So Far, So Good:)

Aha! A new blog post, and I’m NOT explaining why I haven’t been successful at losing weight over the past two months. Yay!

So I hit it hard-core on June 21st. My amazing sister & her husband gave me a birthday gift…2 months or so of working out with a trainer at Fitness Together. FT is expensive, but the hidden secret is that if you work out with a partner, it’s relatively affordable (in our case, my sister and I work out together 3 days per week, and it’s $35/person, per session).

These workouts make ALL the difference in the world. I considered myself knowledgeable about weight-lifting, having trained with a few guy friends during college.

Ha! I scoff at what we used to call working out.

Troy, our trainer, works us within an inch of our lives. He’s pretty much a male Jillian Michaels, minus the yelling…his method is quieter, but no less effective.

In addition, I’ve been sticking to a daily calorie allowance of 1300-1500 calories, AND I’ve modified my diet to a state of healthfulness that I’ve never come close to before. Lots of whole grains, lean proteins, veggies, fruits…this is the first time in my life that I’ve attempted to lose weight by doing EVERYTHING right AT THE SAME TIME. This is key LOL.

And of course, my hidden secret weapon is my BodyBugg. Without it, I would go crazy during the days (sometimes weeks) where I’m working out like crazy, dieting perfectly, but still not seeing the scale change. My BodyBugg lets me remain confident that I am working the weight off, even if it hasn’t shown up on the scale yet.

So, ready for the numbers? Since June 21st I’ve lost 20 pounds. According to my BodyBugg, I should have lost 17.29 pounds. Throw in a couple of pounds of water weight, and my little armband is just pretty damn accurate.

I will say I’ve had the oddest pattern of weight loss. In years past, I was a very steady, regular loser. This time, it’s been in spurts, and I suspect I’ve reached an age where hormones are playing a larger role. I lost 9 pounds very quickly, then nothing for 10 days, then 6 pounds in 3 days, then nothing, then 5 more. And so on.

All in all, I’m very, very happy. A little over one month down, and hopefully just 11 more to go!

Third Time’s the Charm?

The problem, I think, is that I want to put this blog into a specific category…only “fluff,” only weight-loss, etc., and so I end up not posting because I think of topics that don’t seem like they fit. So instead, I’m going to try this as a catch-all blog. Some of everything.

It’s been 10 months since my last post, and I’m ready to try again. No movement on the weight-loss front; however, I weigh exactly the same amount as I did 10 months ago, which for me, is quite a positive thing.

I’ve dusted off the old BodyBugg, and I’m thinking of giving the Couch-to-5K program a try.

In other news, since my layoff last June I’ve decided to go to Nursing school. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for the past 7 years, but it was never the right time, and I couldn’t justify leaving a well-paying job to try something new. You know, I went into college wanting to be a doctor, and ended up struggling with math. Why I went from that to “no medical for me,” I’ll never understand. Instead of looking for a field still related to medicine, I went 180 degrees into Education, which then led to law school. Two degrees in fields that nobody hires in when the economy is struggling.

Not to mention, I feel like the number of years I’ve spent in and out of hospitals and caring for ailing parents has already given me a nursing degree by default:(

So anyway, I studied, learned Algebra all over again, aced the entrance exam, and I start in August. So my immediate and necessary goal is to lose 40 pounds by August, so that I can easily handle the physical rigors of nursing. Ergo, the Couch-to-5K.

Wish me luck!

Just a Quick Update…

Still “on the wagon” food wise, but I haven’t worked out since my last post, due to what ended up being a nasty stomach bug that wouldn’t go away. I haven’t lost any more weight, but I haven’t gained any back, so yay! Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be getting back on board with the exercise…so far I’ve gone 24 hours without nausea, so the bug seems to be gone.
On the upside, I did get to completely and totally indulge my Big Brother addiction during my hours and hours in bed:) Love that Jeff!

Week One: Success!

So, I was supposed to wait until today, Tuesday, to weigh in, but my curiosity was killing me, so I weighed yesterday, Monday, to see how much weight I had lost during the 1st 6 days. The result? Down 8.2 pounds. Woohoo!!!

But wait. According to my meticulous tracking of calories in/calories out, I should have only lost 3.77 pounds. Which brings me to water weight.

I’ve never given much thought to water weight, but my sister made a comment this week about how I’d lose more than I was expecting due to water. Now, we all know that you lose extra water weight during the first week of a diet, because you’re generally dropping your sodium intake pretty dramatically, etc.

However, did you know that the human body is made up of 60-70% water? I knew we were a lot water, but I didn’t know we were THAT much water. So, for every 3500 calories burned, you’ll lose one pound of fat, but you’ll also lose, according to my math, another 1/2 to 3/4 of a pound of water. I’ll keep tracking the numbers and see if that holds up.

Developed a nauseating stomach bug yesterday, and didn’t work out then, or today. Hopefully I’m back on track tomorrow. The nice thing about eating so few calories, though, is that even on a day when I can’t get a workout in, I can still have a pretty darn good calorie deficit…today’s was 1613 calories, and I spent 95% of the day in bed:) I ate nothing but Teddy Grahams, Pringle Stix, and Ice Cream. And oooh, was the ice cream good. I couldn’t keep anything else down. I even tried to eat some pineapple, and it came right back up. But never fear, those Teddy Grahams & ice cream still didn’t push me over 1200 calories. I even weighed the ice cream to make sure I knew exactly how many calories I was taking in.

Off to bed and to say my prayers that I wake up with a normal stomach. Night all!

One month later…with a game plan

So, last month I began my weight-loss effort.  I did great for 2 weeks….going to the gym 3 times a week, eating 1600-2000 calories per day.  And the end result?  I didn’t lose a pound.  Not one pound.  Arrrggghhhh.  What the hell?

So, as has always been my pattern, I got frustrated and fell off the wagon.  I also went to my doctor to have my bloodwork (thyroid, hemoglobin, etc.) checked, to make sure there wasn’t something else I was fighting against.  The results came back yesterday, and everything is fine.  So what was I doing wrong?

Last month I also began listening to Jillian Michaels’ podcasts religiously.  (Until recently, Jillian hosted a 2-hour radio show on Sunday mornings on KFI radio, and the episodes can be downloaded from iTunes).  I’m a huge Biggest Loser fan, and have always felt that Jillian would be exactly the trainer I would choose.  No sympathy, and the ability to see past any B.S. I might try to use to avoid the work or responsibility of weight loss.

So, over the past month, I feel like I was getting my education in truly working the weight off my body, and it turns out I was doing quite a few things wrong.  So I’m going to list the changes I’ve made and tools I’ve begun using…I re-started my efforts on Tuesday, August 4th, and am now on “Day 6″ of what I am damn well determined will be my final effort to reclaim my body and my life.

1) Calories. I’m a big girl.  Not ready to say publicly how big, but big.  Big enough that I burn a LOT of calories just existing.  So, in my mind, just cutting down to 2000 calories a day should have made the weight drop off, let alone adding in some exercise.  But I invested in a Bodybugg (more about that later), and found out that on an average day when I do nothing, I burn about 3000 calories.  So, if I’m eating 2000 calories a day, I’m only creating a 1000-calorie deficit.  Since 1 pound = 3500 calories, that kind of deficit only gets you a weight loss of about 1.5 pounds per week.  Add in the fact that we typically <b>underestimate</b> our calories consumed by 20-30%, and eating 2000 calories per day could result in no weight loss at all.  So I’m dropping my daily calorie allowance to 1200, with a 2000-calorie day thrown in once a week to keep my metabolism guessing.

2) My Bodybugg This is a tool you can see contestants using on Biggest Loser.  It’s a tiny gadget that you strap around your left arm, and wear 24 hours a day.  It measures your heart rate, body temperature, and movement to calculate the calories you are burning at any given point.  Knowing exactly how many calories you are burning, and exactly how many you are eating, is critical to losing weight.  You can look up your estimated daily calorie burn online, but that will be an estimate only, based on population averages, and not necessarily true for you.  The online estimates told me that I should be burning about 3700 calories per day just existing, but my Bodybugg tells me I only burn about 3000, which is a pretty significant difference.

The Bodybugg also then tells me exactly how many calories I burn when exercising.  Because I lost a great deal of weight in college just by weightlifting 3 times per week, I thought that would work again this time.  But it turns out (and as Jillian preaches), the weightlifting doesn’t burn nearly as many calories as cardio.  And plain old walking-on-a-treadmill cardio doesn’t burn nearly as many calories as incline/resistance/interval cardio.  Thanks to my Bodybugg, I now know that the most effective workout I have, right now, is walking around my neighborhood for 2 miles.  Because I live on a giant hill, the incline is huge, and I end up burning about 600 calories per hour of walking, which is double what I was burning while weight-lifting.

3) Food measurements. I’ve invested in a good-quality food scale.  This is critical to helping make sure I’m eating only 1200 calories per day, and not 1400 or 1600.  I also bought a small pocket-size scale that I can keep in my purse, and pull out at restaurants, family gatherings, vacations, etc., to keep control over my portions even when away from home.  It’s much more accurate to measure food by weight than by volume, and 30 calories here or there throughout the day, measured incorrectly, can add up quickly.

4) Calorie Deficit. This is what it all boils down to.  For every pound I want to lose, I have to create a 3500-calorie deficit.  With the tools I’ve listed, I should be able to have a great deal more control over my weight loss.  My goal right now is to create a daily calorie deficit between 2000 and 3000 calories, which should result in a weight loss of 4-6 pounds per week.  I weight in last Tuesday, when I began, and am determined to only step on that scale once a week, because I really let the scale psych me out sometimes.  So, I’ll report my weight loss on every Tuesday, along with my recorded calorie deficits, to see how closely they match up.  I’ll also be sharing any tips and tricks I learn across the way.  If someone happens up on this and finds the information useful I’ll be thrilled:)  If not, this is a way to keep a record for myself of what does and does not work for me.

Turning My Life Around….

So, I pretty much abandoned this blog last year…I didn’t have a purpose for blogging, and it fell by the wayside. Things have changed, though. I lost my job last week due to a reduction-in-force. Over the past year, due to a variety or stressors (home life, job, etc.), I’ve gained back quite a bit of weight that I had once lost.

Now, I find myself in a position to focus the time and energy (that has been missing the past year) on my health. For years I’ve wished I could be a contestant on The Biggest Loser …nothing to focus on except eating right and exercising.  So, now that I can live on my severance/unemployment for a few months, I’m going to try to recreate the Biggest Loser environment here at home.

This blog is now going to serve as my record of weight-loss triumphs and tribulations; a place to work out issues that come up, and to share ideas/tips/recipes etc. that I find useful.

I’ve found that when I get all excited over a new recipe, or the fact that I’ve successfully gone to the gym 5 days in a row, I want to tell EVERYBODY!!! But it’s not nearly as exciting to people who are struggling with their own weight, and probably comes off slightly obnoxious, so I’ll spill that enthusiasm here, and people can read or not read, as they wish.

So, here it goes:)