Living

Gosh I didn't notice that a whole month+ has passed since my last blog post! Time is just flying by.

Not a lot has changed since my last post.  I did make it to "overweight" status 2 weeks ago, so that's awesome!  I really put an emphasis on the word "overweight" vs "obese" in my last post.  Now that I am on other side of the goal, I feel differently.  The BMI scales are so ridiculous that I don't put all that much celebration in the status itself, it's just another goal I met in my long list of goals :)  Weirdness to have that change of heart.

I weighed in at 167.8 last weekend, a mere 1.8 pound from my huge 166 goal.  Of course, now I am back up to 170.2 as of a couple days ago.  My eating has been fine, although I did have a couple days where my calories were up around 1500.  I also had a couple days in the 1100s, so it's not fat weight, its either water weight, muscle weight, or poop.

TMI moment: I don't poop nearly enough.  I feel bloated and gassy and full like ALL the time.  I think it is because I have almost 0 fat intake. I am trying to remedy that by having 2% yogurt (instead of fat free) at lunches, and trying to use more oil when I make stir-frys (instead of dry pans or sprays) but it's not really helping.  I think I may start drinking prune juice, but I really hate squandering calories on juice.  Honestly, only having a BM once every 3 or 4 days, and it not being very much is really starting to get tiring.  So I may just have to trade off dessert for juice a couple times a week =( Sucketh.

About the idea it may be muscle weight, I have really upped my exercise regimen a lot in the last 5 weeks.  I am doing 6:30-7:00 mins of jogging (which I lovingly refer to as my grandma jog because it is slow and ponderous still at this point) to 1-1:30 mins of walking now, which is roughly two full miles over 30 minutes. How cool is that?! I have also changed my route in that I am on a trail with quite a bit of elevation change for two of the cycles.  In addition, I found a hiking trail that I am trying to hit on my off days which is a 700 foot elevation change over 2 miles (give or take), so its a HUGE workout on my legs.  I have only done it a couple times now due to the stupid rain, but it is a regimen that I am looking forward to keeping up.  In any case, my legs are getting pretty solid under this layer of fat!

I found myself thinking about discovering these hikes and nature paths due to me getting out to exercise.  And more importantly, being physically able to make it the 3/4 mile to the path, and up the huge 700 ft hill to the hike area.  I feel like I am finally living, maybe for the first time ever.  That sounds weird and cliche, but I can't think of something better.  Being physically able to do stuff I couldn't do before is liberating.  This is a whole new world and it is exciting for me to discover I am doing something I would never have thought possible before.

My next goal, aside from 166, is to keep up with the hikes, add another mile to my runs (and switch my route back to the flat surface street while I work up to it before switching back to the trail.. that shit is HARD), and be able to fit in 10s, if I am not already in 10s.  I haven't gone to try on clothes in a long while to know my size.  Maybe a visit to somewhere is in order and see if my goal needs to be to fit into 8s.  That would be rad.

The dreaded skin issues are really starting now.  It's so gross - but way better than when the skin was so fulll of fat.  Now, I still have plenty of weight to lose, so it's only going to get worse, but good gods, I have skin folds on my pubic region.  Nobody told me that was going to happen!  The underneath of my arms are starting to look like a stretched balloon after deflation, and my ass/thigh region is all wrinkly. I need a full friggen' body lift.  Oh and don't get me started on the boobs.  I used to be a 44H, now I am a 32DDD.  Talk about sagging... although, I did get a couple of terrific bras and they totally look great under clothes, so there is that.

In non-weight news, we made an offer on a house and it sounds like the bank accepted the offer.  We are going to hear about it very soon methinks.  Very exciting!  Between the health and weight loss lifestyle (which is both time and mentally consuming), switching gears into home remodel/decor mode, and doing my jewelry making, my life is getting pretty hectic!

I'm almost overweight.

So, in 4 measly pounds, I will be out of the obese category.  The mind-bogglingness of this really can't be put into the written word.  I think one needs to experience for oneself how going from a "super-morbidly obese" adult down to "overweight" to really understand the impact of that little word.  Overweight.  People bemoan being overweight.  The bane of a lot of people's existence is being overweight.  And here I am, almost loopy with joy with the prospect of being overweight.  Even though in my brain I know that the BMI categories are complete hooey, it means SO MUCH to me, more than any other number has to this point.

The double whammy though is that my next big goal, after reaching the overweight category, is now 9 pounds away for me: a  weight of 166.  At 166 pounds, I will have also lost 166 pounds.  I will have indeed lost myself in weight.  When people say "you have lost a whole person" (and they do already) I can point to myself and say "Yep. I have lost THIS person".  I am excited to see how I feel on that day.  It is another mind-eff.   There will be celebratory photos taken!  I don't expect to reach that point for another 2 months though, so I need to calm the heck down ;)

My jogging is going well! I am up to 4:30 jog to 3:00 walk.  Of course, my last 2 runs have been lame.  Yesterday I got a serious case of heart burn and indigestion right when I left so I could only do half the jog, and my the last day before that I blew my knee out somehow and couldn't even walk that night let alone jog. 

Tonight is my first night I will be following a strength training CD I just purchased from Amazon.  All the reading I have done has been saying that cardio is not enough for total health and putting on some muscle will help with metabolism as well as sagging skin issues (and good gravy are there sagging skin issues.  In some spots,  I look like a 95 year old man who has spent his life in the Sahara).  I am not really wanting to do the gym thing since 1) I am lazy 2) I am cheap 3) I am moving soon so joining a gymlocal to me NOW might not be local to me in the next few months - so this video seems like a good alternative.  Stay tuned for updates on me trying to get some muscles (pronounced mus-CULS)!

Also, I am really dying for some chocolate cake (there has been a homemade cake sitting out on the credenza in my front office since 9am.  I have not touched it) and ice cream (husband made me go to Cold Stone yesterday so he could have a caramel shake. The kid behind the counter couldn't find the nutrition info for the Sinless ice cream so I opted not to partake and  just watched husband eat).  I don't normally have ridiculous junk-food cravings.  I have been chewing sweet (sugarless) gum like mad all day and it has helped somewhat.  Tonight I shall indulge in my fajita salad with a generous portion of frozen fruit "ice cream" for desert and wallow in my awesome self control  while fiddling with my now-prominent collar bones ;)

Until next time...

The March check in post

I am a jogger.

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I'm just letting that sink in for myself (seeing it in writing, that is) and for any of you readers.  How many posts in this blog talk about how good my eating has been, and then goes on to kick myself for not doing exercise?  I finally passed that hurdle.

Not only am I consistently jogging every other day, but I LIKE it.  I like it, and I LOOK FORWARD to it.  I feel like my brain has been transposed into someone else's head.  This is not something I would ever think would happen.  I hate exercise. I have always hated exercise.  Even in high school (graduated in 1992) in PE class I was the smart ass walking around the track when everyone else was running or sitting behind the hand ball courts while everyone else was playing volleyball.

I am going a very conservative Couch to 5k program.  When I started in mid-January, I was only able to jog for 30 seconds, then walk for 8 minutes (repeating that cycle 4 times).  I am up to 3 minutes of jogging to 5 minutes of walking now.  I am so impressed with myself.  When I get home and I have that hot, sweaty, euphoric feeling... I love it.  It is addicting!  It feels so good. Practically orgasmic.  I look forward to my running days on non-runnign days, and I look forward to getting out and getting my jog in on the day of.

Now, during the jog itself...  that is a whole different story.  When I am out there jogging, and its only been 2 minutes, and I have a whole minute left, you should hear the nasty horrible things I say to myself.  I call myself names for being such a wuss and being in so much pain.  I ask myself why the crap am I doing this to myself, to punish myself the way I am.  I try to convince myself that walking would give me the same caloric workout.  Oh the games we play.

Today is a jog day and I am jonesing to get home and get out there :)

I have been experimenting this month with food.  I dropped my morning oatmeal in favor of having an egg white omelette and then a yogurt midmorning.  I decided I was just not getting enough protein in my diet.  Now I feel like I am not getting enough whole grain since I am basically having none.  I have also been recording my daily weight which is something I haven't done at all.  It looks like I maintain/gain weight for the 2 weeks prior to my menses cycle starting, the slowly start losing as soon as it starts.  I will post results of the month long record on my next post so I can keep track of it.  It looks so discouraging being the same weight for 3 weeks now ... well, as of this morning I am the same weight I was 3 weeks ago.  I have been +2-4 pounds every morning in the interim.

My goal this year was to lose 4 pounds a month; I don't care if it is 1 pound a week or 4 pounds all at once.  This will keep me on track be in the 130s by the end of the year.  However, with this running.. I am getting muscles!  My sides are getting pretty solid under the layer of fat.  So, if my scale doesn't go down as planned, I am not even that concerned.  I can't keep my hands off this solid wall on my side ;)  My goal is really to get down to a size 8 by the end of the year, and if I can be a size 6 - that would be awesome (but that is my secondary goal, and may be too small for my frame-  time will tell).

I suppose that is all for now.  Nothing else much has changed since my last post.  We are still moving forward with house hunting.  I am still eating whole foods and getting 12-1400 calories a day (always closer to 1400 truth be told).

Until next time...

Time Keeps on Ticking

I was in a slump at the end of January as my weight went from 193.6, down to 188 in one week, and then shot back up to the 190s for 2 weeks in a row.  I posted on 3FC and got some wonderful insight and advice on how to get over a plateau, and look what happened! Two weeks later, and I am down to 183.2.  Happy days!

The best bit of advice was "push yourself harder at exercise" and I realized that - yeah - I wasn't pushing myself nearly hard enough.  I did start the conservative Couch to 5K, but I am doing it at my own pace.  You are supposed to move up increments every week, but I am moving up when I can, so its basically taking me 2 weeks per phase.  But the awesome news is, I can do 1:50 jogging and once I did 2:20 seconds! This is amazing to me and I feel SO accomplished.  I know it doesn't sounds like much (even to me if I think about it too much), but the fact that I have never exercised EVER and couldn't walk a block a year ago, my goodness.  I'm awesome!  I can't wait 'til I can go for 30 minutes.  I am going to feel great!

I never followed through on my WiFit every other day plan.  I am going to look for a DVD that has a free-weight toning routine for upper body and see if I can't follow through with that.

Another goal I am working on right now is to get grains out of my diet entirely and to up my protein intake.  I am hoping this is going to boost the last 50ish pounds of loss.  My realistic hopes is that by the end of this year I will be at goal.  My FANTASY is that it will only take half that time.  So, to try to achieve the fantasy, cutting carbs more seems to be a step in the right direction.

I hardly eat grains now except my morning oatmeal.  So my first step is to stop eating the oatmeal (cry) and switch to eggs in the morning.  I am also going  to forgo my half-sandwich lunch and start eating more yogurt and probably salad AND soup (instead of one or the other) and also up my legumes which I have been avoiding due to calorie count.  We will see how this goes.  It has been 13 months of oatmeal every morning and I am used to the feeling of fullness.  Lately though, I have been getting hungry at 11:00 and 4:00.  I think my added jogging has done this, and I need more calories (I'm only doing 1200-1400 now) but instead of upping calories, I'm going to try this shift of food stuffs.

In non-fat related news, we are looking for a house!  This is the first time in a year I have had my thoughts concentrated on something other than weight loss. It is strange.  I have devoted so much emotional time and energy to learning about nutrition and keeping track of calories, and now suddenly I find that I am thinking about ways to save money (still working on the dang down payment) and mortgages and if we can afford to live in the part of town we want to live in... it's a complete shift of perspective.  I am not NOT thinking about weight loss (obviously...).  It is just bizarre to have something else going on in the back of my mind all the time.

Until next time...

I was on track with exercise for 2011...

and immediately got derailed by a ridiculously bad cold!

I still feel pretty terrible, but at least at this point I can think cohesive thoughts and I don't feel like I am living in a fog or wading through jello (that is the best way I can describe the slooooow feeling this cold has given me).  As much as I loved spending time with my little nieces, perhaps letting the sickest one sleep in bed with me the first night while she hacked and coughed right in my face  for 6 hours wasn't the wisest of decisions.  But she is adorable, and I love her, so whatevs!

In any case, on Monday and Tuesday of last week, I took my 10  minute morning walks with the pups (5:30am UGH), and then my two 15-minute hilly walks during work breaks (and climbed 4 flights of stairs,  four times!).  Monday I did my Wiifit Yoga routine, and Tuesday I started my couch-to-5k (conservative) program.  And by Wednesday, I was knocked on my plentiful behind wheezing, runny nose, head ache, sore throat... the whole works.

Even though I am feeling better now (I will be doing my yoga tonight), I won't be getting back out in the cold weather to do my walk/run until my lungs stop feeling like they are trying to claw their way out of my chest.  I feel defeated and like I am letting myself down because I finally got myself pumped up to exercise, and I physically just CAN'T.  But, as the husband pointed out, just because I didn't start on  January 4 (my 1 year healthiversary) doesn't mean the rest of my year is screwed... I'm just off of my self-imposed schedule.

OK I pepped talked myself into feeling a little better about this.

For those curious, my exercise routine is as follows:
10 minute morning walk with the dogs
2x 15-minute walks during the day (during work breaks)
climb at least the 4 flights of stairs of my office building at least once a day
Tues, Thurs, Sat, work on couch to 5k (30 minutes of walk/run)
Wiifit Yoga for 30 minutes the other 4 days

If that routine doesn't do the trick of meeting my 2011 goal of  1 pound per week loss, then I am most likely going to be joining a gym to start weight training/toning.

One Year On Track (137 pounds lost!)

Copied over from 3fc but keeping it here for prosperity too (much less detail then I was actually planning on since I have everything here in the blog already, but still nice to have)
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On January 4, 2009 I set out to change my life.  I have never really dieted before, but I just knew a "diet" wouldn't work for me.  I needed a permanent lifestyle change that would be a FOREVER solution to my food issues.  After researching options, looking up the science behind weight loss, and reading up on nutrition, I started clean eating and calorie counting.

When I started, I told myself I would stay on track for 1 FULL year before giving up, and I would re-evaluate at that time.  So here I am, my most important mini goal has been met.  I have not had a cheat day/meal in 365 days, and I have a loss of 137 pounds to show for it (with very little exercise).  The nitty-gritty details of how I did it can be found on my blog, here.

Onto the pictures! (see photo page, here)

More importantly than looking better, here is a small smattering of some of the physical and health related changes I have since losing the weight:

• I can cut my toenails without holding my breath and leaning to the side to do so
• My feet don't hurt at the end of the day anymore
• I can easily climb 3 flights of stairs (and not even be winded!)
• I no longer wake up all night from sleep apnea
• Even better, I no longer wake up with stomach acid in my throat and lungs and don't have to down antacids before going to bed nightly
• My diabetes is gone
• The nerve pain I had running from my lower back and into my thigh is gone
• My NASH / fatty liver cleared up
• I barely break out anymore
• I can bend and stretch and move in ways that I didn't even know I couldn't do
• My hands don't fall asleep much anymore

My goal weight is still 55 pounds off, and I know that the next year is going to be more of a challenge then the last.  I have issues with getting enough exercise, but that must be my next step in order to reach my final goal, a "normal" BMI.

I suppose I could go on and hit ya'll with an even larger wall of text but I'll spare you :) My blog (link in my signature) holds all kinds of information if you are still interested though!

Thanks to you all for your motivation and kind words.  I don't think I could have done this without you 3FC chicks and roosters as a big portion of my support system.

Happy New Year and a New Me

The last year has gone by in a flash.  I look back and part of me thinks, "geez, that was so easy, why didn't you do it sooner?" and of course the answer is, "I wasn't ready yet."

On the other hand, if you would have told me last New Years Day, as I was shoveling gingerbread cookies (I ate an entire tin of 100 cookies between December 23 and Jan 2) in my mouth that I would be 137 pounds lighter in just a year, I would have laughed and said you were crazy!  I would definitely not have believed that such a huge weight loss could be done without surgery, without a specific diet, and without lots of exercise, and by me, Mrs. I See-It-So-I-Must-Eat-It. 

The weird part is, and I don't really like to tell people this when they ask me about my journey... it has been easy.  The most problem I have has was the week before the holiday break from work when folks brought in home-made baked goods.  I did not allow myself to have any, but, I broke down into tears like a psychopath. I wrote about it on 3fc. 

When I decided to start this journey, I set out to do this 100%. I figured, why go to a partial effort? So, that's the way I have approached every single day.  When I feel temptation, I go through a mental check and balance: If I eat X, then this is the result.  And then I either have the item, or I don't depending on what it is.  I say 'no' to certain things though (sugar, breads that aren't whole grain, rice) and am honest with myself about the consequences of over-eating (if I have 2 tablespoons of cashew butter now, I cannot have popcorn later). It has worked for me.


I think my real challenge with this weight loss process is about to start and I am nervous about the coming year.  I am not going to be having the automatic encouragement of seeing weight melting off with almost zero effort (other than not eating like I have 2 butt-holes, as my dear friend Chris once put it hehehe).  There are new changes I need to make, and it is a challenge that I have not really had to face. As anyone who has kept up on this blog knows, exercise is my downfall.

If I want to make it to 140 by this time next year, I am really going to have to start motivating myself to figure out an exercise I like doing or else I am just going to have a super hard time.  I try to do my walking EVERY day, but I am finding myself with excuses more often than not.  I have my wiiFit that I have used all of twice since getting it at the beginning of February. I also know that I should really be doing some strength training for toning, just to start getting some shape happening here because so far, I am pretty lumpy under all of this fat. The most developed part of my musculature are my huge solid calves what with having to carry around a third of a TON all of my adult life (geez that sounds terrible, but it's the ugly truth).

I don't really like the idea of New years Resolutions, but I certainly have a few goals I would like to meet in 2011:
1) get down to "normal" weight for my height, 140 pounds (lose 54.8 pounds)
2) get an exercise routine down
  2a) do couch to 5k/ start running
  2b) get some strength training in / join gym?
3) make a friend that I know IRL and not just online/ maybe an exercise partner? (any of you readers in the Bay Area?  LOL)

So Happy New Year to a New Me! Hopefully next year I will be able to greet myself in exactly the same way :)