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!

Goal

At 128.8 yesterday and 127.6 today (yeah, I dunno either) I have met my goal of losing 5 pounds from the 133 range. At this point I can really say I'm totally satisfied with the number on the scale and the shape of my body. Or at least, I'm torn between thinking I could lose a few more pounds from my stomach and I ought to put a little back on my ribs. I've been eating cookies.

I want to do more strength training, and more yoga (I've hardly done any since the end of the academic year). I went and got some pants today that are long so I can wear them at work (a chemistry lab) but are flexible enough I can do yoga on my lunch break without changing clothes. Gotta find some way to motivate myself to do strength-building calisthenics, like pushups and bicycle/leglifts, on a regular basis. Also, with my full-time work, and some extra stuff I'm doing related to my work last summer, my running frequency isn't great and when I do run I feel I'm squeezing it in. I'm thinking of maybe setting my standard at fewer times a week but trying to do really good quality workouts that have a full spectrum of exercise types - a run and yoga-stretches and calisthenics.

On that note, it was nice this morning to go for a run just because I thought it would feel good, and without caring at all about how many calories it would burn. With my experience intuitive-eating in the last week or so, I'm pretty confident that the amount of exercise I need to stay mentally sane is at least as much as I need to maintain my weight given how much my body tells me to eat. What my mind nags me to eat can sometimes be another story, but there you go with the mental sanity, and also, it's much less of an issue due to my work right now, where I get very absorbed in what I'm doing and have to specifically change location from lab to office in order to eat.

Lose 5 more pounds

After waiting for my weight to stabilize, it looks like I'm back to the 132 range. I've done a lot of exercise the past couple days - gotten back on the elliptical since I found my Sansa cable again, and really pushed it, a whole 60 minutes today, plus some yoga while cooling down.

I'm sort of back to counting calories. It's actually a little like a WW points system, only with big points, and I think of them more as levels - plus it all translates back into calories at the literal end of the day, just a much rougher estimate than I was working with before. The benefit is being able to think about my meals and snacks as "chunks" in the plan of the day. I assign foods or combinations of foods I often eat to levels:

1 - under 100 calories
2 - 100-200 calories
3 - 200-300 calories

There are then "zeroes", which are under 30, and the idea is to account for a piece of hard candy or a bite of someone's food without using up a whole level 1. My typical target day plan is eat 2 "3's", 3 "2's" and 3 "1's" apart from dinner, then about 500 calories for dinner (counted normally), and less than 100 calories' worth of zeroes, estimated according to how many and what they actually were at the end of the day. Estimating 1's as 100 calories, 2's as 150, and 3's as 250, this totals about 1750-1850.

I'm making it a goal to lose 5 pounds from here. So, I want to see 127.x.  I'm not sure what the timescale will be, but I'd say a month would be ambitious and it should definitely be done by the end of the summer. Maybe by 4th of July.

Status update

Well, I did okay on Monday and Tuesday of last week, but then the free food took over. I kind of forgot about some of my planned strategies (e.g. one donut only). Now I'm around 3 pounds up, which is still under 135, but I don't think it's all "real" anyhow because I don't think I overate enough to gain 2 pounds in a week.

Toward the end though, I did break through it all in a significant way, I think. During the end-of-term party, I took a certain substance that always makes me uninterested in food, resulting in my not eating for about 15 hours. The overnight fast can sometimes last that long, but usually it's around 8-12 hours, so it was a really a great break and made me feel light and "up" and on-track again. Since then, the past two days, I've gone back to counting calories and I've been doing pretty well.

I was going to try to have a cardio workout and a yoga class all five weekdays this week, but I realized there aren't as many yoga classes as I thought and some of them conflict with other things I'm doing. So I'll go to the ones I can and still try to cardio every day.

I'm looking forward to the summer because I'll be able to walk to campus/work and back, which will mean I'm walking for a little more than an hour a day, plus any real working out I do. I guess I wanted to focus on training my running, but the weather's been so sluggish at becoming summer that I haven't really thought about it yet. I actually have a lot of projects I want to work on over the summer including some writing and I'm not sure if I will have enough time for all of it. I'll be working, but I also want to continue a story I started a long time ago, and write an essay about Hobbes and Locke and Ayn Rand, and train up my running, and I need to keep working on this writeup of the work I did last summer. Hopefully it will all happen...

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.

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!

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.

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.

Cardio pls

Pilates has potential, but I can't live on flexibility and strength conditioning alone. I need to reintroduce cardio. So I think next week I'll run in the morning on Monday and Wednesday, or at least Wednesday, and the week after that my Bikram package will be done and I'll start running Wed-Fri-Sun: an ordinary 2-mile-ish run just for a little cardio maintenance on WF, and a long run on Sundays. I expect to formulate some more specific goals for running fitness as the weather gets warmer and the school year winds up, which I will be able pursue in a targeted way over the summer.

Pilates

I didn't love my first Pilates class. It was largely an issue that happens with any fourth-quarter class: so many of the students have been there earlier in the year, the teachers start glossing over stuff, and as a new person you can get lost in the terminology you've never heard before and the difficulty of looking at the teacher who's demonstrating while doing the exercise. However, I could detect that a small sliver of what annoyed me was that some of the things were not just hard to understand, but hard to actually do, and so I think there's potential for me to build some strength. I will go to the next one on Wednesday and if it becomes more tolerable, I'll keep it. I still have two weeks to decide whether to drop it.

probably gain half a pound instead of lose it

At least I got out for a walk today, even if I ate two dozen Reese's peanut butter eggs while doing so...

Adverse conditions

The conditions here are really terrible for weight loss. We have:

- Junk food readily available and visible

- Not much to do and 20 minutes' drive into town

- Dry climate that makes you constantly thirsty even if you drink a lot of water

- Icy roads that make running tough

- Unfamiliar, non-gridded roads that I might get lost on if I went running by myself

So I'm only earning a sedentary 1750 or so calories a day, and am constantly fending off the behavioral availability of eating. Well, life is life. When I get back I have low-calorie, lower-carb meal plans, careful scheduling, and environmental control strategies to lose a couple more pounds before my birthday and the end of phase 3. By the way, I'm not taking aerobics next quarter but instead pilates on Monday and Wednesday. I can keep going to yoga on Tuesday and Thursday and this will improve my evening load a bit and also spread my exercise out so there is some on all four days of the fully-booked week. My Bikram package expires soon and since we may be moving soon, I can't afford to get another one. So I'll be mostly relying on those school classes, and maybe I'll take advantage of the weekends to get back into regular running, since the weather's getting warmer. I could see doing a short run (2-3 mi) on Fridays, a little yoga at home on Saturday, and a longer run on Sunday. That would give me approximately 150 calories of lifestyle activity and 200-300 calories of exercise over my sedentary expenditure each day, so if I kept my calories down to my sedentary expenditure or less (I checked again and actually it's about 1730 right now), I'd keep losing around 3/4 pound a week. If I stayed below 1600 four days a week I could have two 2000-calorie days for the same results, in theory. I think I have 4 Bikram classes left to use up before 4/11, so I will have to either take 2 each of the coming weekends or 1 on of the 8th, 9th, and 10th, unless I'm able to make it to one on Sunday, but since I'm now staying an extra day, I will have a lot to do when I get back.

Push up victory?

So this morning I did a push up.

I know, I can't really believe it either.

In fact, right after I did it, I was so disbelieving I asked my boyfriend if that looked like a real pushup. I mean, I must have collapsed my form or something to do that, right?

But he said it looked like a real pushup.

I've been trying to do another one since, and it hasn't worked. I guess I have to believe the witness.

Bored weigh in

So, I haven't posted much lately. That's because nothing is happening. I'm not losing and I'm not gaining. I'm going to school and doing yoga and aerobics and elliptical, and often feeling hungry at night or hungrier due to exercise, but still pushing a deficit most days. Yesterday I weighed in at 141.4 pounds, and I was out of town the week before, but two Saturdays ago I weighed 141.2 pounds. So that's +0.2 pounds in 2 weeks. Statistically insignificant. My body fat percentage has also been going nowhere since I got back from my trip. It's somewhere between 28% and 29%.

However, one must remember I encountered a similarly irritating plateau just above 170, and I think there was a little bit of a plateau around 155. Every 15 pounds. I hope that's what this is - a plateau that will eventually break, and not the point at which my formulas are showing inaccuracy. For now I will keep eating as lightly as I can manage, go to vinyasa yoga 2x a week, aerobics 2x a week, elliptical when it fits into the schedule, and next week when I deposit my financial aid check I can get a Bikram package which will give me 1-2 Bikram classes each weekend. And let's hope this thing cracks

Exercise plans

Well, I didn't break 140 before school started back up, mostly because last week was a wash. I'm around 141-142, which is fine, but I need to get rolling again.

This quarter I plan to take yoga (vinyasa flow) in the morning and aerobics in the evening on Tuesday and Thursday. Next quarter I'll have pilates before lunch on Monday and Wednesday, so I'll switch my yoga to those days. On the alternate days, I'll do cardio and strength exercises on the machines/mats, and maybe on some days I'll do a run instead of machines. I'd still like to do Bikram each weekend but I'm debating which location and second-guessing whether I'll really be able to go often enough to use up all my classes before the expiration date (they usually rig it so you have to do at least 5 per month which is a leetle more than I think is realistic).

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.

Vacation

Tomorrow I am leaving for my trip to Europe. I'll be back on the 19th which makes me gone from my spreadsheet, and regular computer access, for 15 days.

I'm  not going to count calories, however, I have decided to keep a rough record of what I eat. I'll probably look at nutrition information (which will be in kilojoules!) if I buy snacks that are labeled, but I won't record it. I won't be measuring anything. I will simply jot down what I've eaten each day, and visually/intuitively police how much. When eating in restaurants and at hosted dinners, my guideline will be: try anything that looks good or is necessary to be polite, but you don't have to finish everything that is served. Insofar as the meals are fairly high calorie anyway, I will hopefully be walking a lot, doing exciting things that will distract me from the idea of snacking, and I can do things like have a cafe-creme for a snack or a snack for lunch. I understand that the way "French women don't get fat" is they have lots of moderate daily activity and don't eat much between meals.

My grandpa is 72, but I believe he walks a couple of miles each morning at home, so hopefully I can convince him to walk most places. That will be most of my exercise, but I'm going to also bring my yoga mat and do a little yoga and strengthening routine most mornings (it probably won't happen on the days I'm flying):

10 sun salutes
Standing Bow/Dancer
Warrior II, I, and III
Pigeon, Boat, Forward Stretch, and Cobbler
Rocking, Wind Relieving, and Floor Twist

3 x 5 knee pushups or best effort
2 x 10 regular crunches
2 x 10 oblique crunches

I'm not sure how long this will end up taking, but I figure this might burn 100 or 120 calories. I'm going to go ahead and make it my goal to lose 1 pound from whatever my weight is tomorrow while on break. I think that should be possible, and if I overshoot it, I might do as much as break under 140 by the time I come back.

I'll post my leaving weight tomorrow.

Late weigh-in and first day of the cleanse

Yesterday I weighed in at 147.6 pounds and 31.1% body fat.

I went to a Bikram class and got the introductory package, as planned. I went to my mom's birthday dinner, which was Ethiopian food, and had this yummy bread called injera made from a gluten-free grain called teff. After dinner I had a psyllium shake, which was disgusting and should probably only be taken on an empty stomach, and some Cascara, to kick off the cleanse. We (my boyfriend is doing most of it with me) were too tired to wait an hour between the shake and Cascara, so we took them together, and I think the Cascara might have gotten absorbed by the psyllium because it didn't seem to have much effect, but we'll solve that later by taking the psyllium midday.

This morning I took a milk thistle and dandelion supplement and had a delicious rice cake with unsalted peanut butter and dried cranberries. I also had a piece of kombu (a kind of seaweed) steeped in hot water. I've had a little bit of a cold (just some sore throat/itchy nose in the morning) which I think is making me want salt more than would normally be the case. More than that, I'm feeling very low energy, which is partly because it's cold and probably mostly because I'm not having caffeine.

The official program, then, is this:

Liver support herbs with breakfast
At least 1 psyllium shake per day at any convenient time
Cascara sagrada before bed
Nothing with added salt, sugar, or oil (my boyfriend is allowing honey, I'm not)
No meat, eggs, dairy, or wheat
No mind-altering substances

Sunday-Wednesday: just wheat-free vegan
Thursday-Friday: raw food
Saturday: liquid fast until dinner (my boyfriend will just continue on raw)

Going back to Bikram yoga, and next semester plans

Today I got 147.8, another new low. I hope that it continues on its way down tomorrow for official weigh-in, although my period is coming up and sometimes that causes a loss and sometimes it causes a gain, so I don't know what will happen. That's not the main point of this post, though.

I want to start doing Bikram yoga again. I did Bikram for 2 years in high school - somewhere between daily and weekly, usually closer to daily, and I did a double (two classes in a day) maybe twice. I quit when I felt it was no longer rewarding, my academics were becoming more demanding (this was the beginning of junior year), and the teachers' answer to me was "come more often and work harder."

I've been back for a drop-in class at my old studio a couple of times since then. I also took a yoga class at my high school senior year, and have been taking yoga for P.E. credit all this semester. I do like yoga. The reasons I'm thinking of going back to Bikram are: first of all, the yoga class I'm taking is MW or TTh, which leaves you getting rusty over the weekend. Second, I'd like to exercise more on the weekends, and Bikram is a huge shot of calorie burn that would be useful for my weight loss efforts. Third, I like the two kinds of yoga for different reasons. I like Bikram because it is long, hard, HOT, regimented and predictable. I like my morning school-yoga because, in contrast, the poses vary with each class, and it's more focused on breath and making transitions so that the poses flow into each other. Both approaches are valuable.

Most studios, including the one nearest my school and current place of residence, have an introductory offer of $29 for 30 days unlimited yoga. So I plan to sign up this weekend for that, which will give me lots of yoga over the end-of-semester and break, when I will have more time and less access to the campus gym. Then I'll go traveling, and when I get back for the semester I'll get a 10-class card and just come once a week. It's not what the Bikram cult recommends, but it's what'll work for me.

Which brings me to next semester's plans. I intend to keep going to my morning yoga class, and I'm going to start going to Bikram on the weekend - so far so good. The thing is, there are other PE classes that are interesting and could replace some of my cardio or supplement my pitiful level of strength training - but I can only register for one class at a time for credit. My yoga teacher says I don't have to be registered to come to class, so I think I will try to take one of the other PE classes. The second thing is that the class I most want to take - step aerobics - conflicts with my lab lecture Thursday night. I will have to ask my chem instructor, then, if he will approve the conflict and allow me to take it anyway. Another option is Pilates. So I'll get that worked out. Finally, I don't really know where to look for this, but I'd really like to find a place that will teach and then host dancing on a weekend night, and go with my boyfriend regularly.