Part 1 of Lifestyle Change: My relationship with my weight

Losing weight has been my goal for years and years. In high school, I was a varsity athlete and in very good shape, going to the gym regularly and playing softball. I think at my peak condition I was around 140 lbs.

By my second year of college, I had let all physical activity slide. I was no longer active in any capacity, opting instead to stay up late and play video games with my boyfriend and roommate. The pounds started to creep up and I gained about 25 pounds by the end of college besides being totally physically unfit. To be honest, I just blamed microwave pot pies.

After college, I started working full time, got married and my weight kept increasing. It happened so slowly that I really didn't notice until I noticed. My husband thought he would "help" by getting me a gym membership for Christmas 2003. Ha! I didn't go. I didn't want to go. I was sad and stressed and so many other things that I wasn't in a mindset to lose weight. As I hit 200 lbs., I even tried a weight loss program with my mother-in-law. When that didn't work, I blamed the transfats in their food and that the program was not structured for vegetarians.

In 2005 I started learning Taekwondo and did lose some weight. By the end of 2006, after moving to Austin and going through a divorce, I was down to about 175. Then in January 2007 I got laid off, and into a new long-term relationship. From the time I started a new job in April to the end of the year, I gained back around 30 lbs.

My clothes didn't fit. A few months later, the scale topped at 212. I felt like a failure.

Controlling What I Eat

I have the typical dual problem of many living in the Western world: I don't eat right and I don't get enough exercise. I do try to eat right and I think I eat better than many people, but my weaknesses are sweets and late day/evening snacking. Cookies? Yes, please. Cake? Hellz yeah. A Twix you say? Pile it on.

I am mostly a vegetarian, try to eat vegan and really avoid most animal products. I'm not sedentary either, and even recently started going back to Tae Kwon Do classes in hopes of obtaining my black belt this year, finally! (I took a four year break from TKD to go to grad school.) That said, I more or less maintain my body weight, but it's about 30 pounds too much.

I think I had an epiphany today, trying to figure out yet another food and exercise schedule. It seems that inevitably, I'm struck with hunger pangs which then leads to the urge to snack. Food really does make me feel better. As someone pointed out in a documentary I watched this past weekend called Forks Over Knives, we are in a sense addicted to crappy food.

But what if I could control my reaction to hunger pangs in the same way I control my urge to punch someone in the face who has made me angry? We learn our responses to physical and emotional stimuli so in many cases, we should be able to reprogram them. Hunger is a little bit different since it is an innate response but I think the degree and frequency of the feeling is probably a learned response.

In other words, when I've felt hungry, I've never sat there and just noticed the feeling of hunger. I've never quietly paid attention to the thoughts that follow it and then chosen to ignore those voices. I'm going to try this and see just how effective it might be.

BFL Week 8 Update

I gained back 1.5 pounds this week putting me at 198 even. The program has taken a serious downturn. Due to recurring back pain, I did not complete a single workout during week eight (I went to TKD once and played softball). I did stick to the eating routine but we did not cook dinner even once during week eight either. I'm sure we ended up getting more calories than needed despite trying to make healthy food choices. Eating out is just nearly impossible to do in an entirely healthy manner, whether it's extra salt and butter on vegetables or bread made without whole grains. It's really quite frustrating because we've started to feel overwhelmed by just how much time it takes to cook and clean up every night, plus get food ready for the next day. Eating out is just, well, easier.

BFL Week 7 Update

Yea, we have some weight movement downwards. This week's number is down two pound to 196.5. Total fat loss at this point is 13 pounds! I missed another morning workout (aerobics) this week but went to TKD that evening so I think that makes up for it.

We also dined out on Saturday night and managed to find healthy choices and keep portions reasonable. The food half of the program continues to be easier to maintain than I had thought it would be. I don't feel tempted to cheat or snack on bad foods; I really don't crave much of anything. I'm very happy to be breaking my emotional bond with eating.

BFL Week 5 Update

Well the trend of losing weight on odd numbered weeks continues. I lost 2.5 pounds this week, bringing me below 200 again to 197.5. My progress is going a bit slower than I had anticipated. I'll need to lose 3 pounds to be down 15 at the halfway point (my goal is 30 pounds of fat loss during the program).

I had the actualization this week that my work on my body is just beginning. Even if I meet my weight loss goal during the program, I'll still have another ~35 pounds to lose just to be inside the "normal" range of my calculated BMI. Right now, I'm still easily in the obese range (which is still very hard for me to get my mind around). But I also have to remind myself that I put on these last forty pounds over the year prior to starting the program so it's not unrealistic to expect that it will take that long to get those plus the other 25 pounds off!

I've also started to really take note of just how many fat people are all around. It is of no surprise at all to me that the majority of Americans are overweight. While we're eating our turkey sandwiches at the mall, we look around and take note of what and how much the other people are eating and it's so unhealthy. Our society needs to learn portion control! And as one person put it to me, we need to grasp that food is fuel for our body, not a means to happiness, enjoyment or pleasure. Learning that has been part of my process as well because I was definitely a pleasure eater.

The other thing to note is just how badly we seem to feel on our free days. It's nice knowing we have one day a week we can eat anything we want but the desire to eat lots of bad stuff isn't really there and when we do eat poorly, we feel rundown and tired. And we eat so much less than we would have before. We almost always split any meal at a restaurant and even then it's usually too much food.

We missed our first workout of the program this week, sleeping in on Tuesday and not doing our aerobics training. I had fully planned to workout in the evening but we decided to play games with some friends instead. I don't feel too badly about it; real life happens, we just can't make skipping the norm! We also did not have TKD this week as the school was closed.

BFL Week 4 Update

Gained half a pound this week...I sure hope it's muscle! That puts my weight at the end of week four at 200 lbs. I did some research on average daily nutrition intake and this is what I figured out for an approximate day:

• Calorie intake: 1700 - that's 85% of the USDA recommended 2000
• Fat intake: 37.6 grams - that's 56% of the USDA recommended 67 grams
• Carb intake: 225.9 grams - that's 78% of the USDA recommended 289 grams
• Protein intake: 152.3 grams - that's 305% of the USDA recommended 50 grams

So you can see, this diet is attempting to replace a lot of the normal fat and carb calories with protein instead, which should be building lots of muscle given that we're lifting weights three times each week.

Something I was wondering about is how fiber factors into all of this. Of those ~ 230 grams of daily carbs we're intaking, around 38.5 of them are grams of fiber. But US nutrition labels don't include calories from fiber in their total calorie totals. However other countries, like Canada, do. So by Canadian standards, our total calorie count should be 154 calories higher. The argument for not including these calories is that we don't actually digest fiber. But that seems to apply only to insoluble fiber. We do apparently digest soluble fiber like that found in fruits and vegetables.

On the exercise side of things, my legs took a beating this week! We had two days of lower body lifting, three days of aerobics on the stationary bike and two nights of TKD. My legs were screaming for a break by the weekend. And in class, I was having a hard time keeping strong stances because my muscles just felt so weak. I also played softball on Wednesday and wasn't feeling at my best, a bit sluggish with all the crouching and standing but just running felt pretty good.

BFL Week 3 Update

Bam! 21 days down, 63 to go. This week's weigh in was a little more promising with me dropping below the 200 mark with a reading of 199.5 pounds. And, I did something active every day this week. I played softball yesterday evening and actually felt good running around instead of sluggish and tired. I also made it into TKD twice and plan to keep going on Tuesdays and Thursdays. My welcome back on Tuesday included a broken board to the right eye and nice bruise, so that was fun. Sparring on Thursday was rusty but I didn't get overly tired or feel like I couldn't make it through class.

Food-wise, we're keeping steady on track every day. We did cheat on Monday evening and ate the four remaining chocolate-covered strawberries since they were expiring but I don't feel badly about that. The one funky thing that's happening is being able to get in all six meals on Saturday. This is the second week in a row we've missed one and it's really due to getting up later on Saturdays. We also ended up working out after we'd already eaten meal one. But I have been making notice of when I feel like eating something because it would make me feel better and I'm trying to be aware of those feelings and work on changing my behavior towards food specifically around that perceived need to eat. I rarely feel hungry!

BFL Week 2 Update

I sure hope I'm in the "building muscle" phase already because I went from losing seven pounds last week to gaining one pound this week! That's right, my weight sits at 203.5 pounds after 13 days. I'm hoping, too, that it being my time of the month has something to do with it. And I should also note, I didn't even cheat on the diet part all week unless you count a single chocolate-covered strawberry at 12:01am of my free day (that's today).

Cost for food on this program is definitely less overall than eating out every day of the week and I'm sure the total cost is even less when you factor in electricity/time for cooking. It takes around 45 minutes to prep dinner and do the dishes afterwards. It takes about another 15 minutes to prepare all our daily meals the night before.

The exercise half is going well too. It hasn't been as horrible getting up at 7am every day as I anticipated. Sure, I feel tired and would love to go back to sleep but after about 10 minutes, I wake up. Once we start the day's exercise routine, it's all good from there. No serious injuries to date and the muscles all seem to be adapting well. Next week, the plan is to return to doing TKD on Tuesdays and Thursdays!

BFL Week 1 Update

Today is day 7 (and a free day) on the Body-for-LIFE program. We weighed in this morning and I've lost 7 pounds in week one, down to 202.5. It wasn't as hard to stay on track as I thought it might be. I had temptations, like a Friday happy hour, but I just drank iced tea and enjoyed the conversation.

We did decide to make an alteration to the rules: We're allowing ourselves to drink after 9PM on the day before a free day. So for example, free day this week is Sunday so we drank a couple of beers last night during a movie. If we were to only drink on the free day, we wouldn't really get to have a night out since we plan to have free day on Sunday whenever possible. However, since we are drinking the night before the free day, we also agreed to stop drinking by 9PM on the free day.

The dinners were really tasty and it was pretty easy cooking each night, although Wes has taken the lion's share of that responsibility mostly because he enjoys cooking.

I'm still trying to get used to the time constraints of the program: Getting up much earlier; going to bed earlier; getting all our food prepped the night before; figuring out how to fit dinner in and still have time to do other stuff in the evenings.

The working out part was very brutal the first couple of days; I was constantly in pain. But that seems to have passed as I get used to moving my muscles again. Next week, I think I'll start going to TKD again but we'll see. I don't want to bite off more than I can chew.

We've started the Body-for-LIFE program

Today we finally started the Body-for-LIFE program after months of saying we would; today is day 1 of 84. My starting weight was 209.5 pounds. I was really planning on posting my "before" pictures but after seeing them, I decided I am honestly too embarrassed. Particularly with my "behind" photo, I didn't realize I looked that bad. I knew I felt bad but it's easy to cover up in clothes and ignore the reality. It's not so easy to ignore the fat bulging over your underwear against the glare of a white wall and camera flash!

We're simplifying the eating portion as much as possible, eating the same first five meals each day:

1. 3 egg whites; 1 slice whole wheat toast; 1 apple
2. protein shake; non-fat yogurt cup
3. fat-free turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread; 1/2 tomato; spinach leaves
4. protein bar
5. 1 apple; 2 low-fat string cheese sticks

Meal 6 (dinner) will vary each day and those recipes are coming out of a book complementary to this program called Eating-for-LIFE. As someone who has never regularly cooked in her entire life, this is the most intimidating part for me. But the recipes seem easy enough and we did all the shopping for the week yesterday. Costs for food on this plan for two people for one week is around $120. I will post a real breakdown of everything we purchase for a week and associated costs when that gets all worked out after a few weeks.

Only 83 days to go! :)