Hello, everyone. It’s been a long time since I have shown my face in one of these threads! I recognize many of the names and see a few new ones as well. It’s time for me to get back on the wagon after a year+ off. Granted, I did have a pretty good reason—my daughter was born on Oct. 8.
I actually did really well with exercise during my pregnancy. I still went to the gym 3-5 times a week, and kept up with the elliptical and weight training until I hit 39 weeks. I think everyone there thought I was crazy, but it made me feel better and I believe it helped me during childbirth.
Right now I’m just a few pounds over where I was when I got pregnant one year ago. That’s great, but I gained a few pounds while we were trying to conceive because I cut down on the intensity of my exercise. Now … well, exercise is pretty non-existent. I work full-time and so when I come home all I want to do is spend time with my daughter. We even bought an elliptical shortly after Jane was born and we’ve hardly used it. I’m also breastfeeding so I can’t really diet at this time. I know that I’ll get back on track eventually, and that I need to start out small or it will never work. I’m going to start with a goal of using the elliptical twice a week. I’d like to lose 10-15 pounds in all.
yellowval, I would start out exercising without worrying about whether you’re losing any weight or not until you’ve weaned your daughter (congrats! btw). Once you’re in a position to start watching your food intake then start to worry about taking off the weight. it should be easier if you’ve been exercising for the 4-5 months beforehand.
Yes, that is the plan. I know that I feel so much better when I am exercising, so that is more important than weight loss to me. I’m mostly here for accountability regarding starting to exercise again. There is no way I could track my eating at this point. It would be seriously scary. I eat a ton and have still managed to lose 35+ pounds since October. Crazy stuff. Granted, most of that was pretty obviously water weight, considering that by the time my daughter was 2 weeks old I had lost 25 pounds. I told my sister I’m going to breastfeed through next Christmas just so I can eat whatever I want and still lose weight over the holidays. Best diet plan ever!
Yeah, I should point out that even though this is the Weight Loss thread and I even started it, I’m much more focused on my fitness level and getting my running distance back up, than I am on weight right now. I would like to lose weight but mostly because then I will have less to haul around with me when I am running.
Funny how that works, isn’t it? I think, for me at least, I’m less focused on weight than fitness because when I am fit, I feel so much better about myself and that overrides my desire to be a certain weight. Maybe we should start calling these threads “Weight Loss and Fitness”? Just a thought.
That’s not a bad idea. I started out hyper-focused on losing weight, but right around the time I ran my first 5K, I really stopped caring so much about weight loss. Although the strategies I learned to help with weight loss are the strategies that help keep me fit, so…it all ties together.
Some time in early November I stopped eating between meals. At that point, after an initial loss of a couple pounds (obviously water) I started losing .2 lb a day, every day pretty much. Incidentally, a digital reading scale is a great thing because, even if it is inaccurate, it is consistent (I tested it) and when you see it go down .2 pounds every day, you can see it means something. Then I spent 11 days visiting my son and fell of the wagon. Came back, I was up about 6 pounds. But a week later, I had lost all that. Again water balance is a big thing. Especially since I was snacking on salty things like pretzels. Then the steady .2 pounds started again. Then I read a book online called something like the hacker’s diet and he advocated changing from looking at each day’s weight to a moving weighted average. To do it accurately with a weight of .1 you should add 10% of today’s weight 9% of yesterday’s, 8.1% from the day before, 7.21% of the day before that and so on. This is too complicated, but there is a simple method that is badly inaccurate when you begin but approaches the accurate method as time goes. You start with one day and then each day add 10% of the difference between today’s weight and the previous average to produce the new average. Here is my data since Christmas morning when I started until today. That Christmas morning weight was the least I had weighed in over 40 years, incidentally.
Date Wt Av Comment
10-12-25 228.8 228.80 Slept till 7:30
10-12-26 229.2 228.84 Up at 5:30
10-12-27 230.6 229.02 Big Dinner last night
10-12-28 231.2 229.24 Indian restaurant
10-12-29 230.4 229.36
10-12-30 231.4 229.56
10-12-31 231.0 229.70
11-01-01 232.0 229.93 NY Eve pig-out
11-01-02 231.2 230.06 Indian restaurant
11-01-03 230.8 230.13
11-01-04 230.4 230.16
11-01-05 229.6 230.10
11-01-06 228.4 229.93
11-01-07 227.2 229.66
The significance of how late I slept is that I weigh after I have gotten out of bed and pissed. And the later I sleep the more I piss. The latest weight puts my BMI down below 31 for the first time in a long long time. But the main lesson to be drawn from the above is that, except for minor weight gains in the pigouts, and large changes in water balance that take nearly a week to sort out, beneath it all is the same .2 pounds a day that I had been losing since early November. All from cutting out snacking. The point of the moving average is to smear out the gains and losses of water. One other thing. FWIW I have been walking about 3 miles a day every day, mostly at the mall since the weather is dreary and the ground icy. Except for Christmas Day and New Year’s Day when the mall was closed.
[QUOTE=MsWhatsit; 13321733] jacob, I’ve had very good success with just setting small goals and then continuing to set them: I.e., I started just by saying, “I’m going to make it through January without quitting this program. No matter what, I am definitely going to make it to the end of January.” Then at the end of January, I set a new goal of making it to the end of February. By the end of March, I’d formed a lot of new habits and it was a lot easier to keep on program.
[/Quote]
Yep, that’s pretty much the plan. I have to say that even plodding through this first week has been tough - 1200 to 1550 calories feels like so little food! I’ll definitely have to adopt some of those strategies like starting a meal with broth-based soup, and get over my serious aversion to cooking. Even though I am estimating my portion sizes, tracking has definitely helped as it forces me to consider whatever I eat before it goes into my mouth. My first big challenge will be at a friend’s wedding tomorrow. Anyone have any advice?
I need to re-lose about 10-15 pounds. Sigh. Maintaining is so hard. Luckily I’m still happy with how I look, so I feel like I’ve caught the backslide before I did too much damage. I just was eating and drinking a lot, averaging 1900 calories a day. It’s back to 1600 calories a day for me, strictly counted! I blame my new-ish job that has boring times and the fridge that I can almost touch from where I sit. Secondarily, I blame the cold snowy weather. I want to run, but 20 degrees is my minimum temperature for running. And I hate the Y. Who am I kidding, I am so unmotivated right now.
So I have a plan. First, get eating under control. More veggies, less beer. Second, sign up for a half marathon that takes place April 30th. That’s what I got so far. I did it before, I can recommit to my health! I hope!
Well, I’m back on the wagon again. I’ve managed to somehow lose weight through the holidays without really trying–was down 5 pounds from my weight at the doctor’s office on 12/7, and am down 3 pounds since Sunday.
My husband and I are going to reward ourselves with a trip to Jamaica as our big goal, but my first mini-goal is a massage, which I’ll set up when I get below my pre-pregnancy weight. I’ve got about 20 pounds to lose before I’m there.
I’m doing Primal, with a slight modification (I don’t shy away from cheese at all), getting less than 60 grams of carbs a day, and somehow finding it surprisingly not difficult. I’ve also resolved to stop snacking, and so far, so good. Cutting out grains and starches makes me less hungry.
Just remind yourself that you can eat anything there that you want - you simply choose not to. Reframing situations so that I am actively choosing not to eat a bunch of crap, rather than “forbidding” myself to eat, has really helped me get through special occasions like this.
Had another good day, food-wise. Made an awesome shepherd’s pie using cauliflower instead of potatoes, and a reduction gravy rather than using starch thickeners. Also made some taco meat, which I’ll use on top of salads or in omelets during the week. Played Kinect for 45 minutes, which is the first time I’ve done it since I got a cold right before New Year’s.
I go through stock and eggs like crazy on this diet. During the week, I have at least 3 eggs a day, sometimes 6, and I use beef or chicken stock in almost everything I cook. Need to figure out a way to make it in bulk. I have a giant pressure canner, but I’m kind of afraid of it–I use the electric pressure cooker to make stock, but it’s small. I guess I just need to get over it.
