I don't understand my body, I just don't. I'm not complaining, but I don't understand how I can have a loss like this during a week that I ate like 1300 calories a day, and not lose anything at all during a week I ate 1000 calories a day AND did more exercise. But, as I look back at my archives and my weight-record that I keep on paper, I can see that this is nothing new. To wit:
3/1/07 -- 355
3/7/07 -- 348
3/14/07 -- 349.5
3/17/07 -- 344.6
3/24/07 -- 342.6
3/30/07 -- 334.6 (!!!! -- What the hell? Why???)
4/4/07 -- 333.4
4/10/07 -- 335.0
4/13/07 -- 331.6
4/20/07 -- 327.6
4/27/06 -- 325.2
5/4/07 -- 321.2
5/11/07 -- 321.2
5/18/07 -- 319.2
So at least if I freak out next week, I can look at this and see that it's not something I'm doing wrong now versus last week -- it's just been the freaking unpredictable pattern.
Happy Weekend!
Friday, May 25, 2007
Friday, May 18, 2007
Week 11 Weigh In -- 321.2/319.2
If I lose 2 lbs a week for 80 weeks, I'll be at my goal weight. ;)
Happy weekend!
Happy weekend!
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Week 10 Weigh In -- 321.2/321.2
I weighed in on Friday, but had such a crazy busy weekend I couldn't post. So I will weigh-in again this Friday, May 18.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Obesity "Gene"?
My early morning surf usually takes me to the New York Times Online, and today was no different. On the front page, I found this article on whether or not obesity is a 'natural' condition for some people's bodies, based on their genetic code. I read the article with an open mind, though my instinct is to discount such theories because 1) I want to feel as though I am master of my domain, so to speak, and NEED to believe that if I work hard enough, I can control my weight and my health and 2) I've seen the power of environment on my parents, who were thin throughout my entire childhood, and who gained weight upon becoming sedentary -- they stopped playing recreational sports and working out in their 30s, and started gaining weight, though neither has reached the heights of obesity that I can lay claim to. Anyway, because I am aware of this personal bias, I made every attempt to read the article with a positive, friendly mindset. Yet several things about the studies stood out as unscientific to me, and I wondered how the author of the article could have overlooked these important issues.
One of the major points used to justify the hypothesis of the article is that in the few studies cited, formerly obese people's metabolisms were in starvation mode compared with "naturally thin" people's metabolisms who gained and then lost weight. Forgive me for being trite, but, duh. The individuals in one study cited were given 600 calories per day on a liquid diet. They lost more than 100 pounds in a very short amount of time due to severe calorie restriction. There was absolutely no mention of exercise in their program, which leads me to believe that there wasn't any. Of course their metabolisms appeared to be starving -- they were! Other studies seemed to follow the same pattern -- they focused on calorie restriction as means to weight loss, rather than the combination of healthy eating and exercise. The final evidence used to support the hypothesis is that in studies of adoptive children and twins, those with biological parents who are obese tended to be obese themselves. I have a couple of beefs with this. First of all, what's the standard deviation compared to the rate of obesity in the population at large? Secondly, if 80 percent of children have the obesity gene from at least one parent, why aren't 80 percent of us obese? The article closes with an ominous comparison of a formerly obese person's drive to eat to a normal person's need to breathe, which the scientist urges the formerly obese person to resist. Snort. Either that's a horribly inaccurate analogy and the drives are not on a similar level of intensity, or you are telling people who have this horrible genetic tendency that they should not do something that is as essential to their bodies as breathing. So which one is it, doc?
Reading articles like this always piss me off. I'm a social scientist, not a 'hard' scientist, but even I, with my piddling, bumbling introduction to the scientific method know that any study that does not take into account the effect of exercise on metabolism is not strictly scientific -- it does not look at all causal variables, and makes a conclusion that purports to explain a phenomenon with multiple causal variables. There is an argument to be made, equally as compelling as the genetics argument, that our modern sedentary lifestyles contribute to the obesity epidemic as least as significantly as genetics. I'm certainly not saying that genetics doesn't play a large part, but correlation does not necessarily equal causation.
For my part at least... I've been obese since childhood. I've lost and gained a whole person. My metabolism is pretty dang slow. Yet I can say with complete honesty that since I started eating properly (getting in my five fruits and veggies per day, I can say that I regularly eat 1000 calories a day without feeling deprived) and exercising, I have not been hungry or had cravings, not one single time in two and some months. I guess I must have a genetic anomaly.
One of the major points used to justify the hypothesis of the article is that in the few studies cited, formerly obese people's metabolisms were in starvation mode compared with "naturally thin" people's metabolisms who gained and then lost weight. Forgive me for being trite, but, duh. The individuals in one study cited were given 600 calories per day on a liquid diet. They lost more than 100 pounds in a very short amount of time due to severe calorie restriction. There was absolutely no mention of exercise in their program, which leads me to believe that there wasn't any. Of course their metabolisms appeared to be starving -- they were! Other studies seemed to follow the same pattern -- they focused on calorie restriction as means to weight loss, rather than the combination of healthy eating and exercise. The final evidence used to support the hypothesis is that in studies of adoptive children and twins, those with biological parents who are obese tended to be obese themselves. I have a couple of beefs with this. First of all, what's the standard deviation compared to the rate of obesity in the population at large? Secondly, if 80 percent of children have the obesity gene from at least one parent, why aren't 80 percent of us obese? The article closes with an ominous comparison of a formerly obese person's drive to eat to a normal person's need to breathe, which the scientist urges the formerly obese person to resist. Snort. Either that's a horribly inaccurate analogy and the drives are not on a similar level of intensity, or you are telling people who have this horrible genetic tendency that they should not do something that is as essential to their bodies as breathing. So which one is it, doc?
Reading articles like this always piss me off. I'm a social scientist, not a 'hard' scientist, but even I, with my piddling, bumbling introduction to the scientific method know that any study that does not take into account the effect of exercise on metabolism is not strictly scientific -- it does not look at all causal variables, and makes a conclusion that purports to explain a phenomenon with multiple causal variables. There is an argument to be made, equally as compelling as the genetics argument, that our modern sedentary lifestyles contribute to the obesity epidemic as least as significantly as genetics. I'm certainly not saying that genetics doesn't play a large part, but correlation does not necessarily equal causation.
For my part at least... I've been obese since childhood. I've lost and gained a whole person. My metabolism is pretty dang slow. Yet I can say with complete honesty that since I started eating properly (getting in my five fruits and veggies per day, I can say that I regularly eat 1000 calories a day without feeling deprived) and exercising, I have not been hungry or had cravings, not one single time in two and some months. I guess I must have a genetic anomaly.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Monday, April 30, 2007
Changes
Yesterday, C was tired, and I went for the Sunday Shop at the grocery store alone. It was late in the day, the sun just beginning to set, and the parking lot was almost deserted. Instead of my usual hand-held basket, I got a cart, and began shopping. I filled my basket with cans of crushed tomatoes, ground turkey, sliced turkey breast, whole wheat bread, romaine lettuce, strawberries, onions, garlic, a few light TV dinners for those emergency moments where cooking isn't an option, dry curd cottage cheese, skim mozzarella. I put my purchases on the conveyer belt and refused help out to the car. I loaded the groceries into the trunk, and as I put on my seatbelt, I realized something. Lifting and carrying heavy grocery bags is easier than it used to be; I no longer heave myself in and out of the car; I don't have to pull the seatbelt out to its longest setting. These are very small things, very small effects of the thirty pounds I've lost so far, yet they are profound, and important.
It has been shown by neuroscientists that human beings can remember the experiences of pleasure, pain or ease, but they can't feel the sensations. So while we recall that something was painful or pleasurable or easy or hard, we don't get the oomph that comes with the actual experience. We begin to forget the pain, lose the memory of the pleasure. I've been doing it for decades with my weight. Forgetting the embarrassment of not being able to fit in a seat, not noticing when my feet got sore from standing too long, generally ignoring all goings on beneath my neck as a coping mechanism. And every day I woke up and forgot it all so that I could stay sane and okay enough with myself to just keep going, to keep living. I can't say there has been all that much pleasure to my physical existence, other than the time I spent with C, so I haven't lost any memories there.
My mother is my height, and used to keep her weight between 130-150 pounds. In the last five years, she has gained more than 100 pounds, and is for the first time in our lives, morbidly obese, like me. She frequently tells me what it feels like to be thin -- I don't know the feeling, because I have never been thin -- but I think I am finally beginning to get a glimpse. Getting healthier, getting thinner, isn't going to come with some kind of bright golden light and revelatory, seismic shift between fat and thin. It's going to be marked by little things, like getting up from the couch without any effort, like being able to sit Indian-style without my legs going to sleep, like putting on clothes and not having them cut painfully into my belly. I never realized how much those things hurt until now, when they're gone. I'm writing this down now because while I know I will forget the sensations, I want to remember feeling them.
It has been shown by neuroscientists that human beings can remember the experiences of pleasure, pain or ease, but they can't feel the sensations. So while we recall that something was painful or pleasurable or easy or hard, we don't get the oomph that comes with the actual experience. We begin to forget the pain, lose the memory of the pleasure. I've been doing it for decades with my weight. Forgetting the embarrassment of not being able to fit in a seat, not noticing when my feet got sore from standing too long, generally ignoring all goings on beneath my neck as a coping mechanism. And every day I woke up and forgot it all so that I could stay sane and okay enough with myself to just keep going, to keep living. I can't say there has been all that much pleasure to my physical existence, other than the time I spent with C, so I haven't lost any memories there.
My mother is my height, and used to keep her weight between 130-150 pounds. In the last five years, she has gained more than 100 pounds, and is for the first time in our lives, morbidly obese, like me. She frequently tells me what it feels like to be thin -- I don't know the feeling, because I have never been thin -- but I think I am finally beginning to get a glimpse. Getting healthier, getting thinner, isn't going to come with some kind of bright golden light and revelatory, seismic shift between fat and thin. It's going to be marked by little things, like getting up from the couch without any effort, like being able to sit Indian-style without my legs going to sleep, like putting on clothes and not having them cut painfully into my belly. I never realized how much those things hurt until now, when they're gone. I'm writing this down now because while I know I will forget the sensations, I want to remember feeling them.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Week 8 Weigh In -- 327.6/325.2
I hate to bitch about a solid almost 2.5 lb weight loss, but I swear to god, I don't understand my body at all. This last week has been THE BEST week I've had since I started this program -- calorie wise (1200 or less per day), fat gram wise (30 or less per day), and exercise wise (5 hours of moderate to high intensity cardio). So WTF is going on? A little, evil voice is whispering in my head, "Take some supplements, take some supplements," but I know this voice is not concerned with my health. I guess I should focus on the positive -- I've done a lot of good for my heart this week with all that cardio, and I've put healthy, efficient fuel in my body in the right amounts.
I didn't meet my April goal after all, which is probably part of the reason I am upset. However, I would have met the goal if I hadn't gone on vacation and gained that pound that week. Trying to cheer myself up here -- doesn't help that I've talked to my mom and to C, my fiancee, and they both clucked with disappointment.
I didn't meet my April goal after all, which is probably part of the reason I am upset. However, I would have met the goal if I hadn't gone on vacation and gained that pound that week. Trying to cheer myself up here -- doesn't help that I've talked to my mom and to C, my fiancee, and they both clucked with disappointment.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Week 7 Weigh In -- 331.5/327.6
Woohoo! Down is a Good Thing. I'm still six pounds from reaching my April goal (damn you, Easter vacation, damn you), but this week is my Water Retention Week, so I might be able to reach goal when the PMS water flushes out of my body.
I hope everyone has a good weigh-in and a fabulous weekend!
I hope everyone has a good weigh-in and a fabulous weekend!
Friday, April 13, 2007
Week 6 Weigh-In -- 335.0/331.5
Woo hoo! I might be able to reach my April goal after all, which is fantastic news. It definitely helps with the motivation to do my cardio. Sorry for the short post -- I plan to write something tonight or tomorrow about the "obesity gene" stuff that's plastered all over the news.
Happy Weekend!
Happy Weekend!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Week 5 Weigh In -- 336.4/335.0
I was out of town for the Easter holiday from Wednesday to Tuesday. I weighed on Wednesday before I left and was down about 1 lb. I weighed again yesterday and was down another .5 lb. Considering my exercise schedule went to shit over the 6 days we were gone, I don't feel too bad about that. I've realized that no matter how well/what I eat, my body NEEDS exercise to loose weight. I'm back on track since I've been home, and will again weigh in on Friday to get back on schedule.
I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday -- I'm already ready for my next vacation!
I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday -- I'm already ready for my next vacation!
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