I confess that I've not been eating well, and not exercising as much as I want to. I confess that I've been getting into bad habits, habits I know are bad, that I've read about on other people's weight-loss/maintenance blogs. I confess that I've noticed this and made plans to start roughly calorie counting again, only to stop keeping track once I start to eat something that I know will spike the number. I confess that I've been coming up with excuses not to record my weight when it turns out to be 132 something, and avoiding the scale until I think I'm back on track.
I confess that last night, I ate several shots of hot cocoa mix moistened with just enough water to turn it into a paste. I confess that smoking pot each night, I've been getting munchy, then waking up not hungry but knowing I ought to start off with breakfast, and then not really knowing when or how much to eat or being satisfied with it the rest of the day. I confess that the only approximation to a fruit I had today was a glass of orange juice, and the only vegetable was pizza toppings; the rest of the day I ate bagels, coffee, potato chips, and even a 660 calorie muffin.
I confess, because even if I'm going to act stupid I'm damn well gonna document it. I'm not going to ask "buuut how'd I get here?" 10 pounds up the line.
I'm not really sure what the root cause is. I guess it's probably a matrix of interconnected factors. I need to drink more water, but my boyfriend recycled my Vitamin Water bottle when he found my old bike bottles, and those taste like soap even though I've rinsed them a million times. I need to exercise more, but ever since we moved I've been waking up more tired than usual, and it's the end of the term, so I have tons of work, and so I've been either sleeping or doing homework when I would be exercising, although I have gone on a few near-negligible jogs. I also lost my Sansa cord, so I haven't been able to listen to music while I exercise in a long time. Last year, the same time of year, was when I started to really have trouble making the time for exercise, and falling into just these bad habits. Too much coffee, pot, food, and not enough exercise. But is it the time of year, or is it the fact that I met goal and just cut loose too fast? I dunno.
But I promise, I've got a plan. This week, there will be treats, I know. It's the last week of classes. We'll get donuts or whatnot while we fill out course evaluations. Then there will be the big end of year party over the weekend. Then it will be reading week and finals and there will be a lot of free food. But I have planned out all my breakfasts, lunches, and dinners this week. If nothing else, I will cut the bloating and yucky fullness and find out how much of this pound I've "really" gained. I'm eating eggs and fruit and smoothies for breakfast, a little cereal, no toast planned. I'm eating tuna salad wraps and rice cakes with apples and peanut butter for lunch. I plan to cut the gratuitous sweets, the random snacking. One drink after dinner only, whether that's cocoa or alcohol or juice. One serving of free food that sets itself in front of me - if there are donuts, just one donut. And I will do my best, though I don't know how good that will be, to get a full week of exercise: three runs, two yoga classes, and two Pilates classes. Really, if it doesn't get done in the morning I will try to do it in the afternoon. If I can, I will go to both the Pilates classes, even though I only need one more for credit and I really think the class sucks. This week is going to be a balanced week. It will be controlled. Clearly I still need some of that rigidity.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Let's try this weekly reflection thing then
I'm going to just go back 7 days. I might not always do this on the same day of the week, so I might sometimes skip or overlap days between evaluations, but the point is just to draw attention to whatever's been happening lately, so it doesn't have to be real precise.
-How many days did I eat 5 or more fruits and vegetables? Fewer than 3?
2 and 3 respectively which leaves 2 in the middle. Glad to see more than one "good" day, but I'd like to cut down on the deficient days.
-What percentage of my meals included significant protein? What about snacks?
This question requires waaay too much data analysis. I don't have time for that shit. Also, I never defined "significant protein" which is problematic when it comes to things like oatmeal or cream cheese.
-Do I feel that my diet was satisfactory overall this week?
Mostly, but I probably ate too many treats. I had macaroni and cheese more than once (for meals, but it's still a high calorie meal) and some ice cream one day, cookies another time, and greasy grill food for a dinner-while-studying. I think I handled them well otherwise (reasonable portions, mostly at mealtimes) but still, shouldn't be so frequently.
-Did I have any negative outcomes this week that I feel may have been related to my dietary choices?
Nope. In contrast to the week before, even when I ate maybe-too-many treats, I avoided eating so much of them that I felt yucky afterward. In fact, I started cutting down on caffeine, which has caused some benefits. I notice I can tell when I haven't eaten enough vegetables - but I wouldn't call that a negative outcome really, because it doesn't get too unpleasant, I just respond by having an apple and peanut butter for breakfast or something. It's like being slightly thirsty - it's only a negative outcome of your choices if you ignore the initial signal out of inconvenience until you become dehydrated and fatigued.
I will say I've done hardly any cardio this week. One of these days I need to get up early enough to actually go run at that cute park next to the new apartment. It's just been a thing with school being so busy. But I need to get back in a habit of running in the mornings. All sorts of things have been delaying the plan, but it is something I want to do.
-How many days did I eat 5 or more fruits and vegetables? Fewer than 3?
2 and 3 respectively which leaves 2 in the middle. Glad to see more than one "good" day, but I'd like to cut down on the deficient days.
-What percentage of my meals included significant protein? What about snacks?
This question requires waaay too much data analysis. I don't have time for that shit. Also, I never defined "significant protein" which is problematic when it comes to things like oatmeal or cream cheese.
-Do I feel that my diet was satisfactory overall this week?
Mostly, but I probably ate too many treats. I had macaroni and cheese more than once (for meals, but it's still a high calorie meal) and some ice cream one day, cookies another time, and greasy grill food for a dinner-while-studying. I think I handled them well otherwise (reasonable portions, mostly at mealtimes) but still, shouldn't be so frequently.
-Did I have any negative outcomes this week that I feel may have been related to my dietary choices?
Nope. In contrast to the week before, even when I ate maybe-too-many treats, I avoided eating so much of them that I felt yucky afterward. In fact, I started cutting down on caffeine, which has caused some benefits. I notice I can tell when I haven't eaten enough vegetables - but I wouldn't call that a negative outcome really, because it doesn't get too unpleasant, I just respond by having an apple and peanut butter for breakfast or something. It's like being slightly thirsty - it's only a negative outcome of your choices if you ignore the initial signal out of inconvenience until you become dehydrated and fatigued.
I will say I've done hardly any cardio this week. One of these days I need to get up early enough to actually go run at that cute park next to the new apartment. It's just been a thing with school being so busy. But I need to get back in a habit of running in the mornings. All sorts of things have been delaying the plan, but it is something I want to do.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Bad week
It's been a bad week in just about all respects. Diet, exercise, sleep, homework, and interpersonally. It started with my birthday, which actually went fine in most senses, but precipitated a landslide of alcohol, grease, and chocolate. This was to be expected. However, then there was lots of alcohol and chocolate around, and taking the day off from homework resulted in a lot more pile-up midweek than I was expecting. Like, staying up til 2:30 in the morning on Wednesday finishing a lab report (this was exacerbated by some unforseeable computer troubles too). Naturally I prioritized getting a minimum of 5 hours of sleep over exercise, and then at the end of the week moving didn't go terribly smoothly either, so basically everything just crumbled. I'm not going to go through the list of questions I made up last time because, well, it's past midnight, and I'd like to get this week off to a better start. I have a nice healthy sandwich and some fruits packed for tomorrow, and we'll see if I can drag myself up early enough for a run, but at any rate, since we ARE now moved I'll be gaining some homework time with every commute that's cut in half. Until next time...
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Phase 3 conclusion and new directions
It's finally the final day. My 21st birthday. The end of phase III, the projected end-date of this entire project.
Today I am 130.8 pounds, 23.9% body fat according to my scale, measurements (inches): waist 26 1/2, hips 36 1/2, thigh 21, arm 10 3/4. This means since the end of phase II I have lost:
13.6 pounds and 6.0% body fat (though as we know, the scale is not necessarily reliable)
1.5 inches off my waist, 2.25 off my hips, 1.5 off my thigh, and 1 off my arm
About 1 pant size (my best-fit pants are a 4, though the 6s still work)
And in the grand total I have lost:
53.8 pounds
7.5 inches from my waist as well as 5 from my thigh
4 pant sizes
So I did it! I'm 21, have met my rather arbitrarily chosen goal, and I believe I'm within 10 pounds of my ideal weight. Also, my pants are tiny - before this whole thing I really never thought I'd get smaller than a size 8. I'm happy that I went to that fitness testing and got the alternative body fat measurement, because it tells me I am not just-barely entering the recommended range, but rather that I'm well within it already. It also helps that my belly seems to have gotten noticeably tighter in the last week or so. At this point, I think my personal perception of my body is the best indicator of my progress, followed by weight and inch measurements, and lastly the body fat guesses of my scale.
Where do we go from here? I think I will cut back significantly on my weight-related regulatory behaviors. Specifically, I'll stop counting calories, weigh myself less often (once to a few times a week) and use my scale's body fat function a lot less often (once a month to once a week). What I'll keep doing is writing down qualitatively what I eat in the day and tracking my exercise. I'm going to set up a new spreadsheet that has cells to record weight, body fat, and inch measurements, though none of those will be recorded daily, and exercise in the cardio, strength, and flexibility categories, which will be recorded daily. Calorie intake, expenditure, and deficit estimations will be absent. However, I'll continue with the food journal at least for a bit, and do a weekly reflection on the following questions:
How many days did I eat 5 or more fruits and vegetables? Fewer than 3?
What percentage of my meals included significant protein? What about snacks?
Do I feel that my diet was satisfactory overall this week?
Did I have any negative outcomes this week that I feel may have been related to my dietary choices?
I figure I have stop counting calories sometime, and I know even when I went on vacation I tended to think about the calories, so just not recording them will be a way of slowly phasing out that mindset. Hopefully, just mindfulness and my acquired experience with portion sizes will be enough to keep me on track, and allow me to maintain or lose as I please without being quantitatively rigorous. I'll still probably look at calories and serving sizes in order to make decisions about what I eat, but that's something everyone who's ever had a weight problem should do. If I start to gain without clear cause, I can always go back and audit my diet. My main focus for a while will be exercise and finding a balance between the different types. Overall, the goal is to find an equilibrium where I feel nourished, have treats sometimes, and do exercise I enjoy, in such proportions as to maintain my body in a state I'm happy with, without interfering with my other priorities.
I'll be redesigning this blog, including changing the background (probably immediately after posting this), re-titling it, moving and updating my caption, goals, and weight loss ticker, over the next few weeks. I'll also post some before/after/transition pictures soon, and maybe a weight graph. I have a master, long range weight graph, but it doesn't want to cooperate right now, and it might be nice to wait until I fill up a year of weight records before posting it. I will definitely have a post for my "fat-iversary", although I'll have to decide if that's June 7th (the day I started counted calories) or June 11th (the day I weighed myself).
Until I post again, adieu!
Today I am 130.8 pounds, 23.9% body fat according to my scale, measurements (inches): waist 26 1/2, hips 36 1/2, thigh 21, arm 10 3/4. This means since the end of phase II I have lost:
13.6 pounds and 6.0% body fat (though as we know, the scale is not necessarily reliable)
1.5 inches off my waist, 2.25 off my hips, 1.5 off my thigh, and 1 off my arm
About 1 pant size (my best-fit pants are a 4, though the 6s still work)
And in the grand total I have lost:
53.8 pounds
7.5 inches from my waist as well as 5 from my thigh
4 pant sizes
So I did it! I'm 21, have met my rather arbitrarily chosen goal, and I believe I'm within 10 pounds of my ideal weight. Also, my pants are tiny - before this whole thing I really never thought I'd get smaller than a size 8. I'm happy that I went to that fitness testing and got the alternative body fat measurement, because it tells me I am not just-barely entering the recommended range, but rather that I'm well within it already. It also helps that my belly seems to have gotten noticeably tighter in the last week or so. At this point, I think my personal perception of my body is the best indicator of my progress, followed by weight and inch measurements, and lastly the body fat guesses of my scale.
Where do we go from here? I think I will cut back significantly on my weight-related regulatory behaviors. Specifically, I'll stop counting calories, weigh myself less often (once to a few times a week) and use my scale's body fat function a lot less often (once a month to once a week). What I'll keep doing is writing down qualitatively what I eat in the day and tracking my exercise. I'm going to set up a new spreadsheet that has cells to record weight, body fat, and inch measurements, though none of those will be recorded daily, and exercise in the cardio, strength, and flexibility categories, which will be recorded daily. Calorie intake, expenditure, and deficit estimations will be absent. However, I'll continue with the food journal at least for a bit, and do a weekly reflection on the following questions:
How many days did I eat 5 or more fruits and vegetables? Fewer than 3?
What percentage of my meals included significant protein? What about snacks?
Do I feel that my diet was satisfactory overall this week?
Did I have any negative outcomes this week that I feel may have been related to my dietary choices?
I figure I have stop counting calories sometime, and I know even when I went on vacation I tended to think about the calories, so just not recording them will be a way of slowly phasing out that mindset. Hopefully, just mindfulness and my acquired experience with portion sizes will be enough to keep me on track, and allow me to maintain or lose as I please without being quantitatively rigorous. I'll still probably look at calories and serving sizes in order to make decisions about what I eat, but that's something everyone who's ever had a weight problem should do. If I start to gain without clear cause, I can always go back and audit my diet. My main focus for a while will be exercise and finding a balance between the different types. Overall, the goal is to find an equilibrium where I feel nourished, have treats sometimes, and do exercise I enjoy, in such proportions as to maintain my body in a state I'm happy with, without interfering with my other priorities.
I'll be redesigning this blog, including changing the background (probably immediately after posting this), re-titling it, moving and updating my caption, goals, and weight loss ticker, over the next few weeks. I'll also post some before/after/transition pictures soon, and maybe a weight graph. I have a master, long range weight graph, but it doesn't want to cooperate right now, and it might be nice to wait until I fill up a year of weight records before posting it. I will definitely have a post for my "fat-iversary", although I'll have to decide if that's June 7th (the day I started counted calories) or June 11th (the day I weighed myself).
Until I post again, adieu!
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Results of fitness testing
Unsurprising stuff:
Muscular endurance (push-up test): 4 pushups - "needs improvement"
Muscular strength (bench press): 7 reps of 45 lbs, calculated strength-to-weight ratio 0.417 - 5th/10th percentile among 20-29 yo females, "very poor"
Flexibility (sit and reach): 34 cm w/ zero set at 23 cm (idk) - "very good"
Somewhat surprising stuff:
Resting HR: 84 bpm
Step test HR: 168 bpm, calculated VO2max = 34.78 (don't remember the units) - 35th-40th percentile, "fair"
Very surprising stuff:
Body composition (skin-fold measurements): calculated at 17.0% body fat
Debrief
Okay, so we know my strength isn't that great. I could do a few pushups, I could lift bench press bar a few times, and I thought that stuff was pretty cool, but I'm not surprised that isn't up to what a lot of people can do. Whatever. We also know I'm super flexible, I always got good scores on the sit-and-reach in middle school and I've done plenty of yoga since then. Whoopee.
Cardio stuff was a little surprising. My resting HR was way above what it usually is - 84 is fine, but I've had it down near 60 recently, like when I was on my trip. I also got a slightly below-average score on the step test, which is kind of odd since I spent last quarter doing step aerobics. But then the guy said I could easily improve on cardio in the next weeks, and I realized I've done what, two runs in the last two weeks. If cardio scores change easily on a couple-of-weeks basis, then I'm probably just seeing the effects of spring break lazing around and the first week back not realizing I didn't have any cardio scheduled in.
And then there was the body fat measurement. According to BIA aka my scale, I'm 25% body fat, and according to this formula thingy, I'm 17% body fat. Uhhhh? The guy said from looking me, he thinks the scale measurement is high, and the caliper measurement is low but more accurate than the scale - so, around 20%. That's a pretty big "around" is all I've got to say. But it's nice to think that in the low 130s, I'm actually sitting in the healthy range, not quizzically looking at my "skinny fat". I guess this means I can pretty much dispense with my scale's body fat function as an indicator of what weight I should seek to lose, though it can tell me whether weight I AM losing is fat or lean since the measurement is fairly consistent.
Muscular endurance (push-up test): 4 pushups - "needs improvement"
Muscular strength (bench press): 7 reps of 45 lbs, calculated strength-to-weight ratio 0.417 - 5th/10th percentile among 20-29 yo females, "very poor"
Flexibility (sit and reach): 34 cm w/ zero set at 23 cm (idk) - "very good"
Somewhat surprising stuff:
Resting HR: 84 bpm
Step test HR: 168 bpm, calculated VO2max = 34.78 (don't remember the units) - 35th-40th percentile, "fair"
Very surprising stuff:
Body composition (skin-fold measurements): calculated at 17.0% body fat
Debrief
Okay, so we know my strength isn't that great. I could do a few pushups, I could lift bench press bar a few times, and I thought that stuff was pretty cool, but I'm not surprised that isn't up to what a lot of people can do. Whatever. We also know I'm super flexible, I always got good scores on the sit-and-reach in middle school and I've done plenty of yoga since then. Whoopee.
Cardio stuff was a little surprising. My resting HR was way above what it usually is - 84 is fine, but I've had it down near 60 recently, like when I was on my trip. I also got a slightly below-average score on the step test, which is kind of odd since I spent last quarter doing step aerobics. But then the guy said I could easily improve on cardio in the next weeks, and I realized I've done what, two runs in the last two weeks. If cardio scores change easily on a couple-of-weeks basis, then I'm probably just seeing the effects of spring break lazing around and the first week back not realizing I didn't have any cardio scheduled in.
And then there was the body fat measurement. According to BIA aka my scale, I'm 25% body fat, and according to this formula thingy, I'm 17% body fat. Uhhhh? The guy said from looking me, he thinks the scale measurement is high, and the caliper measurement is low but more accurate than the scale - so, around 20%. That's a pretty big "around" is all I've got to say. But it's nice to think that in the low 130s, I'm actually sitting in the healthy range, not quizzically looking at my "skinny fat". I guess this means I can pretty much dispense with my scale's body fat function as an indicator of what weight I should seek to lose, though it can tell me whether weight I AM losing is fat or lean since the measurement is fairly consistent.
Not much new
133.2 and 25.3% body fat. I'm not thrilled that the percentage has been up above 25% again a few days lately. 133.2 has come up a LOT of times recently. Apparently my low weight/fat upon returning from my trip was spurious. My week of restriction went well, although results aren't evident at this time. I had Pilates on Monday and Wednesday, yoga on Tuesday and Thursday, and a run on Friday. I stayed under 1600 calories M-W and had 1690 calories Th, but the extra 90 were less than the amount I had accumulated "under target" the past three days, so I count myself as successful at hitting 1600 for the four major schooldays. Yesterday I hit 2085 which is a little more than 2000 but I'm not worried about that for reasons that will be clarified. It was great, I had just a light breakfast and then pushed it 'til midafternoon and then had a whole box of Annie's macaroni and cheese and a bunch of ice cream bars. Mmm yum. So the idea is that between Saturday and Sunday, one can be another roughly-2000 calorie day and the other should be no more than 1700-1750. Anyway, after all the food yesterday afternoon I wasn't very hungry this morning and feel like I will be eating lightly today, so I'm pretty confident I'll make up for that 85-calorie difference without any trouble.
This coming week I'll be doing a similar strategy. Target of 1600 for M-Th, except for T when I'll be going to Bikram so if I feel extra hungry, an 1800 target is still a greater deficit than a 1600 target with the usual yoga. Out of F-Sa-Su, two can be about 2000 and 1 should be around 1700. Usually the 2000 calorie days will probably be Friday and Sunday - Friday because it's nice to dig into a big bowl of something delicious at the end of the week, and Sunday because I'll be doing my long runs on Sunday. The general exercise plan from here is Pilates MW, yoga TTh, shorter runs with a little stretching and pushups WF, and long runs Su. I might do some home-yoga on Saturdays too but it could be a day off too - that might vary week to week as I feel like I need rest or stretching more. The modified plan for this week, to use up my Bikram classes, is to replace Tuesday vinyasa, Friday run, and Sunday run (both of the coming weekends) with Bikram.
Also, I'm doing something mildly interesting today: fitness testing. There was a flyer in the sports center about fitness testing on several dimensions, including body composition, cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength and endurance, and some that I can't remember. I know basically about my body composition, but I am interested in what other dimensions they test and how I compare to recommendations. I mean, I think it's pretty cool that I can run 2 miles in less than 25 minutes with no preparation and can sustain a 6-7 mph pace on a treadmill for a couple of minutes, but what are the standards? How strong do they expect 20-year-old college girls to be? I know 25% isn't awesome for body fat, but what conclusions might they draw when considered alongside my other abilities, and will they get a different number if they use a different method? Etc.
This coming week I'll be doing a similar strategy. Target of 1600 for M-Th, except for T when I'll be going to Bikram so if I feel extra hungry, an 1800 target is still a greater deficit than a 1600 target with the usual yoga. Out of F-Sa-Su, two can be about 2000 and 1 should be around 1700. Usually the 2000 calorie days will probably be Friday and Sunday - Friday because it's nice to dig into a big bowl of something delicious at the end of the week, and Sunday because I'll be doing my long runs on Sunday. The general exercise plan from here is Pilates MW, yoga TTh, shorter runs with a little stretching and pushups WF, and long runs Su. I might do some home-yoga on Saturdays too but it could be a day off too - that might vary week to week as I feel like I need rest or stretching more. The modified plan for this week, to use up my Bikram classes, is to replace Tuesday vinyasa, Friday run, and Sunday run (both of the coming weekends) with Bikram.
Also, I'm doing something mildly interesting today: fitness testing. There was a flyer in the sports center about fitness testing on several dimensions, including body composition, cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength and endurance, and some that I can't remember. I know basically about my body composition, but I am interested in what other dimensions they test and how I compare to recommendations. I mean, I think it's pretty cool that I can run 2 miles in less than 25 minutes with no preparation and can sustain a 6-7 mph pace on a treadmill for a couple of minutes, but what are the standards? How strong do they expect 20-year-old college girls to be? I know 25% isn't awesome for body fat, but what conclusions might they draw when considered alongside my other abilities, and will they get a different number if they use a different method? Etc.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Opposite week
It seems to be opposite week chez my body. First I get back from a slothful and mildly gluttonous trip to new lows of weight and body fat. Then as I restrict to 1600 and exercise the next several days, it actually shoots up. When I go to bed at 10pm and have an alarm at 6, I'm tired and don't want to get up, but when I go to bed past midnight for the same wakeup time, I'm perky in the morning. At this rate, after my box of Annie's shells and cheese and several ice cream bars this afternoon, I'll wake up tomorrow light and feathery. I don't know, man.
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