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Ugh. It's time to focus on getting healthy again. I've let myself go for too long, and there is no excuse except that restricting myself all the time seems to slowly drive me to a huge rebellion like the one I've been on for the past eight months or so. This time I'm going to follow the 80/20 rule and see if that can keep me from going completely off the rails again. "Eating right means cutting yourself some slack and enjoying your food."
Chris bought me Wii Fit Plus for Christmas, an upgrade to the original which he gave me for Valentine's Day last year. I haven't even opened it yet. We are expecting our new couch in this weekend, which will create a little bit more space to move around in the living room. We just need to get some furniture sliders put on the bottom of the coffee table so I can move it out of the way without help.
I'm also going to focus on only five pounds at a time, to make the task of losing weight feel a little less daunting. I'll update you all for every five pounds I lose, and hopefully having my friends, family and blog readers as a cheering squad will keep me motivated to start working on the next five pounds!
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*sigh* Okay.
Wow. I got smacked hard with the depression stick, and such an odd time of year for it. I usually save that kind of misery for January or February. I'm not going to go into all the details here on the circumstances that triggered this downward spiral, because at this point I think bitching and moaning about things would be counterproductive. I'm on my way back up and now I need to focus on the positive. Besides, you don't want to read about all of my problems.
One of the things I credit with contributing to this week's turnaround is the fact that I am back on track with my diet. After a long summer of making really poor nutritional choices, I was dragging my feet over cutting my calories back down to a weight-loss level, but now that I've dug in and done it I've realized it was not nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. I've met my calorie goal for three days in a row and am well on my way to a fourth, and though my stomach has grumbled about it a bit, I haven't found myself emotionally craving food at all - and a couple of Tums will quiet down the beast in my belly just fine. (It's just stretched out a bit and will shrink with time.) This time instead of setting specific weight goals, I'm simply going by the number of days I stay under my calorie limit. Every fourteen successful days, I will reward myself with a week of slightly increased calorie intake (at a break-even level instead of a weight-loss level) as well as one specific naughty craving I've denied myself. The first one will either be Chinese food or a slice of pumpkin pie - I haven't decided yet. I will only weigh myself at the beginning and end of my "reward week", just for the purpose of calculating calorie limits.
Anyway, my success at eating right this week has given me a good confidence boost, which is something I definitely needed. Another thing that has pulled me back up a little bit more, which is going to sound strange, is the bout with insomnia I had to deal with last night. I know, "what?" But this was the good kind of insomnia: the kind where you start trying to fall asleep and your brain suddenly starts figuring things out, figuring out what needs to be done to make things better, and you can't shut it off and you almost don't want to because you're afraid all of these epiphanies will be forgotten by morning if you fall asleep.
So I'm still kind of at a loss for what to write about in order to keep this blog fresh, but I do want to get back to posting at least a couple of times a week. If nothing else, I'll keep you all apprised of my success with my diet, progress with other goals I have set to get my life in order, and probably sprinkle in some amusing photos and/or video of the "kids" to put a smile on everyone's faces.
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As you know, I've been trying to lose some weight for the past several months, in order to look good when I go home to Oregon in a few weeks, as well as at the three weddings we're attending this year. I guess I shouldn't say "trying", because as of my last weigh-in on Tuesday night, I have lost about fourteen pounds, with about ten more to go until I reach my "healthy" weight range. And even with ten more pounds to go, I'm already pretty happy with how my body looks these days. I've even been told, by people who were not aware of my efforts, that I look skinny! My hips have narrowed out, and even though my belly will always protrude because of my spinal curvature, it is looking a lot flatter than it was.
Today I read a rather pessimistic article titled "You can not lose weight and keep it off". The first paragraph of the article reads:
The sad reality is that you have about as great a chance of losing weight and keeping it off as you do of winning the lottery. This is just a simple fact of life. Everybody knows it. Every magazine article and television show on the topic gives the same facts: 95% of diets fail, and for those who do lose weight, it's just about guaranteed that they'll gain it all back.
Well, it's true that this is the third time in my life I have engaged in a mission to lose weight. I was very successful each time, but eventually gained at least some of the weight back. But I firmly believe this is only because I allowed myself to slip back into my old habits: the same habits that caused me to gain the weight in the first place. Why wouldn't they cause it all to come back?
No, you can't just go on a diet for a little while, lose the weight you want, then go right back to eating the way you did before. If you do that, yes, you will gain the weight back. The fact of the matter is that to keep the weight off, you will have to be vigilant for the rest of your life. After you've lost the weight, you can increase your calorie intake back to an amount that equals what you burn, and that will allow you to maintain a constant weight. But if you go back to eating whatever you want in huge quantities, those excess calories are going to be converted right back into those pounds of fat you worked so hard to get rid of.
Of course, no one wants to track every calorie for the rest of their life, and deprive themselves of the things they love to eat. So the key is to balance it out. If you indulge one day, go back to your weight loss calorie goal the next day. And keep weighing in on a regular basis to keep an eye on yourself. If your weight starts to creep back up, cut those calories back down for a week or two to counter it.
My own plan, once I reach the upper end of my healthy weight range, is to alternate weekly between a weight-maintenance and a weight-loss calorie count. This way I'll be able to enjoy some of my favorite higher calorie foods, but still work toward getting my weight down closer to the lower end of that healthy range.
As long as a person continues to be aware of what they are eating and monitor their weight, even while occasionally enjoying some of life's sinful pleasures, I refuse to believe that it's not possible to lose weight and keep it off.
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It's been a crazy day, and all I have time to write are these two random, unrelated thoughts.
My review of Lose It for the iPhone gets at least one hit every day from the search engines. What confuses me is the specific search that most often shows up in my logs... variations on the question, "Does the Lose It iPhone app really work?" What kind of question is that? Yes, it works in the sense that it adds up the calories you consume so long as you record each food you eat into the application. Actually stopping eating once you've reached your daily calorie limit is still up to you. Are you magically going to lose weight just by having the app installed on your iPhone? Don't be silly.
No one spells my name right. They never have. Everyone wants to stick an E in there (Carley), or an IE (Carlie), or start it with a K instead of a C. And you know what? I have never seen anyone with my name ever spell it any of those ways. Every single Carly I have ever met, read about, or seen on TV spells it the same way I do: C-A-R-L-Y. So why the hell can't anybody else get it right???
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I don't know what, but something sparked my metabolism this past week. I lost three pounds! I can't help wondering how much more I would have lost if I had been a little bit better with my workouts, as I didn't exercise as often as I had wanted to. There just always seemed to be other things to do. On the positive side, my workout duration is up to about thirty-five minutes. Last night was the first time Wii Fit actually ordered me to take a break. And the really good news is that my knees are tolerating the longer workouts extremely well. My next goal is to make more of that workout time actual aerobic activity, and save the balance games for my off days when I'm too tired or too busy for a full workout.
Chris joined a gym this week, and also joined a "Biggest Loser" competition at work. He's already lost about twenty-five pounds on his own since January, which compared to what I've lost in the same amount of time, makes me want to throw sharp pointy things at him. Why does it have to be so much easier for men?
So let's see if I can do four 35-minute workouts this next week, with thirty minutes of actual aerobics, and at least ten minutes of balance games on the other three days. And let's see if I can lose another three pounds!
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I'm slowly but steadily losing the weight I want to lose. And slow is fine as long as it keeps coming off. I've been working out on Wii Fit for twenty to twenty-five minutes about every other day. That's barely long enough to get my heart rate up into fat burning range, but right now it's about strengthening my muscles and joints so that I can endure longer workouts. And I can assure you it's working. I'm going to add five minutes to my workout time each week, so this next week I'll shoot for thirty minutes, and also want to try to do at least a few minutes of balance games on the days I'm too sore for aerobics. As I gradually increase my exercise, I'm sure the weight will come off faster. I should be in great shape in time for not just my trip to Oregon, but also the three weddings we're attending this year!
I've been following SparkPeople on Twitter, and the other night they posted a tip that I think bears repeating. "Eat a snack before bed. It's a myth that eating late causes weight gain. As long as you don't overeat and stay within your daily totals." I know many people who believe this myth, so repeat after me: It does not matter when you eat - only how much!
Here's something else worth sharing. My friend Laura (Abbie's mom) turned me onto Hungry Girl, an e-mail newsletter dedicated to us women who are trying to lose or watch our weight. It's packed with weight loss tips, recipes, food comparisons, ingredient swap tips, and more.
Finally, here's a warning about becoming too obsessed with eating healthy. It seems that parents drilling garbage into their kids heads about "good" and "bad" foods are leaving them with such an intense fear of food that they are developing a whole new type of eating disorder. Remember, there's no such thing as a "bad" food - it's all about moderation.
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Commenter Ricky asked for my feelings on the Lose It! iPhone application now that I have been using it for a while, so I thought I should post an updated review. If you don't remember, this is the app I am using to track my calorie intake as I work to lose the weight I put back on in 2008.
My earliest observation was the fact that none of the foods I buy seemed to appear in the application's built-in database. This continues to be the case, and those few I do find on the list usually seem to have inaccurate information, or list a different serving size than is on the label. So I have resorted to manually entering everything into the custom foods list. However, the ability to do this is a feature that, as I mentioned before, most of the competing iPhone apps do not offer, and not having this feature is not an option for me. So maybe I'm sacrificing some convenience in the form of more robust food databases, for this one option I can't live without. So be it. Besides, it really isn't all that time consuming to manually enter a food, and it only has to be done once for each food. The time it takes to enter something also depends on what you're tracking, which brings me to my next observation.
In addition to calories, Lose It! does allow you to track other nutrients such as fat, carbs, fiber and protein. These aren't enabled by default, which caused me a bit of confusion at first. What it doesn't do is tell you how much of these you should be consuming. Now, from a pure weight loss standpoint, calories are all that matter. But a diet that is balanced in all of the basic nutrients is going to leave you feeling more satisfied with less potential for cheating out of pure hunger, and it can help you get past those plateaus where you just don't seem to lose anything even though you are staying within your calorie budget. I also felt that the application's calculation of my calorie needs was a bit off. For these two reasons, I do recommend that you create an account on SparkPeople and use it to work out all of your nutritional goals. (Lose It! does allow you to enter an adjustment to its calorie calculation.) Then copy down those nutrient ranges somewhere where you can easily compare them to your totals recorded in Lose It!. I put them in a Note on my iPhone, which is not ideal since you obviously can't see both screens at the same time. I really hope that the ability to calculate, adjust and display nutrient goals will be added to the application itself in the future.
Keep reading...
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It's not a New Year's resolution (I don't make them, remember?), but now that the holidays and all the junk food that comes with them are behind us, I am getting back on the diet wagon. No fad diets, just plain old calorie counting and healthier food choices wherever possible. I say "wherever possible", because in some situations I am limited to eating what is convenient and accessible to me, rather than what is better for me. Fortunately I can usually make up for it with my other meals, and still keep my overall daily nutrition values at healthy levels.
I know from past experience that to lose 1-2 pounds per week I need to consume about 1200-1300 calories a day. I also know what my daily fat, protein, carbohydrate and fiber goals are, and can strive to select foods that will put me within range of those goals. I will be using SparkPeople again for information and advice, as well as recipe ideas, but this time instead of making my progress so public, I'll be tracking my nutrition and weight loss progress on my iPhone. This will make it easier to keep track of what I eat away from work and home, since SparkPeople's mobile site leaves a lot to be desired. I've been trying out the iPhone app Lose It!, and am liking it so far. My only gripe is that most of the brand name foods I eat are not in the database, but at least it lets me enter their nutrition details manually, which is something a lot of the other apps are lacking. Best of all, it's free!
I've resisted going back on a healthy diet for a while now, I think mostly due to depression. But I'm ready now, so watch out world... I'm gonna be skinny!
(PS: Anyone want to donate a Wii Fit?  )
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This past week I reached a total weight loss of thirty-two pounds - eight pounds left to lose out of my original goal of forty. I had divided those forty pounds into five mini-goals of eight, rewarding myself after each eight pounds lost. My reward for this second-to-last eight pounds, in preparation for the big Florida trip, was a new bathing suit.
I sure chose the right time to shop for one. I had worried that they would be hard to find this late in the summer, but apparently this is actually the time when they go on sale for dirt cheap! We went to Kohl's, which is becoming my very favorite place to shop for clothes, and I got a $60 suit on sale for $27. Plus, Chris got a $42 pair of Nike swim trunks for $19.
My suit is a two-piece "tankini" - a halter top with pink and blue flowers, and a black mini-skirt bottom with a belt that ties in the front, in the same flowered pattern as the top. I'm very happy with it and with how it looks on me. I don't have a photo yet, but there will be one soon, I promise!
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Two more months to go 'til the Disney trip, and one week 'til my 28th birthday. All I'm asking for my birthday this year is spending money for the trip; I don't need anything else (although I may use some of that money to get myself some new sneakers). I would really love it if my friends in the area would join me to celebrate, though.
I feel like I haven't really made much progress on the pre-trip to-do list.
buy new camerabuy airline ticketsmake restaurant reservationsmake final trip paymentfind/get wheelchair cup holders- lose those last stubborn 15 lbs. (on my way!)
- find/get new bathing suit
- find/get new adult size arm floaties
- find/get new sneakers
I'm in week four of the SparkDiet, and I haven't lost any more actual scale weight since the four pounds I lost that first week, but my body fat percentage has gone down considerably, so I know I'm on the right track. I found an aerobic step on craigslist for $35 (sells new for $99)... picked it up Friday night. It's in great shape and is exactly the same model I used in high school, with the non-skid rubber surface - I've been known to have accidents on ones that don't have the rubber. So now I have an alternate form of exercise for those days when the weather isn't walk-friendly. I tried it out for the first time last night and couldn't believe how sweaty I got in just twenty minutes on the thing. I also couldn't believe how much harder it was to heave my body up and over the step than I remember it being in high school. Of course, my body weighs thirty-five pounds more than it did back then. My arthritic knee is making its feelings known on the matter, so I will gradually ease into longer workouts and be sure to take long enough breaks in between to allow my knee to recover.
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I've spent a lot of time this past week searching the web for nutritional information on foods that are not already in SparkPeople's database - especially restaurant meals. Along the way I found CalorieLab, which has the most comprehensive list of chain restaurants I've seen so far. They also have the Nondiscloser Hall of Shame, which is a list of restaurants which give lame excuses and/or refuse to release their menus' nutrition data. Among them are:
I love all of these restaurants, but unfortunately, unless they change their tune, I'm just going to have to avoid them at least until I've reached my goal weight.
Keep reading...
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Here's another reason to join SparkPeople. Join the confoozled.com SparkTeam and track your progress against me and other readers. Let's support and encourage each other while engaging in some friendly competition. Scoring is based solely on the SparkPoints system, so it doesn't matter how much weight you have to lose, or even if you're just looking to get healthier without worrying about weight loss or gain - the playing field is even! You earn points for making healthy choices, not for how many pounds you lose or gain.
Don't forget to mention you were referred by HelloKit!
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Goodbye eDiets, hello SparkPeople!
As many of you know I have been trying for over a year to lose 40 extra pounds that I put on during an extended period of high stress in my life. I have been trying to do it on my own based on strategies that I learned from eDiets when I successfully lost 25 pounds several years ago. This time around, I made slow but steady progress for the first 25 pounds, but then for the past several months I have hovered there, losing a few, gaining a few back, never making any further forward progress. I was determined that I did not need to pay for eDiets' services again (which have only become more expensive since I paid for them before), that I knew what I needed to do and should be able to do it on my own.
And then early this week I received an e-mail from a rewards program I'm part of, advertising a completely free online diet program and offering a handful of reward points just for signing up. That program was SparkPeople. I signed up for the free points, explored the site a little bit, and immediately knew I'd found the answer. I can't even explain why or how, but I was immediately more motivated than I ever have been. Maybe it was the fact that this site offers more features than eDiets, while being completely free, or maybe it was because I saw no less than three different disability support groups, and knew that if these other people with disabilities could do it, then I could too.
Keep reading...
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Yesterday I came across this article on 10 Diet Rules Meant to be Broken. It's basically about things people might tell you you're supposed to do when you're trying to lose weight, but that actually have very little, if any, truth to them. It's good to know that as I've been breaking most of them, I haven't really been doing anything wrong.
The last "rule" on the list isn't one we're told to follow when we're dieting, but rather one that is drilled into us from childhood.
10. If you don't clean your plate, you're wasting food (don't forget those starving children Mom told you about).
Tying emotions to eating (like when you feel guilty about leaving food on your plate) sets the stage for emotional overeating, Aronowitz says.
I have always had a huge problem with the starving-kids-in-Africa line, and I'm so glad to see an expert who agrees. Not only does my eating that extra food do absolutely nothing to help those starving children in Africa, we're all being trained to eat more than our bodies are telling us we need, right from early childhood. It's no wonder so many people grow up to develop such an unhealthy relationship with food.
So for all of you out there who struggle with overeating and weight issues, the next time you see a therapist, you have yet another thing to blame on your mother!
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My adventure in weight loss continues to move along smoothly. I now have only five pounds to go to reach my healthy weight range.
Of course, there have been some bumps. There have been a few weeks when I didn't lose anything at all. This week I went and bought a new electronic food scale, and discovered the scale I had been using was not very accurate - I had been eating larger portions than I should have been.
I mentioned before that I wasn't able to do much exercise because of the damage the extra weight was causing my joints. That situation has improved; I've started taking some brisk walks when weather permits. But, I had to slow down this week due to an injury to my knee. And since I lost two pounds this week even without exercising, I can't wait to see how things go when my knee heals!
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Four weeks ago I did what I had been putting off for months. I began a weight loss plan. To be more specific, I joined eDiets.
Those who have seen me might be saying, "What for? You're not fat!" Well, it's true that when I started the program I was only about 25 pounds overweight, which doesn't seem like that much. But for me, those 25 pounds were really hurting my mobility. My knees and ankles were deteriorating, and I was still gaining. I knew if I didn't do something about it, eventually I would no longer be able to walk.
Today, I celebrate having lost my first ten pounds. I had no idea how easy it was going to be, and can't believe I put it off for so long! I'm still eating delicious food, and I'm not starving all day long. And, all of this was done with very little exercise - I swim when I can, and I take short walks, which is the most I can do with my joints in the condition they are. Of course, I'm not advocating that exercise isn't necessary for healthy weight loss. If you can exercise, all the better, and hopefully my joints will heal and I will be able to do more. But for those who can't exercise, it doesn't mean there's no hope. I'm doing it, with the help of eDiets, and so can you!
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