Facing The Situation
So I weighed myself this morning. 148.5. Now, maybe some of that is muscle, and some of it might be water. But only a few months ago, I was at 134. So the trend is clear here. So what shall I say now?
Here are a couple of things which have not added up to effortless weight loss for me, despite all advertising to the contrary:
Eating Paleo
Eating Keto
Now, I am not trying to crap on Paleo. It’s made me feel really good in a lot of ways. But from a weight loss perspective, I’ve been plateaued on Paleo no matter how strict I have been, and Keto only made it worse. If anything, eating Keto actually made me gain weight faster. My skin is still recovering from that situation. In fact, I’m just about done with self-care in the skin department. But here’s a snapshot of my life lately: once we get done with my son’s root canal appointment, then I can have my own impacted wisdom tooth removed. THEN maybe I can manage to get to the damn dermatologist. But Paleo. It has not been a magical wand that makes fat vanish, not for me any way. And you all have been here with me. You know I have really tried. I have lifted, I have eaten strictly. I have really tried.
Perhaps this is because of that thing which we are all still trying to pin down: the thing that makes some people get fat, while others stay thin. There’s something about how I eat, and I don’t know what the hell it could be. My best guess is that even after literally years of food tracking, I am still not able to naturally select appropriate portion sizes. My ability to pack in fuel is really quite superior. Bring on the Ice Age, yo. I will own that bitch. But it’s wasted on this modern age, alas.
So what, pray tell, has worked for me to lose weight in the past? I hope you won’t be annoyed, but it’s exactly what you think. I reduced my overall calorie intake, along with my carbohydrate intake gently, and did more running.
I was really hoping to successfully transition to maintenance. But I can’t call it a success if I gain 20 lbs straight off. That’s really not okay with me. I can’t handle it at all. I want to get thinner again. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel huge now. I’m still below my original goal weight, and I still remember how thrilled I was to get here. But I’m really afraid that I’ll just keep gaining forever, you know? I have to take some action to reel it in.
So I guess I’ll have to get back to basics. I’m not quitting Paleo. While it didn’t do much of anything for fat loss, it was absolutely aces for everything else, so I still love it. I mean, my eyesight even got better! I can’t complain! But I have to take a harder look at what I’m eating lately. Apparently unlimited amounts of all permitted foods is not a great plan for me.
Thursday Morning Weigh-In
143.5, waist measurement 29. I can’t even. I don’t even know how to feel. The waist is smaller, the weight is up 2.5 lbs.
But I have stuff to do and I can’t wallow on this too long right now. Action plan:
1. Stop snacking between meals. That seems to be a huge problem for me.
2. Buy some ketostix and find out for real if I’m really in keto or just enjoying a fantasy.
Oh damn it all. Why does this have to be so hard? It was so easy way back when I started. In the Stone Age, you know.
Food Accountability Post/Friday Morning Weigh In
Back up again to 142.5. That’s a gain of either 1 or 1.5 lbs, I forget which. I can’t deny the truth: I am both frustrated and a bit frightened. But okay. Breath it out, breath it out, breath it out, and then let’s focus on what to do next.
It seems clear that something I have been seeing out of the corner of my eye all along is now moving to center stage: eating Paleo, even very strictly, is not a miracle weight-loss behavior. I need to make use of some of the behaviors that enabled me to lose quite a good bit of weight before I ever heard of Gary Taubes or Loren Cordain.
The added wrinkle is, of course, that I don’t want to move backward emotionally or encourage any form of disordered eating in myself. It’s all for nothing if I wind up spending the next decade meticulously counting macros, isn’t it? I want to expand my freedom, not decrease it. So I really want to figure out how to handle this situation without adding back behaviors I’m trying to get rid of.
So, where to start? Well, I would do what I have done in the past: just take a look at the records and try to identify an obvious area that could be improved. And indeed, when we look at the past week’s posts, something does pop out: desserts. So that will be my focus this week. I will try to reduce desserts on most days, and perhaps even eliminate desserts on some days. One thing that could help with this is to get back over to Capital Tea and restock my supply of Roast Almond tea. It makes a great dessert substitute.
The other thing I think I want to work on this week is developing a kale chip recipe which is less calorie-intensive. I mean, it’s not a bad recipe overall. But it could be better. I also want to develop a carrot chip recipe. The onion ones worked out so nicely; I bet carrots would be good too. If I can get the kale and carrot chips working better, maybe I can also reduce the amount of nuts being consumed.
So okay. There we are. Something to reduce and something to create. Alrighty. I have my marching orders. And now, the food. Today is a work day so I have to pack the food in advance. Happy to say, I have a full slate of clients today! Hooray, cash money.
Breakfast: chicken stir-fry.
Lunch: a sausage mixed up with the last wee bit of chili. Time to make more!
Dinner: Last of the chicken stir-fry. Delicious.
Snacks: 1/2 c. nut mix. Fresh pineapple. And some kale chips when I got home at 8:30 at night.
Notes: I had no energy today. This may have been related to the severe abuse my yoga teacher doled out in class. But that, combined with the rash of accidental self-injury and mental chaos, is sending me to get an acupuncture treatment tomorrow. I need to get my energy straightened out.
Grade: A. Today was good.
Also, I realized I do have one other thing I can do this week: I can bring back IF. So I think I’ll do that a few days this coming week, probably starting tomorrow morning.
I just find myself wanting anything sweet. Not just the stevia chocolate. Dates, raisins, figs. Anything! No wonder I’ve gained a few pounds, huh?
Monday Morning Weigh In
Alas, up another 2 lbs to 139.5. That’s really not acceptable to me at all. Also, this weight-gaining trend has been going on for more than a month now. I can’t pretend anymore that it’s just shark week, or just a wee bit of swole-ness from working out, or whatever. I’m really gaining weight. SIGH.
So, okay. I will start logging my food again on MFP. I had hoped to be done with that nonsense, but apparently some part of me is not yet ready for total freedom.
I’m sad about this development. But I guess I’m also pretty sanguine. Reversals on the road to successful maintenance are supposedly pretty common. I’m not a special snowflake made of rainbow unicorn sweat, so I suppose it is normal for me to run into some trouble along the way. Back to the drawing board.
Monday Morning Weigh In
Looks like up .5 pound, to 137.5. Whatever. My slimmest jeans are a wee bit too tight to comfortably wear around all day… I’m a bit sad about that. But I am trying to just remind myself that it’s water/glycogen/inflammation from my super-fun program of kettlebell madness and is nothing to worry about. It’s not the beginning of gaining back all my weight. No! It’s just the visible sign of my awesomeness increasing. Yeah. That is what I will say. Those 3.5 extra pounds are made up all the extra awesomeness. They don’t have anything to do with the massive sweet tooth I’ve had lately. No raisin is safe from me, I swear.
Monday Morning, NO Weigh In
I don’t have the heart to try. Sharks are coming, there was flying, there was pie, let’s just stipulate for the record that the results would be unfavorable and move on from there. Tune in next week for your regularly-scheduled weigh-in.
As I already said, Thanksgiving was just too wonderful to even express. But I want to still fit into my jeans later this month so I need to get back on my grind a bit. Does this mean I will log back on to MyFitnessPal? [thinks about it] NOPE. I just can’t get too interested in logging. I think I just don’t want to anymore. I’m just gonna try to focus on staying Paleo and maybe eating more greens and less squash. I took sweatforit’s advice and got myself some tea with dandelion root in it to detox and de-puff myself a bit. It’s surprisingly tasty tea, actually. It’s Yogi Tea, DeTox flavor. “Supports Healthy Liver and Kidney Function,” it says here. Well, we’ll see.
My daughter took possession of my fave jeans from Chico’s. There’s something not quite right about a girl of her young age wearing anything from Chico’s, that bastion of suburban-mom-wear. But they look great on her and I know, of course, how comfortable they are. So the upshot is, I bought myself more jeans Saturday evening (amusing myself while my husband was at a HeroClix event) and I tried to pick them with an eye to things my daughter might like to steal from me. JCPenney’s had an excellent selection of petite jeans but pretty much all of them were rather low-cut for my taste. I bought some anyway. They are comfy but there is a loaf situation around my midsection that I am not totally okay with. Hopefully my daughter will take the bait; her tummy is nice and flat and she looks great in low-cut jeans.
I will just take a moment now to say, WOW, the insanity of sizing in women’s clothing is really annoying. I see why it drives some ladies into a frothing rage. I have jeans in my closet in size 2, but those were “short” rather than “petite.” In petites at JCP, I ranged from a 4 up to a 10. Over at Land’s End they were having a sale on shirts (OH YEAH) and I was a small in one style but an extra-small in a different style. How can I ever order from their damn catalog again, now I see that I have no real idea what my size is anymore? And don’t tell me to take my measurements, either. Obviously my measurements did not change appreciably in between trying on 2 different styles of shirt, now, did they? And yet… there it is. Anyway. I had no trouble finding some nice things to buy, so I feel happy and very thankful. But the sizing thing… annoying.
Monday Morning Weigh In
Hmmm. Back up to 137.5. So that’s up, what, 3.5 lbs there. I feel sort of meh about the whole thing. I was good. I didn’t overeat nuts or nut butter. But there was a LOT of sweet potato. Maybe a bit too much carbs, huh? I know it’s water, though. I’m just less uptight about it.
So this week is Thanksgiving. I only have a few things to focus on this week.
- stay as Paleo as possible, with the exception of the long-anticipated pumpkin pie. Just because I eat the pie is no reason to fall completely off the wagon and roll about in the ditch.
- drink lots of tea
- do yoga or get some other exercise every day. Being away from home is no excuse and you know it.
I can’t decide if I want to weigh myself next Monday. Do I want to not weigh? Then there’s no pressure at all. But there’s also no data. I won’t know the truth. If I weigh, then I know what really happened. Opinions?
Monday Morning Weigh In
Wow. So, between the Hurricane Sandy eat-all-the-things situation and the recent advent of shark week, I am up 4 whole pounds, to 138. That is pretty scary! I was thinking about it while I was out running this morning, looking into my feelings and whatnot. I was interested to see that even this anxiety still did not make me want to get back on MFP and log my food. Is that because I’m avoiding doing what I know needs to be done? Or is it because I know I can handle the situation without doing it? I guess we will find out next Monday. Because I’m going with the feeling and not logging this week. So what will I do, then? I will:
- Do as much IF as I feel like doing. Maybe every day, maybe not.
- Drink a whole lot of water and tea. Fancy-schmancy new OXO tea tumbler!
- Eat more greens and maybe a bit less sweet potato.
- Limit myself to only 1/2 a cup of nuts for the whole week. I will do this by measuring that shit out into a tupperware for myself. 1/2 a cup doesn’t seem like much but I ate nuts freely the last couple weeks and it was NO BUENO on many levels.
- Keep on working out.
- Get to sleep on time for a change.
That’s about it. We’ll see how it works out. If I can’t manage to lose a pound or two this way, I guess I will bite the bullet and unlimber my MFP account again.
And somewhere, hard gainers are sadly wishing they could could pack it on effortlessly like me. DON’T HATE ME CUZ I’M BEAUTIFUL.
Monday Morning Weigh In
Optimism was unjustified, it seems. Up 1.5 lbs to 135. But I don’t care. I wore my tightest jeans down there and I wore them coming back up.
The really sad news is, my throat thing is progressing and I think I have to take off work today. BOOOOO.
Monday Morning Weigh In
OY VEY. Last week was full of chaos and non-optimal eating, and the scale really showed it. Up 3 whole pounds to 137!! My arms looked puffy in the mirror. I don’t feel upset exactly. It’s more just that I feel like maybe I’m not quite as ready to enter maintenance as I thought I was. Circumstances were less-than-optimal and I really didn’t rise to the occasion in terms of my eating. I was sort of thinking about ending my weight-loss stage a bit early because I am sort of sick of it. But this week is telling me that maybe I need to spend a little more time here, learning good habits.
acciohealthyme had a little thing on her blog about the different levels of motivation.
Introjected regulation is characterized by recognizing some level of value in an activity, but feeling as though one “ought” to participate out of guilt or obligation.
Identified regulation is the level at which participants see the outcome as beneficial and they begin to participate because they want to.
Integrated regulation represents a level where the activity is part of the individual’s identity and is relevant to higher goals, though it may still be somewhat extrinsically motivated (Biddle, 1999).
Intrinsic motivation is the highest level of self-determination whereby an individual participates in an activity simply for the sake of the activity itself (Deci & Ryan, 1985).
“Student Motivation in Physical Education and Engagement in Physical Activity,” by Charity Leigh Bryan and Melinda A. Solmon
Is my own motivation about Paleo food at the highest level? I dunno. This week has shaken my confidence a bit.
Monday Morning Weigh In
Oh well… gained a pound, back up to 134. I’m becoming increasingly indifferent to the whole weight loss issue. I don’t know if I will even be mentally able to keep at it until my original deadline of New Year’s Day. I may very well just call it quits pretty shortly. I just don’t know. But it’s getting pretty boring at this point. I keep thinking about it and sort of chewing it over in my mind and I keep coming back to that: it’s getting boring and I am starting to be uninterested in it.
Monday Morning Weigh In
Annnndddd it’s up again 2.5, back to 135.5. See-saw, Margery Daw. Whatever. I feel good and I look thin and I’m running again. Although today was not a running day. Today was yoga and it felt really good.
Later this morning I’ll do my last class observation for YTT, and then I’ll be able to get on to finishing up all the last bits of homework and be on track to turn it all in on time this Saturday. OH YEAH baby. It’ll be good to get done with this. I’ve enjoyed the crap out of it but I’m ready to finish now.
Monday Morning Weigh In
Up another half pound to 135. I gotta say that after a week of visiting Las Vegas and also eating every damn thing I saw anywhere, that is not bad at all. Also sharks are due to arrive this week. My face is broken out like WHOA.
But whatever. Per aspera ad astra, folks. I got up and did my P90X this morning. Bro-tastic Chest & Back workout. Maximum goofing-off planned for the rest of the day.
Monday Morning Weigh In, NSVs, Yoga, Blah Blah Blah
So I did gain a pound this morning, up to 136. But I actually consider that to a be victory, since I spent the weekend at my YTT retreat thing and wound up eating a massive amount of fruit there. OH so tasty. I am quite proud to report that I did not eat anything that was not Paleo. But, as I said, there was fruit. Mmmmm. (Also I’m pretty sure I ate something that had honey in it, so I’m watching now to see what my skin will do.) And also, I had an actual cheat meal last week, on Wednesday, although I was too all-over-the-place to blog about it then. I took my daughter for Dim Sum. Here’s a pic:
Mmmm, pork tripe with ginger and scallions! I did enjoy some very non-Paleo-type things, such as the steamed BBQ pork buns and the 8-treasure rice in a lotus leaf. But that was very interesting for me, because I really felt as if the flavors of the grain-based foods were sort of muted and muddy, while the flavor of the tripe dish was fresh, zesty and intense. I really liked the tripe best. (There’s a sentence I never imagined I would utter.) My son wants to go there today for Dim Sum, since he couldn’t go last week, and I think I will just have the tripe and maybe some eggplant or some bok choy or something. I don’t really want to have the grain-based foods. They just weren’t as good somehow. So I do call that a big NSV for me.
So the bottom line here: I ate grains last week and a whole bunch of carb-y fruit this weekend, and I only retained 1 pound of water. Pretty good! And I know it’s water. I’m pretty sure nobody is going to gain fat while they do 5 hours of yoga a day, in between eating fruit salad.
Here’s another NSV from this weekend: on Sunday, many of my fellow yoginis were stiff and sore from the intense beat-down they gave us on Saturday. (@heymaker, Ashley was in fine form. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen an entire room of people rubbing their butts together. Or trying to say “Hello” as if they were made of Ether. LOL!!) But when I got out of my sleeping bag on Sunday morning, I felt fine. The beat-down was vigorous, but I was more than strong enough to handle it. They were all, “I can’t move my arms,” and I was thinking, “bring it on!!” So I did feel like a massive bad-ass, which is pretty much never a bad thing.
Further NSV: I wore the booty shorts and everybody loved them and thought they were hilarious. Of course naturally that day we did a ton of Prasarita Padottanasana, also known as Wide-Legged Forward Fold. (Or, in this graphic, it is the “Prepare Your Anus.”) This only increased the overall hilariousness of the situation. But in fact the shorts were excellent. They stayed up around the midsection no matter what I did, never slumping down under my gut-flap, and also they did not ride up in the crotch or butt area. Really excellent. Shout out to Gap Body!! Good stuff! And the shorty-short legs really gave me the feeling that I was walking around with no pants on which was delightful. Which leads me to my next NSV. My legs still touch each other. But when I walk, they don’t really rub anymore. They just gently brush each other. It actually feels sort of nice. I got to enjoy the heck out of that with these booty shorts. Pretty sweet. Also, my husband really liked them, LOL.
So, in conclusion, the only sour note is that my poor van is back in the shop today. But other than that, I could not be in a better mood right now!
Page 1 of 2
