Weight loss blues

Can I say, I'm just a little discouraged and a little disgusted with myself.  My weight has been fluctuating, which is to be expected (apparently you can fluctuate as much as 2 lbs within a single day), but not really dropping.  I hadn't expected to make dramatic gains: no 14 pounds in two weeks for me.  I want the slow and steady loss, maybe a 1.5 a week.  So that should be three pounds by now.  But it hasn't happened.

I know part of it is my eating style.  I'm still a little kerflummoxed by vegetables.  Don't ask me why; I don't get it either.  I just don't know what to do with them besides put butter on them, and that's not exactly where I'm wanting to go.  I've tried a few recipes, and didn't really like them.  I think it might be an uphill battle on that one, for a girl who rarely ate them beyond the canned quadrumvirate of peas, carrots, corn, and green beans.  It was all my dad would eat.  So it's all I ate.


Thankfully, I did finally make it to the chiropractor; hip is much better; P90X starts next week.  Again, I don't expect to lose more than a pound or two a week, so don't expect me to become the P90X poster child.  I'm not doing their diet.  I'm doing my own.  I don't want that much protein, and I want just a few more carbs.  But not a lot.  But I've already made sure we're stocked with brown rice, not white.  And I'm gathering the arsenal to slowly change our eating habits.  One thing I intend to do is take the first mini-pledge from 100 Days of Real Food: 2 different fruits or vegetables at every meal.  I think I can make that work.  I'll figure it out with the vegetables.


So.  Next week is really ground zero.  I hope I make it.  I hope I lose weight.  I hope I don't ruin my milk supply, as I intend to continue nursing my son until he's one.  I hope, I hope, I hope.

Weight loss motivation, looking back and looking forward

I've been overweight before.  When I was in grad school several years ago now (really?  several years?), I lead a very unhealthy lifestyle.  I sat most of my time, reading required texts, writing papers, writing lessons plans for the part-time teaching gig I had, and grading papers.  Nearly my entire day was on my rear.  I also had a very tight food budget and little love for vegetables and a love for easy meals, which all combined to produce very unhealthy eating habits.  (The irony is that one of my roommates and good friends loved to cook healthy meals.  She was such an example, and I ignored it!  I now wish I had learned from her instead.)  So, much of my day looked like this: sitting around and eating junk.  Combine this with a great deal of stress, and my weight ballooned.

Not long after I left grad school and move home, I had a routine eye check-up for my glasses.  To my surprise, I was attended by a very good-looking, younger doctor, who then proceeded to ask me if anyone had ever talked to me about my weight and the risks it had for diabetes and eye degeneration.  Talk about mortification.  To this day, I wonder if he noticed that I noticed he was good-looking and if it contributed to his less-than-gentle delivery of such news.  I went home deeply embarrassed and my eyes opened to my new figure.  Round.  Everything about me was round: my face, my arms (not in a good way), my thighs, my tummy.  Even my hands and feet.

I still feel insecure when I think about that appointment, but it served its purpose.  It gave me strong motivation to lose weight.  My grandmother had died from complication of Type II Diabetes.  I researched my chances, and according to the American Diabetes Website, my chances were only moderate.  Mr. Good-Looking Doctor had lead me to believe they were a basic certainty.  I researched what weight would take me to zero chance, what was within healthy parameters, including my BMI, and set a goal.  A friend of mine had just gone on South Beach and I checked out a book and hoed in.  It was hard, but I stuck to my guns.  My determination astounded coworkers when we went on work lunches: I drank diet soda if not water and skipped all the goodies on salads, leaving the yummy fried taco bowl and sour cream on a taco salad once.  I had that doctor's voice and face in my head.  And I lost 35 lbs.

Today, I find myself in a similar place.  I weigh very similar weight, but for slightly different reasons.  My pregnancy is not all to blame, but it can take some of it.  I have similar reasons to lose the weight: I may not need to impress single men, but I like to look good for my husband.  And I want to avoid diabetes: I have two children to be healthy and well for.  That doctor's comments, and more his cold expression, still bother me, but his power has waned.  After all, who wants Mr. Good-Looking Doctor when I have Hotty Hubby?  So that burning motivation my take a little bit more work this time.

Here's what I've done:  I've taken two "before" pictures of myself.  Not in regular clothes, but in leggings and a tank top.  You can't hide in clothes like that.  When my regular computer is at last fixed and running, I intend to set them as my background with the caption, "Make this look good."  That is, after all, my goal.  I want to look good in leggings and tank top and not feel embarrassed to wear them around my own house.  Never fear, though, I won't wear them out of the house.  This, then, is my incentive to change.  To remind myself that I can look good and I can reach that goal.  The picture I have in my head that I want to achieve isn't perfect, but it's healthier, and that's what I want.  Second, I've arranged with my husband to give myself a reward when I make it to that goal.  It's not huge nor really expensive.  I simply want a professional to color my hair.  It's not something I would normally pay for and it sounds like fun.  It could get really pricy and I don't plan to go overboard (treat yourself, not blow the bank on yourself), but it's something I'm excited about.  And I'm willing to work towards it.  The last bit of motivation is that I intend to keep a journal,  record really, of my progress, and I mean to make it show some.  I'm almost more excited about that. I don't intend to track it weekly, as that could be discouraging, but I want to give myself an opportunity to see that progress.  So, I have to start somewhere.

The one last thing that I am doing is not necessarily motivation, but it is support: prayer.  I am asking, that if it might align with His will, that the Lord will grant me success and uphold me in this.  I admit, the biggest reason I want to lose weight is I'm tired of feeling negative towards my reflection and my body.  Another, though, is to honor the Lord.  I have been given stewardship of this body and I've been doing a really poor job of it.  I haven't taken care of it, and I should. It's one of the many gifts He's given me.  So, it is my prayer that the Lord will bless me as I try to lose weight and become more healthy, as I try to create a new lifestyle, and grant me the year to do it in.  And that from this day I will continue to be a good steward of my body.

So far, I've taken the pictures.  Now its time to write down my measurements so I can start keeping record of change.  Please, Lord, grant me success and wisdom in this venture so that I might better serve you with my heart and body!

Let the weight loss begin!

Okay, so I know it's really not that effortless.  In fact, it's the exact opposite of effortless.  I'm one of those people who gains weight far, far more easily than taking it off.  I like to say that all you have to do is say the words "gain weight", and I'll do it!

This week I had my check-up after having our baby.  My body has healed in good fashion and everything looks good.  Everything, except one thing.  With this pregnancy I gained more real weight, more lingering weight, than I had with my first.  I knew this already just from the changes in my body, but it was piquing to see the numbers on the doctor's office scale.  Not long after Simon was born, I started formulating a plan.  I hated the way I looked and felt: it was humiliating to catch an unexpected glance of myself in the mirror.  I definitely don't look the way I do in my head.  Yet, I don't want to be stuck there.  I want to do something about it.

My hope and goal is to take the next year to lose the weight.  I'd love to lose 60 lbs, but that would bring me back to what I weighed sophomore year in high school.  Possible, maybe, but not likely.  My body has changed for too much in too many ways for that to be realistic.  So, I'm instead hoping for somewhere between 35-45lbs.  I know that the BMI measurements and today's culture would tell me this is still overweight, and that I should work harder for that last 14 lbs. but I think for my frame and for my life, I can be content with this goal and be more likely to accomplish it.

There has only ever been one time when I was able to drop that much poundage.  Sadly, I've been this overweight before, and that experience is another post entirely.  What it took then for me to lose the weight was to radically change my diet and I went on South Beach.  After I plateaued on that diet (at an acceptable weight, though not my aim) I began biking a lot; I didn't lose any more weight, but I was far healthier.  For many reasons, I can't do that.  I can't lug two little ones on a bike.  I've tried to retry South Beach and I just didn't work for where I was at then, and extreme changes in diet, however temporary, aren't a good idea while I am a nursing mother. 

When I went on that diet, I had a burning desire and motivation to lose weight.  I was single and had a great deal more time and freedom.  Not true now.    The same kind of motivation, again another post.  But being a mother to two under two, well, that is definitely a restriction on time and freedom, one I certainly don't mind having.   Videos and in-home exercise seems far more practical/possible.  So here's the plan (finally, right?): first, we' re going to make healthier meals, mostly by adding in more vegetables.  It's another reason we want to garden: to ensure that we have to eat our vegetables by eating our produce.  Until then, I hope to buy veggies from the farmer's market and the grocery store and eat them up.  To this end, I've been collecting recipes and scouring cookbooks and the internet for interesting ways to prepare them.  Also, I plan to cut soda and flavored drink to a minimum.  This might be more difficult than I hope it will be, because I confess on a rough day I always want a soda .  As for exercise, there are a few videos in our collection that I have used before and with practice feel I can get some good exercise from.  But my primary goal is to make it through the P90X program.  Nick has it, and a friend of ours has told us that there's a cardio circuit of the program that would work well for my purposes.  (After all, I don't want to bulk up on muscle, but to slim down on fat.  I have few hopes of having a "beach body," just to get healthy.)  I know the P90X is intense, so I'll have to work up to it, but it's just the challenge I need to both motivate me and keep me going.  I want to conquer it.  Last, I've come up with some motivational tools to use, but I'll save that for yet another post. 

So, next year: May 19, 2012, I hope to have some results to show.