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. 

97 steps forward, 2 steps back

This week was a frustrating week, but also a promising week.

On the challenging side, the Nerd and I had an Italian friend staying with us for most of the week.  He was a very considerate house guest and a charming man so his visit was very enjoyable, but a guest - any guest - will throw off even the most disciplined routine.

I stuck to my workout plan and tried to eat well all week and tracked everything, which was good.  However, because our guest insisted on cooking a couple of times, and because we were trying to show him Canadian foods like tortiere, butter tarts and nanaimo bars, and because he wanted to show us Italian foods like osso bucco with mushroom risotto and pasta carbonara, we were eating much richer foods than usual for most of the week. 

I was feeling pretty good until our Italian friend left and we moved the scale back into its usual place (we had hidden the scale in our closet for the duration of the visit, whereas it usually lives in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs).  The Nerd noticed that the scale was giving us strange signals, and I guess with all the moving back and forth the scale had gotten out of calibration.  This would have impacted my weigh in last week, as well as all subsequent weights for the most recent week.  The solution appeared to be to reset the scale, and recalibrate it, just in time for this week's weigh in.

At which point we both suddenly weighed 2 pounds more than last week.  Shock and horror!  And extremely disappointing, especially given how disciplined I had been all week, and how attentive to logging all my food I had been.  Yes, my food choices were somewhat different than usual, but they were not junk food, and I was managing the portions, or so I thought.

Given that we both went up 2 pounds, however, it looks like the scale may be the culprit.  Properly calibrated, I was showing 2 pounds heavier than expected.  I don't think I actually put on 2 pounds last week - at worst, I stayed exactly the same - it's just that the weight I thought I was should have been 2 pounds higher. 

Anyhoo, the good news is I am still on my program of daily workouts and eating healthy, and now that our guest has gone, our healthy routines can continue uninterrupted. 

More good news - - the new workout clothes I ordered from Old Navy have arrived, and they are an XL, and they fit!  (cue my happy dance)

New workout  clothes :-)

A friend of mine at the office was raving about her Old Navy workout gear that she uses for running clothes.  Words like "affordable", "comfortable", "great value", and "awesome" were used, and I was intrigued.

On visiting the Old Navy website, I saw that for them an XL is a size 16-18.  Well I am virtually an 18 - - depending on the cut of the clothes, an 18 is either tight or looking good - - so I thought I would take a chance and get the XL.  Worst case scenario, the clothes wouldn't fit yet, and I would have to wait a month or so to wear them.  Best case scenario, they would fit, and I would have 2 more workout outfits. 

The clothes not only fit, the tops were actually cut so generously that they were a little loose!  This is particularly exciting because: i) Old Navy is a normal store with wide distribution in many malls across Canada; ii) my friend was right - the clothes were very affordable, and they had a ton of selection; and iii) an XL is a normal size.  I am (ever so slowly) evolving away from the need for 1X-2X-3X clothes, and transitioning into more normal sizes.  I love it!

So, overall the week wasn't too bad, even though the scale is a lying bitch out to break my heart.  I was able to stick to my program, which meant that I was not facing a ridiculous weight gain to overcome this week, only a calculation error.  I got some new workout gear which, I am amazed to say, actually made me want to work out right away (!).  And, my new workout gear was from a straight size store in a normal size.  Will miracles never cease?

After our friend's visit the Nerd and I looked at what worked and what did not in terms of the layout of the apartment for having guests staying over.  Because the elliptical machine is in the office, we moved our daybed upstairs to the living room so that we could continue our morning workout routine without interruption.  That worked well.  The fact that my desk had to be pushed up against the bookcase to make room for the bed, and the fact that when our guest wanted to go to bed I could no longer work at my desk or in the living room was less optimal.

The solution: move my desk downstairs to the office.  We also ended up moving a small bookcase (with the books to be read) down to the bedroom, and had to flip the orientation of the office so that my desk and the Nerd's desk are now on the right of the room as you enter, rather than on the left. This required that we empty out the room completely so that we could move the elliptical to the other wall, but all is done now, and the room looks great.  The Nerd is now working on getting all the networking set up, and we'll be off to the races. 

All in all, it was a super productive day, and I am feeling pleasantly tired (read: exhausted) after starting the day with my usual 30 minutes of weights + 55 minutes on the elliptical. 

But the laundry is done, chores are finished, and we're having lamb lollipops tonight for dinner, so it's another good day. 

Hopefully next week I will be back to my losing ways.  The scale is already coming back down, so I am optimistic that this week was just a minor technical issue. 

My Scale and I Have a Love-Hate Relationship

Photo courtesy Amelia Stewart, licensed CC-BY-SA-ND

Every morning after my workout it's the same thing.  I stare at my scale and will it to display a lower number, even if it's only fractionally lower.  But before I get the courage to stand on the scale, I waste as much time as possible. 

Brush my teeth - I certainly will!  Plaque must be worth a tenth of a pound or so, right?  Go to the washroom - hell yes!  Water weighs a lot, and I drink a lot, so that must be worth a tenth of a pound or so.  Dry my hair - absolutely!  Wet hair must weigh more than dry hair, so that must be worth a tenth of a pound or so.  And so it goes. 

Every morning I dread getting on the scale, afraid that it will tell me that despite working out and eating healthy, I have lost no weight.  Or worse still, that I have gained weight.  My body is still a magical mystery to me, and I cannot predict from one day to the next what I will weigh, based on how I am feeling or what I consumed the day before.

I went to a gourmet restaurant last week for an amazing 4 course meal ... and lost half a pound the next morning.  I ate precisely on plan on the weekend, and the scale thought I had gone up.  This morning I was two pounds down.  The scale is a fickle mistress, that's for damn sure.

I tell myself that I am adopting a lifestyle change, not dieting, and that the overall objective is to be healthier, not just to lose weight.  I want to bring my blood sugars under control, and have the endurance to participate in everyday activities without fear that my body will let me down.  Losing weight is part of that equation, but it is not the whole part, I keep telling myself.

And yet ... weight is the one single number that can sum up where we stand.  It's a convenient shorthand to define how the overall lifestyle change is going. 

Even though I am losing weight more or less steadily, and even though I know there are ups and downs on this path I am taking, every morning is sweet anxiety for me until I get the courage to step on the scale and see the numbers. 

And I am not alone - - I am reading the autobiography of a US national champion gymnast, and her attitude towards the scale is identical to mine.  And I have heard other people mention the same thing.  I don't know if the attitude ever goes away for those of us who are or who have been heavy, or for those of us in body-conscious professions (like ballet or gymnastics or wrestling or mixed martial arts).  If we are trying to lose, it is a struggle to lose weight.  If we are trying to maintain, it is a struggle not to lose and not to gain weight.  The scale serves as a constant reminder of where we stand. 

While I may never learn to love my scale, I do appreciate it.  For telling it like it is.  For humoring me occasionally.  For not shattering into a thousand pieces when I stand on it.  And tomorrow morning we get to dance again, my scale and I.