, but I wanted to keep going, I want to exercise for at least an hour to burn through all the energy. After 32 minutes I had to hop off the elliptical and it felt like I hardly did anything. At lunch I went for a walk, it was nice.

And then I come home and my boyfriend has made dessert. He pulls it out after dinner and it is... peanut butter fudge. I look at it, raise my eyebrow in amusement, run and get my calculator. He tells me what went into it. I calculate and... FIVE THOUSAND CALORIES in the whole pan. 330 for a piece about 1-1/2 inches square. It's amazing you can even get calories that concentrated. Oh well, yum.

MESO GOAL #2 MET - plus waist!

Finally, today I weigh 149.6 pounds! SOO amazing. I am now Cute Normal-Weight Girl! Good superhero name, huh? I've also met my waist goal of 29 inches. Now it's to be expected that I'll waver a bit - I'd like to avoid bouncing above 150 for morning weights as much as possible because the 150s are lame, but I'll certainly be seeing them any other time I step on the scale for a bit. After that inevitable period though, MAY THEY NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN, except possibly in case of pregnancy some years from now.

I can hardly believe this. Not only am I not overweight anymore, but I'm only 15 pounds away from my original, way back in the past weight loss goal, which is exactly how much weight I was able to lose easily then. If circumstances were equivalent (which they aren't, being 35 pounds into the process already) I could just implement one of my qualitative tricks, wait 3-4 months, and be done.

I'm really eager to get away from the overweight boundary now, so I think I'll be extra motivated over these next 5 pounds. I obviously can't peel off 5 pounds before Thanksgiving, but I should be able to get down to the 148, maybe high 147 range. I definitely hope to be below 145 by Solstice and close to 140 by January 4.

Why January 4? Because I will be traveling! I'm going to Europe between January 4-19, just over 2 weeks, which will give an excellent opportunity to test my intuitive-eating skills. I won't be weighing myself because I won't have a scale, and I won't be calorie counting because I will undoubtedly be eating meals the contents of which I cannot monitor. I'm still debating over whether to keep a general log of what I eat. I will also not be able to do the cardio I usually do, but can definitely work on strength exercises, and may do a lot of walking. I'll definitely have to come up with a plan for that before I leave. Then, it's a matter of exercising my ability to think "what's a reasonable portion of this? Which of these foods do I really want and which ones might I skip? What, in a general sense, have I eaten recently? What does my body feel like it needs?" Two weeks, then, is long enough for the effects to build up and I'll see whether I've largely lost, gained, or maintained - but if I gain, it won't be too much damage, not gonna gain 5 pounds or anything.

I've restyled the blog to celebrate this new goal. This is definitely the more important of my two meso goals, and may end up feeling more important than even the final goal. From here on out, everything is new! Every new low I hit will be the lowest low I've ever seen (at this height).  I'm already thinner by inches and sizes than I've ever been - though let us not forget that I'm still over 30% body fat. Anyway, looking forward just can be nothing but good at this point.

Good eats, weekly summary, and sshh don't get excited yet

I wouldn't have said anything if it hadn't been my official weigh-in day, but today I weigh 149.8 lbs and 31.7% fat.

Which means that yes, actually technically barely, I am normal weight. And I am also still 0.2 pounds above my meso goal. I kind of don't believe it, though. I like the .6 goals because they give a little more buffer against popping back up over the tens-place switch. So no more on this today.

Quick stats:  Average kcals/day 1866, 4 cardio, 2 yoga, average estimated balance -425, -1.0 lb.


Now I've got to catch up on some things I didn't have time to finish a post about this week. Thursday morning, I ate this:

1 egg fried in 1/2 tsp olive oil on a slice of toast (70+20+90=180)
1 orange, cut into half-rounds (100)
8 oz skim milk (90)
8 oz black coffee

Delicious, no? Funny thing is, at 370 calories, it's on the upper end of what I usually eat for breakfast, but it looks like such a typical "dieter's breakfast." (Of course, it would be even more so if I had just the eggwhites and cooked it with some kind of fat free spray, but I like egg yolks and fat is filling). Anyway, I really enjoyed it. Then I went to the gym and burned *659* calories while listening to my Sansa. Thursday morning was pretty much awesome.

For dinner I made tofu and I diced and cooked a turnip my boyfriend had in the crisper. I've probably had turnip before, but only in a soup or something - I didn't really know what it was going to taste like, but I figured it might be a little like a parsnip, especially since I tend to mix up the two words. So I tasted it... it was kind of funny, so I put some butter and salt and pepper on it. It was pretty good that way, but it still had this funny, bitter-spicy note that started to catch up with my tastebuds toward the end of the portion. I think I don't particularly care for turnips, but maybe there's a better way to prepare them.

Friday night, I made acorn squash with butter and brown sugar, then put some leftover rice and crumbled pecans in the hollow. It was amazing. Sometimes acorn squash isn't so good, and I don't really know how to pick out a good one, but they're in season right now, so statistics should be on my side.

So, I like skim milk, coffee, and fruit with a meager protein/carb combo for breakfast, and I should definitely start making more squash. The boyfriend has been gone, but he's coming back today and we'll go shopping and get lots of fruits and vegetables. A few of my new dietary goals are to eat fruit with every breakfast, eat vegetables with every dinner, and to buy produce from the five pigment-antioxidant color groups: red/pink, yellow/orange, green, blue/purple/black, and white/brown.

Activity:

S: 0
S: Outdoor run (2.0 mi)
M: 1 hr yoga
T: Elliptical (15+10m,165+115) and rowing (7:15, 85c)
W: 1 hr yoga
T: Elliptical (42.5m, 527c) and rowing (10.5m, 132c)
F: Elliptical (40.5m, 500c)

Food:

Friday 11/12

Yogurt, granola, and raisin parfait and coffee (130+140+130=400)
Banana and skim milk (100+90=190)
Egg, cheese, and vegetable sandwich (140+40+110+30+180=500)
Babybel cheese (70)
Werther's candy (20)
Skim milk (90)
1/2 acorn squash with butter, brown sugar, black rice and almonds (85+100+45+70+100=400)
Butter and sugar (100+45=145)
Skim milk (90)

400+190+500+70+20+90+400+145+90=1905

Thursday 11/11

Egg on toast, glass of skim milk, an orange, and black coffee (90+90+90+100=370)
Apple with peanut butter (100+200=300)
Tuna garden salad and 1/2 cheese sandwich (20+35+150+90+110=405)
Seasoned popcorn (165)
Bottled Thai coffee (150)
Babybel cheese (70)
Tofu, turnip buttered with salt & pepper, and chard with vinegar (200+40+35+50+10+5=340)

370+300+405+165+150++70+340=1800

Wednesday 11/10

Toast and yogurt with honey (90+130+30=350)
Tangerine (40)
Coffee with skim and simple syrup (10+5=15)
Apple with peanut butter and milk (100+200+80+45=425)
Stonewall Jerquee (165)
Lentils, black rice, tomato sauce, and cheese (130+160+50+110=450)
Seasoned popcorn (50)
Babybel cheese and 1 potato chip (70+10=80)

350+40+15+425+165+450+50+80=1575

Tuesday 11/9

Egg and cheese on toast and a tangerine (90+90+110+40=330)
Almonds (200)
Dry cocoa mix and 100 calorie bar (75+100=175)
Chicken Caesar salad (550)
Pasta with sauce, tofu, and chard with balsamic vinegar (200+50+200+20+10+5=485)

330+200+175+550+485=1740

Monday 11/8

Granola and milk (140+160=300)
Apple (100)
TLC sandwich (430)
Cookies and fig newtons (225+140=365)
Lentils and black rice with cheese (130+160+165=455)

300+100+430+365+455=1650

Sunday 11/7

Chard & cheese scrambled eggs, toast, 1/2 grapefruit, and coffee with milk & sugar (140+100+10+90+30+45=415)
Tangerine (40)
Greek yogurt and honey (130+60=190)
Pinto beans and cheese (130+70=200)
Dinner with parents (1770)
    3 glasses wine and 1 vodka elderflower drink (500)
    3.5 slices baguette with cheese (280)
    Cauliflower/cheese/egg/potato casserole, salad, and bread (600+75+100=775)
    1 chocolate, apple spice cake and ice cream (65+75+75=215)

415+40+190+200+1770=2615

Saturday 11/6

1.3 bagels with flavored cream cheese (350+130=480)
Clif builder bar (270)
Vanilla Coke (250)
Nibbles while making dinner (100)
Pasta and asparagus with garlic cheese sauce (400+50+230=680)

480+270+250+100+680=1780

Morning sucked

So I got up early to see my boyfriend off (he's flying transcontinental to see a friend) and I thought I'd leave early to get to the gym. I wanted to listen to the whole album Nevermind while ellipticizing. However, as soon as I stepped outside I saw it was raining, so I had to come in and change into rain gear. I pulled on the pants and switched my pockets out with the raincoat, which ruined most of my head start. Then I took off.

About halfway there I realized that I hadn't brought my workout clothes to the gym yet this week, so I had to double back and get them, making me actually late. I decided I definitely didn't have time for the whole album now, but I'd do 30-40 minutes with a "go-list". I got to the gym pretty dry, the rain having lightened up, and changed into my clothes. I looked in the pocket of my coat for my Sansa... and realized my raincoat doesn't have a breast pocket, so I hadn't switched it out of my other coat. I thus HAD NO MUSIC AT ALL, AGAIN.

To make it worse, I'm on my period and was sore from some killer ab work we did in yoga yesterday. So it was hard to go intensely. Nonetheless, I was determined to make up for all that crappiness in some way, and I burned 365 calories. It's not amazing, but it's more than yoga. I also did THREE KNEE PUSH-UPS. So I think it's fair to say I can do knee push-ups now.

Dinner with the 'rents

Holy crap. I always eat/drink a lot at dinner parties, but this time I ate enough calories for an entire day (1770). Thank God I went for a run this morning, so my surplus for the day was only in the 400s.

On the bright side, my stepdad looked pointedly at my jeans and asked "are you continuing to lose weight? You're looking great." Apparently I get shout-outs every 15 pounds. YAY!

Another thing that's nice about losing weight, at least when you have a little money, is that you have a good reason to buy cute new clothes. I got some sweatpants on my way back home that I'll be wearing to yoga tomorrow morning. I used to only buy clothes once or twice a year, when I'd get $50 or $100 in giftcards for my birthday and Christmas, but it's nice to just go get new clothes when the ones I have start to suck.

That's all. Goodnight!

Weekly summary

Is it time for another weekly summary already? Today I'm 150.8 pounds and 33.1% fat.

Weekly stats: average kcals/day 1878, 3 cardio, 1 yoga, 1 miscellaneous, average daily balance -287, -2.6 lbs.

Activity:

Sa: 0
Su: 0
M: Extra trip to campus
Tu: Elliptical (20m, 252c)
W: 1 hr yoga
Th: Rowing (10m, 117c) and elliptical (20m, 250c)
F: Elliptical (20m, 261c)

Food journal:

Friday 11/5

Chocolate oatmeal (150+115=265)
Pasta with chicken, green beans, and a small apple (200+340+25+80=645)
Cookie (125)
Rice, beans, and corn with cream cheese and hot sauce (160+115+75+100=450)
Cream cheese (100)

265+645+125+450+100=1585

Thursday 11/4

Chard and cheese omelette and 1 toast (140+110+20+90=360)
Tangerine (40)
TLC sandwich (180+220+30=430)
Chocolate milk (340)
Chocolate (55)
Chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, and green beans (340+100+50+15+50=555)

360+40+430+340+55+555=1780

Wednesday 11/3

Oatmeal with chocolate and milk (150+85+40=275)
1/2 PB and honey sandwich (90+95+20=205)
Pasta salad and a tangerine (200+90+30+40=360)
Vegan jerky and Tootsie pop (80+60=140)
Cinnamon sugar apples (45+50=95)
Rice and beans with cheese, onions and tomatoes (160+115+220+30=525)
Coffee with milk and touch of sugar (40+5=45)

275+205+360+140+95+525+45=1645

Tuesday 11/2

Scrambled eggs with onions and toast with cream cheese (140+40+10+90+100=390)
Apple (100)
TOC sandwich and a tangerine (180+220+30+40=470)
Strawberries and honey (50+30=80)
Mini Twix (50)
Peanut butter (125)
Pasta with sauce and sauteed tofu and lettuce with dressing (400+50+120+10+45=625)

390+100+470+80+50+125+625=1840

Monday 11/1

Granola with milk (140+160=300)
Greek yogurt with honey and strawberries (130+60+25=215)
Cream cheese roll-up and tangerine (180+100+40=320)
Carrots and hummus (35+65=100)
Halloween candy (105+260+100+70+60=595)
Falafel, rice, cheese, and tomato sauce (200+160+110+30=500)

300+215+320+100+595+500=2030

Sunday 10/31

Chard and cheese omelette and coffee with milk and sugar (175+25+100+50+20+50=420)
Chocolate bar (510)
Ramen (380)
Peanut butter roll-up and milk (180+190+160=530)
Miso with tofu (30+100=130)
2 shots whiskey (205)
Bread and cheese (90+110=200)

420+510+380+530+130+205+200=2375

Saturday 10/30

Breakfast out (870)
    Vegetable, cheese, and egg crepe (200+300+100+50=650)
    Mixed fruit (100)
    2 cups sweetened creamed coffee (100)
    Andes mint (20)
Pecans and string cheese (50+80=130)
Black Boss Porter (280)
Pizza (300+25+175+55=555)
Coffee with milk and sugar (55)

870+130+280+555+55=1890

New developments

I hit a new low today (152.0) and my body fat is remaining relatively low (33.5%). I'm very very close to normal weight, which is exciting! I was normal weight by a hair once before at my current height - that was right after losing 10 pounds in 9 days due to illness. At this rate, I'll expect to break 30% around 140.

My mp3 player apparently arrived yesterday, but I guess neither of us went in the front door so I didn't know. Oh well, I'm already on campus and if I went home to pick it up and add music, I wouldn't have time to work out at all. In fact, I already may not have time, blast it - where did the last hour go? At any rate, I now have music-ability. 500 calorie workouts, here I come.

Not just my size, but my shape is changing; I can tell from my pants. I put on the free-box 8s this morning, and ended up switching back into my jeans because they were annoying. In one place, they are indistinguishable in relative size from how they were when I first starting wearing them. In another place, they're developing loose pockets. Altogether, they're kind of starting to sag.

Today I Googled "fit female body" and when I did not get the results I was looking for, I elaborated and asked "what does a fit female body look like?" Still few results. Why is it so hard to find? I just want to see examples of healthy, fit women. Not Olympic athletes, not fashion models, just everyday women who are lean and from whom I could pick one who has a similar frame to me as a reference for what I can strive for.

Reorientation day 2

I went to the gym this morning like I said I would. I was a little late getting out and I don't have the patience for much more than 20 minutes of elliptical without music anyway, so 20 minutes it was, which isn't the stellar 500 calorie workout I was doing before, but it's a fine chunk to slap on top of as much of a dietary deficit as I care to create.

I ate 1840 calories. With just what I was planning to eat for dinner, it could have been 1640, but I was still hungry so, after letting it sit for about 10 minutes, I decided to go ahead and have another serving of pasta. My overall balance was -408 calories. It was nice to not overthink it - I ate when I was hungry, modified my plans due to being hungry, and even indulged spontaneously in a Twix (the big bowl of candy is gone, but there are still stragglers about campus). I think I was getting a little emotionally attached to the numbers, but not counting my calories until after I've eaten them, or at least committed myself to them because that's what I have with me to eat, is really calming. It puts the focus on eating reasonably. I do want to push these last four or so pounds to meso-goal, because I really want to be normal-weight, but in terms of body image I'm basically content to not really worry about it and just let the pounds fade away, as long as I keep making progress. I've got better things to think about than whether I'm eating 1600 or 1800 calories.

Day 1 of reorientation

Well, on my first day of getting-my-shit-back-together, there was a bowl of Halloween candy in the Psych lounge. Then more Halloween candy was the snack in my conference class where we bring snacks. I admit, I ate quite a bit of Halloween candy. That's okay. I hadn't had any yet this year, I'm sure it was less than I've eaten in years past, and in a day or two it will all go away.

What's surprising is that after a couple tiny boxes of Milk Duds, a full-size 3 Musketeers, fun size Butterfinger and Crunch, and a Tootsie pop, I still ended up with a deficit for the day - a margin-of-error slim deficit, but still, I was expecting to go way over. I didn't count my calories until the end of the day, instead just making food that seemed good and reasonable last night and bringing it to school. If, instead of 595 calories of candy, I had eaten 200 calories of a more typical snack (sometimes cookies, but sometimes fruit and nuts or caprese crackers), my calorie count for the day would have been 1635, which is impressive to me. Actually, I might have eaten something after dinner as I'm still a little hungry, but as it is I'm inclined not to because then I WOULD have a surplus for the day. Then again, I might not have been hungry after dinner had I not eaten the candy, because we all know sugar actually makes you more hungry.

I didn't exercise, but I have a really good excuse for that. Today was actually my yoga day, but I skipped because I REALLY needed the sleep after being woken up every couple of hours by the consequences of my boyfriend's late-night Halloween party attendance. After that I basically didn't have time because of classes and reading I needed to finish. Tomorrow I'm definitely going into the gym in the morning, and I'm eagerly awaiting my Sansa. I really think that once I can pair exercise with music again this thing will just kick off and I'll hardly have to think about how much I'm eating.

Interesting thing is, while I've been struggling with my diet, my weight has looked like a sine wave but my body fat has evidently dropped. I noticed my percentages were going down much faster than they were before, and my lean mass was increasing when my weight increased, so I figured there was a water retention element but I didn't know if my fat weight was going down or not because that's not what I track in my spreadsheet. So I just changed the formula a little and looked at the past few weeks. While the net change in my weight has been very little, I've definitely lost between 2-4 pounds of fat. So that's good! I don't know what I could have been doing to promote lean mass, since I've REALLY been slacking on my strength training, but maybe it lends support to the idea that I should be eating more and exercising well at this point.

Getting a little difficult

I'm increasingly falling off this wagon. My weight for the last week has looked like a sine wave. I've been exercising less, and having more and more days when I give in, say "fuck it" and go ahead and eat 2300 calories, without a good excuse.

It might be that I'm more stressed out. My other questionable coping strategies have certainly been on the rise. And nothing is going to change about that, so it'll just have to bugger off.

I'm certainly exercising less due to not having my music. I stopped doing cardio on yoga days because of genuine obligations, but I've been spotty about my cardio on other days too since my Shuffle broke. I ordered a Sansa yesterday though, so in a week or so I should back to pushing 300-500 cals a session on the elliptical while rocking out and getting my daily dose of cerebellar stimulation.

And finally, maybe I'm not eating enough. Maybe, now that I'm at a lower weight, my body is more sensitive to dietary deficit. It doesn't seem that hard if I'm in a good groove to eat 1400-1600 calories. But then there are the days when I'm pushing 1600 before dinner and I just go... gaaahh. Or when I'm on track to eat 1500, but come dinnertime I am just SO HUNGRY and figure I'd better eat what I want.

I know I had just switched to a lower-exercise, higher-diet plan, but I think I need to implement low-diet, high-exercise. I'm going to relax my standards and aim for 1600-1800 this week, and until further notice. That should still be a minor deficit, but hopefully more sustainable, and once I get my music back I can add dramatic amounts to this from exercise without increasing my appetite much. This is why exercise is important - way easier to burn 2500 calories and eat 1800 than to burn 2000 and eat 1300. Hopefully I'll feel better and be back to losing a solid pound-or-two-a-week within the next couple of weeks. Still hoping to break 150 before Thanksgiving.

Weekly summary

153.4 and 33.8% body fat.

Weekly stats: average kcals/day 1805, 2 cardio, 2 yoga, average daily balance -299, +0.2 lbs.

Activity log:
Sat: 0
Sun: 0
Mon: Outdoor run (2.0 mi)
Tue: 1 hr yoga
Wed: 0
Thurs: 1 hr yoga
Fri: Elliptical (28m, 303c)

One thing I'd just like to point out is that I think yesterday (Friday) was a great example of how to do a party. I anticipated that I would want to eat high calorie food and drink, so I minimized my calories during the day, but still ate several healthy, small meals. I also made sure to work out and racked up a couple of hundred negative calories there. Once I was there, I ate a bit of everything I wanted, but didn't mindlessly munch, and drank the perfect amount to get fairly silly with minimal hangover. I ended up with a surplus, but it was a small one due to my pre-emptive measures.

Food journal:

Friday 10/29

Buttered toasted bagel half, 2 eggs, and 1/2 grapefruit (110+50+180+30=370)
Rockfish, brussels sprouts, and rice (100+50+160=310)
100 calorie bar (100)
Bagel half with peanut butter and honey (110+95+30=235)
Cheesy bread, pizza, cookie, sushi, veggies, chips, and birthday cake (150+350+150+75+25+150+150=1000)
4 whiskey drinks with varying amounts of mixers (420+65+65+20=570)

370+310+100+1000+570=2585

Thursday 10/28

Oatmeal with dark chocolate, cinnamon, sugar, and milk (150+30+15+80=275)
Chocolate soymilk (130)
Rice and beans with cheese and tomatoes (160+115+110+40=425)
Leftover pasta and sauce (225)
Mixed nuts (85)
Rockfish, brussels sprouts, and potatoes (200+50+100=350)

275+130+425+225+85+350=1490

Wednesday 10/27

Bagel with egg patty and cheddar and chocolate (220+70+110+160=560)
Kale, potatoes, carrots and boiled egg with apple and grape salad (30+100+35+70+100+50=385)
2 cookies and Dr. Pepper (250+100=350)
1 slice pizza (300)
Rockstar energy drink (260)

560+385+350+300+260=1855

Tuesday 10/26

Oatmeal with dark chocolate, PB, sugar, and a glass of milk (150+55+95+15+160=475)
Apple (100)
Cheese and veggie wrap (180+165+30=375)
Honey green tea and 100 calorie bar (40+100=140)
Pasta with sauce and nutri-yeast and salad with cheese (300+50+50+20+165=585)
Balance bar (200)

475+100+375+140+585+200=1875

Monday 10/25

Grapes pre-run (50)
Bagel with cream cheese and 2 eggs (220+70+180=470)
Jolly Rancher (20)
Tuna, tomato and avocado wrap (180+75+40+100=395)
100 calorie bar (100)
Honey green tea, baby carrots and hummus (60+35+65=160)
Dark chocolate (55)
Tomato bean soup and cheese (250+165=425)

50+470+20+395+100+160+55+425=1665

Sunday 10/24

Yogurt and granola with grapes (140+45+50=235)
Milk, quesadilla with caramelized onions, and grapes (80+180+220+30+20+50=580)
Coffee with milk and sugar (40+20=60)
Peanut butter (95)
Tomato bean soup topped with avocado (250+50=300)
About half of some tuna and cheese (40+55=95)
100 calorie bar (100)

235+580+60+95+300+95+100=1565

Saturday 10/23

Grits with butter and 1/2 grapefruit (200+100+30=330)
Gorgonzola cheese (100)
Toast (220)
Grocery store samples (40)
Clif builder bar (270)
Mac and cheese with broccoli (310+45+30=385)
Dark chocolate, peanut butter, and milk (80+95+80=255)

330+100+220+40+270+385+255=1600

Froot n veg

Watch me eat 4 servings of fruits and vegetables in one meal:

Steam, adding in order:
1 oz baby carrots, chopped (or regular carrots, I just had leftovers from a group snack)
About 1 small potato, chopped
About 2 leaves Italian kale, cut into strips

In the boiling water cook:
1 egg, then cool in freezer and chop

Toss together and add a dash of salt.

In a separate container toss:
1 apple, chopped into small pieces
Heaping 1/2-cup grapes

Close containers, store in fridge overnight, toss in backpack in the morning, and microwave the veggie mixture at lunchtime. Voila: 4/5 for the day taken care of.

Superfluous weight

Sometimes you gain a pound because you binged for two days in a row. Other times you gain three pounds even though you ate your usual 1600 calories two days in a row, as well as the several days before. Don't we all love hormonally induced weight fluctuations.

NEED MUSIC

I REALLY need another mp3 player. Listening to music is SO important to my psychological health, yet I'm constantly forgetting it, plus music is distracting from certain kinds of studying, which limits the times I can listen. On the other hand, I'm way more willing to push on a boring machine like the elliptical, or go really hard, if I've got a nice beat to carry me along, resulting in more calories burned and more of the exercise high and other benefits. So when my Shuffle broke it really set me back. I could still be burning 400 calories in exercise 3 days a week, easy, if I had that thing.

I put it on my Christmas wishlist, but I don't know if I can wait that long. No, scratch that, of course I CAN wait that long, but I don't know if waiting for someone else to buy it for me is worth the delay in physical benefits and the really quite significant psychological differences I could ride out the semester with. Time to look at prices, I think.

MICROGOAL and weekly summary

I did it! Today I weigh 153.2 at 34.7% body fat. I was 153.0 yesterday, but since I'd lost 2 pounds in one day I wanted to give it another day and make sure it stuck. So I've now lost over 30 pounds, and have less than 20 to go. I'm pretty happy about that and I'm also SO CLOSE to my meso goal, the big big step of being no longer "overweight". It seems like it's taking a long time, but at the same time it doesn't seem so long ago that I'd only lost 7 pounds and wondered if anyone would notice (not on a 180 pound person doofus). Well, rawr! I've got about three and a half pounds left so I think that can happen in 2 or 3 weeks? I will definitely be in the 140s by Thanksgiving.

Quick stats: average kcals/day 1671, 2 yoga, 1 mixed, 1 very long walk, avg balance -435, -2.6 lbs.

Exercise:
Sa: 0
Su: 0
M: 0
T: Mixed CSF workout (40 min, 200cc)
W: 15 min yoga
Th: 1/2 hr yoga and 5 hr walking-trip
F: 0

Food:

Friday 10/22

Eggs and potatoes (175+150=325)
1/2 cheese sandwich and apple (110+110+100=320)
Sweetened yogurt and granola (90+25+15+70=200)
Slice of gorgonzola cheese (60)
Cabbage, potatoes, black beans, and chicken (40+100+115+200=455)
Little bit of granola (70)

325+320+200+60+455+70=1430

Thursday 10/21

Oatmeal with toppings and 1/2 grapefruit (150+25+50+15+40+30=360)
Chicken, potatoes, and broccoli (340+150+50=540)
Ice cream (350)

360+540+350=1250

Wednesday 10/20

Bagel with cream cheese and eggs (260+70+160=490)
Grapes (100)
PB and Nutella sandwich (220+200+195=615)
1/2 cheese sandwich and apple (110+110+100=320)
Black beans with corn, tomatoes, onions, and cheese (115+50+30+110=305)

490+100+615+320+305=1830

Tuesday 10/19

Oatmeal with Nutella & PB, and 1/2 an apple (150+100+50=300)
Slice of processed cheese (50)
Chocolate soymilk (130)
Half cheese sandwich and an orange(110+110+60=280)
Nibbles while making dinner (60)
Pasta with sauce and salad with toppings (200+75+2*[30+50+40+25]=565)
Glass of wine and 16 oz Pabst (125+205=330)

300+50+130+280+60+565+330=1715

Monday 10/18

Bagel with cream cheese, scrambled eggs, and grapes (260+105+140+50=555)
Stir-fried tofu, rice, and cabbage with miso and a plum (100+60+160+30+20+50=420)
Grapes (50)
Rice and beans with cheese, corn, and tomatoes (160+115+220+50+30=575)
Nutella (100)

555+420+50+575+100=1700

Sunday 10/17

Bagel with cream cheese, tomato, and spinach (260+150+30+20=460)
Bread with Nutella and an apple (110+200+100=410)
More Nutella, sigh (200)
Miso soup with tofu (30+10+100=140)

460+410+200+140=1210

Saturday 10/16

Oatmeal with walnuts, dried cranberries, and  cream, and 1/2 grapefruit with sugar (150+50+25+40+30+15=310)
Grapes (100)
2 spoonfuls Nutella (200)
Cabbage soup, bread, cheese, and wine (80+75+80+200=435)
Nibbles while making dinner (50)
Flatbread, hummus, brussels sprouts, and cider (300+165+50+200=715)
Ice cream with Nutella on top (340+200=540)
Flatbread and cheese (100+110=210)

310+100+200+435+50+715+540+210=2560

Thin enough to make thinking about weight a luxury

On 8/1/10 I weighed about 170 and I wrote about how I felt in an awkward middle zone with respect to my weight - how ten pounds heavier, I felt comfortable in the fat-girl niche, and I expected it would take ten pounds lighter to get comfortable from the thin side. I think I was exactly right about that. It was about 160 when I started to feel like I was getting a nice shape and looking normal.

Now, I've been in an interesting headspace. I find all sorts of things to like and congratulate myself on with my body, on the one hand. I'm wearing size 6 jeans for one thing, and I can feel my hips and ribs when I lie back and see my clavicle. On the other hand, I feel like the fat that's there is more obvious, and the skin is looser, and I'd really like it to go away faster. I feel like I can look at my body and take it in, accept it fully without any mental blocking-out, but also be impatient to continue changing it.

I'm still about 5 pounds "overweight", but I feel like I'm now thin enough for worrying about my weight to be a luxury.

Today was a break-even day. I didn't go anywhere or do anything really, so I counted my activity as sedentary except for my little yoga break. My gooey peanut butter and Nutella sandwich pretty much screwed my calorie count by noon, BUT I finished the stuff thereby removing it from the house and instead of letting it turn into a 2500 cal junkfest like I have a couple days recently, I ate a "second lunch" to fix my blood sugar and had a small dinner with lots of veggies and no grains. I typed in the number 1830 and remembered how that was a typical number that came up a lot of times at the beginning of this effort. When I weighed 180, 1830 was an effective restriction. Now, at 155, it's maintenance for a lazy day. At my usual level of activity, I wondered, what weight would it maintain? By trial an error in my spreadsheet, about 125. That's not bad at all. By more experimentation, I get that if I exercise for 200 calories a day and eat 2000 a day, plus usual activity, my maintenance weight is about 120. That would be absolutely reasonable and easy.

I've got to get off my drugs though. I'm fairly good at resisting munchies, but sometimes they come through - I don't eat at a time when I wouldn't have anyway, but I eat, say, a PB & Nutella sandwich instead of a veggie scramble on toast (my original plan, but I guess I abandoned it because there weren't any good scramble vegetables). And even though I don't eat extra in between meals, I'm having to spend energy distracting myself from the thought of food. I keep forgetting to drink water lately too. I say munchies are 55% increased thirst, 35% increased appetite, and 10% increased hunger. Pot doesn't really make me hungry, just... bingey, I guess. But the other thing is, if I've been smoking too much and I have a bit of a tolerance... it'll just make me tired and unmotivated, and then I don't get out and do exercise, and I sit in one spot for hours and so I don't have energy for regular stuff either.

So it's pretty obvious why this is problematic. But coffee. Once I eliminate or reduce pot, then what do I do about coffee? I'll want to drink more, because you take away one chemical buzz and you want to increase the other ones. And coffee is a great appetite suppressant and a great focus drug. I mean, that's really the reason I can never get off it lately, is that I have to focus so much. I spend about 60 hrs a week between class and homework. If I don't get my energy and focus from coffee, I have to get my energy from somewhere else... like food, which is very inefficient. And of course the first thing a reasonable person wants to say to that is take a nap, but I get enough sleep. It's more of a focus issue. If all I had to do for 60 hrs a week was wash dishes or mend clothing or dig holes, it wouldn't matter - but the Fourier transform, the Machiavelli paper, the lab report aren't going to get done unless my mind is sharp. So I really have to do what I have to do. Yet if I drink too much coffee, I start getting tired all the time which makes me need more coffee to function and I just get totally strung out. Sometimes I think it would all be easier if somebody just confirmed that my brain's a little funky-wired, diagnosed me with ADD and anxiety/depression and then gave me some amphetamines and SSRIs, and yeah, I know, that's a dumb chemical quick-fix thought and yet, lately I'm not so sure ADD doesn't apply for me. But I'm rambling at this point and have wandered far from the initial point, which was:

I feel thin enough that fussing about my weight is a luxury.

Genetics

People talk about their natural shape, whether they're genetically thin or fat. I honestly have no idea. I haven't eaten "naturally" in a long time - either I've been driven by conditioning, coupled with ignorance, to overeat, or recently, counting calories. There were a couple of times since moving out that I lived by myself with relatively low stress and felt I was eating normally, but those periods didn't last long enough for my weight to stabilize.

My maternal grandma is a petite little thing. She's 5'2" and has been something like 110 pounds most of her life. My mom is taller, 5'6", and slender. She's usually been 120-130 as far as I know and she has sizes from 4 to 10 in her drawers. My grandpa died before I was born, but I get the impression he was lean, and my uncle is appropriately bird-boned. So I should be naturally skinny.

My paternal grandma is 4'10" and I have no idea what she weighs, but her pants must be at least size 16, if not bigger. I only have one aunt on that side, and she's... plump. She doesn't look bad, but I wouldn't want to be her size at my age. Stocky is probably the best word to describe the men of the family, who range from a little dumpy to hard and lean, but in no case light and in most cases tall. My dad himself was a wiry teen and a lean young adult, but he's starting to pack some pudge now that he's approaching middle age. So I should be naturally not-skinny.

After observing for a while, I think I've got my mom's bones and my dad's fat pattern. I've probably got a real wide natural range as a result. I'm probably inclined "naturally" to eat up and pack it into butt and boobs. But I'm not large-framed. I also have the room to dump a lot of the fat without stripping down to the bones, and thus be "naturally" thin like my mom. Needless to say, that is what I prefer to do. Between my two grandmas, I'd rather be a size 2 at 65 than a size 20 (guessing at the numbers, obviously, just to make the point). I just hope the high weights I've reached in my teens are the top of the ladder, that I will continue to lose, find a stable weight between 120-135, and when middle age hits, that I will recalculate the numbers and maintain, or at least, not exceed 150 or size 12.

Size inflation, like grade inflation, and taking care of my appearance

I went to the store to get some new pants yesterday. All the pants I used to wear are too big, and the size 8's I'm in now still fit fine, but are getting relaxed enough that I thought I might be able to fit into 8 jeans as well (I've noticed size X jeans are always tighter than size X other kinds of pants). I haven't worn jeans in a long time because the last jeans I had were 10s, which I wore for a while and then gained 20 pounds in, weakening a number of spots significantly, and once jeans spring a leak you can patch them over and over but it's hard to, for instance, climb trees without re-busting the stitches. I also thought I might get a new shirt since most of my shirts are getting loose and I'd really like to have a cute outfit.

The punch line of the story is I'm wearing 6P jeans right now and it's totally bullshit.

It's bullshit because my 8 pants are just loosening up, and because the 8-med of the other brand of jeans I tried was a bit tight. The 8-med of this brand fit great, but such that they'd loosen up too soon with a few more pounds. The 6P is snug, but by no means uncomfortable. More bullshit? There was a pair of 4-med Dockers that fit okay. I don't believe for an instant that I'm anywhere near a 4. It's hard to believe that 5 pounds ago the 8s started fitting but I could be approaching a 6 now, I mean come on, a size is at least 10 pounds. But most of all, it's bullshit that I'm in a "petite" size. My best-fitting jeans before were also "petites" in size 10. I know petite people, and they are like five feet tall, maybe five-two. I'm 5'5", one inch taller than the average U.S. woman. I'm not fuckin' petite. What do truly short women wear, when even for me regular jeans either sit too high or the hems drag in the mud?

Anyway, it's bullshit, but I'm still pretty happy to be wearing a 6. I also bought a purple long-sleeved shirt (I like purple, but my purple T-shirt wore out even before I gained all my weight) and a new bra, which is a 34/M in "barelythere" sizing. It's super comfy.

I also kinda decided to start taking care of my appearance more in general. I've been really busy with school, y'know, and I haven't had much of a social life, so having this break and seeing one of my old friends from high school has made me realize how I'm not just stressed, but also kind of neglecting my sense of self. That's not just in appearance obviously, but paying attention to my appearance I think forces me to pay attention to my self-concept more, and it's one method of modulating confidence. It's hard to care about your appearance when you don't HAVE cute clothes that fit, but having these new clothes makes me feel like I really can try to dress nice and look, for now just put-together, but later genuinely slim. I have been washing my hair with usually just soap for about 2 years, and while I was getting clothes I also got some Burt's Bees avocado butter and treated my hair with it last night. Then I washed it with the shampoo and conditioner that I will be bringing to the gym, which is where I take most of my showers lately. It's so much lighter, dare I say glossier, but mostly, it lies flat since last night. And my hair's getting long enough that I actually need to brush it sometimes. Hopefully this week I will get back in touch with wearing cute clothes, brushing my hair, keeping it pretty, maybe even wear a little makeup (nevermind that my boyfriend doesn't like it).

Weekly summary and monthly averages

Today I'm 155.8 and 35.2% body fat. It's also the first weekend of my fall break, and I'd really like to hit 154.6 and break underneath 35% body fat by the end of the break. Sound doable?

It's also passed the 11th of October so I can tell you how much I've lost each month so far:

June-July: 10 lbs
July-August: 4.4
August-September: 8.6
September-October: 5.4

Based on this pattern, I hope to have another good loss this coming month. If I can lose just 7.4 pounds in the next 11-to-11 period, then I will meet my current meso goal! That would put us at November 11th and I could still probably expect to lose 5 pounds the next month, putting a little space between me and 150 before even hitting Thanksgiving. Even if I do nothing but maintain over most of the holiday season, I'll be in good shape by the time I go back to school.

Quick stats: average kcals/day 1771, 2 cardio, 2 strength, 2 yoga, avg balance -360, -1.0 lb.

Friday 10/15

Scrambled eggs with cheese and mini bagel with butter and jam (140+110+110+65+10=435)
Banana (100)
Coffee with cream and sugar (30)
Mini bagel with cheese, apple, and cabbage soup (110+110+100+40=360)
Vanilla wafers and Junior mints (200+40=240)
Black Boss Porter (280)
Spoonful of peanut butter (95)
Cabbage soup, bread, and cheese (80+600+220=900)
Clif bar (240)

435+30+360+240+280+95+900+240=2680 + Elliptical (18m, 226c) and 1 set pull-ups

Thursday 10/14

Yogurt, granola, and 1/2 grapefruit with sugar (90+140+30+15=275)
Apple and peanut butter (100+190=290)
Handful of Goldfish crackers (30)
Spinach-cranberry-walnut-gorgonzola salad with dressing and a mini bagel (20+50+50+100+90+110=420)
Salmon, rice, and peas (340+115+70=525)

275+290+30+420+525=1540 + 1 hr yoga

Wednesday 10/13

Mini bagel with cream cheese and an egg (110+35+90=235)
Banana (100)
Pasta with sauce and tuna (300+75+75=450)
Coffee with cocoa and dry milk (110)
Pear chunks, almonds, and honey (25+100+60=185)
Gorgonzola crumbles and dried cranberries (50+50=100)
Lentils and rice (230)
Espresso with cream and sugar (55)
Mini bagel with butter (110+50=160)

235+100+450+110+185+100+230+55+160=1625

Tuesday 10/12

Yogurt and granola (90+140=230)
Pear (100)
Chicken Caesar salad and coffee with cream and sugar (550+95=645)
Grocery store samples (50)
Pasta with sauce and spinach-cranberry-walnut-gorgonzola salad with dressing (250+50+20+25+50+50+50=495)

230+100+645+50+495=1520 + 1 hr yoga

Monday 10/11

1/2 ciabatta roll with Tofurky sausage and egg (75+100+70=245)
Banana (100)
Tofurky sausage and cheese sandwich on a roll and an apple (150+120+110+100=480)
White grape juice (160)
Cabbage soup, Tofurky sausage, and ciabatta roll (80+180+150=410)
Ice cream (125)

245+100+480+160+410+125=1520 + Elliptical (16m, 202c) and 1 set pull-ups

Sunday 10/10

Breakfast at my parents' (740)
    Scrambled eggs
    Veggie sausage
    Baguette slices with goat cheese and olive spread
    Cantaloupe
    Milk
Mini bagel and cream cheese (155)
4 Twizzlers (120)
Cabbage soup, Tofurky sausage, and ciabatta roll (80+240+150=470)

740+155+120+470=1485

Saturday 10/9

Scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and cantaloupe (140+20+40+110+100+100=510)
Ice cream (75)
Rice and beans with cheese (340)
Ice cream (75)
Sparkling lemon green tea (90)
Chunk of mozzarella (80)
Pizza (800)
Espresso with cream and sugar (55)

510+75+340+75+90+80+800+55=2025