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SEPPIESUSAN's Recent Blog Entries
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Tuesday, August 19, 2008
I was so scared to actually do it. I wasn't going to. I didn't feel hungry. I did a huge cardio workout (the run) and then 35 minutes of shoulder/bicep/tricep strength training at the gym and I'd only had 1,400 calories. But then I felt hungry again...so I checked my macronutrient percentages to help me decide what to eat. I was only at 25 percent for fat, so I had some walnuts. Still far below brand new calorie range (about 1,900-2,200), still hungry. I had my new yummy discovery - my Bob's Red Mill "hot cereal" mixed in with some vanilla yogurt (also good with plain oatmeal, though I need to find some w/o added salt). Same result - STILL far below calorie range and still hungry. Now, I should say I could have gone to bed when I was still back at 1,400 calories - I would have felt hungry, but I would have fallen asleep and felt fine in the morning. I could have waited 20 minutes after the walnuts or the yogurt/cereal combo and felt full. But I was still hungry at the moment, and I really do want to try this maintanence thing, so I looked for some carbs (the macronutrient I was now a little behind with) - and I wanted something healthy (no high fructose corn syrup or partially hydrogenated soybean oil, etc.) so I went with some canned pineapple in its own juice. Now I feel fuller...am at 1,800 calories for the day. Still below my range, but I am going to stop here and see what happens............. so nervous, so conflicted. What do I do if I've gained?! What do I do if I've lost more? Will I really be happy if my weight stays the same?? I still have some fat on my body I want to get rid of. I know what I would say if it were someone else with these thoughts - no matter what my scale says tomorrow, stick with it a little longer and see what happens - in fact, don't even worry about my weight until I've been doing this long enough to see a trend forming.. in fact, be sure to actually be IN the range (not 100 calories below it like I am today)... I've already learned how to lose weight, but I do NOT know how to maintain and I MUST learn, and with all the extra energy I am going to feel just fabulous and make huge strides with my cardio and strength training.
But knowing all that is different than actually doing it, when I know I COULD be losing more, and when I see fat on my belly and thighs that has to go.
Then again, I do love to eat and I hate to feel hungry. Maybe I'll really love this so much it'll be hard to ever go back to losing (another thing to worry about -great). This has got to work. You're supposed to lose slowly; you're supposed to drop ten percent of your weight (I did just about that) and then try to maintain that for a while before losing more. You're not supposed to cut calories too far when you're really active anyway. A running website had an article about weight loss that said you should eat 12-14 daily calories for every pound you weigh. That gives me a range of about 1,800-2,100 calories for weight LOSS. Maybe...just maybe...I'll find that I'm still losing eating this much. Wouldn't that be wonderful. Let's see what happens! Sorry for babbling on so much, but I want to record this experiment thoroughly. And I need to work out my thoughts. I haven't even touched on the subject of how to handle eating in Martha's Vineyard yet!
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Oh what a run. From my parents' house to the town hall and around back. Gorgeous weather. How sad that I only saw three other walkers and two other runners, and two houses with kids playing outside, the entire time!
*1 hour, 13 minutes
*5.92 miles
*Average pace 12:20 minutes/mile
*Average speed 4.87 mph (boo - so slow!)
*485 calories (yeah right, mapmyrun - you liar)
Okay, so I need to get better SPEED. I have time - the race isn't until mid-October.
By the way, I was playing with my parents' digital blood pressure machine. My blood pressure was 106/68 and my heart rate was 45. Yeah for health!
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Drum roll please.... I weighed in at 149.4 today!!! As all of us weight losers know, hitting a new, lower digit in the tens place is always so very exciting, though one weight loss book I read pointed out that's just a side effect of our base ten system, haha. This means I weigh closer to 100 than 200! I haven't seen a weight under 150 since before we went to Jamaica in 2/08. At that time, I'd worked my way down to the lower 140s only to binge on all-inclusive resort food, and sleep (I had a cold!) the entire time I was there. Needless to say, my weight was NOT in the 140s anymore when I got home.
Now, two blog entries ago, I talked about going into maintanence for a month as soon as I was under 150. I also briefly mentioned the emotional issues, but didn't really get into it. I am so conflicted...it's been fairly "easy" to stick with reduced calories and get this far...I have huge internal pressure to just keep on trying to lose two pounds per week. But, I had some very compelling reasons to try this - the most compelling reason being that for the long term I want to maintain thinness, not just attain the lowest weight I possibly can and then immediately start gaining again. So - wow - maintanence begins today! I am going to have to add in some extra calories to my plan for the day, and change my goal and ticker and everything. I know I am going to keep questioning whether I really should be doing this....in fact, it didn't even OCCUR to me to ACTUALLY start today, or any day until after my trip to Martha's Vineyard (Thurs-Sun of this week)... but...what the hell. I start today!
Photo was taken yesterday on the beach in Rockport. It's not quite as flattering as I'd hoped, but might as well be honest about the girth of my 149-pound hips as a nice reminder of why this maintanence thing is TEMPORARY. I WILL lose more weight after it's over.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
It was too late to go to the gym...ended up being a blessing in disguise because my workout was BETTER outdoors. We went to Brookline and walked...and then while Jess had dinner I ran...and then we walked some more! I will do stats separately for the trip as a whole first, and then just the running portion.
Whole trip stats:
*7.85 miles
*2hrs,10min
*16:33 minutes per mile
*3.62 mph
*523 calories
Running portion only:
*4.01 miles
*43 minutes
*10:44 minutes per mile
*5.59 mph (not bad for a fairly easy run!!! and hilly too)
*441 calories
It was fantastic. :)
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Yesterday I came up with an idea. I have never, ever done this before and I am hesitant about the emotional effects...but I think I will learn a lot and it will be very healthy for me, too.
Here it is: As soon as I am under 150 pounds, switch to maintanence for one month.
Of course 149 pounds is not my ultimate goal weight, but it is within the healthy range, it's lower than I've ever been able to maintain without MAJOR control, and I think it's a weight that looks okay on me. (Yesterday, at 152 pounds, two separate people told me I looked thin!)
I have been reading _Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss - and the Myths and Realities of Dieting_. This book is totally fascinating to me because it describes, in a very readable way, tons of research studies on weight loss. Just as I'd feared, what I have read so far is very discouraging about maintaining weight loss. However, rather than deciding that there's nothing I can do and giving up, I am determined to work even harder to make sure I can be successful. Therefore, I am going to enter in this temporary weight maintanence experiment.
I want to learn what it is I will need to do for the rest of my life in order to maintain my weight. I want to know exactly how hungry/how full I should feel, how much food I can eat, how exercise impacts it all, what my moods are like, my energy level, how much my weight fluctuates - all things that I just do not know right now, because I have NEVER tried to maintain my weight before. I am hoping (though I have no idea if it'll actually work) that I can rev up my metabolism so that when I do go back to trying to lose weight after the month is up, it will be easier. I am also hoping that if there is such a thing as a "set point" for weight, that maybe I will lower mine by doing this. I also will be training for a 10K race during this period, and am hoping that the extra calories will benefit my training - actually, I KNOW they will.
I will still carefully plan, track, count calories...this is a careful experiment and NOT an excuse to get lazy, eat too much, or go to restaurants (at least not too often - how can I count calories if I have no idea what's in my food??). I fully expect to feel hungry SOMETIMES, but I am hoping that it won't be very often...like maybe just before a meal rather than a gnawing feeling late at night like I get sometimes now. I think it would be very pleasant to spend most of the time feeling just satisfied - not stuffed, not starving - I am reminded of the pictures of the wrinkly stomach and the puffed out stomach from the section on the "Core" diet in the Weight Watchers manual. I am hoping to be the satisfied stomach in the middle!
I was afraid to mess up my SparkPeople goals, so I started a new account just to find out what my maintanence calorie range will be. I entered 149 as my starting and goal weight and then messed around a bunch with the amount of cardio. The default was thirty minutes, three times a week, with a calorie range of 1,600-1,950 per day. I wasn't too happy - I eat 1,600 to LOSE weight sometimes - until I realized that realistically I will be doing MUCH more cardio than that. I tried a whole bunch of amounts of cardio, all the way up to seven times a week for sixty minutes, which gave a calorie range of 1890-2,240. Given that I will be training for my 10K and doing regular strength training (maybe I'll even add some muscle!), I should feel safe staying toward the higher end of that range. Though if I want to play it safe, I could use a smaller range, numbers that were in the 3x60 cardio level AND the 7x60 cardio level - that would be 1,890-2,030. This is where I can get all OCD and I'm sure it's quite boring for anyone who is still bothering to read this. :)
Anyway, I'm awfully close to hitting that 149 mark already. Yesterday I did almost a full hour of strength training and stretching - chest, back, and abs. I didn't have time for cardio at the gym, but that was because we wanted time to walk from Jess' condo in Dorchester to Fenway Park for a Red Sox game!!!!!!!!!! According to mapmyrun.com, the walk was 5.73 miles. It took about 100 minutes, which works out to 3.44 mph or 17:27 min/mile. Mapmyrun is even telling me that I burned 340 calories. Hmm...over an hour and a half and only 340 calories? Oh well. I don't usually rely on just walking for my cardio.
I ate only my own food and was trying to avoid drinking, but in the end I succumbed to a glass of wine and three rum and Diet Cokes - enough to get me kind of drunk. I wish I didn't always give in or feel like I need alcohol to have fun. I just wonder whether my friends - at least the ones I was hanging out with last night - might think I'm awfully boring unless I drink - and I guess a part of me thinks so too. Plus we went to the karaoke bar where I ALWAYS get a strong buzz and sing and dance and talk to everyone.
So like always when I drink, I weighed a lot less this morning - 150.4 - a loss of 1.8 pounds since yesterday. I know it's from dehydration so I won't be upset if it's up a little tomorrow, but I would love it if it were a permanent loss.
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