Broke 190 for the first time in a year

It has been a hard-fought past 12 months.  I battled depression and crippling job stress and reverted to all my negative eating behaviours along the way.  It was only when I got my new job that I was able to muster the determination to say: "It stops here.  I can't change the past 12 months, but I can change the next 12".

And I did.  I went back to first principles of what I know worked for me - - tracking my food and pushing my workouts.  Along the way I got back in touch with this whole lifestyle change that I was supposed to be doing (rather than merely losing weight).  That has been perhaps the most profound thing I have discovered in this journey - - it really is all about the lifestyle, stupid.  There ain't no such thing as a quick fix, and negative habits will always generate negative consequences. 

The results have been just what I had hoped - - and more, and less.

The weight is coming off again, and this morning after my workout I weighed in at 189.8 pounds, a number on the scale I have not seen for about a year.  I have also noticed that as I continue along this path (and as I get older) the weight takes more work to lose.  I used to see relatively consistent losses every month.  Now I am seeing punctuated equilibrium: I stay relatively the same for a week or so, then have one week of surprisingly easy losses, then "girl time" adds 4 pounds of gratuitous bloating, then I spend 2 weeks trying to get back to where I was before nature's awesome majesty took my hormones on a ride.  Over the past few months I have seen this pattern repeated over and over again, and I am slowly starting to change my mindset from disappointment if a given week is not lower on the scale to focusing on the longer window of a month.  So although the individual days or weeks (depending on the week) may see frustratingly little weight loss, overall the months are still showing losses, and I am still moving in the right direction.

On an even more positive side, the Nerd and I are slowly starting to transition into more of a maintenance mode rather than a hard core weight loss mode.  I say this not because we do not have weight to lose - - we do - - but because we are starting to make adjustments to make our lifestyle more sustainable in the long term.

For me that means a step change reduction in calories from an average of 1,600 - 1,800 calories per day to trying to keep under my 1,430 calories per day objective (!) without having to eat back all of my exercise calories.  I usually come in somewhere between 1,400 and 1,600 calories a day, and even the difference of 200 calories (on average) per day has had profound results.

Staying under my calorie target organically has allowed me to do things like take additional rest days, or to use long walks as exercise rather than brutally exhausting elliptical workouts, while still losing weight.  I have a more normal life, and that is kind of nice.  As I age I also find it a bit tougher to maintain the intensity of the workout schedule that I used to - - after almost 3 years that kind of work takes its toll on a body.  Mine, in particular.

All of this is in aid of changing me into a person who eats sensibly more often than I do not, and who works out to feel good rather than because she has to.  Don't get me wrong, I still use workouts as a way to enable a good day of food when I know I am going out, but I am trying to focus more on the every day consumption levels as well.  It certainly seems to be working for now.

It is more difficult in many ways than simply jumping on the elliptical, because I have to be so diligent about what is going into my mouth every day, all day.  But in aggregate this approach seems to be working, and even the bake sale day of a thousand rice krispie squares and gingerbread men (omnomnom) did not set me back for long.

I know I am prone to wild mood swings about my weight loss journey, and I am always more optimistic when the weight is coming off easily as it has been this week rather than those weeks when I am doing exactly the same things and the scale is not moving at all, or worse, moves only upwards. 

However I have noticed over the last few months as I have been starting to discover my body's new rhythms that I am more relaxed about the tough weeks because I am more confident that the good weeks will come.  I am gradually becoming more disciplined in my routine, and I am able to be more zen about my progress as a result.

Not that I am zen, exactly, I am only zen-er than previously.  But I will take it, just as I take this new (revisited) milestone of breaking into the 180s.  I have worked hard for this, and I am feeling good.  

Off the reservation ... but coming back

The real truth about trying to lose weight is that it is what goes into your mouth that drives your results.  You can exercise all you want, but if you go crazy with food, there is not enough exercise in the world to overcome all those calories. 

Confession time.  This past week has been a bad one for snacking and for dining out or in with family and friends - lots of snacks, and lots of bigger than normal meals with wine.  The only saving grace is that I have still worked out on plan, so my "consecutive weeks worked out" streak remains intact - now up to 65 weeks and counting.  The bad side is that I have really let my eating, especially my late night snacking, go completely out of control. 

It's time to take things back in hand.  I am doing a few things this week to shake things up and break out of this negative spiral. 

First, I have stopped weighing myself every day.  Even though I only recorded my weight once a week, I was getting completely obsessed with the numbers on the scale, and when they did not decrease, I would get frustrated and binge out on chocolate.  I know, this is not exactly productive behaviour, but what can you do - - they call it "emotional eating", not "rational eating" for a reason.

I am not sure what my new weigh-in intervals will be, but I don't plan to step on the scale until the end of the month just to get a baseline, and then perhaps not until the following month-end.  We'll see if I can resist the temptation to weigh-in.  I have noticed a real tendency for my moods to follow the scale - - when I gain, for whatever reason, I feel depressed, and when I lose, I feel energized and unstoppable.  Those mood swings are taking over my days, and I need to break out of them.

I have not weighed myself for more than a week, and it's actually kind of liberating.  I did hop on the scale for a directional read this morning to see how much work I need to do to get down to my lowest weight - - a lot - - but I was expecting a bump yesterday after a gourmet dinner out at North 44 restaurant with the family last night.    

Second, the incremental chocolate dish on my desk has been banished.  I could not resist the lure of those bite sized chocolates, and they were killers to my carefully planned out days - - especially on days when the aforementioned scale is being uncooperative.  The chocolates ran out on Friday afternoon, and they are not getting replaced any time soon.  This will help me cut out the illicit snacking that has been my achilles heel the past few weeks. 

Third, I have completely changed up my free weight routine.  I have been doing the same free weight routine virtually unchanged since October, and it's time to mix things up and give my muscles a bit of a challenge.

This morning was the first morning of the new routine, and it was a killer.  Very challenging, which is good.  And yes, the new routine includes planks, as promised, which lead to all sorts of creative swearing on the part of yours truly.  I can still only do 5 planks of 30 seconds each - - barely! - - but hope that over time as I continue to work on my core I will be able to do more.

Fourth, it's time to step up the elliptical again.  I took the cross-ramp up to 8 a couple of weeks ago, so today was the time to take the tension up to 8, from 7.  It felt challenging, but good.  I felt great after finishing my workout, and I certainly had a good sweat this morning.  I released all the glows today. I may have actually experienced an endorphin. 

Finally, I need to re-integrate rest days into my program.  I had been good about taking rest days for a while there, but I let my obsession with the scale push me into working out without taking rest days for a few weeks.  One of the symptoms of overtraining is depression, which just leads to binge eating for me.  Another symptom of overtraining is lack of progress.  Just what one wants to see after pushing it as hard as I have been doing.  I know that I have a tendency to overdo things, and failing to take rest days is just one part of that.

So, this week I shake myself, dust myself off, and get back on plan.  The workout plan is on track, and has never fallen off track, so now it is time to get the eating under control.  Today was Day 1 - on track.  Tomorrow I will work on stacking another good day on top of Day 1.  Put enough good days together, and this week will take care of itself. 

Back to blogging - 127.9 pounds down [with pics]

I haven't been blogging for a couple of weeks because, frankly, I have been really frustrated with my workouts and weight loss.

Let me be clear here - - losing weight is work every step of the way, especially when you do it the right way, through gradual lifestyle improvement.  But up until relatively recently, it has been pretty easy for me to lose 1 - 1.5 pounds each week.  I would log my Friday morning weight, bump up a bit Saturday morning, and then Sunday through the following Friday I would pretty well see incremental losses every day.  I would not stress out too much about my progress, because by Sunday (or Monday at the latest) I was usually below my previous Friday's weight, and anything I achieved from that point on was gravy.  (mmmmmm....gravy)

Two weeks ago I changed up my routine to formally add back in a rest day.  Not a pretend rest day with "only" a 30 minute workout like I had been doing, but a full, proper rest day.  No intentional workouts at all.  I would not be bedridden for the day, but I wasn't going out of my way to exercise, unlike the other 6 days of the week.

The rest day has led to a couple of changes in my routine.  First, it has shifted my weigh in day from Friday to Saturday, the official end of my workout week.

Second, it has led to a huge rebound weight gain on Sunday morning, because I have the usual weekend rebound plus whatever I am not losing through sweat from the normal workout.  For the past couple of weeks, instead of getting back to my Friday weight by Monday, I have been only getting near my Saturday weight on the following Friday - - in other words, it is taking me the entire week to get back only as far as I had been the week before.

I am sincerely hoping that this is merely a temporary aberration, prompted by the recent change in routine.  I am finding it very difficult to spend so much of my time making up ground I have already lost, so to speak, and I really dislike the feeling of being behind the eight ball for most of the week when I am exercising every day and eating well.

Now that I have vented my frustrations, let's focus on some of the positives, shall we?

Although it is not pretty, I am still losing weight, which is good because otherwise I would be completely demoralized with the difficulties of the past couple of weeks.  I am down another pound this week, which, in addition to the 1.2 pounds I lost last week, brings me down to 206 pounds, down a total of 127.9 pounds.

Looking back at my progress, I have lost more than 90 pounds since last July, the first readings on the chart, above (top line).  The other major win in the past few weeks has been that I have decreased my body fat % into the normal range (bottom line), albeit not consistently.  Keep in mind that the above chart only starts 6 months after I had first begun working out. 

Taking a look at my steps over the past 11 months, you can see that my average daily steps have increased over time.  In recent weeks I have averaged more than 15,000 steps per day on days I work out.

 

Certainly as my fitness has improved, my world has expanded.  The city is more accessible to me.  Just last week I walked up to the Bay to do some shopping (a trip I previously would have taken the subway to accomplish), and yesterday the Nerd and I walked a mile up to the Loblaws at the old Maple Leaf Gardens to pick up our favourite bread (4 subway stops away).  Where I once could barely walk half a block to the corner, now I don't think twice about walking for an hour on an errand.  I like that.  

 The biggest improvement over time has been in my fasting blood sugar levels.  In May I saw a step change improvement in my sugars, as shown in the above chart.  Whereas each previous month I have seen gradual improvement, even sometimes stringing together 3 or 4 normal results, in May suddenly all but 2 of my readings were normal.  This month to date I have only had 1 elevated reading, and I have also had several readings in the 4 - 4.9 mmol/L range - - another step change improvement.

It's funny how quickly I went from hoping to see a normal fasting blood sugar reading to expecting my readings to be normal.  I am not exactly sure what led to this sudden improvement, other than losing enough weight to almost be overweight, rather than obese.  Perhaps that's all that it takes.  

So how am I progressing against my goals?  Pretty well, in small baby steps:

Only a pound to go to reach light heavy.  In fact, I could qualify for a non-championship fight right now, if, say, I were at all fit.  Which I am not.  At least to that level.  Better yet, I am only 3 pounds away from being overweight.  

I have to confess that it feels like I am reaching 50% of this goal every week.  Which of course means that I will never get there.  I know that I will eventually reach this goal, given time, but it honestly feels like forever.  Patience, grasshopper.  

Here's how I am looking as of June 1, 2013.  To me, I just look normal, like nothing has changed.  Still with the unmanageable hair, still with the wonky eye.  But if I look over time, I can see big changes:

In March 2012 I was wearing size 2X-3X, or a 24-26, and weighed 313.7 pounds.  In October I was down to a plus size 20 and 268.4 pounds, and now I am a size 14-16, and 206 pounds.  Definite progress, if slow and steady.  I have had an expensive month because I have had to buy a lot of new clothes to replace my old baggy suits, but I am feeling more confident and healthier than I have been in years. 

So, net net, it has been a frustrating month so far because the change to my routine has made progress a little tougher to see.  But the progress is still happening, which is great.  I just need to be more patient and accept that this is still a long term thing that I am doing here.  Every month I am still losing pounds and inches, and every month I am measurably healthier.  So I just need to stop trying to have it all, right now, and get zen about this lifestyle change.