Here we go... (this might be a long one cuz I have a lot to say this week!)
Starting Weight: 290.3/291.3*
Last Weigh-in: 281.0
This Week: 280.3
Net Loss: -0.7
Loss-to-Date: -11.0
YES! FINALLY hit 10 pounds down. It's been a long, frustrating road to this ten pounds but I earned this. I worked hard. I've got a looooooooong way to go but I'm finally in a place where I really think I can get there.
So let's talk about this week. I've switched things up a bit. I've decided to put WeightWatchers on a back burner for a while, and instead I've created an account on and started using MyFitnessPal. MFP is, in most ways, pretty similar to WW in that you log your food, exercise, and weight, but a) it's free, and b) instead of calculating points, it tracks the actual legit numbers for your food. The primary focus is calories but it also tracks carbs, fat, protein, sodium, and sugar. This is really important to me because as you may recall, I'm trying to cut out carbs and sugar almost completely (or close, anyway), and I've always wondered where I fall as far as how much protein I get. This is much better for me in that regard. You'll also notice a MFP progress ticker on the right side of this page showing how much weight I've lost. *It says 11 pounds down because I entered my starting weight from WW, and after all this time I realized that my starting weight was 291.3, not 290.3. I'm not going to adjust past entries but I'm going to go by this number moving forward.
MFP also has a social aspect to it. WW does too, in the form of forums and stuff, but not only does MFP have forums and message boards, it kind of has a Facebook-like aspect about it in that you have a news feed, you can add "friends", and people can see what you do (with varying degrees of privacy available) and encourage you. Already, in just being on it for a week, I've accumulated 21 friends, and 12 of them are people I don't know in real life and are just on similar journeys and are offering encouragement. I gotta tell you, finishing my calorie log for the day, or just simply logging in and having someone tell you "way to go!" just for accomplishing those little steps... it's pretty motivating.
The only thing that WW has that MFP doesn't is recipes and other food resources like articles and "cheat sheets". You can build and store your own recipes on MFP, but WW has its own database of WW- and user-created recipes that I've occasionally used. I don't so much anymore because I feel like WW recipes rely on a lot of processed food, but either way, it's nice to have it there. For that reason, I've been hemming and hawing about whether or not I should cancel my WW subscription for good. I've been a member for the past 5 years (not including my attempts at it in HS and college) so it's hard to just walk away from it. We'll see.
I've already converted Derek to MFP. He seems to like it so far, and he's actually been more motivated than I expected him to be about logging what he's eating and stuff. I don't think he ever really got into WW the way I did (which... may have been part of my problem?), so it's nice to finally have this to share with him and hold each other accountable. At any rate, I highly recommend it. If you decide to sign up, my username there is (shocker!): healthilyeverafter13.
So. With help from my newfound obsession with MFP, I logged everything I consumed this week. When you set up your account, it automatically calculates your recommended daily allowances based on your weight loss goals. It calculates your BMR (basal metabolic rate -- how much you burn just by, like... living), and then subtracts the amount of calories per day based on what you want to lose. So, if you're like me, and want to lose a pound per week (which it recommends), it subtracts 500 calories, since 500x7 days in a week = 3500 calories, the amount in a pound. This number is now your daily calorie goal. Mine is 1980. It also calculates goals for your other macronutrients, but I don't remember those offhand.
This week, I did amazing. I had an average of about an extra 500-ish calorie deficit every day on top of the one already included. I had tons of fruits and veggies, not so many carbs and sugar, and we cooked dinner at home every night this week until Friday. All signs pointed to me being able to lose at LEAST two whole pounds this week. I was ecstatic. I even weighed myself periodically during the week (which I never do, and will not continue doing because it makes me crazy) and on Friday morning, I weighed myself and I was down 2.7 pounds! I was SO FLIPPING HAPPY, but wasn't going to count it because it still wasn't my official weigh-in day. I did pretty well Friday for breakfast and lunch, but I slipped for dinner and Derek and I ordered Chinese. I stayed within my calorie goal, and most of the macros, but I did go over in sodium (as you might expect). I always make dumb mistakes the meal before weigh-in. I wish I could knock some sense into myself! Couple this with the fact that Aunt Flo is visiting this week and there you have my 0.7 loss instead of the beautiful 2.7 loss. Oh well. At least it still went down. Back on the horse this week!
In other news, I had a doctor's appointment Friday and got a variety of good news. I had two primary reasons for my visit: 1) the last time I was there, my BP was a bit elevated and she wanted me to come back again after the wedding to check it. She suggested that it could've just been because I was nervous about being at the doctor, but she wanted to check anyway, and 2) I hadn't mentioned it to very many people, but on and off for quite some time now, I'd been having some minor chest pains. They were mostly on the right side of my chest, and they were never above, say, a 2 or 3 on a scale of 1-10, but they were causing some MAJOR anxiety, which was making everything, in general, worse. I mean, we're talking... crying myself to sleep at night, afraid I wasn't going to make it to my 30th birthday, and asking for extra bedtime kisses from Derek "just in case I don't wake up in the morning". Of course, WebMD is my mortal enemy (as is the internet in general in situations like this), and over the course of the past month or so I'd diagnosed myself with everything from anxiety pains to lung cancer. The pains started at the tail end of last year (and were actually part of the reason I scheduled the doctor appointment I had in January), but went away before the appointment, and then came back again at the beginning-to-mid April. They were/are sporadic and fleeting, usually not lasting more than a few seconds at a time. Just enough to make me panic. A lot.
Well. I got good news. My NP said, with confidence, that she thinks it's costochondritis, an inflammation of the cartilage between your rib bones. The inflammation in the ribs can affect the nerves, which is why some of the pain seemed more superficial and it moves around. The only symptoms that don't really match up for me is that my pain isn't severe, and it doesn't hurt for me to breathe in deeply. The other symptoms are pretty much dead-on, so I'm hoping that this is right. Unfortunately, though, the only real treatment is NSAIDs (like ibuprofen), and I've had mixed success with those. Usually, though, the pain isn't ever bad enough that I need the ibuprofen in order to function. I've noticed that it gets more irritating when I'm sitting at my desk or in the car too long, so I've been trying to stand or lay down more. That seems to help. Otherwise, costochondritis kind of "flares up" (which explains why it went away for a few months), and I'm hoping this flare will be over soon.
Aside from that, my BP, which was 140/90 the last time I was there, is now 126/80, which is close to perfect. I was SO happy to hear this. Part of the reason I had been panicking about the chest pain was that I was imagining that my BP had shot through the roof and I really was having a heart attack or something. I know, I'm not rational. On top of that, my NP said she is "very pleased" with my progress on my weight loss so far, knowing how hard it is with the PCOS, and told me to keep up what I'm doing. Her only recommendation was to step up my exercise game, but that's a surprise to approximately zero people. Hopefully now that I know that I have a relatively clean bill of health and I'm not going to die tomorrow (from chest pain, anyway), I can stop having daily anxiety attacks and get back to my life. Not even joking, I had been a WRECK for the past few weeks... to the point where I made Derek take off work to go with me to the doctor just in case the NP was like "this is serious, drive to the hospital RIGHTNOW". Thankfully, I hide it well from everyone except Derek. Not thankfully, Derek has probably wanted to escape to a remote island somewhere to get away from my neurosis. Sorry honey! I love you! Thank you for being so flipping amazing!
So that's my life this week. Tomorrow I'm hoping the weather will stay as beautiful as it was today, because I'm planning on going swimming at the pool in my apartment complex for the first time in like... 2 years. YAY! Cross your fingers! :)
(Also, stay tuned -- I have an idea for another post that I may get to during this week... didn't want to make this one any longer than it already is!)
<3
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Weigh-in and... is that some progress!?!
You know the drill... first the dirt:
Starting Weight: 290.3
Last Weigh-in: 284.4
This Week: 281.0
Net Loss: -3.4
Loss-to-Date: -9.3
When I saw that number this morning, I almost shit myself. I lost all of the gain from last week, PLUS some.
Honestly, I can't say I was expecting it. I've gotten to the point where I don't hope for much -- it's easier to keep myself from being disappointed that way. I did make some better choices this week, though, so I didn't think a loss was completely out of the picture. And I guess in the back of my mind I was kind of hoping for something as drastic as this.
My biggest success this week has been drastically cutting back (but not out completely) the amount of carbs I consume. It hasn't been easy, let me tell you! Aside from bread and potatoes and pasta and rice and all of those things being incredibly tasty, well, I just grew up on the notion that a meal consists of a meat, a carb, and a veggie. Sometimes, all three are combined (yes, my mom was queen of the casserole!), but either way, that's the way to a well-rounded diet. If I don't have something starchy with my meal I feel like I'm missing something... and not in the "Ohhh, bread, I miss you" sense, but the "Wait... something's not here" sense. But I have been doing a lot of reading lately and it appears as though going low/no-carb is pretty successful for women with PCOS. Our bodies just don't break them down correctly, or something. So I figured I'd give it a try, namely starting with complex carbs like bread/rice/potatoes and not focusing so much on simple carbs like fruit. I love me some fruit -- you can't take that away from me!
Bob Harper's Skinny Rules wants you to eliminate carbs after dinner. This is a really tough challenge for Derek and I because our meals usually consist of, as I said, some sort of meat, a heaping serving of veggies, and a significant serving of some sort of starch... lately it's been either steamed rice or roasted potatoes. (I know. White carbs. Shoot me.)
I decided, though, that I wanted to focus on just overall reducing the carbs I was consuming throughout the day instead of trying to eliminate them from a meal altogether. So, all this week, my breakfasts have been complex carb-free (which is much easier for me).. most of this week, they've consisted of a banana and some peanut butter. I saw my coworker doing this a couple weeks ago -- peeling a banana and then using a spoon/knife to spread a little peanut butter on each bite. GENIUS. And delicious. I had some single-serving cups of reduced-fat peanut butter that had been forgotten about, so this worked perfectly, because I couldn't go overboard with the PB. Yum.
Lunches were... well... they were okay. Monday for dinner we "slipped" and ordered out. Derek has been wanting me to try Afghan food/kebab for a long time, and I finally relented. I ordered a combo that had beef and chicken, and came with rice, spinach, and bread. And since I anticipated not liking it very much (I'm really, REALLY picky), I ordered a side house salad. I figured you couldn't mess that up. The spinach, for me, was inedible. It was really mushy and slimy and whatever seasonings were used were overpowering everything. The rice was okay but also had seasonings I wasn't crazy about, so I mostly stayed away from it. The chicken was tasty but dry -- and this is something I'm SUPER picky about so I was expecting this (I rarely eat chicken simply because 95% of the time, it's too dry for my tastes. I really should just be a vegetarian. Meat is weird.). The beef -- kubideh, if you're familiar -- was ground beef seasoned and shaped into a roll of sorts. It was pretty tasty and this was what I ate the most of, although I still didn't eat it all. The salad was good and the bread was delicious. So my carb-heavy meal ended up being not-so-carb heavy and actually kind of small. Overall, I'd say that it wasn't terrible, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat it again. Sorry, Derek. :-\
Anyway, for Tuesday's dinner, we made our dinner that we were supposed to make for our "Meatless Monday". It was a "burrito" of sorts, filled with black beans, corn, salsa, and a little bit of reduced-fat shredded cheese. I called them "burritos" but they were made with Mission Carb Balance soft-taco sized tortillas, so they were actually pretty small. And they were delicious. And there were leftovers for lunch on Wednesday.
The rest of the week was pretty unspectacular but I tried my best to keep the carbs down. With the exception of last night's dinner (turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread), I opted for lower-carb tortillas instead of actual bread, and did my best to regulate how much starch I was consuming overall. I think this is where I can attribute my success this week.
On a side note, a new restaurant has opened right across the street from my office called Sweet Leaf, and I am SO happy they're there because there's finally a place nearby to get a good salad or sandwich that doesn't charge outlandish prices and is actually tasty. They have "pre-fab" salads or you can create your own, same with sandwiches, so the possibilities are endless. The salads so far have been tasty but they're pretty lettuce-heavy which makes me feel like I'm not getting my money's worth. But I've gotten sandwiches from them a couple times (on a wrap instead of bread) and they're actually pretty tasty. I'm still trying to stick to the concept of making dinner and taking leftovers for lunch, but when that doesn't work out, I'm glad this place is a good backup plan. Yay.
So, I didn't really intend for this post to be "What Sarah Ate This Week", but there you have it. This week I'm going to keep trying to cut back/out my carb intake, and then try to up my protein intake (since I'm not much of a meat eater, as I've mentioned). I kind of feel like an idiot because all along I've refused to do any major diet change other than cutting out the obvious unhealthy foods... I've subscribed to the "everything in moderation" rule, and of course Weight Watchers has always instilled in its members that you can eat whatever as long as you account for it. This worked for me in the past and I've been too stubborn to realize that maybe it wasn't working anymore and that with the PCOS, other things really do need to be considered. Maybe this will help me get on the right path for good.
I was crunching some numbers and looking at my goals. If you recall from my Very First Post, my first short-term goal was to get to 250 by my 30th birthday. At the time, it would require me to lose about a pound a week and I was really excited because that really sounded doable. Well, with all the setbacks I've had, I've now got 16 weeks to lose 31 pounds... so, just about 2 pounds per week. Slightly less doable, but if I can keep up what I did this week, it's possible. At this point I'd settle with just getting close.
On another note, and I'll try to wrap it up here... I'm really eager for there to be noticeable, visible changes. I've lost nearly 10 pounds now and I don't feel different, my clothes don't fit differently, and I don't see a difference in how I look. I feel like once there's a noticeable difference, I'll feel more like I'm actually doing some good for myself. Right now still kinda feels like I'm faking it. Wish me luck!
Starting Weight: 290.3
Last Weigh-in: 284.4
This Week: 281.0
Net Loss: -3.4
Loss-to-Date: -9.3
When I saw that number this morning, I almost shit myself. I lost all of the gain from last week, PLUS some.
Honestly, I can't say I was expecting it. I've gotten to the point where I don't hope for much -- it's easier to keep myself from being disappointed that way. I did make some better choices this week, though, so I didn't think a loss was completely out of the picture. And I guess in the back of my mind I was kind of hoping for something as drastic as this.
My biggest success this week has been drastically cutting back (but not out completely) the amount of carbs I consume. It hasn't been easy, let me tell you! Aside from bread and potatoes and pasta and rice and all of those things being incredibly tasty, well, I just grew up on the notion that a meal consists of a meat, a carb, and a veggie. Sometimes, all three are combined (yes, my mom was queen of the casserole!), but either way, that's the way to a well-rounded diet. If I don't have something starchy with my meal I feel like I'm missing something... and not in the "Ohhh, bread, I miss you" sense, but the "Wait... something's not here" sense. But I have been doing a lot of reading lately and it appears as though going low/no-carb is pretty successful for women with PCOS. Our bodies just don't break them down correctly, or something. So I figured I'd give it a try, namely starting with complex carbs like bread/rice/potatoes and not focusing so much on simple carbs like fruit. I love me some fruit -- you can't take that away from me!
Bob Harper's Skinny Rules wants you to eliminate carbs after dinner. This is a really tough challenge for Derek and I because our meals usually consist of, as I said, some sort of meat, a heaping serving of veggies, and a significant serving of some sort of starch... lately it's been either steamed rice or roasted potatoes. (I know. White carbs. Shoot me.)
I decided, though, that I wanted to focus on just overall reducing the carbs I was consuming throughout the day instead of trying to eliminate them from a meal altogether. So, all this week, my breakfasts have been complex carb-free (which is much easier for me).. most of this week, they've consisted of a banana and some peanut butter. I saw my coworker doing this a couple weeks ago -- peeling a banana and then using a spoon/knife to spread a little peanut butter on each bite. GENIUS. And delicious. I had some single-serving cups of reduced-fat peanut butter that had been forgotten about, so this worked perfectly, because I couldn't go overboard with the PB. Yum.
Lunches were... well... they were okay. Monday for dinner we "slipped" and ordered out. Derek has been wanting me to try Afghan food/kebab for a long time, and I finally relented. I ordered a combo that had beef and chicken, and came with rice, spinach, and bread. And since I anticipated not liking it very much (I'm really, REALLY picky), I ordered a side house salad. I figured you couldn't mess that up. The spinach, for me, was inedible. It was really mushy and slimy and whatever seasonings were used were overpowering everything. The rice was okay but also had seasonings I wasn't crazy about, so I mostly stayed away from it. The chicken was tasty but dry -- and this is something I'm SUPER picky about so I was expecting this (I rarely eat chicken simply because 95% of the time, it's too dry for my tastes. I really should just be a vegetarian. Meat is weird.). The beef -- kubideh, if you're familiar -- was ground beef seasoned and shaped into a roll of sorts. It was pretty tasty and this was what I ate the most of, although I still didn't eat it all. The salad was good and the bread was delicious. So my carb-heavy meal ended up being not-so-carb heavy and actually kind of small. Overall, I'd say that it wasn't terrible, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat it again. Sorry, Derek. :-\
Anyway, for Tuesday's dinner, we made our dinner that we were supposed to make for our "Meatless Monday". It was a "burrito" of sorts, filled with black beans, corn, salsa, and a little bit of reduced-fat shredded cheese. I called them "burritos" but they were made with Mission Carb Balance soft-taco sized tortillas, so they were actually pretty small. And they were delicious. And there were leftovers for lunch on Wednesday.
The rest of the week was pretty unspectacular but I tried my best to keep the carbs down. With the exception of last night's dinner (turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread), I opted for lower-carb tortillas instead of actual bread, and did my best to regulate how much starch I was consuming overall. I think this is where I can attribute my success this week.
On a side note, a new restaurant has opened right across the street from my office called Sweet Leaf, and I am SO happy they're there because there's finally a place nearby to get a good salad or sandwich that doesn't charge outlandish prices and is actually tasty. They have "pre-fab" salads or you can create your own, same with sandwiches, so the possibilities are endless. The salads so far have been tasty but they're pretty lettuce-heavy which makes me feel like I'm not getting my money's worth. But I've gotten sandwiches from them a couple times (on a wrap instead of bread) and they're actually pretty tasty. I'm still trying to stick to the concept of making dinner and taking leftovers for lunch, but when that doesn't work out, I'm glad this place is a good backup plan. Yay.
So, I didn't really intend for this post to be "What Sarah Ate This Week", but there you have it. This week I'm going to keep trying to cut back/out my carb intake, and then try to up my protein intake (since I'm not much of a meat eater, as I've mentioned). I kind of feel like an idiot because all along I've refused to do any major diet change other than cutting out the obvious unhealthy foods... I've subscribed to the "everything in moderation" rule, and of course Weight Watchers has always instilled in its members that you can eat whatever as long as you account for it. This worked for me in the past and I've been too stubborn to realize that maybe it wasn't working anymore and that with the PCOS, other things really do need to be considered. Maybe this will help me get on the right path for good.
I was crunching some numbers and looking at my goals. If you recall from my Very First Post, my first short-term goal was to get to 250 by my 30th birthday. At the time, it would require me to lose about a pound a week and I was really excited because that really sounded doable. Well, with all the setbacks I've had, I've now got 16 weeks to lose 31 pounds... so, just about 2 pounds per week. Slightly less doable, but if I can keep up what I did this week, it's possible. At this point I'd settle with just getting close.
On another note, and I'll try to wrap it up here... I'm really eager for there to be noticeable, visible changes. I've lost nearly 10 pounds now and I don't feel different, my clothes don't fit differently, and I don't see a difference in how I look. I feel like once there's a noticeable difference, I'll feel more like I'm actually doing some good for myself. Right now still kinda feels like I'm faking it. Wish me luck!
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