Ok, it's funny what the scale does. You live right, you're up to 205.5 all week. You stress out and drink Jack & Cokes and eat, nay gulp down, McDonald's, the scale rewards you down to 203. Yay. I get it though, and I know I have my week of good living to thank.
Tomorrow's my weigh-in day, and I'd love to cash in on this low weight and - yeah - move down from here. But here's how it happens sometimes. Today, I'm taking a daytrip with my Dad and this other man. I have had my good breakfast, and I have packed a good lunch and snack - but not dinner. I figure I'll join them on whatever we do for dinner. Hopefully a healthy restaurant if I have any say in the matter - not the huge helpings Southern cooking restaurant my Dad likes, but the high-priced Asian cuisine downtown or something. It's a healthy organic hippie town, so we ought to be able to find something! That plus hopefully a bit of hiking. Even if my weigh-in is not what I'd hope for tomorrow, I'll feel okay because I'm still working but right now there is some life to be lived as well. It is spring and there is joy to be lived and I am doing well.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
here's how it happens sometimes
So I'm totally a stress eater, fuh sho. And, like, stress has been building up over time lately. One more thing on top of one more thing, one more day on top of the next, can't get everything done. Taxes have been playing a role, because they've been on my mind of things I need to get done, but haven't been able to focus on it for a while due to work. Then yesterday I lost my phone while run-walking to work, and I spent hours dealing with that. So today I retraced my steps again (stress), had a little interruption of false hope that kept me waiting still longer (stress), then went and bought a new phone (stress) - having driven across town in sluggish thick daytime traffic (stress) - then made efforts to get my taxes done, which involved several trips back and forth across town due to this form I left behind or this checkbook I forgot to bring with (I seriously drove over 60 miles today). At 8:30 I'm at the post office mailing my tax forms and facebooking my need for liquor. So I went by a bar and had 3 Jack-and-Cokes while playing Mahjong and got quite delightfully soused. Decide I'm dizzy enough and head out, and could you guess - I'm ready to totally abandon my diet. The Dairy Queen across the street is closed (I was going to buy the "Brownie Earthquake" and have just a couple bites) and as I drove home looking for gas (stress) and knowing I'm supposed to cook dinner at home (chicken something) I am FEELING more like... that McDonald's over there, and I go through the drivethru and get a Quarter Pounder and a hot fudge sundae.
The good news is I'm not here at home ready to pig out. I'm actually ready to gulp down too much liquor as I read, play video games, watch movies (Mendy, Carl Sagan Cosmos, Buffy Season 3 on hulu) and fall asleep too early for the party crowd. Tomorrow is another full day - "vacation" - but with a married guy I've never hung out with before, and my Dad, all day, and do I need to pack all my food for the day??? (stress)
All of this totally failing to mention the little breakdown I dealt with when I stopped in to donate blood at the Red Cross and was rejected - not for iron, but because of my heart. My pulse was too low, and also the nurse mentioned some irregular heart beats. I came home and freaked out. On the one hand, I feel fine - I had a workout this morning, I jogged 1.5 miles the other day without a hitch, I actually felt enthusiastic and energetic today alongside all that stress and healthy and all that, without feeling numbness or dizziness or any of that, but god knows I'm no great athlete either - nothing I read on the websites seemed to connect to my feelings and my pulse as reported by the Red Cross nurse. So on my outings today I went to the Rite Aid and sat at the blood pressure machine and had several readings in a row. It says the monitor was made to read arms from 9-13 inches, and mine is more like 15 inches, but still, my reading was perpetually very low for blood pressure, and my pulse came out around 57-61, not the 49 the Red Cross nurse reported. I have to get health insurance and go see a doctor. I haven't had a checkup in years.
The good news is I'm not here at home ready to pig out. I'm actually ready to gulp down too much liquor as I read, play video games, watch movies (Mendy, Carl Sagan Cosmos, Buffy Season 3 on hulu) and fall asleep too early for the party crowd. Tomorrow is another full day - "vacation" - but with a married guy I've never hung out with before, and my Dad, all day, and do I need to pack all my food for the day??? (stress)
All of this totally failing to mention the little breakdown I dealt with when I stopped in to donate blood at the Red Cross and was rejected - not for iron, but because of my heart. My pulse was too low, and also the nurse mentioned some irregular heart beats. I came home and freaked out. On the one hand, I feel fine - I had a workout this morning, I jogged 1.5 miles the other day without a hitch, I actually felt enthusiastic and energetic today alongside all that stress and healthy and all that, without feeling numbness or dizziness or any of that, but god knows I'm no great athlete either - nothing I read on the websites seemed to connect to my feelings and my pulse as reported by the Red Cross nurse. So on my outings today I went to the Rite Aid and sat at the blood pressure machine and had several readings in a row. It says the monitor was made to read arms from 9-13 inches, and mine is more like 15 inches, but still, my reading was perpetually very low for blood pressure, and my pulse came out around 57-61, not the 49 the Red Cross nurse reported. I have to get health insurance and go see a doctor. I haven't had a checkup in years.
Apr 15, 205.5
Darn, for the past few days my body has been weighing in at over 205. At first I figured it was due to my menses which started about the same time as this upswing. But the menses is gone and my weight is still not budging. Then there was the fact that Monday(?) evening I got this urge to go to this old local restaurant for nostalgia's sake and wound up overeating. Then this week maybe I had too many sugar-free puddings and maybe the Salisbury steaks that my meal plan demands are actually not conducive to weight loss, or maybe I've overestimated the 4-oz size of ground beef patty that they demand. Also, when I switched my meal plan to the Seasonal Spring meal plan, my calorie budget went up to 1600-1700. I don't know why that changes when I switch meal plans.
Anyway. Darn.
Fitness-wise it's been a pretty good week. The day after my restaurant-binge, with my extra calories in me, I had this extra energy that I took to the gym and decided to do 24 laps - 1.5 miles - more than I'd ever run before contiguously in my whole life - and did it pretty easily, after which I went and finished out my time demands on the elliptical. Sunday or Monday I did the yoga again. And yesterday I decided to walk-run to work, and lost my phone on the way so I retraced my steps, sometimes running, sometimes walking very slow - about 10 times resulting in something like a couple hours of terrain-coverage.
I'm still relatively committed to the diet, but could stand to be more so, I guess, if I want to ever, ever, ever get below 200 pounds.
Anyway. Darn.
Fitness-wise it's been a pretty good week. The day after my restaurant-binge, with my extra calories in me, I had this extra energy that I took to the gym and decided to do 24 laps - 1.5 miles - more than I'd ever run before contiguously in my whole life - and did it pretty easily, after which I went and finished out my time demands on the elliptical. Sunday or Monday I did the yoga again. And yesterday I decided to walk-run to work, and lost my phone on the way so I retraced my steps, sometimes running, sometimes walking very slow - about 10 times resulting in something like a couple hours of terrain-coverage.
I'm still relatively committed to the diet, but could stand to be more so, I guess, if I want to ever, ever, ever get below 200 pounds.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
April 10, 203.5
Okay - back to official weekly weigh-in day and today's weigh-in is 203.5. Measurements done today show a waist-to-hip ratio of .96, which is down from the .99 I reported at the end of January. That's such an interesting development. I feel almost fantastic about .96.
My weight loss graph has become much more "hilly" in the past few months, more bouncing up and down, but the thing is I'm still reaching new lows as I bounce, so I still feel pretty good about it. My rate of loss is not what it was last summer (steady and speedy) when I was 250 pounds. Also, the not blogging about it every day helps to keep me from feeling the disappoinment of not being able to report progress. (Weighing myself every day doesn't get me down, but reporting sluggish results daily here drives me to frustration.)
203.5 is remarkably close to the 202.5 that was my previous low. That's really pretty encouraging! It helps me to feel like, as I progress along this journey - and even more so as I enter maintenance mode - that I will be able to enjoy the sweets and indulgences food can offer upin moderate occasion without my weight soaring unmanageably back to a high level that I can't even work myself up to trying to reduce again. I wonder if I will always, always continue to be a fat woman struggling to remain slender.
I haven't done yoga in forever, as I complained yesterday. I'm going to set up the DVD player and give it a go. 45 minutes of yoga seems like too long to wait for coffee and oat bran! So I'd better get started.
My weight loss graph has become much more "hilly" in the past few months, more bouncing up and down, but the thing is I'm still reaching new lows as I bounce, so I still feel pretty good about it. My rate of loss is not what it was last summer (steady and speedy) when I was 250 pounds. Also, the not blogging about it every day helps to keep me from feeling the disappoinment of not being able to report progress. (Weighing myself every day doesn't get me down, but reporting sluggish results daily here drives me to frustration.)
203.5 is remarkably close to the 202.5 that was my previous low. That's really pretty encouraging! It helps me to feel like, as I progress along this journey - and even more so as I enter maintenance mode - that I will be able to enjoy the sweets and indulgences food can offer upin moderate occasion without my weight soaring unmanageably back to a high level that I can't even work myself up to trying to reduce again. I wonder if I will always, always continue to be a fat woman struggling to remain slender.
I haven't done yoga in forever, as I complained yesterday. I'm going to set up the DVD player and give it a go. 45 minutes of yoga seems like too long to wait for coffee and oat bran! So I'd better get started.
Friday, April 9, 2010
April 9, 204
Continuing the week and the weight gain from last week's off-planness continues to drip off, from 210 to 206, 205, and today 204. From having been 202.5. Most of what I gained was surely water weight, so maybe a week of Easter candy and restaurant food and Oreos and an open bag of tortilla chips while you Facebook will gain you 1.5-2 real pounds. (Try that for a full year!) I'm relieved things are going well. The weather's been so nice I keep opting for walking in the park as an exercise, instead of elliptical or yoga (yoga would involve reconnecting the DVD player, and besides it would be indoors) but it's been so long since I've done the yoga. Walking seems tepid, but the weather calls for it. I tried running again recently but my body wasn't up for it - weird how one random day your body just runs 1.3 miles and then not again for the next several weeks. Ha.
Life is pushing down on me. An intense week at work, continuing today, but the show previews tonight. Tomorrow is Family Day. Sunday I work another job. Then I must get my taxes done and sent off. Then, if I don't get any other work next week, a trip to the beach would be awesome, and a trip to the mountains would also be awesome. Meanwhile, I'm counting the weeks to my next actual paycheck, and the clutter of my life is making it hard to get across the floor or lay anything into my car. Oh, and I need to take my car in to get a part replaced - $260. And I've met a potential roommate, with whom I could have a housey house and animals at home, but the stress of leaving my current situation and telling my current roommate weighs on me.
That's nothing to do with my weight loss journey - that's just what's "weighing" on my mind right now.
I suppose I will breakfast, pack food, do dishes, shower, go walk in the park (while I read my book which was supposed to be finished by the end of March) and then work all day.
Life is pushing down on me. An intense week at work, continuing today, but the show previews tonight. Tomorrow is Family Day. Sunday I work another job. Then I must get my taxes done and sent off. Then, if I don't get any other work next week, a trip to the beach would be awesome, and a trip to the mountains would also be awesome. Meanwhile, I'm counting the weeks to my next actual paycheck, and the clutter of my life is making it hard to get across the floor or lay anything into my car. Oh, and I need to take my car in to get a part replaced - $260. And I've met a potential roommate, with whom I could have a housey house and animals at home, but the stress of leaving my current situation and telling my current roommate weighs on me.
That's nothing to do with my weight loss journey - that's just what's "weighing" on my mind right now.
I suppose I will breakfast, pack food, do dishes, shower, go walk in the park (while I read my book which was supposed to be finished by the end of March) and then work all day.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
April 7, 206
One day back on the diet brought the high weight of 210 down to 206. Really nothing else to say. It's a tough week for me - have to get through to Friday, and also Saturday and Sunday.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
hiatus
I won't go into the details or excuses for my hiatus. I feel no guilt or regret and it's been great for me. I guess after a year I just needed to, wanted to. Even though work is still stressful this week, I can't allow my hiatus to last another day, so I'm back on the plan today. I keep trying to press down below 207, 205, 200... and going off the wagon and bouncing back up. The other time I lost a lot of weight in my 20s, 207 was the low point that I bounced up from. My high school weight was around 210-215 by graduation. I wonder if there is some sort of natural barrier or plateau for me at this weight? Not impenetrable, but something that makes it hard to push past. Dropping below that might even entail letting go of a part of who I am (inasmuch as psychological understanding of self is affected by physiological understanding of self) which could be hard on me since I am rather attached to my own identity.
Weight today 210.
Weight today 210.
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