Challenge Complete! (FINALLY!)

Today I have the evidence! Ta da!

This challenge has mostly been about frustration and annoyance for me. I am so glad to be done. 133 was supposed to be my "easy" goal since 130 is my goal in real life. This challenge felt much harder to complete than the one in the spring due to a combination of factors - lack of motivation, parties, medications, carrying more muscle, and only indoor working out.

I was very surprised that it came down to the wire like this, especially after how well the Boost Your Metabolism week went. Looking at the weight loss chart, I realize the amount of effort I put in is the key element (shocker!). Despite all the external factors, when I stopped with all the little cheats, stuck to the workout routine, and (most importantly) went to bed at a reasonable hour (and therefore didn't night snack), which I only did consistently during the first week and last two weeks, I had actual results.

 

Now as look ahead to maintaining my weight and meeting my new goal - no need to diet in January - I realize motivation and willpower are the key elements (and the hardest to find!). Keeping up the workout routine should be fine. But not falling back into bad snacking habits and learning how to have cheat food in moderation is going to be hard. I always gain back 2 pounds right away after dieting. So I have ease back into "not being on a diet".

New goals:

1. Go to bed at the same time as Moose every night. No after dinner snacking.

2. Finish Body Revolution in a timely manner. (And try to meet my unofficial touch-the-ceiling-while-burpie-ing goal.)

3. Continue to eat new healthy recipes, but carbs are okay for dinner sometimes. Max 1 cheat food per day. Dessert (but not after dinner) or alcohol, never both!

When I am done Body Revolution (3ish weeks) I will assess where I am at and adjust my habits from there. I still want to have a flat stomach someday and not muffin-top out of slim fitting jeans, but I just can't handle trying to lose any more weight right now. That is a problem for the new year!

Close Only Counts in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

This morning I step on the scale. Lo and behold, what do I see? 133.0! I scurry to fetch the camera, step on again, and the scale says... 133.2.

So not funny, scale.

So I try again. And again. And again, and again, and again. 133.2 every single time, dammit, until the scale gets pissed and starts showing 133.6 and then 133.8 out of spite.

Are you freaking kidding me?!

Scale, you can go die in a turkey fire.

Anyway, tomorrow I will be prepared - with the camera - for the first weigh-in. *Fingers crossed!*

The best I could get photographic evidence of. Balls!

The Last Monday

Last week: 135.4lbs
This week: 134.0lbs
Goal: 133lbs

Getting close... 1 pound in 5 sleeps... hopefully with random water weight fluctuations it is possible!

This past week I worked really hard, so I actually feel kinda calm this week. I know I have done everything I can, so as long as I stick to the proper routine, I know the number on the scale is just going to be whatever it's going to be.

I have done Jillian every day and double Jillianed on Friday since it was Moose's birthday and we went out. My eating habits were essentially steel cut oatmeal for breakfast, whole wheat muffin and apple for lunch, greek yogurt with nuts for snack, and beef stew for dinner, with nothing but water to drink.

We hosted a Birthday Eve party on Thursday and I had one goat cheese tartlet, five mini eggs, three meat balls, two chicken fingers, two tostitos with salsa dip, two crackers with cheese, and the rest was roast beef and veggies with hummus. No alcohol and no butter tarts or snack size chocolate bars or brandy beans.

Friday (after double Jillian) I had a pear salad and wild boar ham with cheese/cabbage/almond deep fried ball, ate a few mouthfuls of Moose's dessert, and had two shot glasses of whiskey sour. The deep fried-ness did not agree with my gut which said, "WTF is this? I have no idea how to digest that anymore!" and immediately expelled it. I am very upset I forgot to weight myself the next morning, because right after eating breakfast and drinking a bunch of water I was 135.0 on the scale. I may have missed a challenge ending dip! Gah!

Saturday for Moose's Boxing Birthday I had cheese fondue for dinner (and tried to mostly dip apples and broccoli and ate a lot less bread and chicken peperettes) and a small piece of tart raspberry pie and ice cream for dessert, but I only had oatmeal and yogurt all day and had no alcohol, so I think the calories were maybe in an okay range even if the quality of the food wasn't.

Sunday I only had one piece of french toast and one piece of bacon with a tiny amount of maple syrup for breakfast, and complimented it with greek yogurt and raspberries. I had yogurt and nuts for snack (Jillian would yell at me for double dairying in one day) and roasted chicken with butternut squash soup for dinner.

I am on the last two workouts for Body Revolution. They are hard but very interesting. Can you do pushups in a bridge position? I sure as hell can't! But, I have two and a half weeks left, so hopefully I can do a couple by the end! The last level of cardio video is the most evil thing I have ever done. Jillian claims it is the hardest workout she has ever come up with. I put on a false grin as I must face it every three days...

Monday = No Fun Day

Last week: 134.8lbs
This week: 135.4lbs
Goal: 133lbs

12 sleeps left. I am so screwed. Please be bloating that is gone by next week!

Tell me why? I don't like Mondays...

Last week: 136.4lbs
This week: 134.8lbs
Goal: 133lbs

1.8lbs to lose in 19 sleeps. It is possible!

This past week the scale has settled down a bit, not jumping around like crazy. I'm not sure if my body has started to find equilibrium or if the combination of medications (one with the side effect of constipation and the other with the side effect of diarrhea) has made my gut act normal for a change. We shall see as I go off the second med. I am trying hard not to succumb to the "modest weight gain" side effect of the stupid drugs.

In Jillian news, I have started week 9 of Body Revolution, meaning I am on workouts 9 and 10 and cardio 3. These are definitely the hardest Jillian workouts I have ever done. (With exception to Extreme Shed and Shred which I just did with Krista. They have a lot of the same exercises, so it follows they are about the same level.) I am so sore, as if I've been doing solid weight training. But, I have never enjoyed Jillian more.

The more difficult the exercises get with lots of balancing and doing lower and upper body exercises at the same time, the more interesting it is. It takes a lot of focus to do the moves properly and I never get bored during the workouts or need to watch a show while doing the non-cardio workouts. I really enjoy rotating through three videos and doing something new every two weeks. I'm excited (and afraid) to see what workouts 11 and 12 are like.

Monday Again

Last Week's Weight: 138.8lbs
This Week's Weight: 136.4lbs
Goal Weight: 133lbs

The scale is being a bit more reasonable this week. Still going to be tough to make the challenge deadline, though.

Body Image

In elementary school, I had a classmate named Jessica Sachse. It was hard to have a conversation with her and not think about her physical disability, despite the fact that she is a very intelligent person with many artistic interests similar to my own.

I have not talked to Jes since high school, but a couple of years ago I read an article about her in The Star called This Isn't an American Apparel Ad. She posed for a series of ads that ran on TTC monitors to "challenge conventional notions of sexiness."

I discovered Jes has also posed naked as a way to explore herself and see what everyone is looking at when they stare at her. She has a very insightful short video called Body Image posted here (or with an analysis posted here) that explains her thoughts and feelings on her disfigured body.


What follows may sound like a lesson that is learned in an after-school special, and I don't want to come off as preachy, but in truth it is important to sometimes step back and think about where your thoughts and feelings come from when assessing your own body.

Especially when we are dieting and exercising and trying to improve ourselves as much as possible, we (or at least I do) can fall into the mentality of "no matter how hard I work I am never sexy enough, can never get my body to match the ideal in my head". But we have to remember that almost all of our ideals come from current popular culture's unattainable idea that beauty is a godly standard of perfection.

The point of dieting and exercising is to be healthy, fit, and happy, to feel good about yourself according to your own standards. It is not about trying to win a beauty contest.

Imagine how you would feel if your body was too different to even compete with conventional ideas of beauty. Then what would you think of yourself? Where would your self-confidence come from? Like Jes, I'm sure we would focus a lot more on intellectual pursuits and think of our body as simply a vehicle to get our mind from one life experience to another.

I'll admit, I'm glad I'm attractive and that other people think so. Life is easier when you visually fit in to the accepted norm and people treat you nicely because of it. But being glad you're beautiful and being obsessed with being seen as beautiful are two different things. It's helpful to be reminded by people like Jes where the boundary is and which mentality will actually make you happy.

Monday of Shame

Last week's weigh-in: 135.0lbs
This week's weigh-in: 138.8lbs
Goal weight: 133lbs

So I am not entirely sure what is up (other than my weight). One would think The Weekend of Crazy Candy Consumption would be to blame (and it certainly was a dieting setback), but last week I was already at 138lbs on Thursday, which means less than a pound of change over the weekend. Bloating should no longer be a factor. Perhaps the new medication I am taking is affecting things?

Honestly, it sucks, but I'm also willing just to wait it out and see if it goes back down. My clothes don't fit as if I've gained four pounds, they are still looser than when I started the challenge. All I can really do is try and be hard-core about my diet and exercise.

Monday is Finally Monday Again!

Last week's weigh-in: 136.6lbs
This week's weigh-in: 135.0lbs
Goal weight: 133lbs

Not too bad considering the weekend, although the overall trend over the last 2-3 weeks has been a stable line. Once I have de-bloated by next week, hopefully I will be close to the end of the challenge! (Although Krista's birthday weekend is coming up... better make sure to weigh myself Friday morning!)

I still want to meet my weight goal, so I will not be swapping it out for an exercise goal like we talked about, but I'm totally cool if that's what you guys want to do. I will add a little unofficial exercise goal though just to move some of the focus off the dreaded scale number - I want to be able to touch the ceiling when I do the jump part of burpies. I think I'm about two inches away at this point. (I think our ceilings are 9 feet high).

Unexpected side-effect of Jillian - I am a better dancer! Okay, maybe not better (because I still probably look like a fish out of water having a seizure) but I can do way more jumping and twisting and squatting type moves and not get tired on the dance floor - wearing 3 inch heels! Woo!

Monday Should Have Been the New Tuesday

Last week's weigh-in: 135.4lbs
This week's weigh-in: 136.6lbs
Goal weight: 133lbs

Balls. Although this is up almost a pound from yesterday, so hopefully it is a bit of a spike anomaly in one way or an other.

Clearly, I have not been working very hard. It is so easy to fall back into old habits! Motivation, where did you go? Although when I do get around to doing Jillian, I am enjoying the harder Body Revolution workouts. All the tricky balancing and jumping keeps my focus and makes the time go by a (tiny) bit faster.

Oh well, time to buckle down and see some progress before ruining it all at Krista's birthday celebrations :)

Delicious Mayo-less Chicken Salad

I ate this on a bed of baby spinach. Yum! Go Jillian recipes!

 

Tuesday is the New Monday

Last week's weigh-in: 135.6lbs
This week's weigh-in: 135.4lbs
Goal weight: 133lbs

I'm not really sure if the lack of change is my failure to properly encorporate the new meal plan rules into my diet or because of Thanksgiving weekend which included four less-than-ideal meals. I did avoid all alcohol though, to many comments of "Why aren't you drinking?" and "It's Thanksgiving dinner, I wouldn't ruin it by drinking water instead of wine."

Also, when I brought up the fact that I am trying to eat more whole foods and being strict with my diet to lose what I've recently gained and learn to maintain my weight, all I met was criticism. "You shouldn't be dieting, you're already too skinny." "You have no fat to lose." "It's unhealthy to be too thin." et cetera. I even got eye rolls when I said one reason we were late was because I exercised that morning.

Screw you people, I'm going home.

I know most of it is misunderstanding - of course when I wear flattering clothing and am clearly the thinnest person in the room it looks like I am the last person who should be dieting. A big part of it is them justifying their own guilt for not bettering their own body like they wish they could. But, as Moose said, it would be nice to just once get the response of, "Yeah, it is hard work to maintain a nice figure. Good for you for trying to eat healthier and keep fit."

Oh well. It's my life, not theirs. I will simply continue on my way and feel good for "winning" at every family event.

Weekly Weigh-In (#1)

Last week's weigh-in: 141.8lbs
This week's weigh-in: 135.6lbs
Goal weight: 133lbs

Let me start by saying this drop definitely includes bloating, which is usually about 2lbs for me. Even still, 4.2 pounds is a lot in one week. So what happened?

Well, remember my first post where I was all whiny and frustrated with dieting? Yeah, before this past week I had no motivation to diet and was sick of a lot of my diet foods. So I let myself eat whatever I wanted, because if dieting was going to make me miserable and I didn't care about my weight, what was the point? I ate McDonald's fries, Blizzards, chocolate, chip truck poutine, brownies, and pie. And it didn't make me feel better. At all.

Then Moose's family came up for the weekend. I ate okay but still had dessert and alcohol. Moose's mom looked at a recent picture of us on a phone and asked "Who's the pregnant woman?"

Ouch.

I jokingly said, "Well, now I know it's really time to diet." But at that moment, I was suddenly motivated again. (She also thought Moose was some random Asian guy, so I can't be TOO offended.)

So, how to change my diet foods. Well, I have this handy recipe booklet from Jillian that goes along with the Body Revolution workouts. Week 1: Boost Your Metabolism. For one week, eat no flour, sugar, or fruit. NO prepackaged, fake foods. Follow her simple recipes for egg breakfasts, soup or salad lunches, yogurt or hummus snacks, and meat and vegetable dinners. Okay, I can do that.

Obviously, I had good results. I'm a bad test case though, because I made a lot of substitutions for the fish and vegetables I don't like. But I followed the recipes in spirit, didn't cheat, and did so-so on the exercise part. She warned that you may be tired and headache-y from the sudden lack of sugars and carbs. Yes I was, but was that from the food or my sleeping disorder and menstruation side-effects? Who knows.

Anyway, this was a successful start to dieting. I am a little worried about moving into a broader range of food again. I plan to mix Jillian meals with my old diet food. Jillian's meals for the rest of the 90 days are much less strict, but I'm a really picky eater, especially with the dinners. Hopefully I don't fall into my old habits - too many carbs and sweet fruits, not enough variety in meat and vegetables. But my shopping list is nearly unrecognizable, so it looks like a good start!

Starting the Diet - AGAIN

My rule is when I hit 140 on the scale, I have to diet. No choice, sucka. Not allowed to go up a pant size ever again.

I hit 140lbs in June. I "started" dieting several times. I did not lose any weight. Finally I had two successful weeks of dieting before camping. Then I gained back what I lost. I hit 142 point something after camping.

Finally, two weeks after camping, the real dieting started again.

My official goal is 133lbs. It is an "easy" and simple goal. I don't have the drive to do the hard goal like in the spring.

I am using Jillian Michael's Body Revolution to help me achieve this goal, as well as rock climbing and biking (for as long as weather permits). I can't decide whether to try following Jillian's meal plan or not. So many foods I don't like... (fish, vegetables!) I don't know if I could do it. But my diet food probably needs a reboot.

My unofficial goals need work. They are not easily measurable and seemingly unattainable. Those are pretty bad qualities for goals.

#1: 130lbs (and stay there!).
I hit it once, for about 3 days. It was so hard, and I felt like the only way to maintain it was to make dieting my forever way of eating (no junk or booze, ever). But any higher than this and I feel like I still need to lose weight.

#2: Have a flat stomach.
I was at 130lbs. I finished Jillian's Six Weeks Six Pack (even did levels 1&2 back to back). I could feel all the muscles (and still can!), but I still didn't have a flat stomach. What else to do? Is it simply not possible?

#3: Stop needing to diet 1 month after finishing dieting.
Every time I diet, I immediately gain back 2 lbs the week after I finish because I can't help gorging. Then I slowly gain weight for the next couple months and hit my max weight again. Then I need to diet. AGAIN. I am so sick of constantly needing to diet, of every family event saying, "Yeah, I'm dieting again."

When I gain weight after a weekend of indulgence or a vacation, I want to lose the weight right away and get back to my goal weight. After a vacation, Moose simply doesn't indulge (but doesn't eat diet food) and falls back to his previous weight. If I go back to consistent healthy-ish foods and exercise, I will simply maintain my new weight. How do I fix my body's metabolism? How do I reset my body's comfortable weight? Is the only option dieting for a week after one day of drinking or dessert? That's still constant dieting!

Hurumph I say.