Friday 6/18/10

Exercise: 35 mile bike ride (to beach and back) 1492 calories
Weight: 210
Hacker's Weight:210.8
Net calories: 1233

Wow. I went kind of crazy at breakfast today, I knew I was going to be doing a long bike ride so I figured I'd have more of my cereal than normal. Thing was, then it was like I was suddenly ravenously hungry - I usually eat about 200 calories worth of cereal, but today I ate almost 800 calories in about an hour. Usually 200 calories gets me through to lunch - it almost felt like breaking the routine opened up the floodgates. I'm still going to be okay today since I'm riding my bike to the beach and back, but the feeling out of control with my eating was not okay, and I broke my own rules about only eating sitting down, from a dish. Yikes. Stick to regular breakfast.

The other thing that happens to me that happened today is the craziness in the morning spirals into later craziness as well. Almost like, "well the day is already shot, why try anymore?" That's ridiculous thinking, but alas can happen. Today it manifested by my buying a snack I really don't need in the house, these silly dark chocolate covered toffee almonds that are in the bulk section at Hannafords. I took down the nutritional information to enter in to MFD, and it was sobering. Unfortunately I've eaten most of them today (thankfully I didn't get many), even though they weren't really that enjoyable, especially now that I know how calorific they are. The spiralling didn't get too out of hand, largely due to my long bike ride. I'm going to end up the day within my calorie goals, but on the higher rather than the lower end of those goals. I'm really looking forward to getting my heart rate monitor back and functional, there's so much guess work right now in my exercise calories, depending on how I log my bike ride I either earned 1492 calories or just over 2000 (it's based on speed, and my average speed was 12.9 which would give me 2000 but I honestly don't think I burned that many calories).

Actually, I ended up not being very hungry for dinner and thus was on the low end for calories.

Thursday 6/17/10

Exercise: 5 mile run (692 cal)
Weight: 210
Hacker's Weight: 210.9
Net calories: 878, which is way too few, but I was very full after dinner and didn't feel hungry throughout the day... and eating more just didn't make sense. MFD is mad at me for eating too few calories, but oh well.

Great run today, a little faster than the last time I did the 5-6mile loop. My right hamstring was tight after my ride yesterday so I did a long walking warm up, and while it was still a bit tight throughout the run it feels fine now and didn't keep me from anything.

For some reason I just really wasn't all that hungry today - perhaps because I ate very well and stayed full.

Wednesday, 6/16/10

Exercise: 18 mile bike ride at average of 13.8 (1044 per MFD, seems high to me)
Weight: 210.5
Hacker's Weight: 211.1
Net calories: 1300

So much for exercising in the morning today. But I did get out for a great bike ride in the afternoon in which I really pushed myself and I felt so fast! Like my legs were pistons, awesome. Made a delicious "cool cucumber and white rice salad" from Deborah Madison's excellent cookbook "Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone."

Had a brief snappy exchange with Rich after dinner, and afterwards I found myself mindlessly finishing the last of the leftovers that didn't fit in the container. Mindless eating is sneaky, and definitely something that I do sometimes when processing emotional issues. One of the newer rules is that I only eat from a dish, only sitting down. No grazing from the fridge, no eating from a container. Constant vigilance! Even with this brief slip up, it was a good day calorie-wise.

Tuesday 6/15/10

Exercise: "fast" 5K run around back cove, (606 cal)
Weight: 208.5
Hacker's weight:
Net calories: 1592

Not sure why the scale dropped two pounds today, but I'm not complaining. I overslept today, and ended up missing a lot of an absolutely gorgeous day. I was really excited by my run, it was the first time since resuming running that I pushed myself to do more than my super-slow pace, and I did the 5K distance in 40 minutes. While this is nothing to write home about and shy of my personal best, it felt really great to be able to rise to the challenge, and to run a distance at a more reasonable speed without stopping. I wish I had easier access to running the back cove, it's such a great run!

I ended up with almost all my run calories to eat back late in the day, and ended up overdoing it a bit, partially to avoid undereating for the day. This keeps happening where the extra calories that I earn I end up eating back with indulgent sorts of things later in the day, rather than spreading them out with healthy filling foods throughout the day. If I can, I'm going to try to exercise in the morning as possible to try to avoid this problem.

Monday 6/14/10

Exercise: 1h40m bike ride to get groceries (1025 cal)
Scale weight: 210.5
Hacker's weight: 211.3
Net calories: 1415

One week of doing this blog, and today is the first of my weekly Monday check-ins. My scale weight this morning was 210.5, and my hackers weight is starting to normalize with regular logging, today's weight brings it to 211.3. I'm quite pleased with this progress, especially because my scale weight the day before I started the blog was 215 pounds! Even more than the numbers, I'm very pleased that I've blogged every day, met my exercise goals, and been within my target net calorie range every day. Go me!

I also sent my heart rate monitor (HRM) in for repairs today. I like being able to see how many calories I've burned while I'm exercising and to have a little more faith in the accuracy of the calorie expenditures than by estimating with MFD, and it's been frustrating to have it not working for the past few months.

I was having a tough time motivating to run today, so instead I rode my bike by a circuitous route to the grocery store to make a new recipe, which ended up being very tasty. The place I went has lots of very ripe and very cheap fruit, and my treat for such a long bike ride (and so many calories earned) was a lot of fresh fruit including blackberries, cherries, strawberries today, plus some more blackberries, cherries, and pineapple in the fridge for later. Super yummy!

Okay, so a week of success is kind of a drop in the bucket and doesn't mean I should relax now - but a year of weight loss is just made up of lots of weeks like the one I just had. Slow but steady. Time to get out and have another great week.

Sunday 6/13/10

Exercise: 50 minute bike ride (467 cal) plus about 40 minutes walking, unlogged
Weight: 211
Net Calories: 1421

Lazy morning, went out for coffee/tea with laptop in hand to discuss vacation options which was very fun (working on bicycle tour in Canada). Leftover vegan mexican casserole for lunch, guessed on calories but can't be too bad as it's mostly salsa and low calorie lavash bread. Then out to local museum before braving possible impending weather for bike ride. Good ride, and tried two new recipes for dinner - oven baked tofu sticks with fancy ketchup for dipping sauce plus a lime-cumin-cilantro carrot salad. Very yummy. For dessert a non-dairy ice cream I've never had by Little Lads (their Nice Cream) that was very tasty, and since I had extra calories to spare I could have an entire cup. Happily, this was one of those days where at the end of the day I find myself struggling to eat ENOUGH calories so MFD doesn't chastise me for eating too little. These are good days, but I do try to eat at least their recommended minimum (1400 calories right now).

Saturday 6/12/10

Exercise: 6 mile slow continuous run (990 cal)
Weight: 211
Net Calories: 1530

Highly gratifying to see some movement on the scale this morning:-). I had planned a run today, and even though it was raining lightly this morning I set off anyway. It was fantastic! I ran nearly 6 miles without stopping, albeit exceedingly slowly, and felt wonderful. I probably haven't run that far in 6 or 7 months, and it felt like the first time since my running hiatus that I really had the feeling of rhythm and sustainable pace that I feel like I could do forever - this is what makes running so great and addictive! I was afraid that it would take a really long time for me to work back up to my previous running levels, and today's run makes me feel really excited. It's also nice to be able to burn so many calories in an hour... but important not to feel like I can eat whatever I want after a long run.

Potlucks are one of my favorite kinds of meals, but can also be an area where I go overboard with calories - so many choices and wanting to sample everything. We have a fun potluck tonight. With that in mind I tried to set myself up for success...

Rules for potlucks: 1. Bring something healthy that I know I can eat. 2. Only one plate, no more than half a cup of any particular dish. 3. No seconds even if it was amazing. 4. Okay to try several desserts, but try for bite-sized portions of each. 5. Eat really slowly, savor the new and different foods. 6. Bring knitting (as appropriate) to keep me busy so I don't get more food for something to do. Potlucks are my favorite type of meal so rule 7 is to enjoy it, but not to go nuts!

And I did great! Honest attempt at logging food eaten yielded a days net of within 150 calories of my lowest goal, despite the 6 double-stuffed oreos and 2 smores, all of which I heartily enjoyed. Great day.

Friday 6/11/10

Exercise:45 minute walk after dinner (239 cal)
Weight: 214
Net Calories:1285

Ah, the frustration of doing everything right and not seeing the scale move the direction you would like. According to this blog I've gained a pound since starting early this week. But my weight the day before I started was 215, highlighting the variability of daily weights (I didn't lose 2 pounds overnight that night, nor gain a pound last night). I prefer to use the tool at hacker's diet that calculates your weighted 10 day moving average, a technique that takes most of the daily variables of scale weights out of the picture (how hydrated were you that morning, weight pre or post BM, etc). Trouble is that it's going to take a week or two for my moving average to recalibrate since I've only recently resumed tracking my weights on Hacker's after having been at a lower weight the last time I logged there... once it's normalized I'll add it to my reporting here. I'm going to use Mondays to check in and change my sidebar stats, rather than focusing too much on daily weights.

Good day today. Went to work with Rich (I often do this and spend the day at the local library) so I packed all my food for the day, less room for temptation when there's no kitchen/fridge. Went to Whole Foods for a quick grocery run and not only did they not have the usual minefield of samples out, I also managed to avoid the frequent trap of getting a poor choice of snack and instead got about a cup of fresh cherries (87 calories). It's a small step, but that felt really good to have stuck to my guns. I sometimes feel that eating wisely and focusing on weight loss is sort of a habit you get into, and I'm a little out of the habit of avoiding some common pitfalls. The more one practices the easier it gets.

MFD thinks I had too few calories today (they think I should never go below 1421), but I'm not hungry, I've eaten well and had balanced foods, and considering that I've been a little over my goal the last few days plus tomorrow is likely to be a bigger eating day (potluck) I'm okay with being a little under. They're right that it's important not to eat too little in order to avoid slowing down the metabolism and going into starvation mode, but they're a little more rigid about it than I think is necessary. It's not really that exact of a science anyway and many portions, exercise calories etc are estimates, I figure as long as I'm pretty close things are good.

Thursday, 6/10/10

Weight: 213.5
Exercise: rainy day, did active housework for an hour, MFD counts as 250 calories
Net Calories: 1687

Rainy all day, not chance for running or biking. We were almost out of bread so I made a batch of four sandwich loaves... a bad idea on a day when I can't exercise since there's nothing so appetizing as a house that smells like fresh bread! Despite sampling the bread I ended up almost okay, but over my actual goal, MFD says that if every day were like today I'd lose 1.4 pounds a week.

Yummy dinner tonight, I'm on a mission to use up an unnecessary fridge item every day, and tahini and dried tomatoes are on the list. So tonight we had portabello bruschetta with a dried tomato spread and wilted spinach with a lemon tahini sesame seed dressing, both recipes from epicurious.com and both surprisingly tasty. It was a reasonable dinner as well, and would have been more so if I hadn't had such generous pieces of bread. It was really nice to actually prepare new recipes and make a real dinner with two dishes, makes me savor the food more when I get to eat it.

Also exciting - I love our homemade bread and have never been sure of how to log calories from it, but in today's batch I weighed the end result and calculated calories per gram so now I can toss my piece of bread on the scale before I eat it so I can accurately log it - really helpful! I love our food scale, although it does tend to bring out the obsessive side of me.

Day Two - 6/9/10

Exercise: 3 hr riding bike
Weight: 213.5
Net calories logged: 1465

Today was bike and beach day. I rode my bike from our apartment in South Berwick to the Beach at Wells, about a 17-18 mile trip each way. It made for a total of about three hours of riding, and while I don't currently have a functional heart rate monitor I estimate it as earning me 1700 calories give or take. It was a nice ride, but turned out to be a rather chilly day so I spent my beach time huddled in the lee of some rocks under my towel rather than lounging on it, but I still enjoyed some good reading time.

It was easy to imagine that all this exercise would translate to carte blanche in the eating department today, but in reality upon returning home I had only 760 calories left in my budget as I had indulged in several snacks for the trip (including my first fresh strawberries of the season!). My characteristically challenging period of late afternoon home alone snacking cost me some of those calories, but a reasonable dinner meant that I ended within my goal range of calories.

Day One - 6/8/10

Weight: 213
Exercise: Ran 3 miles very slowly
Net calories logged: 1662

I made pretzels today for a potluck, and I figured out that each is about 140 calories. Had a hard time getting motivated today after sleeping in somewhat, but did manage to get out for a run after a while, happily without hip pain! Afternoon is definitely the toughest time for me to avoid overeating.

Setting sail

I'm a 32 year old woman and as of today, June 8th, 2010, I weigh 213 pounds with a BMI of 36.6. I have been obese for as long as I can remember, and most people in my family struggle with obesity. I'm otherwise healthy, quite active, about to start on a new exciting career having just finished graduate school and ready to practice as a family nurse practitioner.

Four years ago during a life transition I woke up to the reality of my weight at that time. I then weighed 275 pounds and had a BMI of 47.2 which qualifies as morbidly obese. In the next two years I lost over 80 pounds through educating myself about nutrition, logging all my calories, and being consistent with exercise including beginning to run. Recently increasing busy-ness, some depression, and an injury that has limited my running have contributed to my weight creeping back up to the current point.

While I've spent most of my life in denial of the seriousness of my obesity until my successful weight loss, I now have a new motivation for achieving a healthy weight. My husband and I are eager to have a baby. While there are plenty of people who become pregnant while obese and have healthy pregnancies and babies, being obese significantly increases the risk for serious health issues including gestational diabetes, pregnancy-induced hypertension, preeclampsia, premature birth, large for gestational age infants and other concerns. Not only would I like to improve my own health by losing weight, I'd also really like to avoid these issues and give our baby the healthiest start possible.

What's really lit a fire under me is a NYT story I saw recently (here) about rising obesity rates in pregnancy and the impacts on maternity wards. Pretty grim. Plus I'm not getting any younger, and pregnancy at "advanced maternal age" (over 35) has its own set of risks.

Then there's also this great reason for losing weight: I spend large amounts of time counseling my patients to lose weight, and I'm really not a big fan of hypocrisy.

So here's the deal... starting today I'm going to have the goal of safely losing as much weight as possible in one year so that we can start trying to conceive next summer. Minimally, I want to get my BMI below the 35 mark (about 203 for me). My true goal is to reach the point of just being overweight, not obese, which would be a BMI of less than 30, or a weight of less than 175. That's about 40 pounds in one year, or just shy of a pound a week - a nice healthy rate of weight loss.

Ideally I'd get to a "normal" weight which they say would be 145 pounds for me. I was probably a little kid the last time I weighed 145 pounds :-). This would be great but is a bit of a daunting step right now... so for now lets focus on baby steps (so to speak!).

So here we go! I keep telling myself that I know how to do this, I've done it before, and I am smart, capable, effective and successful - I can do this! I'm starting this blog to help hold myself accountable and to share my journey with others who might be on a similar path.