No excuses, get what you want

Another banner week. Checked all the boxes on my goals and lost 3 lbs. Weighed in this morning at 274, which is a new landmark as well: lower than my lowest weight when I was trying back in the summer of 2017. So, I've lost all the weight I gained since that time, and then some. Also overall, from my starting weight in November 2018, I have lost 21+ lbs. Ate clean all week, and went to the gym 3 times plus worked out at home on days I didn't go the gym. ✔✔✔

So let's talk about some of it.

Weight: I've been weighing myself every day and I plan to continue doing so. I say, "hogwash" to the popular myth that you should never weigh yourself more than [insert whatever interval].

Fuck that. Weighing myself every day keeps me accountable. It also helps me to understand how my diet affects my daily weight. I've had some very unpleasant surprises, like the day I got on the scale and weighed 8 lbs. more than the day before.

OK - don't panic! Here's a science-based fact: even for a person like me, who is easily capable of binge-eating 5000 calories in a few minutes, it is virtually impossible to gain even 1 lb. of actual fat in one day. (Note I say "virtually," because it is technically possible, but as a far outlier.)

So back to that day I ricocheted back up to 290 from 282 the prior day. (This was 2 weeks ago.)

Needless to say, sticker shock was in full swing that day. I was like, "Oh fuck me. What the for real fuck? I am off the wagon. I'm gonna fail again. This is bullshit. Fuck it all." Then, I took a deep breath and said, "Slow down, slow down, let's not jump off the building just yet, okay?" I had to really be honest with myself that the day before I had really overeaten, even though it was "clean" food, I still ate too much of it and a lot of salty food, including peanut butter which I swear one fucking tablespoon of peanut butter and I can feel my panties pinching me. And a lot of salty food, combined with not having gone to the gym that day, either and most of it is water weight. OK, so... phew. Yes, I went a little off the wagon, but it's not the end, it's not that bad. It did also serve to refocus my goals and my resolve. For whatever reason, this time, setbacks encourage me instead of me quitting at the slightest bump in the road.

About water and hydration, something noticed that I like: it is noteworthy that I have never had a problem drinking enough water. Water is my favorite beverage, always has been even when I was a kid. I don't keep any other kind of beverage in the house, not even milk, unless coffee counts. In fact, I despise milk, always have. They had to force me to drink it when I was a kid, and now that I don't have to do anything I don't want to, I still hate milk. Yuck. Milk is gross. (I get plenty of dairy from yogurt and cheese.)(And you don't need as much of that as the diet industry wants you to buy -- oops, I mean, wants you to think.) I love water and I always have a big cup of water at hand. Sometimes I do over-hydrate, but that's not actually bad, you just have to piss a bunch of times until your body gets back to it's preferred hydration level.

OK side tracked. Back to water, or specifically pee. Something I was struggling with and trying to accept as an inevitable consequence of getting older was having to get up to pee as much as 4-5 times during the night. Since I started going to the gym and working out regularly along with cleaning up my diet, I sometimes actually sleep through the whole night (insomnia being another major challenge for me, that is also quickly abating...) and in general I never have to get out of bed to pee more than once a night. It's seriously like a miracle. It's an unexpected benefit.

Let's move on.

Diet: something I was not expecting -- I am losing my appetite for processed and / or high-carb-low-nutrient crap food. As I have already noted (and it is truly amazing) I have not even considered buying a frozen pizza, which used to be my #1 indulgence food. And I have frozen buffalo chicken strips and fries -- my #1.5 favorite indulgence food -- in the freezer untouched for over a week now. One day last week I was about to cook some for dinner just out of habit, and as I was standing there staring into the freezer I realized that more than just not having an appetite for it, I was feeling mildly grossed out by the idea of eating that. And later that same night, when I was digging around in the fridge for a bedtime snack I actually said out loud, "Yum. Cucumber," and I ate some cucumber slices with vinegar -- and then went to bed, feeling satisfied.

Who fucking thought ever such a thing was possible? Some cucumber slices were my preferred snack.

Exercise: I am actually enjoying going to the gym. At 6 in the morning. WTF? I feel great afterward and it sets the tone for my whole day. I am currently considering stepping up my goal from 3x/wk to 5x/wk. I emphasize "considering" because I want to make sure I set sustainable goals that I can achieve 100%.

I find that by the end of my work week, I am running on a sleep deficit of 5-8 hours depending on how early I go to bed throughout the week. I just can't go to bed super early. I'm not wired for it and I'm not happy when I force myself to. I find that I am naturally tired and ready to go to bed between 9 and 10 pm, and that just has to be good enough. I find that since I have started exercising regularly and sleeping better, that the sleep deficit is not as debilitating to be as it was. I also am willing to sleep in on my days off, I do not subscribe to the belief that you must go to bed and get up at the same time every single day. It's just not practical. And I enjoy the luxurious feeling of sleeping in. It's psychologically medicinal as well as how I compensate my sleep loss during the work week. Since starting to exercise more often I have also found that my recovery time (in terms of regaining lost rest, as opposed to just making up the lost hours) is much shorter. I tend to sleep in really late Saturday and then on Sunday I wake up much earlier, for a day off.

So why the long ramble about my sleep? Well, because it will be affected by an increase to 5x/wk at the gym. I won't go after work, I just know I won't. So it has to be in the morning. Plus, I like going in the morning, there is something about it that just clicks for me. But, I find that at least 1 day a week, I end up sleeping in about 30 minutes and just doing my "short morning," to still get to work on time. And I find that day I always thank myself for choosing to sleep another half hour. I think I am going to try going to the gym 4 days next week and if that goes okay, I will trial-run a 5 day schedule and see if I think it is sustainable.

And just because I have been watching them on YouTube, here's a shout-out to my current favorite weight loss inspirations: ZachAttacksFat and JordanShrinks.

Zach has a saying I like: "No excuses, get what you want." I find myself saying that any time I am about to go off the wagon and it helps. I also have realized that it really is about me and what I want and my plan to get there. And the more I work on it, the more I realize that all that matters is going forward. Missing a goal, or going off the wagon for one meal or one day or a little weight gain are not reasons to quit, they are reasons to try harder. I even find myself "leaning in" on my workouts, like the last few minutes on the treadmill I find myself saying, "get into it, not out." Push through, get the endorphin rush, you'll be happy.

Another quote by Zach that I think about quite often, "I've never gone to the gym when I really wasn't feeling it and regretted it after." That is so true -- when the alarm goes off at 5am it is easy to say fuck it and reset it for 6:30, but I end up thinking how disappointed in myself I will be if that is what happens. And I get up and get ready and go. I have been preparing my meals for work and getting my gym stuff all put together the night before as well so all I have to do is go. And truly, it is just the actual getting out of bed that is hard. Once my feet are on the floor, it's go time.

So let's have a little recap......

Weight: going good, losing about 2 lbs. a week on average.
Diet: going even better than expected.
Exercise: going good, could go better -- I am going to trail-run going to the gym 5x/wk
Mood / Depression: I know I didn't talk about this in this post, but going very well.

Milestone: tightened my belt down a notch

Very good week! Amazing what happens when you set goals and stick to them. Weighed in this week at 277 lbs, which is 18 lbs lost since I started tracking and this week I dropped 4 lbs. Something I see as an even greater success, and a literal milestone: I moved down a belt notch this week. I waited until I couldn't stand the feeling that my pants were going to slide off my hips any more, then one day at work in the bathroom I cinched my belt down another hole -- and much to my surprise, I was comfortable the rest of the day, even sitting down.

I need to start taking my measurements again. I'm sure the belt notch represents a couple inches lost off my waist and I know my muscles are getting bigger because I can see (and feel) the proof. I have a cloth measuring tape and 2 tape measures, you'd think I could find one of them...

Goal: start taking my measurements again.

So what did I do? Well, I went to the gym M, W & F and worked out at home the other two. And I found that as I increased my physical activity, my appetite decreased. I am still using WW to to track my dietary intake and my weight, and I ate less than my daily points allowance every day without feeling hungry. One day I only ate 18 points (which is less than half) and although I did not feel hungry that day, I was really hungry the next day before each meal. It was the only day I came close to eating my whole points allotment. So, I did learn from that a little lesson: don't under-eat, there will be a payback.

I also go the book, "It Starts With Food," and have been reading it as my bathroom book. And I have been watching every documentary or special I can get my hands on between all my TV platforms. I also try to do a 25 min beginner workout on HASFit while I cook dinner, every day. It's interesting to me, and I feel like I'm also helping my brain by watching TV that is actually educational.

I am also doing really well on my plan to eat at least 50% of my calories from vegetables. I have been having a salad for lunch every day at work, and and a lean protein with a mix of roasted or sauteed vegetables for dinner pretty much every day. This has also allowed me to keep some of the comfort meals I like in my diet without them tanking my goals. Those being: Buffalo chicken strips, french fries (oven baked only, no restaurant fries) and I also like Orange Chicken or General Tso's Chicken over white rice. I eat one or both of those once a week, but they have become the exception not the norm. I also haven't eaten a frozen pizza in at least 6 weeks, maybe more, haven't even felt tempted. I did eat 2 slices of pepperoni pizza at work about a month ago, but I actually felt kinda gross afterward. Astonishingly, I have also not eaten sandwich bread in about a month, and only a couple English muffins a week (I like one with my at-home breakfast, so Sat & Sun) and a couple times a week I eat a flour tortilla - -either a wrap of some kind or a fish taco, oh yeah, and I do still keep frozen bean & cheese burritos in the freezer which I tend to use as the base of a meal 1-2 times a week. However -- I never in all my days imagined the day would come that I didn't have a loaf of bread in the house and didn't care. I haven't even bought garden burgers 'cause I don't want to eat bread. And really, garden burgers are kind of gross, dry, carboardy grain-based quasi-bread. I'm not a vegetarian (although sometimes I forget that.) If I want a burger, I'd have a meaty one. With bacon. My standard day-to-day diet is clean enough that I can (literally) stomach some less-than-ideal foods -- they are part of my psychological satisfaction with food.

I am also doing pretty good on my promise to myself that I am going to change the way I experience food. I am working on putting my fork down after every bite. The only time I am not sticking to that is at work, and I will buckle down on that one too. I am also trying to prepare for dinner, not just prepare the food, but prepare my environment. I light some candles and incense and set the table and make sure I designate the time period as "dinner time." I'll admit it: I watch TV while I eat, I am going to keep doing that. But, I still make a concerted effort to stage my environment, put down my fork between bites, and make sure to actually taste the food before I swallow it. I also try to drink a full glass of water 20-30 minutes before eating, even if I forget the time frame, I still drink one even if it's right before. Then I drink another whole glass as part of the meal.

It is worth writing down what my routine / regimen currently looks like:

Meds / Supplements:

• St. John's Wort, 900 mg (600 in the AM & 300 at bedtime)
• Vitamin B Mega-Complex (1 cap in the AM)
• Tylenol PM (1000 mg at bedtime)
• Valerian (1500 mg at bedtime)
• Melatonin (10 mg at bedtime)

Exercise:

• Situps and lower ab crunches (15 ea. 5x week M-F first thing)
• Gym 3x week (M,W, & F before work)
• Beginner full body workout (15-25 min 5x week M-F in the evening)
• Spontaneous use of my hand weights, usually in response to an emotional food trigger

Diet:

• 50% of my calories from vegetables
• Lean protein with every meal
• Portion snacks on plates, and actually portion them
• Keep an honest and complete written track of what I put in my mouth (cock doesn't count unless you actually eat it.)
• Eat mindfully
• Before eating anything at all, drink a glass of water
• Drink a full glass of water first thing in the morning, and at bedtime (I drink a whole glass down with my supplements AM & PM, easy peasy.)
• Do a triple check system when I feel a food craving:
• Am I really hungry or was it an emotional trigger? What am I thinking about?
• Am I thirsty? Drink water and wait 5 minutes.
• Is my body craving activity? Walk around or do a 10 min workout video or use my 15 lbs hand weight and do some arm curls or something, just to see if a little activity will kill the craving.
• Plan out and prep my meals before I'm hungry. Sounds weird, but it keeps me from letting hunger give me permission to deep fry everything and dip it in ranch. 
• If I have a snack craving, at least try some snow peas or carrot sticks or a pickle. I find a pickle usually satisfies my evening snack wants by being savory and crunchy and filling all at once.

I'm happy to announce I am doing good on all of it. I've cleaned up my nutritional regimen, totally changed up my physical activity level, found myself actually interested in it instead of feeling obligated to it, and changed my routines for the better. I have lost all the weight I gained last year -- I am back down to the weight I was at 18 months ago when I last made any concerted effort to diet. I am feeling better, sleeping better, and have seen a huge improvement in my mental state and the best part -- I am still actively looking for ways to make it even better.

Something about me has changed. As I already said, I find myself interested in it and I see the results and I want to see more. When I've done this before I've tended to see only the long term goal, not the process. I hate T-shirt wisdom, but the journey really is the important part. It's not like when I get to my goal weight I can just go back to sitting in front of the TV sucking down 3 frozen pizzas a week. I will have to maintain my dietary and exercise goals for life. And that doesn't bother me this time. I don't see the goal weight as the "stopping point" any more.

In fact, there is ample evidence that people who have lost large amounts of weight -- more than 25% of their body weight or greater, have to eat a calorie reduced diet for life to maintain that weight, as much as 10% less daily calories than someone who has been at or close to a healthy weight their whole life. Your metabolism as a "set point" that goes up much easier than it goes down, and it is an evolutionary survival trait for all humans. Our bodies are built to store fat (energy) and will store as much as we give it. It's pretty basic: what goes in, goes in. It only comes out if we do something to use it up. There is also ample evidence that muscle building exercise is critical in maintaining a healthy weight. Even though you don't burn a lot of calories while you are lifting weights, the amount of energy your body uses actually building muscle tissue has benefits equal to cardio, but in the form of changing your actual shape, not just the number on the scale. Keeping muscle strength up also contributes to bone density and triggers endorphin cascades in your brain which help regulate all kinds of things including mood and appetite control.

So, it's been a good week. I was probably too hard on myself 2 weeks ago for not working out that much and going off the wagon in a few little ways. The truth is I hurt myself (my foot) and I needed some time to heal and that included some food indulgences too. I am determined that I am going to do this in a way that is psychologically and emotionally satisfying to me. And this week I saw the real proof that my goals are working. And instead of taking that as permission to back slide a little, I have seen it as evidence that I should keep going forward.

plateaus and renewal of goals

OK so I haven't written in over a month. Oops. Whatever, I forgive myself.

So, it's been a month. And my weight has pretty much plateaued. Overall, I've lost about 10 lbs in the 2 months since I started actively tracking my diet and exercise 11/11/18. Yes, 10 lbs is something to be happy about and I am. However, that is not enough -- that is just over 1 lb a week, which would be good except that I got down to my current weight the first month and now there has been no net change since. I did  "lose" some this month, but that is because I actually gained back 4 lbs.

My physical appearance is important to me, I proudly own that. I am acutely (pun intended) aware of the health consequences of being 100 lbs overweight and I see the health benefits too. I'm pretty sure they go hand in hand. In fact, I got my first "notice" that I am loosing weight from a co-worker who wouldn't say so if she didn't mean it, so that was a nice compliment. And I have noticed my belt is getting looser. (NOTE: I should start measuring myself again...) And I have noted that since I started doing core strength training, I am having an easier time getting in and out of the car and up and down from the floor, and my balance is better -- I don't have to hop around and grab things to put on socks. And, I haven't even considered eating a frozen pizza in weeks, and have barely eaten any bread. My diet is a lot cleaner than it has ever been, and I am feeling better.

HOWEVER: I am not losing weight fast enough. Right around the New Year I decided I was not happy with that rate of weight loss, and that in fact it seems pretty clear to me that diet alone is not going to get me to the body I want. To that end, I joined Planet Fitness, went once, and pulled a muscle in my foot (or something, strained my foot and ended up limping for a week.) In the interim, because I did not want to go to the gym while I was in that much foot pain -- it really hurt, I did a random YouTube search for a home workout and discovered HASFit.

So I've been active, but have not been back to the gym since 1/4/19. I think my foot is better so I am aiming to go back to the gym tomorrow morning. My goal is to go 3x a week, preferably M-W-F because I am still wanting to insulate the weekends as my cocooning time. I don't exercise on the weekends, I do what I want even if that is nothing, and if there are any indulgence foods I have planned, that is also when I eat them. So if I miss a planned gym day, I am hoping to have enough discipline to go another weekday.

I am determined that this is going to work. I am 46 not 96. It's not too late to turn my health around, and it's not too late to have the physical shape that I want. Brad Pitt is 55, Tom Cruise is 56 -- I am not an old man is my point. I am still youngish, and I know I am never going to look 25 again, and that is fine with me, but I can still fix my weight. I have gotten so fat I don't look like myself even to me anymore, and I don't picture a skinny guy when I picture me. And I'm all done with that. I joke about wanting my 20-something body back, but actually I was in really bad shape, flabby with no body strength. I couldn't do 2 sit-ups back then. I was a "skinny fat." (LOL - thank you Jane Lynch and 'Weeds' for that term...) I want to be in good physical health, including my body shape and weight. I want to by clothes because they will look good on me, not because of how I will look in them. My old blog was called "Look Good In A Tight T-shirt," and that remains a benchmark.

Coach Kozak from HASFit.com 

I am back down to the weight I was at in the summer of 2017 when I started trying to lose weight again for the millionth time with no plan but to change my diet. That sounds bad, like not an awesome achievement. LOL. But I take it as a good goal post. That means I have lost all the weight I gained from consoling myself with gluttony and booze when my life took a nose dive that fall. Since then I have been by necessity focused on establishing sustainable self sufficiency again, but I've got that part pretty much on auto pilot now. And I've noted that since I passed that particular marker, my attention has turned back to my weight and my appearance. I have a window right now where there is room for a new priority in my lifestyle. I have had those windows before and I often squandered them on sloth or indolence. But not this time. I am going to keep dogging away at this until it works.

I'm trying not to fanboy on Coach Kozak and HASFit. But there is something I really like about him and his wife and co-coach Claudia and their family and their story. It helps that he is hot, but lots of trainers are hot. I just like him, and I like his motivational approach. Another quote by him that I really like, is about time spent on social media, "We should spend less time fantasizing about other people's reality and more on making ours how we want it." And, "The difference between you today and you next week is what you do in the next 7 days." And the YouTube channel has every type and level of workout as well as vlog-style videos about lifestyle health like diet and routine and how to do it on a budget and how to include fitness in your day to day life. I would encourage anyone to utilize this YouTube channel or any other they like as a backup or supplement to a gym workout regimen. It helped me to stay accountable when I wasn't able to go to the gym, and when I was in jeopardy of relapsing back to my old habits -- my go-to for comfort / stress / failure relief is food. And I know that physical activity elevates my mood and my willpower and often completely evaporates emotional / psychological hunger. So, thankfully I had the internal resources to search for an exercise video instead of a sandwich, and it paid off.

Anyway, that has been my month. I really was teetering on the edge of a relapse there for a minute. I was about to quit Weight Watchers and say fuck the gym. I was having those bad self-thoughts again like, "I was just born to be fat," and, "I just need to accept myself as I am," -- no thank you. I do not accept high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep apnea and an early death. I know from having been much smaller and in better cardio condition that those things go away when you lose weight and stay active. And I do not accept that there is anything about myself I can't change if I prioritize it. I will be who I say I am, I will have the body shape and the physical health that I want, and I will get there by my own determination and plan.