I confess

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.

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.

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...

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!

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.

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.

Reflection on the trip pre weigh in

So, before I even look at the scale, I am going to make a little evaluation of how things went as far as my diet and exercise on the trip.

I ended up altering my exercise a little. 10 sun salutes is really too much, so I did 5 instead. I got bored doing 2 different kinds of crunches, so I eliminated the regular crunches and just did oblique crunches, because you still use the middle muscles for those. I still did my yoga routine, knee pushups, and oblique crunches most of the days, like I wanted to. The last couple of days I didn't do the pushups and crunches, but I did the yoga.

As far as the weight I expect to have, the first thing to note is that I left on day 7 of my menstrual cycle and tomorrow, when I have my official return weigh-in, it will be day 23. So I will expect a water-hormone-related gain related to that, but my body fat percentage will tell me about that. Hopefully, I have drunk enough water today to stabilize my hydration level despite the 22-hour assault of airplanes. In France, I may have managed to lose a pound because we walked SO MUCH and often we either were too busy to eat lunch or we ate a big rich lunch and weren't hungry for dinner, so we had only 2 meals a day sometimes. In Finland, I probably about broke even most days (well, except for those two dinners with the obscene flow of alcohol) but it's hard to say. We did some walking, but it was cold and the city was very compact, so not as much, and we usually ate three square meals. As for the travelling days, the ones in the middle were normal, the short day I really have no idea how well I matched my calories to my time, and on the long day (today) I was incredibly hungry, probably because we got up at 3:30 AM, so I've eaten a lot, but then it's been a 34 hour day.

My pants have gotten looser, but that means nothing because I've been wearing the same 2 pairs of pants for 2 1/2 weeks. My dress, which would be less likely to stretch and which I wore only twice, I think fit a little better than when I acquired it, but it's hard to tell. Based on my body image when I looked in the mirror, I felt like I was losing weight in France and at best maintaining in Finland, but there are psychological factors including my knowledge of my behavior during that time, so that's probably an unreliable indicator for such a small potential weight change.


I have to admit I couldn't resist calorie estimating entirely. I didn't think much about it in France because we were walking so much, but especially in Finland where I could tell I was near the line and kept being faced by large dinners I wanted to keep a rough mental tally (estimated to an increment of 100) of how much I had probably eaten. I also weighed myself once, about 3 days ago. I saw the scale in the WC when we were at a dinner and had to step on. Of course, it read in kilograms, and it read 64 1/2 kg. Well, 65x2 = 130 so 65x0.2 = 13, adds up to 143, minus a pound for the 1/2 kg, so about 142 pounds. Considering I was wearing clothes and it was 7 PM, not bad. But then I remembered that analog scales, in my experience, tend to run low.

So, I may have lost my pound or I may not have. I would be surprised if I lost much more than a pound, and I would NOT be surprised if I lost a pound or less of fat but maintained or gained overall because of my cycle. I would also be somewhat surprised and definitely disappointed if I gained fat overall. We'll find out tomorrow, and in a few days I can do a check between Saturdays 3 weeks apart.

Sugar binge

Monday 12/27

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

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

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

Hoping for better luck tomorrow.

Diet is going well this week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Activity:

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

Food:

Friday 11/12

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

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

Thursday 11/11

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

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

Wednesday 11/10

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

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

Tuesday 11/9

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

330+200+175+550+485=1740

Monday 11/8

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

300+100+430+365+455=1650

Sunday 11/7

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

415+40+190+200+1770=2615

Saturday 11/6

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

480+270+250+100+680=1780