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.