I have a love/hate thing with working out. I feel soooooooooo sooooooo good when it’s done, but it is like PULLING TEETH to get myself on it. I can restrict calories all I want and the weight slooooowly, slowly drops, but if I work out it practically melts away. You’d think with all that positive reinforcement action I’d be chomping at the bit to get it done every day, but I drag my feet 'most every time.
This morning I weighed in at 215.0, 3 pounds for the week, and 80 since I started last May.
Yesterday I rode ~32 miles with a friend. Since I was still feeling Friday’s Spinervals 19.0 workout, I decided to take it easy and make it an active recovery day. About 30 minutes in, I realize that I’m not hurting, actually I’m feeling pretty strong, so I must have made the right choice. However, when I get home and download the data collected by my cyclocomputer, I find that I was a bit faster, and my heart rate a bit lower, than when we did the same route two weeks ago when I was pushing hard.
Last night I pulled out some of my old dress shirts that I haven’t worn in 10 - 12 years, hoping they would fit. The 16 1/2 inch necks are a just hair too tight, but the bodies of the shirts hang like tents. Looks like I’m going to need new shirts after all. Just for fun, I tried on one of the dress shirts I was wearing last year. Lets just say if my old shirts were like tents, the 19 inch shirts were circus tents. No problem with the necks being too tight though.
Been too depressed to report my Saturday weigh in-- I was up 2.8 pounds! The lady at the scale said that it was probably retained fluids, but still depressing.
Jayjay I think that’s going to be my new mantra. Excellent.
Last week I was sick all week so I ate whatever made me feel good and didn’t walk for 10 days.
The good news is my hip doesn’t hurt any more.
The bad news is that I’m back up to 176.5
179.5/176.5/140
I walked yesterday and this morning and I’ve discovered a new Yoga/Pilates studio that opened on my walking route. Hubby and I are talking about taking a couple of yoga classes.
I also found a Yoga class on FitTV at 6:00 every night which is a very good time for me. I’m going to try that tonight.
My short term goal is to be under 170 by March 23 which is when my band is playing this nifty outdoor concert.
I am back at 180 today–the 179 was just a fluke due to fluid loss.
I knew it wouldn’t work. Core isn’t substantially different from the way I was eating before–the biggest change is that I’ve cut out bread altogether, because I’m not willing to spend WPAs on it.
I paid for a three-month subscription, so I’ll keep to it for that long, but really… all I’m doing is forcing myself to eat oatmeal for no reason.
It was just so disappointing. When I weighed myself on my scale on Friday, it looked like I was finally breaking out of the 170’s. So when I was up on Saturday, it just really hit me hard.
My next weigh-in isn’t for another 2 weeks but I know the ball has now started rolling (I usually need a 2 to 3 week lead time) because I can actually zip up my size 6 jeans, which is an improvement. My fat pants are now nice and loose on me (I swear to gods, I am throwing the entire set of backup “I got chubby” clothes completely out of my closet come April). Trainer is happy, I’m happy and optimistic.
I always feel like the first 2 to 3 weeks before that whole clothes-getting-looser are the hardest for me. After that I feel really committed to not gorging on dim sum. Before…well it’s hard not to want to cheat.
I’m going to be away from the gym since I’m flying back East to see my parents over the weekend. Am doubling up on cardio to make up for being out of the gym for 4 to 5 days.
At the risk of you considering my feedback a “lecture” again (for which I will not apologize), I must say that I still don’t see where you’ve done the real homework necessary in figuring out a plan that will work for you.
You first mentioned starting the WW program when you joined this thread about two weeks ago, so I would agree that you are justified in fiddling with your approach: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; if it is broke, fiddle with it. However you have posted from nearly day one about how you “didn’t think it would work” without giving any reason why, except eventually to comment how you were eating pretty much the same calories and doing the same amount of exercise as before.
If you reviewed the WW Core plan, and noticed that the way you would go about it was not really any different than the way you lived your life now… Why would you expect magical results?
A change in your body will only come from a change in your diet and lifestyle, and only you know what the current input values are. A WW plan that doesn’t change those basic input values will not yield a change in your body composition. Just shelling out $$$ to Weight Watchers doesn’t do a thing (except increase their revenue). WW can help you form the shell of your approach, a starting point for your plan, but you must fundamentally accept that you yourself, not an external “they” nor the people contributing to this discussion on the SDMB, are responsible for understanding your body and forming and executing your plan.
OK, “lecture” over; here’s some constructive feedback: if you’re already in calorie balance, you need to consume fewer calories or burn off more calories. Rather than eating less, try exercising more; if you’re already doing regular exercise (you mentioned having “3 or 4 activity points” in your ledger already), try upping the difficulty, increasing the duration or changing the venue.
Cheer up: unless you’re one of the unfortunate few with thyroid issues or something, losing weight is not rocket science, but a well understood problem… Just one with a million different specific solutions. Eventually you WILL find a plan that works for you. But you will have to do real work to figure that plan out, or else trust to luck by using someone else’s plan that happens to approximate what will work for you.
I’m back on track! According to last week’s readings I’ve dropped a full body fat percentage since I got back in the gym, from 30% to 29%, though I don’t fully believe it. We’ll see how I score at this week’s reading. I’m using one of those bio-mass reader thingys that should really be in Star Trek
Today’s gym trip was exhausting, I set out to push myself. I still am really lacking in the upper body strength and found that I couldn’t even manage Negative dips without my arms giving out after having done my sets on the bench. We’ll see how I progress this week.
I do, incidentally, have an underactive thyroid. I take medication for it though.
I asked for input on the WW boards and am ready to start another two weeks, this time with more vegetables–even though I’m meeting the “five a day” requirement, people on the boards seem to think I’m not getting enough. They’ve lost on this plan, I haven’t, so I’m taking their advice.
My point is this: if eating reasonable amounts of healthy foods, and making an effort to get exercise, isn’t enough to make me lose weight–I’m going to forget about it. I will not be a gym rat. I will not go hungry. Life’s too short. While I’d optimally like to be a thin and happy person, if the choice is between chubby & happy and thin & miserable, I’ll choose chubby.
Today has been a day when I just cannot stop eating. I’m not sure why. It’s not even junk (unusually for me!) - I’ve had scones and hot chocolate (only 2 points worth), a hot dog for lunch, veggies and rice, yogurt, another scone, salad and low-fat soup, bringing me up to an amazing 32 points for the day. I was supposed to swim laps this afternoon, but the pool filter was broken and we tried anyway - and immediately got out to shower the gross off of us.
No. JayJay and SuperVenusFreak are larger. I was considerably above 285 when I first came in, too. Don’t know about anybody else, as I’m not paying that much attention to the numbers. I just happen to know about those two guys because I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with them.
So after that last post I immediately thought to myself “What the hell am I doing?” and shut off the computer, got in my car, and went to the gym.
It definitely made me feel better. It’s so much better just to go DO it and then you don’t feel guilty for the rest of the day. I’m happy I made that choice. So this week I need to continue to make healthy choices and get in there 3-4 times. I’m going to go tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. Monday, Friday and Sunday can be off days. Those three days are my laziest.
On another note it is incredibly inspiring that people posting here have lost 80 lbs. It helps me think positively, as I can’t imagine how much work that must be. Kudos to you guys!
My goal is to lose 50, and I’m trying not to think about how much that seems to me. Considering I’m at 19, that’s pretty good.