This shit is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s... okay, no.
This morning I'm 134.6 pounds (2.2 down from last week) and 25.6% body fat. So I've hit my goal right on the dot, and my lean mass is still in triple digits. I now get to see what my ticker does when you hit goal, which turns out to be: nothing interesting. It just says 0 lb to go. And 50 pounds lost. Which is pretty awesome - 50 pounds lost. Annika Q and the whole 50 pounds... that she got rid of. Not to mention 3 compounds of 10% of my body weight. I tripled what they usually get in those obesity-and-dieting studies. Woohoo!
I took my measurements as well: waist 26 3/4, hips 37 1/4, thigh 21 1/2, arm 11. My waist hasn't changed a ton lately and my arm measure has been totally stalled for a while, but my hip and thigh measures have dropped a lot since I last measured. That helps to explain why my pants are getting baggy. However, considering it's currently subfreezing outside, it's actually rather useful to be able to wear an extra pair of yoga pants under my jeans.
I'll do a more thorough debriefing and where-do-we-go-from-here reflection on my birthday, when phase 3 is officially over. However, for now what I'll say is - I'm happy with my weight, and I wouldn't mind if this was the end, but I don't think it has to be, and I think my ideal weight/fat content is still lower. I haven't met my <25% body fat goal yet. I think in the future, my ceiling weight should be around 145. That's when I really began to feel like I looked good and felt good, and it's within normal BMI. At the moment, I'll keep exercising and calorie counting, but think less about weight, more about body fat %, and most of all about fitness. I'll probably go for a bit less calorie deficit than I have been, inching toward a more maintenance-oriented version of this lifestyle. For example, I have my aerobics class certain days and I might choose to do yoga on the alternate days, rather than doing them the same day and then other hi-cal workouts the other days. I would try to get back into running, but I think I'll wait for the weather to get above, oh, fifty Fahrenheit. It just sucks futzing with layers and the air freezes your throat and if your ears aren't warm enough you get a terrible headache and so on...
Oh, and one last thing - I'm dropping sugar and refined flour from my pseudo-Lent restrictions because I feel like it is a) not really a big issue for me in the first place, b) hard to enforce, and thereby c) being a pain in the ass in a way that is not useful. Just a few examples to justify my choice: I can't eat the honey roasted peanuts my boyfriend bought because they have regular sugar in them too, but I can make cookies with honey. If I want to go get a yogurt for a snack, most of the time I'm out of luck because I don't want to eat plain yogurt or yogurt sweetened with Splenda, but all other yogurt is sweetened with sugar except maybe those awesome Fage cups. I ate a salad the other day from the salad bar and used this orange ginger dressing, and it didn't even occur to me to think salad dressing might have sugar, but when I got to the bottom of the bowl I realized it was really sweet. Anyway, so I'm still excluding milk, cheese, butter, and intoxicants, but I think the whole thing might have started out too broad.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Weigh-in and pants
Today I am 136.8 pounds at 27.0% body fat, which is 1.2 pounds down from last week. Happy days! I will soon meet my goal which, although I think it will not be the end of my body improvement journey, will be pretty awesome to say I finally met, considering I first conceptualized it when I was 13 and it ended up being a 50-pound goal.
My pants situation. I've been wearing these size 6 jeans for a while, since about 155. They are finally starting to get loose enough that I think I'd like to go shop for size 4 jeans, although they'll be perfectly acceptable for wearing for a while yet. I will look for some black jeans because I need something black for a performance I'm going to be in soon. Anyway, I also have these size 4 pants that I bought in order to have something "business casual" before my Europe trip. The 4Ps I tried on were too small, but the 6Ms were too long, so I settled for a 4M, and it's just not quite the right shape, so I haven't really been wearing those much, but anyway, a 4 has fit for a while. The sixth grade pants, size 8 in some mysterious system that is scaled way small, have gradually come to fit more and more, and they've reached a point where I can tell they're just never going to fit properly, because they are actually getting loose on the hips, but still are too tight in the thighs. So sad, but at least I can put that question to rest. I may try and patch the cool design they have onto another pair of pants. Finally - this morning I was wearing this size-6 skirt that was slightly tight when I acquired it and now fits perfectly, when my boyfriend brought me a size 2 pair of pants he found abandoned in the laundry room. I looked at them, thought "yeah those look a little small," but tried them on. If they were made out of an ordinary, not so stretchy material they would be wearable but too tight to move in, but with 3% lycra-spandex they fit perfectly. So apparently I now wear anywhere from a 2 to a 6. I find this really interesting because when I wore size 10 or 12 and even 8, I was just one size unless I was borderline and then one would be a little loose and one a little tight. Now, apparently, I span 3 sizes. So strange.
My pants situation. I've been wearing these size 6 jeans for a while, since about 155. They are finally starting to get loose enough that I think I'd like to go shop for size 4 jeans, although they'll be perfectly acceptable for wearing for a while yet. I will look for some black jeans because I need something black for a performance I'm going to be in soon. Anyway, I also have these size 4 pants that I bought in order to have something "business casual" before my Europe trip. The 4Ps I tried on were too small, but the 6Ms were too long, so I settled for a 4M, and it's just not quite the right shape, so I haven't really been wearing those much, but anyway, a 4 has fit for a while. The sixth grade pants, size 8 in some mysterious system that is scaled way small, have gradually come to fit more and more, and they've reached a point where I can tell they're just never going to fit properly, because they are actually getting loose on the hips, but still are too tight in the thighs. So sad, but at least I can put that question to rest. I may try and patch the cool design they have onto another pair of pants. Finally - this morning I was wearing this size-6 skirt that was slightly tight when I acquired it and now fits perfectly, when my boyfriend brought me a size 2 pair of pants he found abandoned in the laundry room. I looked at them, thought "yeah those look a little small," but tried them on. If they were made out of an ordinary, not so stretchy material they would be wearable but too tight to move in, but with 3% lycra-spandex they fit perfectly. So apparently I now wear anywhere from a 2 to a 6. I find this really interesting because when I wore size 10 or 12 and even 8, I was just one size unless I was borderline and then one would be a little loose and one a little tight. Now, apparently, I span 3 sizes. So strange.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Gluten-free dairy-free milk and cookies
Sounds ridiculous? Nuts are nutritionally similar to milk, and an egg is a sufficient binder to allow them to replace flour as well (not with the same texture, but like a scone or cornmeal muffin). You could also make a vegan but glutinous version by throwing in some flour and substituting the egg with a banana. If you wanted it totally vegan AND gluten-free, there are specialized egg replacers and gluten-free flours available to experiment with, but my general rule is I don't write recipes that require expensive and specific products. I don't want to buy them, and others might not be able to find the particular brand of something, which tends to matter in the gluten-free world.
Without further ado:
Without further ado:
Ingredients:
1 cup almonds
4 cups water
2 x 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp + 2 Tbsp honey
1 egg
2 Tbsp oil
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Equipment:
Blender
Large piece of cloth or fine-meshed strainer
Cookie sheet
Mixing bowls & fork
Procedure:
Soak almonds overnight and discard soaking water. Add soaked almonds and fresh water to a blender and blend at high speed for 1-2 minutes. Strain into a jar, squeeze out the pulp thoroughly, and set aside. Stir 1 Tbsp of honey and 1/2 tsp vanilla into the milk (these are optional and the milk is fine without, but in my opinion they make it significantly tastier).
Spread the reserved almond pulp across a cookie sheet and leave in the oven on low heat until dry. You may have to check a few times and break up damp clumps. When the almond grounds are ready, remove from cookie sheet and preheat oven to 375 F. Mix baking powder and salt with almond grounds. In a separate bowl, mix 2 Tbsp honey, 1/2 tsp vanilla, oil, and egg. Add dry ingredients to wet. Form the mixture into 8 patties and place on cookie sheet. Bake for 10-15 minutes. The cookies are best after they have cooled slightly.
Pair 2 cookies with 1 cup of milk for a yield of 4 servings, or use them separately. I don't have a good way of determining how many calories go into the milk vs. stay in the pulp, but assuming it's half and half, the milk is 115 calories per 8 oz and the cookies are 105 calories each, for a total of 325 calories per serving when combined as suggested (a rather large snack, or add some fruit for a nice breakfast).
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Weigh-in with the LAST MICROGOAL
Well how's this for progress: 138.0 and 27.6% body fat! Actually, I'm extremely skeptical of this number since that means I lost 2.4 pounds since YESTERDAY. But then there was the time I lost 4 pounds in less than a week after breaking through my 170 plateau, so who knows. If you frame it as 3.2 pounds since 3 weeks ago, it sounds a little more reasonable. At any rate, I'll count myself as having cracked my last microgoal. The LAST ONE, before my final goal. As in, I have less than 5 pounds to go. Oh, and my ticker is now so close to the end that the current number is overlapping with the goal number. This is really amazing.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Progress, metabolism, and set points
Today saw a new low of 140.4, which is a good sign. It's about time this train got moving again. When I showed my boyfriend the flatline of the past couple of weeks, he said "well maybe that's just the weight your body wants to be when you're fit and working out." I said maybe if it doesn't budge for another month I'll consider that hypothesis, but I think it's just a plateau. My reasoning is, at the beginning of January my estimated calorie balance was pretty much in line with my actual weight loss. If the flatline was a reflection of my "really" maintaining, my burn rate would have had to drop to at least 300 calories less than what my formulas predict, in just a few weeks, with no unusual metabolism-affecting behavior on my part. I find that implausible.
It's actually really fascinating to me, why different people have stable or unstable body weight, where their most stable body weight is, and how much ease or difficulty they have in changing it. There's set point theory, which is supported by numerous studies of generally two types. One type is conducted on normal weight people who are put on either low- or high-calorie diets; they tend to lose or gain less weight than expected purely from calorie calculations, and also vary within the sample in ways consistent with their family history as to how much weight change is experienced and whether muscle or fat is affected. The other type of study is conducted on moderately obese people who are put on a diet, and the usual result is that they can lose about 10% of their body weight and then stall out, either because they start getting too hungry to stick to the diet, or for no clear reason even though they are continuing to comply. One flaw with some of these studies is that they put people on extreme diets suddenly, which will of course have metabolic effects, but others make reasonable changes and still get the same results.
Then there are the common and not-so-common situations that really throw that whole idea into question, or at least demand a better understanding of how a set point is set. There are extreme examples like Jennette Fulda/PastaQueen, who became almost 400 pounds and then lost half her body weight, or Jessica Smith who similarly was very fat and then slimmed down enormously. Then what about the "freshman 15" effect? If body weight is more or less hardwired, then why do so many people gain weight when they go to college - why don't their natural hunger mechanisms compensate for the different environmental conditions, say, causing them to eat lightly the day after a pizza party? Why do some people seem to gain weight at much more than the typical pound-per-year rate, piling on the pounds until they reach a psychological breaking point, and always have trouble maintaining a weight loss even if they previously were stable for a time at that weight? Why has my boyfriend's weight been stable plus or minus 2 pounds for years, whereas mine has been more like plus or minus 15? And why has it been so easy for me to lose over 40 pounds? I'm now almost 10 pounds lighter than I ever was as a teenager, 25 pounds lighter than my most average weight, what you might have called my apparent set point, and I'm feeling no backlash. I am still pushing typical deficits of 300-600 calories, and I'm not killing my life with exercise or white-knuckling against hunger. How do you explain that in set point theory?
It's actually really fascinating to me, why different people have stable or unstable body weight, where their most stable body weight is, and how much ease or difficulty they have in changing it. There's set point theory, which is supported by numerous studies of generally two types. One type is conducted on normal weight people who are put on either low- or high-calorie diets; they tend to lose or gain less weight than expected purely from calorie calculations, and also vary within the sample in ways consistent with their family history as to how much weight change is experienced and whether muscle or fat is affected. The other type of study is conducted on moderately obese people who are put on a diet, and the usual result is that they can lose about 10% of their body weight and then stall out, either because they start getting too hungry to stick to the diet, or for no clear reason even though they are continuing to comply. One flaw with some of these studies is that they put people on extreme diets suddenly, which will of course have metabolic effects, but others make reasonable changes and still get the same results.
Then there are the common and not-so-common situations that really throw that whole idea into question, or at least demand a better understanding of how a set point is set. There are extreme examples like Jennette Fulda/PastaQueen, who became almost 400 pounds and then lost half her body weight, or Jessica Smith who similarly was very fat and then slimmed down enormously. Then what about the "freshman 15" effect? If body weight is more or less hardwired, then why do so many people gain weight when they go to college - why don't their natural hunger mechanisms compensate for the different environmental conditions, say, causing them to eat lightly the day after a pizza party? Why do some people seem to gain weight at much more than the typical pound-per-year rate, piling on the pounds until they reach a psychological breaking point, and always have trouble maintaining a weight loss even if they previously were stable for a time at that weight? Why has my boyfriend's weight been stable plus or minus 2 pounds for years, whereas mine has been more like plus or minus 15? And why has it been so easy for me to lose over 40 pounds? I'm now almost 10 pounds lighter than I ever was as a teenager, 25 pounds lighter than my most average weight, what you might have called my apparent set point, and I'm feeling no backlash. I am still pushing typical deficits of 300-600 calories, and I'm not killing my life with exercise or white-knuckling against hunger. How do you explain that in set point theory?
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Lent
I know, Ash Wednesday isn't for another month. However, I'm not actually a Christian so I can run my "Lent" so that it ends on the spring equinox if I want.
I have, however, been reading some Christians in my humanities class, and the focus of my pseudo-Lent is to remove what St. Ignatius of Loyola would call "disordered attachments". As such I'm focusing on three main categories - intoxicants, sugar, and milk - expanded and modified to suit both my own purposes and some of the traditional spirit of Lent.
Intoxicants is primarily targeted at pot. I smoke too much pot and I lean on it too much. So I'm not smoking pot. I'm also excluding alcohol because, although I don't drink very much, it has a similar... draw, shall we say, in terms of its drug effect. Nicotine, though I also rarely smoke tobacco, is implicitly excluded for the same reasons. Either of those could easily replace pot, were I to allow it, and that would defeat the point. I'm also excluding other drugs which do not have the same disordering attractiveness, like psychedelics, because I think general sobriety is a main point of Lent. However, I'm not excluding caffeine because that would be academically irresponsible. One could make a number of arguments that I should, but it's not what I'm choosing to focus on. I think it's okay because it does not have the same potential for abuse. Since I'm excluding sugar and milk, it will not be inordinately a pleasure to seek out, and if you try to abuse coffee like you can with pot or cigarettes, you just feel awful by the end of the day.
Milk specifically includes milk and cheese, and specifically excludes yogurt. I don't know why, but yogurt just doesn't have the same excessive appeal as milk and cheese, and it's a good source of protein and healthy gut flora. Butter doesn't have that much appeal either, but I'm going to exclude it because it's just another really rich thing that I don't need. In the same vein, I'm not eating meat (including fish). I'm still waffling on eggs. On the one hand, it seems in the spirit to go vegan (except for the yogurt). On the other hand, they fall in the same category as yogurt in that I'm not excessively drawn to them and they are nutritious. We're going to eat the eggs that are in our fridge and then make a decision about whether to buy them for the remainder of the time.
Sugar means refined sugar. Naturally occurring sweetness is fine. Honey I will allow. However, crystals of -oses that don't come out of a bee's behind are not allowed. I'm not being a fascist about tracking down every teeny little bit of high fructose corn syrup in who knows what. It's common sense - this isn't a cleanse where if it enters your body it taints, it's a mental purification and disciplinary practice. If it's not obviously sweet and doesn't have a strange draw, I'm not going to worry too much. In this basket, I'm also not eating non-whole grains. No enriched unbleached flour bagels.
Hopefully this will have some beneficial effects on my weight loss, but more so my mind.
I have, however, been reading some Christians in my humanities class, and the focus of my pseudo-Lent is to remove what St. Ignatius of Loyola would call "disordered attachments". As such I'm focusing on three main categories - intoxicants, sugar, and milk - expanded and modified to suit both my own purposes and some of the traditional spirit of Lent.
Intoxicants is primarily targeted at pot. I smoke too much pot and I lean on it too much. So I'm not smoking pot. I'm also excluding alcohol because, although I don't drink very much, it has a similar... draw, shall we say, in terms of its drug effect. Nicotine, though I also rarely smoke tobacco, is implicitly excluded for the same reasons. Either of those could easily replace pot, were I to allow it, and that would defeat the point. I'm also excluding other drugs which do not have the same disordering attractiveness, like psychedelics, because I think general sobriety is a main point of Lent. However, I'm not excluding caffeine because that would be academically irresponsible. One could make a number of arguments that I should, but it's not what I'm choosing to focus on. I think it's okay because it does not have the same potential for abuse. Since I'm excluding sugar and milk, it will not be inordinately a pleasure to seek out, and if you try to abuse coffee like you can with pot or cigarettes, you just feel awful by the end of the day.
Milk specifically includes milk and cheese, and specifically excludes yogurt. I don't know why, but yogurt just doesn't have the same excessive appeal as milk and cheese, and it's a good source of protein and healthy gut flora. Butter doesn't have that much appeal either, but I'm going to exclude it because it's just another really rich thing that I don't need. In the same vein, I'm not eating meat (including fish). I'm still waffling on eggs. On the one hand, it seems in the spirit to go vegan (except for the yogurt). On the other hand, they fall in the same category as yogurt in that I'm not excessively drawn to them and they are nutritious. We're going to eat the eggs that are in our fridge and then make a decision about whether to buy them for the remainder of the time.
Sugar means refined sugar. Naturally occurring sweetness is fine. Honey I will allow. However, crystals of -oses that don't come out of a bee's behind are not allowed. I'm not being a fascist about tracking down every teeny little bit of high fructose corn syrup in who knows what. It's common sense - this isn't a cleanse where if it enters your body it taints, it's a mental purification and disciplinary practice. If it's not obviously sweet and doesn't have a strange draw, I'm not going to worry too much. In this basket, I'm also not eating non-whole grains. No enriched unbleached flour bagels.
Hopefully this will have some beneficial effects on my weight loss, but more so my mind.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Push up victory?
So this morning I did a push up.
I know, I can't really believe it either.
In fact, right after I did it, I was so disbelieving I asked my boyfriend if that looked like a real pushup. I mean, I must have collapsed my form or something to do that, right?
But he said it looked like a real pushup.
I've been trying to do another one since, and it hasn't worked. I guess I have to believe the witness.
I know, I can't really believe it either.
In fact, right after I did it, I was so disbelieving I asked my boyfriend if that looked like a real pushup. I mean, I must have collapsed my form or something to do that, right?
But he said it looked like a real pushup.
I've been trying to do another one since, and it hasn't worked. I guess I have to believe the witness.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Bored weigh in
So, I haven't posted much lately. That's because nothing is happening. I'm not losing and I'm not gaining. I'm going to school and doing yoga and aerobics and elliptical, and often feeling hungry at night or hungrier due to exercise, but still pushing a deficit most days. Yesterday I weighed in at 141.4 pounds, and I was out of town the week before, but two Saturdays ago I weighed 141.2 pounds. So that's +0.2 pounds in 2 weeks. Statistically insignificant. My body fat percentage has also been going nowhere since I got back from my trip. It's somewhere between 28% and 29%.
However, one must remember I encountered a similarly irritating plateau just above 170, and I think there was a little bit of a plateau around 155. Every 15 pounds. I hope that's what this is - a plateau that will eventually break, and not the point at which my formulas are showing inaccuracy. For now I will keep eating as lightly as I can manage, go to vinyasa yoga 2x a week, aerobics 2x a week, elliptical when it fits into the schedule, and next week when I deposit my financial aid check I can get a Bikram package which will give me 1-2 Bikram classes each weekend. And let's hope this thing cracks
However, one must remember I encountered a similarly irritating plateau just above 170, and I think there was a little bit of a plateau around 155. Every 15 pounds. I hope that's what this is - a plateau that will eventually break, and not the point at which my formulas are showing inaccuracy. For now I will keep eating as lightly as I can manage, go to vinyasa yoga 2x a week, aerobics 2x a week, elliptical when it fits into the schedule, and next week when I deposit my financial aid check I can get a Bikram package which will give me 1-2 Bikram classes each weekend. And let's hope this thing cracks
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
ideaplan
This is more of an idea than a plan. I'm not setting any goals for follow-through. But here's the idea: during the week I stay pretty strict with my diet. I aim for 1500-1600, maybe 1700 calories along with my exercise and I do not let cravings, mere opportunity, etc interfere. On the weekends, I am a little more lax, having treats or eating out and being comfortable with closer to 2000 calories a day. In addition, at some point during the weekend (end of class on Friday thru Sunday night), I am allowed one "binge", which might spike my calories. I'm not defining it very tightly, except that it should not become an all-day thing. The rest of whatever day it occurs on, the guidelines are in line with what I said above. You know what it is when you do it, but examples might be: a quart of ice cream, a huge plate of pasta with creamy cheese sauce, a package of wafer cookies and a whole bag of potato chips, a box of donuts and milk, a plate of breaded chicken strips and french fries, half a batch of chocolate chip cookies, a whole bag of individual-wrapped chocolates.
The motivation behind this idea is that as I get lighter, the calorie levels needed to create a deficit are more difficult to hit. If I don't happen to exercise on a day, I have to eat less than 1500 calories to have a pound-per-week equivalent deficit. It takes more, psychologically, to make the deficit many days in a row. Fitting in restaurant meals or indulgences isn't too hard on 1800 calories, but it is on 1500, so the idea is to simply loosen up at the time (weekends) when opportunities are most likely to arise. The allowed "binge" is just an outlet for cravings, and knowing there's a specific time for it makes it easier to wait for.
The motivation behind this idea is that as I get lighter, the calorie levels needed to create a deficit are more difficult to hit. If I don't happen to exercise on a day, I have to eat less than 1500 calories to have a pound-per-week equivalent deficit. It takes more, psychologically, to make the deficit many days in a row. Fitting in restaurant meals or indulgences isn't too hard on 1800 calories, but it is on 1500, so the idea is to simply loosen up at the time (weekends) when opportunities are most likely to arise. The allowed "binge" is just an outlet for cravings, and knowing there's a specific time for it makes it easier to wait for.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)