So tonight M. sent me two photos she had. This one was taken on Sat 16th Aug 2008 – about 1 month before I started dieting:
and then this one was taken on 10th January 2009 – about a month ago:
and what I did tonight was make this:
OK, it’s a bit crude but I like it 🙂
This has been an interesting week. This week I watched a TV program called “Why Thin People Aren’t Fat?” and I read a blog on something called ‘Fat Acceptance’.
This has made me think, which is almost never a good thing.
OK in order to write about this I need to try to sum up what I got from these sources of ideas, otherwise I’ll be here all night. Here goes:
Dieting is bad
OK no, that’s not it. Or it’s only a small part of it. Let me try again.
First the TV program. This was a Horizon program from the BBC. For those that don’t know this means it’s a fairly serious, if populist, science program. They repeated a little-know experiment which showed that some thin people almost literally can’t get fat. What I got from this show was:
What may be depressing for many people who are overweight [is] to know that a large amount of weight-loss is very difficult to maintain in the long term. However we know that small amounts of weight-loss will make you healthier and actually is much easier to maintain.
Dr Carel le Roux, Imperial College London.
There was lots more than that but that’s the gist of what I got from it.
Now the blog. This is more political. I only read a few recent posts and some with intriguing titles. But what I gained from this was:
Now all this very interesting and some of it is new to me so it certainly made me question what I’m doing. And that made me a little sad.
Why? Because regardless of whether it’s doing me any good or not the sense of achievement, the satisfaction I’ve gained from actually sticking to something and seeing results has been great. But now there’s reason to believe that I’ll probably find it impossible to maintain and if I do it’ll be like a fulltime job and I’ll constantly feel hungry (one study showed that obese people on a “maintenance diet” still felt hungry all the time).
So am I right to worry or is this typical Shuggie paranoia?
Well the good news is that I am already doing some good things. The essence of HAES is eating well, taking exercise and self-acceptance. Well I certainly eat better than I did and I do lots of exercise. More than I did and more than I need simply to lose weight (see below). As for self-acceptance well yes and no. But that’s a bigger issue than just my weight, though I have got sucked into thinking how nice it would be to be “thin” again.
So…
The first is this “natural weight” thing. How do you know what it is? In the program they said most adults gain only around 20-30lbs across their entire adult lives. At 18 I was 10 1/2 stone, a few months ago (41) I was 22 1/2. That’s a little more than 30lbs. In other words I wasn’t maintaining some natural weight I was getting bigger and that’s not good.
So maybe I do have a natural weight, and maybe it’ll still be fat by everyday standards. But if I’m doing exercise and not eating crap and generally being reasonably healthy then I’ll be ok with that. I’ll have to give up the dream of being thin but I’ve been fat my whole adult life, I think I’ll cope.
One thing all this reminded me which I pretty much have known for years is that yo-yo dieting is worse for you than not dieting at all. But I’m not yo-yoing yet. I’m still on the way down. Maybe I will be one of the 95% but maybe not. If I’d had to predict it I would have say that I would never have got this far. I would have said that I would have lost a few pounds , maybe even a stone or more, but put most of it back on again, and so on, a few times by now. So maybe, just maybe, I’m capable of keeping at least some of this off.
And you know what? If not. If I go back up then I’ll just keep up the exercise and healthy eating and call it a win.
But I honestly think I can maintain it.
Why? Because I haven’t been hungry all the time. Despite surviving on 1800 calories a day I’ve felt ok most of the time. If I had to live on this regime the rest of my life, I could. I’d rather have a few more treats every now and then, but it’s not like I’m even missing those completely. Plus that’s a diet based on losing weight. My plan to maintain it will allow me a few more calories and at least one “day off” per week.
So to conclude. I’ve had a lot to think about but that’s actually good. It’s made me really think about what I’m doing and look at my motives and confirm what’s good about it. There’s a lot in these sources I agree with, specifically,
However I don’t think that I’m actually endangering my health right now and the benefits in terms of self-esteem, accomplishment and yes, feeling fitter are real.
So I’m carrying on.
OK so you’re bored rigid by now by my meandering thought processes (so why you reading my blog?), what about this week’s stats? Before I post them, a quick word about exercise.
End of last week I developed a large blister on my foot. Right between my big toe and the next one. It wasn’t painful but it made walking, even using the stepper, awkward. So on Tuesday I abandoned exercise for the week. I thought it would be a good experiment. Ever since I got my pedometer I’ve been aware that exercise doesn’t account for very much of my weight-loss, how much would I lose even without it? Here’s the answer:
Weekly loss: 2kg (4.4lb)
Total loss: 29.5kg (65lb or 4st 9lb)
Current weight: 114.6kg (252lb or 18st)
This is a number of milestones. I’m under 115kg, I’m 18stone even and I’ve now lost just over 20% of my original body weight.
So yes it’s mainly the diet and not the exercise that’s causing the weight-loss. Which in a weird way just re-inforces that I need to keep up the exercise because it’s that that’s doing me more good and it’s that that will keep me healthy if I do eventually yo back up.
…as in my weight and my mood.
Weekly loss: 0.3kg (0.7lb)
Total loss: 27.5kg (60.6lb or 4st 4lb)
Current weight: 116.6kg (257lb or 18st 5lb)
*sigh*
I’m not quite sure what went wrong. OK so I have still lost weight and it’s not a tiny amount but it’s still fairly small. Meanwhile I’ve had a week where I’ve not only stuck to the rules but had a lot of exercise. I’ve worked hard this week and unlike some weeks it’s felt like it.
I’ve been hovering around this general weight for the last three weeks. Is this me finally hitting the “plateau”? Makes you think about targets and goals. I once said that,
“As long as my general health and fitness was ok I didn’t feel inclined to go chasing a particular body image.”
But I have haven’t I? I mean I’m fit enough now to not worry about falling over if I have to run for a bus. So the fact I’ve kept going, kept losing weight must mean I want to look slimmer right?
I do. I admit it. I not only want to be healthier, I want to be thinner. But I’m not there yet and it’s taking so bloody long.
Don’t worry I’m not giving up. I’m just having a whinge. It’s my blog and I’ll… (well you know the rest)
Weekly loss: -0.1kg (-0.2lb)
Total loss: 27.2kg (60lb or 4st 3lb)
Current weight: 116.9kg (257lb or 18st 5lb)
It’s been another week where I put on weight slightly. Although given that it’s only 100g (that’s a small glass of water) I’m seeing it as maintaining last week’s weight. Which I’m quite happy with because I had quite a big week from Tue-Fri. We were moving offices at work and I was helping out. This meant lots of extra hours, lots of lifting and carrying, but also ordering pizzas and a couple of pub lunches. It also meant that I over-compensated because I knew I was doing lots more exercise (I could feel that as I flopped into bed exhausted). I had a bit of a pig-out on Thursday.
So all in all the fact that I managed to pull it back at the weekend means I’m not unhappy.
Not much to say about this week. I’m back on track again. Losing weight again. Worrying that it may be too much too quickly, again.
Weekly loss: 2kg (4.4lb)
Total loss: 27.3kg (60.2lb or 4st 4lb)
Current weight: 116.8kg (257lb or 18st 5lb)
Well it had to happen sometime. I made it through various evenings out, weekends away, pub lunches, Christmas and other potential pitfalls and now, finally, this week I put on weight:
Weekly loss: -0.2kg (-0.4lb)
Total loss: 25.3kg (55.8lb or 3st 13lb)
Current weight: 118.8kg (261lb or 18st 9lb)
Or did I? I still feel like last week’s was a fake number. Either way over the last two weeks I’ve lost over 6lbs which is still good going.
Weekly loss: 3kg (6.6lb)
Total loss: 25.5kg 56.2lb or 4st)
Current weight: 118.6.9kg (261lb or 18st 9lb)
Wow! 3kg is big. It’s more than I’ve lost since week two. It’s big enough to make me suspicious. As you’ll recall I did have some problems with my scales before Christmas, giving me silly low numbers, but I replaced the battery and it seemed to be ok again. Also I’ve checked it with smaller items against the kitchen scales and it seems to be accurate.
Actually I suppose I have stepped up the exercise slightly and this is the first week in quite a while when I haven’t had a meal out or a pub lunch or something. Anyway I’m choosing to go with it on the basis that if it’s wrong it’s a bit like an estimated reading on the gas bill – it all works out correctly in the end.
…what have we done?
I guess Christmas is always going to be a significant event for any dieter, for me it had at least three important aspects this year. First Christmas means Christmas dos, which mean alcohol and food. Second Christmas means Christmas at home (my parents home that is) which means food and various chocolatey treats. Third, Christmas was a kind of milestone – it was where I initially hoped to lose 10% by, and it was also the end of the first page of my spreadsheet*.
One of the first things I found out when I got home was not just that, as expected/hoped for, I got the “Ooh you’ve lost weight” reaction, but that my sister is also dieting. She’s doing Weight-Watchers and has been for the last 5 weeks. She’s lost 8lbs and has another 8lbs to go before she reaches her target. She’s also become a little obsessed with it – which is how come I got this entire story before I saw her – she’d been telling anyone who would listen, including the family, all about it.
I mention this partly to tell a funny anecdote about my dad. He was sure (rightly as it turned out) that she’d tell me all about it as soon as we met. He wanted me to reply to the news that she’d lost 8lbs with “That’s nice, I’ve lost 50.” I didn’t. It would have been funny, but a little too mean.
The other reason I mention it is because my Sister exhibited a mild form of something I’ve come to recognise, which is the apparent need to give advice. It’s happened to me a few times now. I happen to mention I’m on this diet and the person I’m telling asks me how much I’ve lost. I tell them. Then they ask me how I’ve done it. I tell them. Usually at some point during the details of this they feel the need to let me know how I could be doing it better. Which I find odd. I’ve lost 50lbs in 15 weeks. I must be doing something right.
Now it’s not really fair to put this all on my sister. She has a mild case as I said, and she really wasn’t telling me what I’d done wrong so much as congratulating me that by sheer luck I’d managed to replicate the principles that underlie the WW method.
It works for her. I’m glad of that. This works for me. :0)
So how was Christmas itself? Well it was always going to be a ‘holiday’ from the diet. My way of handling times when I need to be social so far has been to take a break from the regime. I can get away with this because it’s so infrequent. This was a whole week (well five days) though. I learnt a few things.
I learnt that alcohol is bad for dieting. I already knew that I am able to have chocolate, deserts or other calorie-filled goodies in moderation as a treat. I have the self-control to have just one piece of chocolate and leave the rest. However if I have alcohol, itself full of calories, my resistance to temptation is severely compromised.
I learnt that given the chance to come off the diet I will take the opportunity to pig out. This is not great. It’s good that I can say “after Friday I’m back on the diet” and stick to it. It’s not brilliant that I use the intervening time to swallow all the calories I can.
I learnt that this diet is for the long haul. OK I sort of knew that but emotionally it sunk in. Consciously or otherwise I’d allowed this week to become a sort of milestone that I was heading for. I’d told myself (and others) that this needed to be an indefinite change in lifestyle but secretly I harboured a hope of “once I get to Christmas I can relax abit”. This was at least partly because I expected to have made more progress than I have. Or rather I expected the progress I have made to look more significant. Also I’d gotten used to a frankly unrealistic rate of weight loss. If I extrapolate my current weight loss I’ll reach my target weight somewhere around the one year mark. That’s ok. I just need to keep going.
This all sounds a bit negative but there is actually good news. Not only have I not put on weight over Christmas but I’ve even gone down a little. These are the results based on last time I weighed myself properly (i.e. week 13):
Loss since week 13: 0.7kg (1.5lb)
Total loss: 22.5kg (49.6lb or 3st 7lb)
Current weight: 121.6kg (268lb or 19st 2lb)
Here’s a graph from the first (now complete) page of my spreadsheet.
The 10% reduction is self-explanatory. The “milestone” is a mini-target that I kept moving (usually it went down in 5lb intervals) every time I hit it.
[*]Yes I know a spreadsheet can scroll and therefore doesn’t need to have “pages” – but I designed mine in sections so a section (or “page”) would all fit on the visible screen. The first page ended with 29th Dec.
So in about 30 mins (or however long it takes me to shower and pack) I’m setting off for the long drive to my parents for Christmas. I will have limited internet access (i.e. my mobile) and so this was supposed to be where I post a brief Lesamy update with my pre-Christmas weight-in stats. “Supposed to be” because it didn’t quite work out that way.
You’ll recall that I’ve had two Christmas dos this week and that I was worried about what impact that would have on the diet. So last night, after midnight to satisfy my anal side, I went and weighed myself. The scales read 96.7kg. I tried again. 96.7kg. I tried several times and still got the same result.
Now this can only mean one of three things:
3 seems most likely. I tried again this morning and I was down to 96.3. Now 0.4kg is within a plausible range for the normal variation but I suspect what’s happening is that the battery is fading and as it does so the readout it gives gets less and less.
I’ll be able to get a better reading from my mum’s scales when I get home.
Since this week is not a SlingInk deadline week and in order to get ahead of the curve I thought I’d do a brief get-it-out-there blog post.
It’s traditional at this point to add some blather about the process of dieting/exercise itself before the big ‘reveal’ of the numbers. Well I don’t have a lot to blather about but just to add to my ‘shocking wrist fat loss’ theme of yesterday, I would just like to whinge say that I find it odd where my body decides to go for its missing calories. i.e. where it chooses to burn fat. My wrists I mentioned and I think my face (though is that just a decent haircut and a shave making me look tidier rather than thinner in the face?)
But one other, um, area, where I think I’ve noticed a change in my behind. Ok, now before you think that I literally must be disappearing up my own rear-end to have noticed this let me explain that the evidence is secondary and I’d quite happily be wrong. Thing is I’ve noticed lately that after sitting down (at work or at my desk at home, like now) for a while I start to feel like my bum is a little sore. It feels like the bones of my whatever-you-call (not the cocyx the other bits) are digging into the chair seat. Now I never noticed this before and my sitting habits haven’t changed all that much, so I conclude that whilst I’m still relatively heavy, but have lost some weight, if I’d lost some on my backside it would explain why my bony parts are pinning me to my chair.
Or it could just be lack of visible progress frustration mixed with my normal paranoia and hypochrondria.
Oh well, here’s the stats.
Weekly loss: 0.6kg (1.3lb)
Total loss: 21.8kg (48.1lb or 3st 6lb)
Current weight: 122.3kg (269lb or 19st 3lb)
I was expecting this to be honest. Last time I had a whole weekend off the clock the effects were carried over into the next week so I was partly expecting that this time. Also I had a lunchtime at the pub on Friday which was also off the clock. (I had virtually no evening meal to compensate but still, alcohol’s nearly pure calories you know.)
I’m not gutted, it’s still going down. The challenge is to make it through the next two weeks (Christmas work do this week and Christmas itself the next) without going up.