It's Been a Rough Week

Actually, it's been a rough few weeks.  I'll skip the details and start instead by saying that I went on a great camping trip last weekend.  That's my little blue tent in the middle.

I was really nervous last week, because I didn't know the camping people very well (in most cases I'd met them only once or twice), and it could have been a very long, very lonely weekend.  So last week when I had uncontrollable urges to stuff my face with everything carby that exists, I knew why.  I was only a little successful at resisting the urges, but managed to semi control portion sizes. I didn't exercise last week either.  Funny how when I'm under that kind of stress, my first tendency is to dump good habits in favor of eating starch, sugar and laying in front of the TV.  It feels like comfort, but really isn't.

Then I was dumped by Dude Monday night, and started a whole new kind of stress.  This is the stress that makes my stomach tie up in knots and makes it difficult to eat at all.  It's also the kind of stress that makes me turn to exercise to feel better. Like an idiot yesterday, I asked Dude if we could meet, and we're getting together in an hour.  I was originally thinking it would be closure, but I've been regretting it and getting tied up even more all day. Completely unable to focus on work.  At 2, I thought, "I HAVE to go running."  That's the only thing that's going to calm me down and give me enough perspective to make it through this.

It really did help that I ran.  I'm calmer and I've found a tiny bit of peace - for now.  It drove out all the words and questions running around in my head and helped me see how I should approach this. As positively as possible. It's pretty cool that exercise can do that!!

I was 189.2 this morning - so even through all the stress, I've maintained and gone down a tich. I'm gonna try to hold on until I can see brightness and good again.  I know it's there somewhere.

Sad

So, I got dumped today.  Really, for real this time.  I wasn't sure we'd make it past his 2-week trip to Germany and now that he's come back, I found out within 5 minutes of seeing him.  Kinda makes me wish he'd done it before he left - it would have saved me a rough two weeks.  I'm still absorbing the death of that dream and beginning to think about what my summer is going to look like now that I'm alone again.  I'm sad.  Sad because I want so much to believe in true, forever love.  I want so much to have it happen to me, and I'm scared it won't.  I know I'll be happy again, alone or not. But right now I'm very sad.

I Was That Person

Last night I was the person looking lustfully at the bar of chocolate and asking, "Is anyone going to finish that?"  "Anyone else having a second glass of  wine?"

At lunch yesterday, a group of us went out to an Italian restaurant and I ordered my favorite, pasta fagiol - with a big slice of garlic bread.  And then I ate the whole thing.  Even though I haven't had that much food in one sitting in 9 months, and it was physically painful to eat that much food.

Later in the afternoon, shopping at Target, I fell victim to a bag of popcorn and a rice krispy treat.  A small part of my mind said, "Yo, Jordan - you don't really want that," so I at least waited until I got home before diving in.  And managed to throw away most of the popcorn and half of the rice krispy treat.

I could say that it's a slip and promise myself to get back on the wagon, but it's more than that.  It's the first time I've been so out of control in 9 months.  Yes, I'm tense and I've got stuff going on - but I've had that in the last 9 months and not lost it.  What's different now?

I don't know.  But it didn't magically happen yesterday - it's been building up.  I haven't run in a week and the only other working out I've done is yard work. (Except for Tuesday when I felt really emotionally crappy and worked out to make myself feel better.)  I've been eating my formula breakfast and lunch (700 calories down by 5pm), but then eating carby dinners, about 900 calories worth.  How do I know?  Because it's been the same dinner for the last 4 nights.

We talk about finding non-food ways to take care of ourselves, about feeling our feelings instead of stuffing them down with food - but that presumes that we know something's going on before the food goes down the hatch.  I didn't really realize it until last night.  Or maybe it was this morning.

My main technique for feeling my feelings is meditation.  Looks like it's time to take some time for me. Time to practice some self care that isn't destructive.  I should be thankful to the person asking, "Is anyone going to finish that?", because it's a sign that everything's not all right in my world.  I should learn these signs and pay attention to the message and hopefully I'll get better at noticing and reacting to the feelings - sooner than I did this time.

Friday Thoughts

Can't come up with a neat saying like Thursday Thoughts, or Monday Musings.  Not feeling all that brilliant right now, I guess.  190.4 this morning.

I've been thinking about that article in the NYT that I linked to on Wednesday.  Notably the part about the lag between eating and impact on weight.  I think that's true for me.  The only thing that has instant impact is salty stuff that makes me retain water, which I don't consider to be a real weight gain (even if it takes several days to get back off).  Most of the time I don't see a real change in my weight if I eat one big meal.  If I compensate quickly, I can avoid any impact at all. 

That means that yes, I'm still going to need the daily (well, twice daily) weigh-ins to get a sense of which way the wind is blowing.  But I need to be careful on a scale of weeks, not days or hours.

Calories in-calories out works pretty well for me. I'm probably eating about 1500-1600 per day (I've lost the mojo to track everything in MFP.)  Still losing, but much slower these days.  I do perfect for breakfast and lunch and then slip a bit for dinner.  Maybe a drinky poo or a piece of bread with butter.  That crap adds up fast!

I flailed a bit this week.  I ran Monday at lunch, and then life happened and I couldn't go Wednesday. I was so, SO, SO tempted to give myself a break and take a few days off from working out (as a present for finishing the EMT class). I got scared because that feels like the slippery slope that takes me right back to being huge. If I reward myself with some days off from exercise, what's next? A fettucini alfredo dinner reward? A week off?  Two weeks?  Argh!!  It should be a reward to exercise, not to NOT exercise!  But it isn't.  I don't look forward to exercising.  I look forward to the exercise being over.  That's when I remembered that Laina feels the same way about exercise, and she's been a successful maintainer for lots of years.  It's OK to not love exercise - but not OK to skip it.

So I ran yesterday at a weird time at the end of the work day, but still during work time.  I had to work through lunch so technically it was my lunch hour that I took at 4, but it still felt weird.  Then, it was SO, SO hard to run. I stopped 3 times to adjust my music. Stopped another time or 2 to look at text messages. I just didn't want to do it.  About 2/3 of the way through I finally settled down and just finished it.  Then I felt great.

So here's what's happening now that I'm not tracking what I eat in MFP.  I'm estimating, and making switches that don't make sense to reasonable people.  Like this one:

I had rice krispy dessert instead of a grapefruit.  It was a recipe from a magazine that I've been dying to try.  Dried cherries soaked in amaretto with rice krispies and maple syrup, and almond butter. Yes, it's very good.  But likely many many more calories than the grapefruit.

And today - my plan was to do a weight workout.  But then I remembered that I have a LOT of dirt to move in my yard this weekend.  I think I'll use the energy and the muscles this afternoon to move dirt instead of iron weights.  This needs to be me not skipping a workout again!!

Because ... I'm thinking about skipping the 5K on Sunday.  I love getting up, making a big cup of tea and getting back into bed to read the iPad on weekends.  I haven't done that in... weeks. (mostly 'cause I'm not alone on weekend mornings, which I'm definitely not complaining about! But we don't sleep in.)  Can't sleep in next weekend because I'm camping (!!).  And then Dude is going to be back from Germany and I'll be back to getting up on weekend mornings again. I have zero desire to get up early Sunday morning just to prove something to myself by running/walking a 5K in town.  Waah!  Can't I just make a promise to do 5K later in the day and sleep in instead??  Whine, whine, whine....

PS - I didn't mean to convey that I dropped everyone who's not maintaining off my blog list!  I did drop one or two, but most of y'all are still on my must-read list!  I love the can-do attitude that means you'll be successful - eventually.

Wednesday

Mir gave me a gentle poke yesterday, about how it's time for an update. And good thing!  I hadn't really noticed that the last time I wrote was a whole week ago.  All I can think to write is a bunch of random things that don't hang together.  So, by golly, they'll hang separately!

- 190.0 this morning.  A new low. Barely.  I went up to 192.2 before coming down to this this morning. I've been eating out with Dude a lot and not being very good about what I ate.  I do OK on portion size, but even a really small bit of ice cream is too much if it isn't fantastic ice cream (and it wasn't).

- I've begun changing my blog reading to focus more on successful maintainers. To those of you that write about struggling and failing time and time again and falling into binges, pizza and burgers, Sorry! It's not personal.  Just like my losing phase was so much helped by reading along with other losers, my maintaining is going to depend on "hanging out" with other maintainers.  There's a bunch of you that struggle and write about it and I learn along with you as you learn the binge triggers and how to help yourselves.  I'm a keep reading y'all. I feel like an alcoholic trying to stay away from booze sometimes.

- I ran 3x last week, and did strength once.  I'm going to try for a repeat of that this week.  Each of the runs was run 1 mile, walk a little, run 1/2 mile, walk a little, run 1/2 mile, walk a little, run a mile, cool down.  RunKeeper (cool app!) says that my average pace for the entire thing was about 13:50-14 minutes per mile. The running parts were about 12 min/mile, or 5 miles/hr.  It doesn't keep up with most people, but I'm happy with it.  My first 5K-that-I-want-to-run-most-of-it is on Sunday morning.  I'll probably start too fast and burn out, but we'll see.

- There was another NY Times article this morning on obesity that I liked.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/science/a-mathematical-challenge-to-obesity.html?_r=1
Of course, the guy's a mathematician, so I'm intrigued right away.  Data!  What does the data say??
It brought up a thing I've mentioned before - the body weight simulator: http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov/
I played around with it again this morning and put in my current weight and my goal of 170 and saw that it thinks I can eat 2500 calories per day to maintain.  Hahahaha!  That's the funniest thing I've read in a while!

- I'm wearing a pair of size 14 Liz Claiborne jeans right now.  Monday night I wore some size 12 Levis.  They fit oh-so-tight.  But I could comfortably sit for periods of time, so they go into the rotation.  My goal of goals is to wear size 12 pants.  I have no idea what weight that will be, but I want to be a size 12. Size 10 would be OK, too.

- Dude is on his way to Germany for a 2-week vacation.  Hard to believe that we've known each other for like 11 weeks!  I need to rediscover meditation again - I'm way off balance lately and have been a bundle of nerves and stress for no reason.

- The final EMT test is tomorrow night.  I went to the liquor store and bought a bottle of champagne for the minute I get home from that test.  This has been 5 months of hell, this class - but I made it through!

- I don't think I like the new Blogger.  It's impossible for me to ignore that only 3 people read my last few posts now that the numbers are right there for me to see.  Maybe a few more read on Google reader. Hopefully.  It doesn't make me want to stop blogging though.  The main reason I'm doing this is for me.
- And finally.  Here's a picture from the structure fire call we had 2-1/2 weeks ago.  I'm the girl. The only one.

Progressing Nicely

190.4 this morning.

My goal for last weekend was to hold onto 191, and I surprisingly did!  Surprisingly because Dude and I were going to run both mornings, and didn't end up doing it (and I didn't work out later).  I took an exercise break day on Friday, so I didn't end up working out at all between Thursday and Monday. 

We also had restaurant meals both days of the weekend.  I didn't choose especially healthy stuff at the restaurants, but I did try to be mindful about what I was eating, eating more for taste than volume.  For example, on Sunday, instead of having an entree, I ordered nachos for dinner, which I *love*.  They turned out to be just OK, not great - so it was easy to leave most of them on the plate.  On Saturday I had a meatball sandwich, also a favorite of mine.  I immediately set aside half of the bread, most of the sauce and focused on the meatballs.  Again, they were just OK. Not great. So I didn't have heartache about leaving some on the plate (and half the bread and most of the sauce)

I'm not always successful, but I try to focus on eating great food.  If it's not great (and I have some control), then I'd rather go hungry and wait for something great. I don't have enough calories to waste any on food that doesn't taste good!

On that note, I read a piece in the New York Times yesterday: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/dining/the-author-peter-kaminsky-on-how-to-eat-wisely.html?ref=health
This guy is an advocate of eating for flavor, even coining the term Flavor Per Calorie, or FPC. He says to go for foods that provide maximum flavor. They will satisfy you so that you don't need to eat a lot.  This is exactly my philosophy! It seems to be the opposite of Stephan Guyanet's go-for-bland-food advice, but I don't see any conflict. In my mind, highly rewarding food is food that makes you want to eat more, even right after you've had some.  Flavorful, satisfying food is food that fills up your senses and you don't need much to feel satisfied.  Examples are: kalamata olives, avocado, pepperoni, spicy salami, anchovies, dark chocolate.

I also read an article in this week's Newsweek by Gary Taubes about the Obesity Crisis: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/06/why-the-campaign-to-stop-america-s-obesity-crisis-keeps-failing.html
Interesting! This time last year, I was firmly in Taubes' court about insulin. I've evolved a bit as I've read more second-hand research on why we get fat and others have evolved past low carb.  I had forgotten that mainstream science still has years to go to get to where we are on obseity thinking.

Enjoy the reading!

Friday

191.2 this morning.

FINALLY, a new low. But then, I've been working hard for it. Working hard 85% of the time, that is. I can see how weight losers get stuck in maintenance mode by being good during the week and then a little too free over the weekend, 'cause that's me all over. Not necessarily the weekend, but a chicken wing here, a piece of pizza there, and there goes three days of being perfect.

My goal for this weekend is to hang onto 191.  Dude and I have plans to check out a hamburger joint tonight, which doesn't bode well for the whole 191 thing - but I gotta figure out how to not be scared of eating in restaurants.

I also desperately need to meditate.  My peace of mind has gone to hell, mostly because I've moved away from my unshakeable core and towards being wrapped up in figuring out what other people think.  Yes, logically I know it doesn't work, but it's SO hard to shake 40 years of conditioning.

I found a local 5K that's being run on May 20th and just registered!  I walked a 5K last fall when I weighed about 260 and was in terrible shape.  I huffed and puffed my way to second-to-last place out of hundreds, in front of someone walking with a cane.  Tuesday I jogged at lunch 10 minutes, walked a bit, jogged for 10 minutes, walked a bit and jogged another 10 minutes.  So, while I don't think I'll be able to run the entire 5K straight, I do think I'll jog most of it, which feels pretty good.

Hope all y'all had a good week and a great weekend coming up!

A First

When I put this morning's weight into MFP, I noticed that I've lost a grand total of - da dummh - 0 pounds in the last month.  Well actually, I gained 5, then lost 7, then gained 2.  It wasn't exactly static. 

Since I started this weight loss journey last September, this is the first month I haven't lost. 

It's a crummy first, but I'm not terrified - yet.  I did write that I was thinking about slowing down and maintaining a bit before the final push to <170. But this is a kind of limbo that I don't love.  I have some pairs of too-big pants and some pairs of tight pants, and don't want to spend money on "real" clothes until I get closer to my final size.

I'm maintaining the exercise, but slacking a little on food.  Like eating actual bread on occasion, and allowing myself a little too much on the treat front.  As Mary from A Small Loss writes, you can't out-exercise a bad diet.  I was hoping to get down to 180-185 before Mir's next challenge, which would give me a fighting chance of getting to <170 by the end.  It's technically possible, but not likely unless I start taking more care with food.

I don't have much else to say right now.  I can see the end of this blasted EMT class in a few weeks - only a few weeks until I get evenings back again! Everything else is perking along.  Not great, but not terrible, which is about as good as real life gets sometimes.

Peace out, y'all!!