Weight Tracker - Week 6

The slide continues . . .



With this week's one-pound loss, I have officially surpassed my Lenten goal of 10 pounds and have a week left to go. To use a word I learned from my friend John, "Woot!"

On Saturday I did something I've never done before. I bought clothes at a vintage clothing store. It was fantastic going into a store to buy clothes without having to look for a "big and tall" section. I bought a pair of jeans that make my ass look amazing. I didn't fully realize how much bigger my old jeans were making me look in the pelvis/thighs area until I put these bad boys on. They are a bit tight, but I'm beginning to embrace tight clothes. There was a time when I avoided fitted clothing, especially pants, because these pieces were unflattering on me. Now tighter pants actually take weight off instead of seeming to put it on. It's an exciting change, and I have to resist the urge to go out and replace my entire wardrobe all in one fell swoop. There is only so much money in the clothing budget.

Next week will be the final installment in the Lenten series. Stay tuned to see how it all turns out!

Weight Tracker - Week 5

Not that I'm complaining, but there seems to be a pattern here.



This week's total is 1.5 pounds. This is actually a pretty good thing, since healthy weight loss is supposed to average between 1 and 2 pounds per week. At this rate, it will take me another 19 weeks to reach my goal weight. That puts me at my goal weight towards the end of August. It also puts me ahead of my Lenten goal of 10 total pounds by 2.5 pounds (I've currently lost 9.5 pounds). Of course, this may start varying week-by-week, so it's certainly not a fait accompli. However, I am very encouraged.

Life has otherwise been a little crazy. I'm hoping to take this weekend to catch up on some things in my life that I've let lapse a bit, including blog updates. There is much to tell.

Weight Tracker - Week 4

We're at the midway point, and so far progress is still better than expected.

Another 1.5 pounds have come off in the past week, bringing the net total for these four weeks to 8 pounds even. I'm already to the point that my jeans, previously getting a little tight, are starting to feel loose again. I've found that roughly every 10-15 pounds represents a waist size reduction, so I may be in the market for some new jeans very soon!

I was talking to my friend Ciahnan last night about my weight loss and strategies for losing the last big chunk of weight I want to lose, which is about 25-30 more pounds. He made an interesting point, one that I brought up in my previous post, reminding me that the body is amazingly well adapted to expending as little energy as possible to produce the maximum effect. So, all this time I've been sitting on a recumbent bike my body has been finding ways to pump those pedals harder while using fewer calories.

So next week I'm getting off of the bike and trying new pieces of equipment. This works out well because I've agreed to take part in a 5K next month - a first for me - and I've been debating whether to run it or walk it. I think that I may spend a couple of non-sequential weeks on the treadmill, seeing if my body can tolerate running that long a distance. (I can easily walk 5k, which is just over 3 miles.)

Posts have been light this week because I've been crazy busy. There's lots of stuff running through this old noggin', and I hope to be espousing bleeding-heart liberal propaganda very soon! Stay tuned!

Weight Tracker - Week 3

Despite my continuing abysmal gym attendance record, I'm still shedding pounds.



Two more pounds saw fit to pack their s*it and leave, so I'm quite pleased. Since the beginning of Lent I've lost 6.5 pounds. I set my goal as 10 pounds by the end of Lent, and we're not even to the halfway point yet (that would be roughly Lent 4, a week from Sunday) so I am thrilled at my progress so far. It's amazing how fast the weight comes off once I return to my more disciplined ways.

In previous attempts to lose weight I hit plateaus after the first few months. This has happened multiple times in the past two years. In the past failing to lose weight for a few weeks would simply derail my entire effort and I'd eventually gain back every ounce that I'd lost. And, as if the weight had been placed into a high-yield savings account - the adipose tissue version of ING Direct, I guess - I got back a few extra pounds as well. Yippee!

This time I faced the fact that at each plateau I had to do something different to force my body to continue burning fat. Caloric restriction, for most people, only goes so far. Evolution has fine-tuned the human metabolism to take full advantage of the calories we're given. It seems that the body will often adapt to reduced caloric intake by decreasing basal metabolism. Exercise, especially aerobic and isometric (resistance) exercise, seem to help maintain and even increase basal metabolism even in the face of reduced caloric intake. Recent reports dispute the veracity of this claim, but since nutrition science seems to be about as constant as a fickle lover I'm not prepared to abandon this idea.

I know that exercise is critical for my own weight loss, so I have got to carve out more gym time if that trend line is to maintain its current trajectory. Speaking of which, what am I doing sitting here typing? That only burns 102 calories an hour! And I'm nowhere near my target heart rate!

The Wages of Sin

I discovered this Sin Meter on my friend Heidi's blog, and immediately completed the questionnaire so that I could be told exactly why I'm doomed to Hell. Here are my results:

Greed:	Low
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	Low
Envy:	High
Lust:	High
Pride:	Very High

Discover Your Sins - Click Here

So basically I'm just full-up with pride and lust. I must admit I'm shocked. What a revelation. Next I guess you'll tell me that President Eisenhower is dead.

Happy Lent, everyone!

The Beginning

When I moved to Chicago at the end of 2004 I had recently broken up with a long-term boyfriend, had been miserable in my old job and living situation and was apprehensive about moving away from friends in Nashville and even further away from family in North Carolina. I consoled myself by eating, an old habit that I could never shake and probably never will.

One morning, a few months after moving to Chicago, I decided I should see just how much I weighed. The last time I'd been weighed was during a visit to my physician's office the previous summer, some eight months prior. At that time my weight had ballooned up to a value as high as it had ever been.

I gingerly nudged the digital scale from against the wall. I pressed lightly on it with my right foot, awakening it from its slumber. The yellow digital display came alive and read "0.0". I stepped onto the scale, right foot first, and as I did the display blinked "---", indicating that the scale was calculating my weight. I delicately placed my left foot on the apparatus, my entire bulk now firmly on the scale, and waited for it to determine how much I weighed. I stared at the blinking hyphens, anticipating and dreading the number that would be displayed. Finally, the hyphens resolved and the display said, "Err."

"Err?" What on earth does that mean, I wondered.

I turned the scale over and looked at the instruction sticker adhered to the bottom. I scanned for what this message meant, and was shocked to find that this was an error message that displayed if the scale's maximum weight had been exceeded.

The scale's maximum weight was 330 pounds.

The realization that I weighed in excess of 330 pounds was sobering. At that moment I understood that I had two choices: to get bigger and bigger or to work to reduce my weight. It didn't take me long to decide to choose option 2. This was the heaviest I had ever been in my entire life, and I resolved that it would be the heaviest I ever would be.

I next had to determine the best course of action to lose weight. Never a slave to reason, I figured it would be best to go it alone and make all my decisions independent of a health care provider. Fortunately I have enough training in physiology and science that I can read and learn about nutrition and synthesize the information with relative ease. However I would say to anyone else, even a person with training in biology and medicine such as myself, that seeking out a registered dietitian is the better way to go. Talking to your physician is a good start, but most general practitioners are so overworked they don't really have time to do much beyond shove diet and nutrition pamphlets into your hand. Working with a dietitian or nutritionist, which I did several years ago, is helpful because they have more time to dedicate to you and can help you come up with an individualized eating plan based on your personal likes and dislikes. Perhaps more importantly, they become a person to whom you feel accountable regarding your weight loss. I found this accountability helpful, and others I know have expressed similar sentiments.

I knew that losing weight would be a long-term endeavor, and that keeping it off would require changing the way I ate, shopped, lived and worked. I wouldn't start a "fad" diet - fads are temporary, and I wanted my weight loss to be permanent. I would monitor myself minimally in the beginning, afraid of becoming discouraged because I wasn't progressing rapidly enough. I also assured myself that permanent change would take time, so I reasoned that to lose the amount of weight I desired to lose, 110 pounds, would require a minimum of two years.

During the next few months I would decide on a focus point - something I desired that I felt would be impossible to achieve without losing weight - and alter how I interacted with food. In the next installment I'll discuss my focus point and talk about changing my perceptions about food and eating.

Of Robert Frost and Old Friends

I originally wrote this entry two days ago. Even though I'm just now posting it, I've decided not to change the day references. Here's the original post.

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I am writing this while sitting in the C terminal of the Nashville International Airport (BNA), awaiting my return flight home to Chicago. I left the Windy City yesterday morning and flew into Nashville, my home of eight years, to attend a birthday party for a friend from my grad school days. Because I was really uncertain whether or not my work schedule would allow me the luxury of this 31 hour trip, I didn't let anyone except for the folks directly tied to the party know that I was coming. (Sorry to any of my peeps in Nashville who were left unaware of my incursion!) Having not taken a real break from working since last October, I worked my ass off to make sure this trip would happen. In fact, to take care of things in the lab so that I could get out of town I went into the lab before dawn yesterday and I will go directly to work once I've dropped my bags off at my apartment this afternoon. But I needed this little break to recharge my dwindling spirits.

Although I was genuinely looking forward to it, I was a bit apprehensive about this trip. The friend whose birthday we were celebrating had arranged this party, and I was glad for him to have done it. Despite this I knew it might be awkward because this friend now lives on the West Coast and had several largely separate groups of friends in Nashville, representatives of each having been invited to the party. I was reasonably sure that, as in the days when we all lived in Nashville, this party would operate such that friends from each of the three circles would socialize mostly with the other members of their own cliques, and the host would have to spend his time vascillating amongst the various constituencies. The other possible downside was having to see a couple of folks on the invite list whom, frankly, I could go for a long time without seeing or speaking with. Despite these misgivings I came anyway because of the allure of seeing a couple of folks who, because of various circumstances, I have been unable to see for quite some time. And the relatively balmy temperatures in Nashville seemed particularly inviting given the miserable dregs of winter Chicago seems unable to shake off.

When I arrived in Nashville, my friend from Philadelphia came to the airport to retrieve me, and we spent the afternoon together, having lunch with another friend from New York and my best friend from college who now lives in Atlanta. After lunch my friend from Atlanta and I participated in a ritual leftover from our college days: the two of us go to clothing stores, I select outfits for her to buy, and then she leaves better dressed than when she arrived. We both admitted this exercise was a bit more fun when her parents were footing the bill, but we appreciated spending quality time together in the women's fashion aisles of several large department stores.

Finally the time came for us to go to the birthday shindig. We arrived and, at first, it felt as if the previous three years had not passed. Warm hugs were exchanged all around, everyone commented about how good everyone else looked - a mostly credible claim - and we all went inside. In a few minutes, though, everyone reverted to type and we spent the next couple of hours standing around in our old cliques, talking about old times, comparing everyone's current boyfriend to his former boyfriend and commenting about how everyone really looked. My Philadelphia friend walked around and chatted with members of each different group. This is truly one of his strengths, this ability to mingle amongst various social groups. The other friends and I mostly wondered why we were there.

The friend from Atlanta was in a unique situation from the rest of us, because she was really only friends with me. She knew my friend from Philly, but I was her entree into the group. As we sat, waiting for my New York friend to drag the friend from Philly away from two bears who were card-carrying and pistol-toting NRA members, I said to my friend from Atlanta that this weekend had served as a good reminder of why good things aren't meant to last. The friends from Philly and New York, as well as the one whose birthday we were celebrating, were the last remnants of a large group of friends I hung out with in the middle years of graduate school. These guys were my lifeline during a stretch of my life when I was very uncertain about myself professionally and socially. Having been largely unsuccessful in the dating world, these gay men became like surrogate boyfriends. They provided all of the social benefits of a relationship without any of the physical intimacy. With only a couple of exceptions, that was all I ever wanted from these guys.

We were a tight group, although there were several incidents of drama and tension, including of the sexual variety. (It was 12 gay guys, for pity's sake.) I never knew a closer group of friends, and likely never will again. For many of us coming out is like going through our teenage years all over again. We may be physically older and through with the more embarrassing aspects of pubesence, but we nonetheless have to deal with all the emotional baggage of asserting our own individuality and figuring out the often perilously thin line between platonic attachment and romantic longings.

Eventually the group split up. Petty jealousies, sexual betrayals and rumor mongering set the wheels in motion, but ultimately our careers got in the way. Many of us were students and anticipated moving on to actual employment once our degrees were finished. Others knew that Nashville was only a temporary destination as their occupations required them to relocate or take new jobs in different cities. I was among the last to leave, and I'm glad I stayed around as the most significant relationship of my adult life occurred in the last two years I lived in Nashville, once most of my friends had left the city to start new lives. Eventually a job took me away as well, and here I sit, waiting in the aiport of the city that was home for so long for a flight to the city that I call home now.

Last night was a stark reminder of the message from Robert Frost's poem "Nothing gold can stay." As much as I loved all these guys, I really only see the ones in Philly and New York, and another who now lives in Milwaukee. And there's a reason for this. Joyous times in life are precious and fleeting, and this is what makes them special. It's nice to think that we'll always stay friends with everyone we've ever been friends with, but that's the exception rather than the rule. As I get older losing friends seems less like a tragedy and more like the normal way of things. I have more friends to make in life, and some people whom I currently know and feel close to will fade from my life like the passing of a season. And that's okay.

The friend from the West Coast who threw the birthday party for himself last night admonished us to stay in touch. I hope we will, but I'm not counting on it. Sometimes you just know when it's over. And as I sit in the airport terminal, watching for the plane that will take me back to Chicago, I really feel only one thing.

I feel like it's over.

Weight Tracker - Week 2

Despite having made it to the gym only one day this week, I was greeted by a happy scale this morning.



I've lost another 3 pounds since last week, so I'm very pleased!

I had hoped to post an entry this week about my weight loss story, but other things have taken priority (hello, the Oscars!) I will start that process soon, but as an entrée I'm posting this picture of myself at (approximately) my heaviest. This picture was taken about 3 years ago.



In this picture I weighed over 300 lbs. Black may be slimming, but it's not magic. It would be another year - and another 10 lbs. or so - before I'd actually start the long journey of shedding these excess pounds. Look for the story in the next week!