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 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.

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!

Weight Tracker - Week 1

I stepped onto the scale this morning and was greeted by the loss of 1.5 pounds. Considering that I had a healthy Mardi Gras weekend (which means I ate like a condemned pig), this is encouraging! Here are the data:

As promised, there are no absolute weight values (yet). It's all about trend, folks!

For next week's update I'll have been back on my regimen for over a week. If things happen as they did the last time I got strict I expect to lose at least three pounds by next Friday. If I don't I won't be crestfallen, though. Between now and then I'll begin telling the story of my lifelong struggles with weight. But not today - I've gotta work for a living!

Weighed Down

I've been pretty silent on the blog for the past several months, primarily due to how busy I've been at work and with my other commitments. I've been particularly tired when I get home in the evening, and that's prevented me from becoming inspired enough to pop open the laptop and type up events from my day or opinions on current events. I feel no desire to fill this space with prattle. There are a few of you out there who read this, and I hate to disappoint.

It occurred to me recently that a big part of my fatigue has come from the fact that I haven't been treating myself very well for the past few months. I've put on a little weight (not much, less than 10 pounds) and I haven't been going to the gym nearly enough. This is a path I've traveled down before. I know I need to turn around, because I don't like the destination.

Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent. As Lent is a time of preparation, I'm going to use this time to prepare myself for living the remainder of my life as a healthier, more active person. I've already gone a long ways towards that goal -- I've lost in excess of 90 pounds in the past two years. I still have 40 pounds to go before I reach my goal, and it's been hard to push myself towards getting that last bit of weight off.

As part of my usual Lenten disciplines of abstaining from meat and alcohol and fasting once a week, I've added two more disciplines. The first is that I'm giving up watching all broadcast television. Since I don't have cable, this means pretty much all TV. I will still allow myself to watch DVDs. I will not allow myself to watch episodes of currently airing programs on the internet; that feels like cheating to me. I am also exercising my right not to observe this Lenten discipline on Sunday so that I can watch the Oscars. (Sundays are feast days and as such do not require adherence to Lenten fasts. Don't believe me? Look it up.)

The second part - and the part which involves you, dear reader - is that I am committing myself to losing weight during the season of Lent. Not eating meat or drinking alcohol will certainly help. However, I feel I also need a little culpability. That's where you come in. I am hereby committing myself to updating this blog at least once a week with information on my weight loss. Starting Friday I will post a graph charting my weight. Each week I'll post an updated chart so everyone can see how my weight is trending. Because I believe in a certain level of mystery I won't publish my actual weight. The important thing is that the trendline moves downward over successive weeks, not the actual values that the trendline represents.

I am also going to start writing a series of blog entries chronicling my weight loss for the past two years. If others enjoy reading this, or are even inspired to pursue weight loss or other personal improvements because of it, then I will be immensely flattered and grateful. That being said, I am primarily doing this for myself. I want to show myself how far I've come in this time, and to remind myself why I never want to go back to the physical form I had. It has been hard for me to appreciate how different I look now than I did when I started this trek in spring of 2005. I think this is a common problem amongst people who have poor body image, and I certainly count myself among that group. I'm pretty sure that even if my body were model perfect then I'd only focus on whatever imperfections, no matter how small, I could find. As part of my blog entries I'm going to publish some pictures of myself that have been taken over the past three years. Even I find the difference striking.

I wish everyone a blessed Lenten season in anticipation of the glory of Easter. Until then, I'll see you in cyberspace!