It's been a while, hasn't it?

Yeah... so, everything has been fine for the last month or so. After I hit my 5-pound goal, I basically decided I was cool with my body, cool with the number, and I wasn't going to try to change my weight anymore. For the first couple of weeks I bounced between 127-130. Then I got my period around the same time I had a wisdom tooth bothering me and dropped down to just under 125 in a few days, then hovered around 125-126 for somewhat over a week. I kept counting calories for a bit and figured that, eating intuitively, I take in about 1600 calories/day during the first half of my cycle and 1900 calories/day in the second half, and a 2500 or so day about a once a week - all averaging out to about 1850/day. Then I dropped the calorie counting, and pretty soon after that I dropped the exercise tracking because I know whether I'm doing enough exercise without looking a spreadsheet of it. The reasons I exercise have nothing to do with weight anymore and everything to do with mood regulation. Finally when I hit the middle of my cycle, I shot up to 129 in a few days, and have dropped back to 126-128. So, I guess I lost a pound or something on average during that first month "maintaining". I'm still writing down what I eat, and weighing every day - not so much because I need to monitor it that closely, but to establish a baseline and to assess when I've "really" stabilized at a static average weight, which may take a few months.

I figure as long as my weight stays below 130 it can do whatever it wants. Past 130 I'll start paying attention, 135 I think is my definite action level, and 145 should be about my max. Of course, this could change if I actually get into some strength training and it pays off, or further in the future when I get pregnant, but for now those are the graduated ceilings I see for my weight.

Anyway, I'm actually thinking of quitting this blog. Nobody's reading it, I'm doing fine, and it's been suggested I create a web-based presentation of my weight loss process, but I don't really want to just open this anonymous blog to all the people who know me. So I'm going to take the data, re-work it up, and start a new blog that will actually be associated with me and have readers. 

Adios, amigos!

Plans and updates

After watching a few more days, I think I need to revise that to "my weight has stabilized around the 133 range." Which means the 5 pounds now only go down to 128. That's fine anyway; that'll be about 2 pounds back to my birthday weight, and 3 pounds after that. I realized that I haven't been watching a graph of my weight since my birthday, and today I put my post-birthday weights in a graph and could see exactly what's been going on. For about two weeks I basically stayed steady, then gained about a pound in the last two weeks of classes, and then with the end of semester party and my period hitting just after I got a big spike in my weight, so I had to wait for the water retention to level out, but it looks like I gained about a pound for real over that weekend. Anyway, my weight has been edging slowly down for the past few days, and I think I've been on the right track (if chipping a little slowly) for the past week and a half or so.

I've been following that pointlike plan I described last time with 33-222-111-zeroes-dinner as the target. I may stick with this plan on some days for the summer but I was also thinking of a new template. The idea would be, eat a sensible breakfast, eat a normal dinner, and plan on often having after-dinner treats or beverages, but during the day, bring a protein bar and 500 calories' worth of fruit and vegetables, of which I can eat as much as I want. There will be a fridge at work, so I can just keep track of what I have there and top it off to 500 each morning. I'll try to get some cardio most days, which can be before either breakfast or my protein bar. I think the 500 calories' worth of fruits and veggies is brilliant, because if I eat it all that's definitely 5 or more servings, and 500 calories of fruits and veggies is really a lot of volume, so it shouldn't feel limiting. It also keeps my calories around 1100-1200 before dinner, which leaves room for a nice dinner and a drink or a dessert all within 1800 or so, and my exercise will basically be my deficit. I'd like to keep doing yoga, but I'm not sure where I'd go. I don't know if I want to keep doing Bikram - although once-a-week or so would probably kick my losses up a bit - but any other type of yoga I'd want to do more often than I can probably afford.

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!

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.

Monday plan

Here's my planned eats for today:

2 poached eggs, buttered toast, 1/2 sliced grapefruit, and cafe au lait (140+90+50+30+65=375)

Salad with sunflower seeds and dressing and a can of tuna (50+50+50+150=300)
Chunk of cheese (110)

Snack in class?

Chicken spaghetti casserole (and veggies?) (about 550)

This is projected at 1335, not including the possible class snack (you never know if someone's actually bringing one). My target is 1600. Therefore, if I'm under 1500 by after-dinner (allows 165 "extra"), then I get an ice cream bar.

Plan/strategies for Hum snack: either JUST SAY NO or take a small amount. Drink water or coffee. Prefer juice and hard candy to solid snack foods.

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?

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).

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.

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.

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.

What is a healthy diet?

As my BMR declines and I have to compensate for reduced exercise with stricter diet, I find myself more often feeling exhausted on lower-calorie days. I'm never going below 1200, but sometimes when I'm below 1600 I get through the day with few calories, and I've eaten in a such a way that I don't really feel hungry, but something feels physically unsatisfied. Which got me wondering if sometimes I'm not getting enough real nutrients. It's easy to get enough essential nutrients on 2000/day. It's no doubt possible for 1600, and possibly down to 1200, but you have to be more careful and make sure most of the calories come with good nutrition. So what is a healthy diet? I do not have the time and energy to invest in looking up RDIs for all the vitamins and minerals, let alone make up a meal plan that isn't repetitive and fulfills everything, but the simpler models of a healthy diet aren't so helpful. One model I heard a lot growing up essentially says, minimize dairy, minimize carbs, minimize salt, moderate fruit... okay so I'm eating nothing but beans and veggies. That's realistic. The food pyramid model is easier to work with, but it simply doesn't work because the minimum number of servings of everything adds up to way more calories that I'm eating. So, what tests could I apply to my diet to determine if I'm eating healthy?

I'm going to provisionally define a healthy diet as:

- 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day
- A complex carb and a protein at every meal
- No more than 10-20% of calories from "empty" sources like oils, added sugar, alcohol, and refined or artificial carbs and fats
- At least 1 and no more than 3 servings of dairy per day
- Fish 1-2x a week
- Total meat (fish and fowl only for me) no more than 2-3x a week

I'm of course aware that vegan diets and meat-heavier diets can be healthy, even at low calorie values (and in fact most vegan diets are low calorie by default) but given my actual dietary preferences this seems like a good way to spread out nutritional needs. Now I need to look at my food journal and see how well it adheres to these standards. I think I will need to start insisting on vegetables in dinner no matter what, and also try to have a vegetable and a fruit at lunch because I simply don't eat those things for afternoon snacks - sometimes I don't eat an afternoon snack at all, but if I do it has to be denser than that. Another thing to look at is "empty" calories. If my target calories are 1500, then I should be limited to about 200 "empty" calories.

Shifting my focus

So I gave in to after-dinner snacking even though I wasn't really hungry the past few days. I don't know what's up with that - the night eating thing has never really been my style. I basically broke even for about three days (including the party day) and then pushed, oh, -250 or so the past couple of days. It's something, but it's not much.

The other reason I pushed so little of a deficit yesterday was that my iPod finally died. It's an old Shuffle that I've had since I was fifteen, and the on-switch was getting sticky so you had to push real hard, push oppositely on the other side at the same time, and try it more than once. Yesterday was the day it just wouldn't turn on. I was very disappointed because I'd just put together a new playlist I was excited to listen to. So yesterday I didn't do any exercise because I didn't want to ellipticize without music and just sort of didn't feel like doing pull-ups. Yeah, I know.

So today I'm getting back on the wagon. I've had yoga and 915 calories so far, I'm going to get some milk to drink when I'm done writing this, then go home for dinner. But I need to shift my focus from lots of exercise and moderate diet, to some exercise and stricter diet. If I do yoga the mornings I have class, and run 2+ miles on other weekday mornings, I have 200 calories of exercise 5 days a week. Then, if I eat no more than 1700 calories a day, I should still lose a pound a week. That sequesters the exercise in the morning and doesn't require music, which makes it more manageable. I feel like, when I don't do any exercise at all, my diet is hard to manage. But even if I don't burn a ton of calories, just a little exercise makes it easy to restrict pretty hard. As far as my pull-ups, I occasionally skip a day out of boredom or discouragement, but I don't think I'll really lapse because I know I'll lose all my progress since I do nothing else of magnitude with my arms.

I also need to chill out and continue working even though it's getting hard to put my all into it, both schedule wise and in terms of motivation. I'm in the low end of what I've weighed before which simultaneously makes me impatient to lose-these-10-pounds-already and break 150, but also makes me feel not really fat, basically the same shape as everybody else, and therefore, not a big deal if I only maintain for some reason. So, I'm re-setting my attention on the next microgoal. 154.6 is the short range target. Just 5 pounds, so I can claim 30 pounds lost. Just 5 pounds, so these pants will fit a little looser and I can ride my bike comfortably with yoga shorts underneath them. Just 5 pounds.

Sick

I'm getting a cold. This was a situation I did not think of and plan for because uh, well, I get only 2-3 colds a year and usually they don't happen in the summer, so it wasn't on my mind when I started this thing. Anyway, I always get extra hungry when I have a cold. I particularly crave salt, I imagine because I'm leaking a bunch of it in snot. I don't know if I actually need the extra calories or not, but I do know it makes me feel better to eat more. So I'm going to just say fuck it while I'm sick. I'll try to still push a deficit, any deficit, but not worry about it being 500-1000 or how I achieve it, that is, I'm also not going to worry about doing my scheduled exercise. But on that note, I have impressed myself recently. Yesterday I didn't have much time, but I really craved the feeling of sweating and loosening up, so I popped in just for 15 min on the elliptical, all I had time for. Today, even though I'm sick, I wanted to go ellipticize, so I just took a real easy pace and went through my whole playlist. Even when there are things in the way I'm finding that my body makes me want to do my exercise anyway, and that's a positive change.

Day 99 - conclusion of Phase I

Well it's day 99 and what do I weigh? 162.8. As I updated in my sidebar earlier, that means that in the first 99 days I lost:

21.8 pounds
3.5 inches off my waist
1, almost 2 pant sizes

and for a bonus:

at least 1 cup size
at least 2 band sizes
3.5 inches off the part of my hips that might not be where I'm supposed to measure, but at least I'm consistent
1.75 inches off my thigh

Here's my weight data over time in eye-candy form:

"Adjusted" simply means that weight entries from the analog scale were multiplied by 1.026 to align them with entries from the digital scale. See 7/23 for a more detailed explanation.

So, I'm excited about my progress so far and I'm also excited about new features in my spreadsheet for Phase II! I've added a column that calculates my BMR based on my body weight and then another one that multiplies by 1.3 for what I call my LMC, lifestyle maintenance calories. This assumes that, before the exercise I track, my basic lifestyle of being a student, walking around campus with books, and riding my bike to and from school is in between "sedentary" and "lightly active". I may tweak the multiplier on weekends or other days that I am noticeably less active. I'm also going to start estimating my calories burned during exercise, since so much of it lately is on machines that calculate it. For now I'll count running as 100/mile, and a yoga class as about 200 (harder than walking for an hour, but less aerobic & rhythmic, plus, the internet said no). Finally, my last handy dandy column puts it all together and calculates my estimated deficit. So each week, I'll now be able to compare the deficit I think I had to the weight I lost. It'll be fun!

And now, it's time to start over. My "high weight" is no longer 184.6, it's 166.2. I've gotten a little ahead already, but the name of the game is to get further away from that reminiscent-of-8th-grade number and close in on that juicy normal-weight number, 149.6. I'm really looking forward to breaking 160, although it could still be a few weeks away. Bring on the 5's!

Quick update

Started school Monday so, posts will be less frequent now. Crossed 20 pounds again yesterday, forgot to update the ticker then but just did now (had another fairly dramatic drop today). I also changed the goal on my ticker to 134.6 because that's really how I'm thinking of it and I can always modify it again later if I want to but I was tired of mentally adding 5 pounds onto what my ticker said. I want to be able to go throw a little party in my head when it says 25 lost, 25 to go.

I've got a confession to make...

... which is absolutely the most cliche title I could have given this post, especially considering I don't think any of my 3 supposed followers actually read my blog, and if there a were a real follower, s/he could easily deduce most of it from my posted data. But this needs to be written and analyzed because that Annika Q's Universal Solution to any problem.

My habits are slipping. I've begun drinking too much coffee and smoking pot too often, which you wouldn't know from the data. I also have been exercising only every other day all week. It started out with good reasons - we spent most of the day driving back on Sunday, I knew ahead of time I wouldn't get any more exercise than the bike ride home. Tuesday, I was in some combination of pain or lightheaded hunger most of the day, so I gave myself a pass on that one. But there was really no excuse for Thursday. Today, I really really was going to go out to the track... and then I got a little distracted and got too hungry to go out, had to eat lunch, and then was too full to want to run. I don't know if I'll end up going today, because there's a lot to do. Including reading for Monday, which is of course about to become the biggest time-sink in my life. At least I've eaten low calories on the days I didn't exercise - the diet really hasn't been that hard, calorically anyway. But I did experience some weirdly strong carb cravings this afternoon, and I notice that I've sort of started ignoring the reduced-dairy thing I had started a while ago. Besides, exercise is important not only because it's generally good for me but because it leads to larger deficits. I can eat lower total calories on days I don't exercise, but I can do larger deficits when I do exercise because 500 calories of exercise doesn't make me hungry for 500 extra calories.

Part of this maybe has got to do with the general disturbance this month has been. My job ended so I didn't go somewhere in the morning every day. I went on a bike trip, then was back for a week, then went on a long camping trip and came back. It's hard to re-establish routine after those kinds of things. Also, the intense exercise I did on those excursions was largely fueled by energy bars, which are rewarding and full of sugar. Calorically, they were justified, but they may have left some baggage.

Part of it may be psyching myself out. School's about to start, and I might be using it as an excuse to start failing early, in a way. I also just lost 4 pounds and zoomed past my first goal in a week away, which sends a bit of a "you can be lax" message. And I'm now at the weight I've been for most of my life. It seems a little less pressing to change what I'm used to than it was to undo recent damage.

Part of it is probably what I'm reading. What you read has a tendency to change your head - that's the whole premise of school. What I've lately been reading is PastaQueen (see sidebar). I'm up to a point in her archives where she has been basically stable for I don't know, a year or so at a point about 20 pounds from her goal weight, and isn't really bothered by it. Let me tell you, I felt a lot more energized to go run when I was reading anorexic blogs, and a lot more prone to do push-ups in between clips of Supersize vs. Superskinny. I guess they really are "thinspiring." That was the whole point of the original "obsessional diet" title - I'm so blah about this stuff normally, I have to practically pretend to have an ED to find an effective medium.

Although school will definitely be a time-sink, I think it'll be helpful to an extent by routinizing my life. I'll be on campus with the gym every day, and there's a specific morning window when I can do my exercise. Also, it'll give me stuff to think about besides my stupid weight. This has basically been my project all summer, and it's been particularly thought-consuming in August since my job ended. It's also getting to the point where the results are slowing down and the execution isn't so novel anymore. As long as I can get my exercise out of the way early each day, it'll be easy to go the whole day without thinking about food, then I spend 10 minutes planning tomorrow's and each night I get to look at an effortless deficit. Because I'll have other things to pay attention to, hopefully the next 5-10 pounds will just whiz by even if they're not going away that quickly.

Whatever happens tonight and tomorrow, I'm going on a neighborhood run Monday morning. I'll do 20 minutes of elliptical on Tuesday before yoga, and I'll do a regular 40 minutes before class on Wednesday. Repeat for Thursday and Friday, and go to the track Saturday. That's how I'm kicking off my first week of school. The diet should take care of itself - we planned dinner and breakfast for each day of the week, and whatever I bring to school is all I can eat for lunch and snacks. I've also added some new features to my second spreadsheet, which starts on the 14th, and which will estimate my daily deficit.

Riding out the tidal wave of school

I swear every time I've lost weight, I must have gained muscle that follows me back up the weight ladder. I say this because my size-at-X-weight keeps getting smaller. When I weighed 165 in 8th grade, I wore a size 12. When I hit 180 around Christmas of my junior year, I was also a size 12, and when I got back down to 165 I was a size 10. Now I'm about 165 again, and I wear 10's, but I'm on the edge of an 8. And yet I'm still 36-37% fat?

Maybe the sizes are actually changing, like grade inflation for pants. They've certainly changed since the 60's, but do they change perceptibly over a 7-year timespan?

Anyway, school starts next Monday and it throws a whole new wrench into the gears. I've lost 20 pounds over the summer (yowzers!) and I may be able to claim 25 by the end of the 99 days. Right now it seems easy. It's never been about willpower, just ignorance - there is nothing difficult about limiting myself to one peanut butter cup when I know the exact numerical damage it will do. It's even easier to pass up the seconds of rice and beans (haha, I never get tired of this example do I?). And frankly, I'm not worried as much about my diet. I'm not living in dorms this year and won't have the money to buy a lot of on-campus food. What's more likely to go out the window is my exercise routine. So I've got a plan.

First, on the diet front - I'm in an entirely new situation. I've handled my own food before, but only while going to state school or during the summer. Preparing my own food with 26 hours a week of class and more of homework is another thing. There's also the difference of living with my boyfriend, whose body works in almost the opposite way to mine. I could go on and on, but the best example is that, left to his own devices, he would eat an enormous breakfast and an enormous dinner with maybe a few nibbles in between. On the contrary, I like a small breakfast, small dinner, large lunch, and at least 2 snacks. So, we are going to do some meal planning and weekend preparation of freezable/storable foods. I'll have to prepare my lunch, snacks, and lay out my clothes before bed because I'm terrible at getting out on time in the morning if I actually have to be creative.

Getting out on time is important because on TR, I have a 7:45 AM yoga class. If I get my ass up at 6 and don't have to do much, I can probably get down to campus at 7 when the sports center opens and get a quick elliptical workout and rinse-off done before yoga, which would be real nice. MWF I have the options of still rushing over the gym in the morning, running in the neighborhood and leaving a little later, or... sleeping in and leaving a little later.

Sleeping in will probably win a lot. It's easy to get up at 6 when you go to bed at 9:30, but when you're kept up til 11 with homework, it's hard for exercise to beat out sleep for second priority. And sleep is important to both weight loss and academic performance. But if I don't do it in the morning, school will loom in its king position for the rest of the day. So here are my goals and safety nets for exercise:

I want to keep doing cardio 5-6 times a week. This means 4-5 weekdays and 1 weekend day. First choice is running or elliptical, but if it doesn't happen in the morning, the backup plan is to speedwalk on the treadmill, 4 mph or as fast as I can go without starting to run, at least 40 minutes, whenever I don't have a specific place to be. The advantage of this is that if I'm not bouncing up and down, I can lay a book on the display and do schoolwork at the same time. It's not ideal, but it'll burn calories and not time. However, because I like being fit to run, I want to do a minimum of 2 proper runs each week. I imagine I'll go down to the local high school and run on the track for my weekend cardio, so that means I need to fit in 1 run during the week. I think I can do that.

In terms of strength training, well, let's just say it'll be a whole lot easier once I can do the exercises on my own. Then I won't have to change into gym clothes and go to the machine and wait in between sets... blah. When all I have to do is stop in at the park for 10 minutes on my way home it will be much easier. For now, I'll be happy as long as I keep doing my pull-ups 2-3x a week. At this rate, I should be able to do a pull-up unassisted by the time I reach my weight goal. I'll probably work on push-ups sporadically, but hopefully they'll improve without much specific attention because pull-ups use related muscles. Anyway, since my mornings are mostly booked, strength training will have to happen in the afternoon. I'll do it whenever I have time, in proximity to my treadmill walk if necessary, it'll be that last thing I have to do before leaving campus, and if I didn't do it Monday I must do it Tuesday.

Finally, I'm going to make an appointment with the health/counseling center to discuss ways of not getting derailed from good habits (including exercise, less sugar, less caffeine, and taking time for myself) when I am so pressed for time.

Back-from-the-bike-trip weigh-in

172.0 and 37% bodyfat this morning, and I'm sure it's fluid and digestive retention and maybe a little bit of muscle for a number of reasons...

- I feel like I'm retaining
- I ate spaghetti for dinner again last night
- I've been drinking tons of Emergen-C (electrolytes) for several days
- I've also gotten sufficiently dehydrated to need constant lip balm
- I've eaten 11360 calories in the last 4 days, mostly in the form of solid food
- I got the same weight yesterday immediately upon returning, but with 35.8% fat
- My body feels harder than it did when I left
- There's no way I gained any fat when you look at my energy balance

Alright, excuses over, I'm sure I will be vindicated next week. I really hope I shed a few pounds in the next few days as I re-equilibrate and hit 169.6 already. I just need to lose 2.4 pounds from here, 0.4 pounds from my lowest weight last week, to have lost FIFTEEN FULL POUNDS. I've been bouncing around twelve, thirteen, fourteen, for a bit too long and it's getting annoying.

The plan from here is as follows. Today, I don't restrict, but it's not a "booster day" where I try to eat a lot. It's just an allowance for the fact that my body may need more calories to recover, so not to worry if I'm up around 2000, but if less works out, then great. I suspect I won't need the allowance since I actually didn't have much deficit yesterday. Tomorrow, I restrict with a target of under 1850 to begin with, working back down to under 1700 as soon as my body will allow, and go back to my usual exercise immediately.

Quick 9-day stats: average kcals/day 2311, 4 cardio, 2 strength workouts, 148 biked miles including 2938 ft of climbing, +1.2 lbs.

Now the data, but first a note on "net calories." I don't usually calculate net calories because calorie-burn estimates are notoriously unreliable and then you have to take into account your BMR and it's just not really worth it under usual conditions. But since I was doing such extreme exercise and eating lots of food to fuel it, I wanted to get an idea of what kind of deficit I'd be pushing. So the "net calories" reported for bike-trip days are the consumed calories minus a burn estimate based on riding the number of miles I did at 8 mph and 172 lbs body weight according to whatever assumptions go into a typical online calculator. Note that this doesn't account for the weight of supplies, bike, elevation, speed variation, etc. My BMR, for reference, is estimated at about 1600 calories/day, but this also could be different for the bike trip days because of the amount of repair and quick adaptation necessary.

Sunday 8/8

1 Lara bar and 2 Emergen-C's (200+40=240)
1 cup polenta and 1/2 can tuna (175+95=270)
BLT sandwich and side salad with vinaigrette (550+50+50=650)
3/4 pint Half-Baked ice cream (810)
Pasta with red sauce and a glass of wine (500+80+125=705)

240+270+650+810+705=2675 + 22 miles bike riding (net: ~1825)

Saturday 8/7

1 Powerbar, 1 Clif bar, 1 Luna bar, 1 Lara bar, and 2 Emergen-C's (240+250+180+200+40=910)
Eggs, hash browns, toast with butter and jam, and chocolate milk (140+300+200+200+100+160+100=1200)
1 tortilla, 1 oz cheese, 1 cup rice and beans, and 1/2 can tuna (170+110+230+95=605)
1/2 half-pint blackberries, and 1 beer (50+100=150)

910+1200+605+150=2865 + 39 miles bike riding with 1548 ft elevation gain (net: ~1200)

Friday 8/6

2 Clif bars, 1 Luna bar, 1 Lara bar, and 5 Emergen-Cs (490+180+190+100=960)
2.5 tortillas, 3 oz cheese, 2 cups rice and beans, 1 cup polenta, and 1/2 can tuna (425+330+460+175+95=1485)
1 orange, handful of peanuts, and 1 Werther's candy (100+200+20=320)

960+1485+320=2765 + 32 miles bike riding (net: ~1500)

Thursday 8/5

1 egg, 2 toast with butter, 1/2 grapefruit with sugar, vanilla yogurt, and soymilk (70+200+100+40+15+105+100=630)
1 Powerbar, 1 Clif bar, 2 Luna bars, 1 Lara bar, and 4 Emergen-Cs (240+240+360+200+80=1120)
3 tortillas, 3 oz cheese, 1 cup rice and beans, and 1/2 can tuna (510+330+230+95=1165)
1 can Coke (140)

630+1120+1165+140=3055 + 55 miles bike riding with 1390 ft elevation gain (net: ~1000)

Wednesday 8/4

Soymilk and coffee (100)
Egg, cheese, and potato burrito (2*70+100+100+170=510)
Walnuts, apple, and green tea (245+100=345)
Ice cream with fudge sauce and strawberries (2*150+130+50=480)
Pasta with red sauce and nutri-yeast (500+120+50=670)

100+510+345+480+670=2105 + outdoor run (2.0 mi) and upper body strength workout

Tuesday 8/3

Egg on toast, vanilla yogurt, and grapefruit with 2 tsp sugar (70+120+10+80+30=310)
Cheese sandwich and apple (2*120+2*100+100=540)
Frozen grapes and a chunk of cheese (50+100=150)
Slice of bread (120)
Soymilk and 1 package ramen (100+380=480)

310+540+150+120+480=1600 + outdoor run (2.2 mi)

Monday 8/2

Banana and coffee (100)
Toast with sweet peanut butter and coffee (100+190=290)
Chunk of cheese (100)
Couscous with sauteed onions, tomatoes, and chopped almonds (175+40+30+200=445)
Frozen grapes and a spoonful of sweet peanut butter (50+100=150)
Chicken with butter, sauteed potatoes, green vegetables and a glass of wine (210+100+150+80+50+125=715)

100+290+100+445+150+715=1800 + outdoor run (1.4 mi) and upper body strength workout

Sunday 8/1

Scrambled eggs with cheese and toast (140+75+100=315)
Blueberry bread and a slice of provolone (220+80=300)
Picnic lunch (860)
Caponata sandwich (300)
Yogurt and fruit salad (140+60=200)
Bread with sardines (150+110=260)
Carrot and sparkling juice (30+70=100)
Sesame puffs and popcorn (60+165=225)
Pizza and soda (500+150=650)

315+300+860+225+650=2350 + no exercise

Saturday 7/31

1 bowl cereal with sliced banana and coffee (150+100+100=350)
Chunk of cheese (100)
Partial bowl potato corn chowder, pasta, fried polenta, and a glass of wine (150+200+150+125=625)
Chunk of cheese (100)
Slice of bread with sweet peanut butter (100+100=200)
Iced tea (60)
Miso soup with tofu (50+100=150)

350+100+625+100+200+60+150=1585 + aerobic dancing (7 songs)

I weigh every day

A lot of people recommend to weigh once a week. They say don't weigh every day, because your weight fluctuates with fluid and such.

The recommendation is also to lose 1/2 to 2 pounds a week.

So I say, if your weight fluctuates with fluid in such, then it could JUST AS EASILY make an unfavorable fluctuation on your weigh in day as any other day. You're looking for a 1-2 pound change, which is pretty much the same range as day-to-day random scatter about a stable weight, and about half as much as within-day changes. So, you can only see a trend over time. You only weigh weekly, you have 1/7 as much data and it it takes a lot longer to know if you're seeing a trend or not.

Also, cool thing: this morning the body fat reading said 36.6%. I log it as 37%, according to my previous decision on sig figs although it's been more consistent lately, but this is the first day I've rounded UP to 37%. Also, my bodyfat percentage has decreased by 1 rounded percentage point since the last time my spreadsheet calculated 107 pounds lean mass. I've lost 2.4 pounds since then, which is about 1.4% of the previous weight. It's a pretty rough calculation, but signs are looking good for mostly fat loss.

Upcoming bike trip

Hey, you know what REALLY gets your metabolism going? Riding your bike 70-80 miles in one day, resting, and repeating 3 times.

That's not quite what's going to happen this year. But last year, I rode my bike down to my dad's in the next major city down the valley, hung out for a weekend, then continued on to the college town where I went to school my first year. I revisited my old campus, saw a few friends, and turned around, using my dad's as a pit stop again. I weighed about what I do now, although I was probably in slightly better general shape. I ate around 1200 calories worth of energy bars each day of riding, plus meals. So I ate, in total, probably 3000-4000 calories a day, which is obviously a ton, but stick the ride into a few calorie calculators, add BMR, and you'll see it's somewhere between just-breaking-even and huge-deficit-anyway.

But I didn't say it shaved the pounds off while I was riding, I said it gets your metabolism going. The upshot of all this is that two weeks, 3 half-gallons of ice cream, and very little running later I was STILL slimming down. Not bad at all.

This year I'm doing another bike trip, this is for sure. Unfortunately, I don't have 9 consecutive days before school starts to ride down the valley like I did before. Instead I'm going with my boyfriend on a 4 day trip - the plan is to leave next Thursday - which will probably be 50 miles out, 2 days of recovery/hanging out, and 50 miles back. I won't restrict the day before or while I'm on the trip, although I will still record and count calories, and I'll probably eat as much of a pint of ice cream as I want the night we return. But afterward, I won't eat 3 half-gallons of ice cream to myself in 2 weeks and sit around. Instead I'll go straight back to the plan I've been following - strength training, running, and restricting. That should really give this thing a kick.