That´s what my weight curve has been looking now for more than four months, on average. Not that the daily weights were all the same- they were, within a total range of about four kilograms, all over the place, acually, with the lowest and the highest values just days apart.
Seeing that kind of spikes is quite scary, actually, especially since they definitely didn´t correspond with any major dietary indiscretions.
Then again, if I look at the data I have from past years, I can see a pattern of my weight going up or at least plateauing whenever outside temperatures go up. As I am not even very hungry when it´s hot, drink absolutely no soda, and haven´t had an ice cream for about two years, the connection cannot be in what I eat, but rather in what I keep inside in the way of water retention.
Every autumn, my weight has been going down again. So I guess I´ll have to wait for autumn...
But looking up that data also reminded me of something rather positive. I am, today, 22 pounds lighter than I was in 2011 on the same day, and 60 pounds lighter than in 2010. From my all-time highest weight, it´s down 68.2 pounds as per today. Add to that the at least two pounds of water I´m retaining due to the heat, and you get, essentially, a maintain.
Mind you, I still have to watch what I eat, keep my carbs low, and never ever take a dive into the sugar box, whatever carby treat it may contain. But then, the ability to climb all three stairs to our apartment without pausing, or run for the bus, or walk through the city without needing a crutch to lean on, is so much better than anything sweet.
I mustn´t ever forget that, or I´ll end up what Norma calls a trainwreck, in other words, part of those sad statistics that the size acceptance people use to bolster their claim that it is impossible to lose weight and keep it off in the long term.
I don´t think it´s impossible, provided you learn from your experience while losing. And provided you accept reality. For me, reality is that something like "intuitive eating" will never work for me, because my regulatory mechanisms- if there is such a thing- have broken down completely many years ago. So, I just cannot trust my body to tell me what it needs. Reality, for me, also means accepting that my hunger and satiety signals are, for the most part, not working at all. So, I can´t trust my body to tell me when it´s full, either.
What I can do is watch my portions. That has, over time,become easier by the acquisition of some new, smaller bowls and plates, which hold just what is the right portion for me, and by sticking to the iron rule of never ever eating anything directly out of the package, but putting it into a dish first, and then- no seconds. Ever.
And no fiddling around with what has worked for me in the past. If I deviate from my plan, I pay for it in added weight. If I do that often, I´ll regain. As simple as that.
And still so hard to get for many of us out there.
Julia
2012/08/28
2012/08/27
Shopping bags
Ever so often, even if we are trying to cut down on grocery shopping, there comes a day when the pantry needs restocking, so we drive to the local equivalent of Costco and get us a carload of frozen veggies, canned beans, bottles of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and of course a load of milk products, too, while we´re at it.
All that stuff goes into our insulated grocery shopping bags. These are big enough to put a bottle crate into one, so there´s plenty of room inside. When they are filled, they are rather heavy.
So there we were unloading the car after our shopping trip, and I remarked to DH how heavy the bag I was just handling felt, and that I had lost more than the equivalent of two of those, wondering aloud at the fact that I had, back then, been able to climb the three flights of stairs to our flat at all.
DH looked at the bags and said, no way could I have had that much extra baggage on me.
So, before unpacking, we put the bags on the scales.
It turned out that it wasn´t two of them, it was all three, fully loaded, which together equalled about the weight I have already recondensed.
I stood there, looking at the bags, picking them up from the floor to feel their weight.
And I remembered what it had felt like to have all that condensable matter on my body, sticking to me, weighing me down.
I don´t ever want to be back in that place.
Julia
All that stuff goes into our insulated grocery shopping bags. These are big enough to put a bottle crate into one, so there´s plenty of room inside. When they are filled, they are rather heavy.
So there we were unloading the car after our shopping trip, and I remarked to DH how heavy the bag I was just handling felt, and that I had lost more than the equivalent of two of those, wondering aloud at the fact that I had, back then, been able to climb the three flights of stairs to our flat at all.
DH looked at the bags and said, no way could I have had that much extra baggage on me.
So, before unpacking, we put the bags on the scales.
It turned out that it wasn´t two of them, it was all three, fully loaded, which together equalled about the weight I have already recondensed.
I stood there, looking at the bags, picking them up from the floor to feel their weight.
And I remembered what it had felt like to have all that condensable matter on my body, sticking to me, weighing me down.
I don´t ever want to be back in that place.
Julia
2012/08/23
Short and sweet
When temperatures soar, so do garment hemlines. Unless you have decluttered all of your high-temp clothes. Which is what had happened to me. I had, quite a while ago, ditched all of my wide, wide linen pants and skirts, and hadn´t bothered to replace them as the weather wasn´t hot enough to warrant the expense. And now there I was, stuck with, at least at home, wearing my running shorts. So, at the next visit to the mall, I looked for end-of-summer sales on something lighter to wear. What turned up was a pair of white cotton shorts.They had them up to a size...L. Without an x in front. And without elastic material. As they were really cheap, I took along a pair, not bothering to try them on first. At home, the first thing I did was peel myself out of my long blue jeans and slip them on.
Guess what, they fit. Size L, from a regular-size store. I haven´t worn size L pants since...I can´t even remember. So, even though my weight has been plateauing for about four months now, it looks as if my body is rearranging itself at the weight reached again. My thighs, too, seem to have condensed. At least, standing in front of my mirror, while I may never be Miss Great Legs, what I see when wearing those shorts looks at least- tolerable.
Which also hasn´t been the case for way too long.
For now, I´ll take tolerable any time.
Julia
Guess what, they fit. Size L, from a regular-size store. I haven´t worn size L pants since...I can´t even remember. So, even though my weight has been plateauing for about four months now, it looks as if my body is rearranging itself at the weight reached again. My thighs, too, seem to have condensed. At least, standing in front of my mirror, while I may never be Miss Great Legs, what I see when wearing those shorts looks at least- tolerable.
Which also hasn´t been the case for way too long.
For now, I´ll take tolerable any time.
Julia
2012/08/20
Summer he-e-e-e-a-a-t wave
It´s hot. Like, really hot. Melting-the-tarmac hot. The tram that passes by our house is squeaking with the rails being warped by the heat, and everybody is just fighting to keep their cool.
Luckily, the hottest days were the ones over the weekend, so at least I didn´t have to work there, and the good news is that my colleague´s vacation is over, too, so I can finally concentrate on my own stuff again.
And the big electric fan- which I keep under my desk, pointing at my feet, so as to have maximum refreshment with minimum flying papers- is making things at the office almost bearable.
Still, above thirty degrees centigrade outside means my edema has come back, too, and the water I retain messes up my weigh-ins quite spectacularly. Knowing it´s just water retention makes it somewhat less frustrating, but I´d still prefer to be rid of it again, which isn´t going to happen soon as the heat wave is supposed to stay on at least for another week.
We went grocery shopping on Saturday, before things really heated up, and our fridge is now stocked with plenty of ingredients for salad dinners to last us through the next couple of days. So, on the calories-in side, I can stick below my limits, and if I do so, I can be certain that there will not be a "real" gain and it will all come off again when temperatures drop.
Being stuck inside all weekend, except that shopping excursion, als meant being able to enjoy the new arrangement in our living room. DH had been grumbling a bit when I told him on the phone what I had done, but when he saw it agreed at once that this was better. The paper embargo, too, has been working miracles. Well, not exactly, because the papers that used to clutter up our living room are now resting on the guest bed pending their being tidied up by DH, but at least the guest room is now the only place where loose papers are kept, and just maybe he´ll start filing/culling them soon.
That guest bed is actually one of the items on the decluttering schedule, too. The only time we´ve ever used it was whenever MIL came to visit. As that won´t happen again due to the fact that she doesn´t travel any more, this bed definitely is a big piece of clutter now. Were we to remove it, we´d be richer by two square meters of prime real estate in that room, which in turn might allow us to do some major rearranging in there- or, at least, to remove the laundry rack, when in use, from the living room to the former guest room, which could, then, become the official laundry drying and ironing room.
The problem being that we spent good bucks on a new mattress for that bed just three years ago, and that thing is still almost unused. But if I calculate how much it costs to rent and heat those two square meters of apartment, I guess the poor return of investment for that mattress shouldn´t keep us from doing away with it. After all, we´re still thinking about making the guest room over into a master bedroom, and then that bed would be a major obstacle, too. And the positive effect of removing things has by now been more than amply proven in the living room. If I could motivate DH to cull the contents of his den, maybe we´ll be able to do the redecorating this year, yet. We´ll see.....
Julia
Luckily, the hottest days were the ones over the weekend, so at least I didn´t have to work there, and the good news is that my colleague´s vacation is over, too, so I can finally concentrate on my own stuff again.
And the big electric fan- which I keep under my desk, pointing at my feet, so as to have maximum refreshment with minimum flying papers- is making things at the office almost bearable.
Still, above thirty degrees centigrade outside means my edema has come back, too, and the water I retain messes up my weigh-ins quite spectacularly. Knowing it´s just water retention makes it somewhat less frustrating, but I´d still prefer to be rid of it again, which isn´t going to happen soon as the heat wave is supposed to stay on at least for another week.
We went grocery shopping on Saturday, before things really heated up, and our fridge is now stocked with plenty of ingredients for salad dinners to last us through the next couple of days. So, on the calories-in side, I can stick below my limits, and if I do so, I can be certain that there will not be a "real" gain and it will all come off again when temperatures drop.
Being stuck inside all weekend, except that shopping excursion, als meant being able to enjoy the new arrangement in our living room. DH had been grumbling a bit when I told him on the phone what I had done, but when he saw it agreed at once that this was better. The paper embargo, too, has been working miracles. Well, not exactly, because the papers that used to clutter up our living room are now resting on the guest bed pending their being tidied up by DH, but at least the guest room is now the only place where loose papers are kept, and just maybe he´ll start filing/culling them soon.
That guest bed is actually one of the items on the decluttering schedule, too. The only time we´ve ever used it was whenever MIL came to visit. As that won´t happen again due to the fact that she doesn´t travel any more, this bed definitely is a big piece of clutter now. Were we to remove it, we´d be richer by two square meters of prime real estate in that room, which in turn might allow us to do some major rearranging in there- or, at least, to remove the laundry rack, when in use, from the living room to the former guest room, which could, then, become the official laundry drying and ironing room.
The problem being that we spent good bucks on a new mattress for that bed just three years ago, and that thing is still almost unused. But if I calculate how much it costs to rent and heat those two square meters of apartment, I guess the poor return of investment for that mattress shouldn´t keep us from doing away with it. After all, we´re still thinking about making the guest room over into a master bedroom, and then that bed would be a major obstacle, too. And the positive effect of removing things has by now been more than amply proven in the living room. If I could motivate DH to cull the contents of his den, maybe we´ll be able to do the redecorating this year, yet. We´ll see.....
Julia
2012/08/16
Diminishing surfaces
The decluttering of our apartment has, by now, progressed to a point where all of our existing possessions do have a place to put them away. Which, in turn, means that we are now officially progressing to the next stage of minimalization: finding out which items are, even if they have a home, superfluous, or even attracting clutter accumulations.
The fastest way to pick out those is doing a complete tidy-up and then just wait and see which places are the first to become untidy again.
As it is, anything that has a horizontal surface is a possible clutter magnet. It is too easy sometimes to just drop something off, and leave it there.
One of the usual suspects for that was right in our entrance area. We have had two big chests there, with flat lids that seem to attract bags, newpapers, and such like magic. The problem being that the bags were supposed to go inside the bigger one, while the smaller of the two serves as a tool chest and is only opened when there´s something to do that requires using a tool, which isn´t that often as a hammer and a screwdriver for everyday jobs are kept outside, and the power drill doesn´t see much use outside of a move in progress.
So, after emptying some bookshelves of their literary payload, I took a measuring tape to that tool chest, and voila- it now fits nicely under one of those bookshelves that I rearranged a bit for the purpose ( thumbs up to those incredibly versatile IKEA shelves).
The other chest now has a big basket on top that serves as a receptacle for bags and such, keeping them contained instead of flying all over the place.
Removing the tool chest also opened up the entrance optically, making it look a lot less cluttered.
Again, having a thing less makes for a better look. The tool chest fits under that bookshelf completely, and as it´s from the same wood as the shelf, blends in to appear almost a part of the shelf.
One other thing I have done is make an agreement with DH to make the living room a paper free zone. That means that no letters, advertising flyers, newspapers and such may be put on the horizontal surfaces of the living room, with the exception of one leather-bound file folder I keep next to the computer that holds bills and such pending their being taken care of. Anything else has to be removed. As DH is such a keeper when it comes to paper stuff, what we agreed on is that the new place for his paper stuff will be the former guest room which now has become his home office and den. Perhaps having to pick it up and take it there might even make him throw some of it out at once....
In any case, I am right now enjoying my paperless living room. And eyeing the tchotchkes on the shelves for potential evacuation candidates.
The less I have to take care of, the better I feel. And it´s rubbing off on DH, too.
Julia
The fastest way to pick out those is doing a complete tidy-up and then just wait and see which places are the first to become untidy again.
As it is, anything that has a horizontal surface is a possible clutter magnet. It is too easy sometimes to just drop something off, and leave it there.
One of the usual suspects for that was right in our entrance area. We have had two big chests there, with flat lids that seem to attract bags, newpapers, and such like magic. The problem being that the bags were supposed to go inside the bigger one, while the smaller of the two serves as a tool chest and is only opened when there´s something to do that requires using a tool, which isn´t that often as a hammer and a screwdriver for everyday jobs are kept outside, and the power drill doesn´t see much use outside of a move in progress.
So, after emptying some bookshelves of their literary payload, I took a measuring tape to that tool chest, and voila- it now fits nicely under one of those bookshelves that I rearranged a bit for the purpose ( thumbs up to those incredibly versatile IKEA shelves).
The other chest now has a big basket on top that serves as a receptacle for bags and such, keeping them contained instead of flying all over the place.
Removing the tool chest also opened up the entrance optically, making it look a lot less cluttered.
Again, having a thing less makes for a better look. The tool chest fits under that bookshelf completely, and as it´s from the same wood as the shelf, blends in to appear almost a part of the shelf.
One other thing I have done is make an agreement with DH to make the living room a paper free zone. That means that no letters, advertising flyers, newspapers and such may be put on the horizontal surfaces of the living room, with the exception of one leather-bound file folder I keep next to the computer that holds bills and such pending their being taken care of. Anything else has to be removed. As DH is such a keeper when it comes to paper stuff, what we agreed on is that the new place for his paper stuff will be the former guest room which now has become his home office and den. Perhaps having to pick it up and take it there might even make him throw some of it out at once....
In any case, I am right now enjoying my paperless living room. And eyeing the tchotchkes on the shelves for potential evacuation candidates.
The less I have to take care of, the better I feel. And it´s rubbing off on DH, too.
Julia
2012/08/14
Summer in the Dolomites
Have you ever seen a picture of those grandiose-looking Italian mountain crests? In that case you have a good idea what my weight curve these last weeks has looked like. Daily fluctuations of two to four pounde, up and down. The good part is that they have evened out to a net value of zero, so, I have, on average, been maintaining. The bad part, of course, is that I didn´t lose.
I could start a whinefest of complaining about the heat, stress, and frequent visits with MIL keeping me from losing, but that wouldn´t change the situation either. As it is, I am rather glad that the weight I had lost has stayed off under the given circumstances, and I just keep on doing what I did to condense that, hoping for the best as far as future losses are concerned.
One step forward, one in place is still better than one forward, two back.
Julia
I could start a whinefest of complaining about the heat, stress, and frequent visits with MIL keeping me from losing, but that wouldn´t change the situation either. As it is, I am rather glad that the weight I had lost has stayed off under the given circumstances, and I just keep on doing what I did to condense that, hoping for the best as far as future losses are concerned.
One step forward, one in place is still better than one forward, two back.
Julia
2012/08/13
Too many lights?
With both of us working full time outside the house, the time we spend actually inside our flat (and awake) is mainly in the evening and on weekends. As the house we live in is situated at the bottom of a valley, so, the sunlight is blocked by a mountain , and the windows of our living room are facing southwest, that means we usually have to turn on the lights rather early if we want to avoid that cavern feeling. Which, in turn, led to a proliferation of light-emitting stuff, as in lamps, more lamps, candle holders, LED lamps, and more such like occupying the better part of the available horizontal surfaces.
The thing being that several of these illuminating devices weren´t even plugged in, and thus didn´t even provide any illumination, while several others were rarely if ever switched on because the light they gave was too feeble to make a substantial contribution to the overall brightness of the room.
For some time now, that is, since the too-many-chairs epiphany, I had been feeling a vague unease about the things on top of our shelves. I think I found another culprit for the general cluttered feeling of our living room.
Thus, today was lamp reduction day. The LED lamps, which I had originally intended to be spotlighting some artwork on the wall, were the first to be removed. Then I proceeded to the unplugged lamps. One of them is DH´s, an electrified version of a petroleum lamp with a brass foot and orange glass lampshade. It looks pretty enough, but with the original arrangement (that had another narrow glass cylinder inside the lampshade) you couldn´t put fluorescent bulbs in there. I have, tentatively, removed that cylinder and inserted a fluorescent bulb- if DH agrees to that solution, that lamp will be used again. For another of his lamps, I´ll have to get a new lightbulb, too.
Of the candlesticks, I removed all of mine and left only one of DH´s which is rather decorative, too.
Then I added a stronger lightbulb to a bone china decorative lamp, which now shines a lot brighter than it used to, and replaced that where the LED lamps used to be..
The overall effect is, once more, stunning. Less visual clutter, less cables hanging around.
The only downside is that I now have those LED lamps lying around. They were outrageously expensive when we bought them because the technology was very new then, but right now, they just don´t have a home. Still, I´m not ready to throw them out. Perhaps I´ll find another use for them, but until then, they´ll rest inside a storage bin instead of cluttering up my living room.
Tonight, I´ll see what else I can do to improve the lighting and reduce clutter. But once again, it seems that removing the excess is the way to go.
Isn´t it always.
Julia
The thing being that several of these illuminating devices weren´t even plugged in, and thus didn´t even provide any illumination, while several others were rarely if ever switched on because the light they gave was too feeble to make a substantial contribution to the overall brightness of the room.
For some time now, that is, since the too-many-chairs epiphany, I had been feeling a vague unease about the things on top of our shelves. I think I found another culprit for the general cluttered feeling of our living room.
Thus, today was lamp reduction day. The LED lamps, which I had originally intended to be spotlighting some artwork on the wall, were the first to be removed. Then I proceeded to the unplugged lamps. One of them is DH´s, an electrified version of a petroleum lamp with a brass foot and orange glass lampshade. It looks pretty enough, but with the original arrangement (that had another narrow glass cylinder inside the lampshade) you couldn´t put fluorescent bulbs in there. I have, tentatively, removed that cylinder and inserted a fluorescent bulb- if DH agrees to that solution, that lamp will be used again. For another of his lamps, I´ll have to get a new lightbulb, too.
Of the candlesticks, I removed all of mine and left only one of DH´s which is rather decorative, too.
Then I added a stronger lightbulb to a bone china decorative lamp, which now shines a lot brighter than it used to, and replaced that where the LED lamps used to be..
The overall effect is, once more, stunning. Less visual clutter, less cables hanging around.
The only downside is that I now have those LED lamps lying around. They were outrageously expensive when we bought them because the technology was very new then, but right now, they just don´t have a home. Still, I´m not ready to throw them out. Perhaps I´ll find another use for them, but until then, they´ll rest inside a storage bin instead of cluttering up my living room.
Tonight, I´ll see what else I can do to improve the lighting and reduce clutter. But once again, it seems that removing the excess is the way to go.
Isn´t it always.
Julia
2012/08/06
A galaxy decluttered
Last week, at work, was once again sheer pandemonium. What with being the only of the colleagues left at the office who wasn´t taking their annual vacation, plus another spell of above-thirty-degrees centigrade heat, I neither had any time left to blog, nor did I have, come Friday, any energy left.
So I allowed myself a Bruno Mars style lazy Saturday (as in Today I´m not doing anything, less the part about the nice girl;)), and on Sunday my spirits had returned enough - and the temperature dropped- to make me go at another decluttering project I had been procrastinating about, namely, those red IKEA boxes I keep on top of a shelf in my living room to contain small stuff and papers that aren´t currently needed but which I don´t want to toss, either.
I took all of them down and went through the contents, culling what I didn´t regard as a keeper any more and shredding the discarded papers at once.
With regards to that, an important lesson- just because I once decided an item should be kept, doesn´t mean that decision won´t be revised by time. Where I live, there´s no real possibility that I´d ever need, say, the heating bills from my former flat again when I´ve moved out twelve years ago, nor the repair bills from my old car or even a ticket for speeding I got five years ago. So, what I do is set an expiration limit and return to the receptacle I put the stuff in after it expires. Yesterday, that meant that the content of one whole box went to the shredder. Which came as quite a surprise, as I had already gone through that stuff years ago and ditched all those old rental contracts from long-ago flats, operating manuals for gadgets I no longer own, and receipts for non-taxable payments completed ages ago. And still there was one box´s worth of paper trash that could be tossed immediately.
Another box turned out to hold the remains of my formerly beloved Star Wars collection. I had, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, been an avid collector of roleplaying books, which I hadn´t ditched because I had still hoped they might have some resales value.
Not so. I checked the prices for those on Momox, and found out that of all the lot, only two had an asking price at all, which was a fraction of what I had paid for them and wouldn´t have been worth the hassle of having to pack and post them. So, the whole lot is now in the recycling bin, making me a lot wiser as to the futility of keeping things in the hope that they might be worth something someday. While there might be someone out there who is as crazy about that stuff as I used to be, I won´t keep the stuff on the off chance of finding him because the now empty box it was in can certainly be put to a better use.
In total, I ended up with two completely empty boxes, and enough free space in some of the others to allow me to relocate some items from my everyday filing cabinet, freeing the latter up a bit.
Once again, getting rid of things of the past will give me space to live my present life. It´s liberation at its best, and I will, whenever I have a sliver of time left, continue to weed out the stuff that´s left.
The best thing being that, due to the shopping embargo I keep, the result of such a session is really free space, not just a chance to stash some more acquisitions. And that is definitely something I can get used to.
Julia
So I allowed myself a Bruno Mars style lazy Saturday (as in Today I´m not doing anything, less the part about the nice girl;)), and on Sunday my spirits had returned enough - and the temperature dropped- to make me go at another decluttering project I had been procrastinating about, namely, those red IKEA boxes I keep on top of a shelf in my living room to contain small stuff and papers that aren´t currently needed but which I don´t want to toss, either.
I took all of them down and went through the contents, culling what I didn´t regard as a keeper any more and shredding the discarded papers at once.
With regards to that, an important lesson- just because I once decided an item should be kept, doesn´t mean that decision won´t be revised by time. Where I live, there´s no real possibility that I´d ever need, say, the heating bills from my former flat again when I´ve moved out twelve years ago, nor the repair bills from my old car or even a ticket for speeding I got five years ago. So, what I do is set an expiration limit and return to the receptacle I put the stuff in after it expires. Yesterday, that meant that the content of one whole box went to the shredder. Which came as quite a surprise, as I had already gone through that stuff years ago and ditched all those old rental contracts from long-ago flats, operating manuals for gadgets I no longer own, and receipts for non-taxable payments completed ages ago. And still there was one box´s worth of paper trash that could be tossed immediately.
Another box turned out to hold the remains of my formerly beloved Star Wars collection. I had, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, been an avid collector of roleplaying books, which I hadn´t ditched because I had still hoped they might have some resales value.
Not so. I checked the prices for those on Momox, and found out that of all the lot, only two had an asking price at all, which was a fraction of what I had paid for them and wouldn´t have been worth the hassle of having to pack and post them. So, the whole lot is now in the recycling bin, making me a lot wiser as to the futility of keeping things in the hope that they might be worth something someday. While there might be someone out there who is as crazy about that stuff as I used to be, I won´t keep the stuff on the off chance of finding him because the now empty box it was in can certainly be put to a better use.
In total, I ended up with two completely empty boxes, and enough free space in some of the others to allow me to relocate some items from my everyday filing cabinet, freeing the latter up a bit.
Once again, getting rid of things of the past will give me space to live my present life. It´s liberation at its best, and I will, whenever I have a sliver of time left, continue to weed out the stuff that´s left.
The best thing being that, due to the shopping embargo I keep, the result of such a session is really free space, not just a chance to stash some more acquisitions. And that is definitely something I can get used to.
Julia
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)