Crap! It's Weigh-in Day and my weight sucked. Really! I didn't remember until just about an hour ago that it was weigh in day. I was up again this morning. 233.4. Sigh.
So I was visualizing my weight today... being a very visual person. I saw it (un-creatively) as a pendulum. I seem to be very, very consistent in the way I gain weight. I seem to settle into a weight zone, where I will hover between a range of about three to five pounds. Most recently it has been from 229-234. I will vary between that zone starting by mostly showing up at the lowest weight, then it will gradually land more and more often on the mid-range numbers with periodic alarming jumps up to the high point, and more relieved visits to the lowest rate. Finally it will happen that more and more I will see the high end of range - until that becomes the low end. The switch between broad ranges usually happens when I am away from the scale (on a cruise, or at Banjo camp, or vacation - or whatever). I went from 229 being the high number to being the low number when I was at banjo camp. But the switches within the range happens every month when my period hits. So, usually I can hover at about a four pound range for about four months or so. I absolutely HATE that I am over 230. And I even more hate that I can't figure out a) how to stop this continuous gain and b) how to make it go back down. It was about a year ago that I first cleared 220. That puts me at 10 pounds in this year. Funny thing. That is EXACTLY what I have been doing for the past 8 years. So - eating more doesn't work. Eating less doesn't work. Doing more cardio doesn't work. Doing more weight training doesn't work. Doing yoga doesn't work. Eating vegetables and high fiber doesn't work. Eating protein doesn't work. Fat Flushing doesn't work. Sugar busting doesn't work. Eating healthy and exercising at the same time doesn't work. NOTHING works! Sarah likes to point out that in the beginning I did lose weight - but 8 pounds total - which is completely consistent with my weight loss at the beginning of ANY change in my diet (I lost 9 with Atkins and 6 with Fat Flush). To be completely honest and fair. The first year September 05-August 06 - I dropped about 10 pounds (215.4 to 205-ish) from October to March. I stabilized around 208-209 until that October when I quit smoking. It was at that point that I began AGAIN my steady increase. So - since October of 2006 I have gained about 20 (TWENTY!!) pounds - and it is still increasing! I am not entirely sure you can even count the 10 pounds from the beginning as real weight loss - since I always thought the 215.4 was unnaturally inflated from a weekend of eating junk and scrapbooking. I had weighed in at my annual just in July (6 weeks earlier) at 210. So - Year One - I lost 1 pound. Year Two I gained 14 pounds. And Year Three (which we have just completed month six) I have gained - so far - 10 pounds.
So - I am thinking now that I respond to nicotine. I can't say helps me lose, but I think it kept me from gaining. Just thinking, I had been gaining steadily from about 1997 (when I turned 30) until I started smoking in about 2003. I then held pretty steady until I quit smoking in 2006. It had nothing to do with diet and exercise. It was all drug induced. Hummmm. I wonder if there is a healthier version of nicotine that I can take? Unfortunately all of the diet drugs are appetite supressents - and that isn't my problem. The other type that they just started marketing (Alli) are fat absorbtion blockers - which I already do naturally. I can tell because fatty foods make me assend - so I avoid them. I need a metabolism eccerant. Isn't that what Phen-Phen did? isn't that what MDMA (ecstacy) did? Why are all the effective weight loss drugs not illegal? Sigh.
I have an appointment with Rebecca tomorrow. I want to talk to her about my nicotine response. I wonder if there is an herbal supplement that might do the same thing.
4 comments:
Hi Amy,
You mentioned every diet I've ever heard of and more so that seems like problem No. 1. The one thing I've learned in this weight loss game is patience.
If you put yourself on a healthy routine of eating and exercising and stick to it you will lose weight.
You can't lose 9 pounds, go back to old habits then try the next diet rolling down the block.
That is most likely the reason why you're gaining.
When I changed my eating habits last year I overhauled my diet so I'd eat healthy every day. It wasn't a diet it was as lifestyle.
From there I tweaked it, changing up foods and exercise but mostly just trying to be consistent.
I think that will be the biggest thing for you right now. There's no quick fix. But if you can lose 9 pounds you can lose 29 or 39.
Sounds like you need some goals, I'd start with short-term goals that don't have to do with how much weight you lose but have more to do with habits. Then you'll start to see long-term success. Go for it!
Hey Vicki,
I appreciate your desire to give helpful information - but you have to understand that I have been at this diet business for twelve years! I have read every nutrition book out there and eating healthy is so ingrained in me that I am not sure if I even remember HOW to eat an unhealthy diet. I am all about lifestyle changes - and I have done that. That is where my frustration lies - 12 years of doing this has resulted in nothing. I DIDN'T lose 9 pounds = that is the whole point. If I lost 9 pounds I would weigh less than I did 12 years ago - but I weigh 60 pounds MORE. I have had more than one nutritionist tell me that my body is very good at adapting - and one tell me that is a classic Germanic body response. I have found some of the information in Intuitive Eating very interesting - and it completely explains why eating fewer and fewer calories DOESN'T work for everyone. Since overeating - and poor eating - have never been my problem, reducing calories is not going to be my solution. I wish setting goals was all I needed.
I say this realizing it's going to piss you off:
Vicki's right--the one thing you haven't been is consistent. It seems to me like you're always playing around with the food you eat (the type, the amounts, the balance between proteins and carbs, plus added weirdness of fat flushes and bitter herbs and God knows what else) and you stick with each new try for a few weeks, maybe up to six weeks or so, and then you give up and try something else.
I've never heard the "classic Germanic body response" thing before, but as far as your body type goes, you're not significantly different than Emily (who also seems to take after the Angerer side of the family) and the thing she's doing that IS significantly different than you is exercising. Not sporadically or lightly, but heavily and regularly. You seem to go to the gym in spurts, and then stop, or you went to that trainer for a while and then stopped. I'd LOVE to see you really up your activity level to see if that has the positive effect on your metabolism that you seem to be looking for in food (or nicotine or some other drug). Walk for an hour every day, go to the gym for heavier exercise three days a week on top of that, and start every day with some light weight work or yoga. When you think about Emily's general activity level compared to yours, it's not just a matter of going to the gym more often (which she does, for really difficult/long workouts) but of maintaining a high level of activity all the time. Clearly that's easier to do when you're up and down the stairs 40 times a day running after kids, or walking to the library or taking them to the playground, but you could replicate this high level of activity. It wouldn't be fun or easy, but I think it's absolutely necessary. And it doesn't seem particularly fair to blame a Germanic body type when the rate of obesity in Germany is only one-third what it is in the U.S.
I also think that in many ways you're deluding yourself about your diet. You say you eat a very healthy diet, and for the most part you do. But you also eat out quite a lot, which isn't especially healthy--even the healthy choices at a restaurant are worse than the equivalent homemade (we had dinner at Panera on Monday for a school fundraiser--the Asian chicken salad was over 500 calories). Have you ever tried a complete moratorium on eating out? You can't really say "but I don't do it that often." I think one dinner out a week is fine for someone who isn't trying to lose weight. But it's nearly impossible to lose weight if you're eating out even once a week, especially given your pattern of weight loss and gain. This is true for me, who does seem to be able to follow the "rules" to lose weight, so I think it's even more true for you. When I go back and read your posts, it seems that lunches and dinners out are pretty frequent (and this includes trips to Starbucks, Coldstone in the summer, going to bars, etc.) and days/evenings spent reading in bed are pretty frequent. You say that your poor eating is still better than average, but since average in this country is abyssmal, I wouldn't set that as my standard.
You're probably right that the cycle of dieting has only served to mess up your metabolism further, and of course giving up smoking tends to have the effect of slowing down a metabolism. You can't speed up a metabolism without drugs or exercise. And since, as you say, the drugs are illegal, that doesn't give you many options. Thirty minutes a day of moderate exercise is the minimum recommended for staying healthy. For losing weight, though, you need to do more than that and stop making excuses about your job (we all have them), your gym buddy (none of us have one of them), your general level of fatigue or health, or your schedule.
It's frustrating for all of us to watch you struggle while we seem to have fewer problems. And sure, some of this can be chalked up to different body types and different natural metabolisms. But ultimately I think it comes down to consistency--none of us LIKE to exercise, but Emily and I do it because we know we have to, and we do it on top of a lifestyle that is already more active because of dogs and kids. But the dogs and kids, while they force us to be more active, are also a curse--they eat into our time. I easily spend more than an hour a day with childcare, so why can't you spend an hour out walking? And if I can manage daily exercise on top of that, why can't you also get to the gym on top of that hour long walk? It's like the Amish diet that got attention a few years ago--don't worry about your food, just walk 15 miles a day and do heavy manual labor. That's what keeps the Germanic body response in check.
Look at the pictures of the Amish women - 15 miles a day and manual labor - and they are still frequently plump!
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