I usually try not to be a coward when it comes to Facing Up to Reality.
So, I dug out my bioimpedance scales this morning and, after inserting a fresh battery, stepped on them. The last time I had done so was when I had recondensed by about five kilograms, which brought me for the first time below the limit up from where all that thing would give me was an "error" reading.
Back then, my body fat percentage was 52 per cent, which meant that there were, in total, 55.6 kilos of fat on me.
Since then, my weight has gone down by another 25 kilograms, which I had hoped had brought down the amount of fat, too.
Today's reading: body fat percentage 54 per cent of total weight.
Worse than before.
Which means that I still carry around some 43 kilos of blubber.
Which in turn means that only twelve of those kilograms I was so glad to have recondensed were actually, you know, fat.
And thirteen were something else, which means either water weight or lean tissue, i.e. muscle.
No wonder I'm plateauing. And perpetually exhausted, too.
What this means is that what I have been doing is not working.
I had thought that keeping my protein intake at about thirty per cent of total calories would suffice to prevent loss of lean tissue even without exercise.
Boy was I wrong.
So what to do?
Rebuild that lean tissue, logically.
Which might mean gaining weight before losing any more of it.
At my goal weight, a body fat percentage of, say, twenty would amount to about thirteen kilograms of fat that I would not mind keeping on my body.
Thirteen. Not forty-three.
The other thirty kilograms are what has to go.
Except I am only fifteen kilograms above goal weight, which in turn means I would have to regain fifteen kilograms of lean body mass if I don't want to end up with a BMI below twenty.
So, what I need to do is build muscle without gaining fat.
And without spending inordinate amounts of time on it. I have a life outside of weight loss, after all. A very busy one.
Back to the library for information and back to the drawing board.
Julia
2013/01/29
Slippery slope
The last weeks were rather busy, plus, rather cold which meant less opportunity for walking around outside. And shopping by tram. While that was frugal because one buys less when having to carry it all the way home, it also meant shopping my pantry most days for something to turn into dinner.
Which led me to a big duh moment. Eating from the pantry means, to the exception of the frozen veggies I use, too many carbs (think rice and pasta) and way too few micronutritients, which made me end up hobbling to my kitchen last night with a cramp in my leg because I obviously had had too little magnesium and had been neglecting my vitamin/mineral supplements. A packet of powdered magnesium took care of the cramp, but I could have prevented it by being more regular about supplementing.
Actually, I'm probably low in other micronutritients, too, which don't have the good grace of announcing that they are running low.
Which might be part of why my weight won't budge, too.
Julia
Which led me to a big duh moment. Eating from the pantry means, to the exception of the frozen veggies I use, too many carbs (think rice and pasta) and way too few micronutritients, which made me end up hobbling to my kitchen last night with a cramp in my leg because I obviously had had too little magnesium and had been neglecting my vitamin/mineral supplements. A packet of powdered magnesium took care of the cramp, but I could have prevented it by being more regular about supplementing.
Actually, I'm probably low in other micronutritients, too, which don't have the good grace of announcing that they are running low.
Which might be part of why my weight won't budge, too.
Julia
2013/01/25
Thick and tired
Maybe it's the darkness and cold of deep winter. Maybe it's the lack of rest that comes with having too much on one's plate.
Whichever it is, for weeks I have been suffering from permanent fatigue. Not a good thing if I want to continue recondensing. And not a good place to contemplate starting an exercise program, either. If all I want to do after work is plunk down in my recliner and doze off in front of the TV set (which is turned on for the benefit of DH, not mine-I didn't even have one before DH moved in), exercise of any kind is an even more daunting proposition than usual.
Intellectually, I know that not moving my body beyond what is unavoidable might be contributing to that feeling of general weakness and malaise, and also to the persistent aches and pains that have been plaguing me ever since the onset of the cold weather.
As several of the women in my family have been suffering from rheumatoid arthritis that started around menopause, I am, of course, worrying that my genes might have caught up with me there.
The condensable matter, under these circumstances, is of course not budging. I just barely manage not to regain. And with every day on that plateau my chances of getting to goal before the big five-oh are shrinking.
I'd rather be shrinking myself...
Perhaps the lengthening of daylight time and better weather will help. I am not giving up. Not after how far I had come.
The weather forecast says temperatures will be back above freezing next week, but it also says there'll be a lot of rain. If they were wrong about the rain part, I could, perhaps, start on the nordic walking again. If not, I'll have to wait for my usual route through the park to turn back from ankle deep slush to a walkable pathway.
I have also been looking into the purchase of a cross training machine that would free me from weather constraints. Apart the fact that they are quite expensive, those things take up a lot of space, which in our flat is at a premium anyway.
Perhaps I should throw out the guest bed in the office to make room. Putting DH's small desk that right now sits in the living room over into the office would mean enough room for a cross training machine where that desk lives now.
Then again, what I definitely don't want is another white elephant sitting around. I used to own a stationary cycle that ended up as a rather impractical clothes rack for several years before I threw it out. So, if I were to buy me that cross trainer, I'd better use it.
I know that there are specimens of that machine which are a lot cheaper than the one I have been ogling, but whichever machine I bought would have to bear the weight of either DH or me, and those cheap ones probably wouldn't hold up.
Perhaps I should look for one on ebay...
Julia
Whichever it is, for weeks I have been suffering from permanent fatigue. Not a good thing if I want to continue recondensing. And not a good place to contemplate starting an exercise program, either. If all I want to do after work is plunk down in my recliner and doze off in front of the TV set (which is turned on for the benefit of DH, not mine-I didn't even have one before DH moved in), exercise of any kind is an even more daunting proposition than usual.
Intellectually, I know that not moving my body beyond what is unavoidable might be contributing to that feeling of general weakness and malaise, and also to the persistent aches and pains that have been plaguing me ever since the onset of the cold weather.
As several of the women in my family have been suffering from rheumatoid arthritis that started around menopause, I am, of course, worrying that my genes might have caught up with me there.
The condensable matter, under these circumstances, is of course not budging. I just barely manage not to regain. And with every day on that plateau my chances of getting to goal before the big five-oh are shrinking.
I'd rather be shrinking myself...
Perhaps the lengthening of daylight time and better weather will help. I am not giving up. Not after how far I had come.
The weather forecast says temperatures will be back above freezing next week, but it also says there'll be a lot of rain. If they were wrong about the rain part, I could, perhaps, start on the nordic walking again. If not, I'll have to wait for my usual route through the park to turn back from ankle deep slush to a walkable pathway.
I have also been looking into the purchase of a cross training machine that would free me from weather constraints. Apart the fact that they are quite expensive, those things take up a lot of space, which in our flat is at a premium anyway.
Perhaps I should throw out the guest bed in the office to make room. Putting DH's small desk that right now sits in the living room over into the office would mean enough room for a cross training machine where that desk lives now.
Then again, what I definitely don't want is another white elephant sitting around. I used to own a stationary cycle that ended up as a rather impractical clothes rack for several years before I threw it out. So, if I were to buy me that cross trainer, I'd better use it.
I know that there are specimens of that machine which are a lot cheaper than the one I have been ogling, but whichever machine I bought would have to bear the weight of either DH or me, and those cheap ones probably wouldn't hold up.
Perhaps I should look for one on ebay...
Julia
2013/01/24
Feeling good in one's skin
Like everybody else on this planet, I have been born into it wearing that contraption of flesh and bones called a body. And ever since, I have felt uncomfortable in the particular specimen I am stuck with, and I have envied people who seemed to be able to generate any pleasant experiences from the fact of having a body. To me, it seemed always preferable not to be reminded of having one.
Living was something I did in my head and with my brain.
Of course, being brought up by two elderly people who, out of fear that something might happen to me, never allowed me outside the house to play, either by myself or with other kids, didn't exactly help. At a time when other children, blissfully unaware of any limitations of their bodies, test their limits and grow the synapses necessary for coordinated and effective movement, I was perpetually confined to a six-room floor plan.
Besides, my grandparents, while loving and well-intentioned, also were rather Victorian in their attitudes. Everything about the human body was considered gross and unmentionable.
And then I entered school.
Being uncoordinated and clumsy for lack of exercise, I was relentlessly bullied, most of all during gym class. Add to that a gym teacher who, in retrospection, obviously did not see what the cause of my klutziness was, and what you got was a deepening conviction on my part that any activity that involved moving my body around was absolutely pointless torture and should best be avoided. Which meant that I spent almost all of my free time indoors, reading.
I have, even when normal-weighted by BMI standards, always had what is called a "stocky"build, which set off another bully in my immediate family who kept calling me fat- though I technically wasn't- and forced me into my first diet at age eight, as if starving my body would remove the klutziness, which of course it didn't. Neither did it change the basic build of my body.
What all that left me with was a solidified case of body hatred, and the conviction that my body was nothing but a perpetual source of shame and discomfort, an obstacle to be dragged around that would meet nothing but revulsion from others.
And that was before I gained over a hundred pounds of excess fat.
In a way, hating my body like that made it easier to be obese. To me, my body had always looked like that. When I first gained all that weight, what I thought was that my body was, for the first time, really looking like what I had believed it looked like all my life. And the physical limitations that came with obesity were, from my twisted point of view, just extensions of the limitations I had perceived even when still slim. That was also why it was so easy to deny them.
Today, I have successfully recondensed about seventy pounds of that excess fat. Enough to come back to a point slightly below, or as slightly above, that limit of obesity.
And for about a year, my weight has been plateauing. Two thirds of the way down achieved, and then stalled.
I have no idea if it is my body trying to get back to some kind of elevated setpoint or my mind playing subconscious tricks on me. What I know is that this is not goal. Not even remotely so.
I don't want the description of the subject, if ever a postmortem were done on me, to read "obese female". Being normal-weighted is the number one item on my bucket list.
But, after trying out most of the recent scientific results on what to eat for weight loss, the only thing left I am not presently doing is.... exercise. Moving my body above what is unavoidable in my daily life.
When I started on my weight loss journey, I was doing two rounds of about forty minutes a day of nordic walking. The action with the walking poles helped with the back problems I had.
Then came winter and weather that was too cold for walking outside. So I quit. When spring came around, I did not restart.
I had so hoped I could get to goal without having to resort to exercise, especially since I was convinced that any weight loss caused solely by exercising would not be maintainable for me.
So, it seems that I won't be able to avoid facing that body of mine after all if I need its cooperation. The problen with that being that I still hate my body. I'm still uncoordinated, and the ravages of obesity on my joints and on my skin have made me even less anticipate any enjoyment from moving it.
It hurts, it jiggles in places where it should not, it is clumsy, and it feels increasingly weak, as if the last, say, ten pounds I lost had been the muscles I had used for dragging around the weight I have already lost.
I have no idea what my body fat percentage is right now. It used to be too high for my bioimpedance scales to measure, giving me an "err" reading instead. What I am afraid of is finding out that what I lost would be lean tissue instead of blubber.
I'm not usually so shy about facing the truth.
Whenever I read someone's description of how they enjoy moving their bodies, whenever I read about "positive body image", all I can feel is envy of people who can generate enjoyment from their bodies, and resignation at my own inability to do so. The worst part of it all being the knowledge that I was probably born with that ability and lost it somewhere along the way. I haven't yet found a way to reclaim it.
Perhaps I should just pretend. Act as if I knew how to perceive moving my body as a thing to be enjoyed instead of a chore to be avoided. Others have managed it.
And then I would have to find the time for doing some exercise.
And pick one to do regularly.
The problem being that my schedule of late has been so irregular that I am glad if I manage to get six hours of sleep in. Making time for an hour of exercise (counting in the time to shower afterwards) will require some major tweaking of my timetable.
And, as walking or nordic walking are about the only kinds of exercise I know how to do at all which require neither equipment nor participation in a group activity, and right now we have ten inches of snow and sub-freezing temperatures, I have some time to make those tweaks before I can start again.
If only my knee-jerk reaction to the proposition of exercise weren't so much like that to the proposition of having a tooth pulled without anesthesia.
Actually, I'd probably prefer the tooth.
Being stuck with a body that requires regular maintenance beyond feeding, cleaning and sleep sometimes sucks. Big time.
Julia
Living was something I did in my head and with my brain.
Of course, being brought up by two elderly people who, out of fear that something might happen to me, never allowed me outside the house to play, either by myself or with other kids, didn't exactly help. At a time when other children, blissfully unaware of any limitations of their bodies, test their limits and grow the synapses necessary for coordinated and effective movement, I was perpetually confined to a six-room floor plan.
Besides, my grandparents, while loving and well-intentioned, also were rather Victorian in their attitudes. Everything about the human body was considered gross and unmentionable.
And then I entered school.
Being uncoordinated and clumsy for lack of exercise, I was relentlessly bullied, most of all during gym class. Add to that a gym teacher who, in retrospection, obviously did not see what the cause of my klutziness was, and what you got was a deepening conviction on my part that any activity that involved moving my body around was absolutely pointless torture and should best be avoided. Which meant that I spent almost all of my free time indoors, reading.
I have, even when normal-weighted by BMI standards, always had what is called a "stocky"build, which set off another bully in my immediate family who kept calling me fat- though I technically wasn't- and forced me into my first diet at age eight, as if starving my body would remove the klutziness, which of course it didn't. Neither did it change the basic build of my body.
What all that left me with was a solidified case of body hatred, and the conviction that my body was nothing but a perpetual source of shame and discomfort, an obstacle to be dragged around that would meet nothing but revulsion from others.
And that was before I gained over a hundred pounds of excess fat.
In a way, hating my body like that made it easier to be obese. To me, my body had always looked like that. When I first gained all that weight, what I thought was that my body was, for the first time, really looking like what I had believed it looked like all my life. And the physical limitations that came with obesity were, from my twisted point of view, just extensions of the limitations I had perceived even when still slim. That was also why it was so easy to deny them.
Today, I have successfully recondensed about seventy pounds of that excess fat. Enough to come back to a point slightly below, or as slightly above, that limit of obesity.
And for about a year, my weight has been plateauing. Two thirds of the way down achieved, and then stalled.
I have no idea if it is my body trying to get back to some kind of elevated setpoint or my mind playing subconscious tricks on me. What I know is that this is not goal. Not even remotely so.
I don't want the description of the subject, if ever a postmortem were done on me, to read "obese female". Being normal-weighted is the number one item on my bucket list.
But, after trying out most of the recent scientific results on what to eat for weight loss, the only thing left I am not presently doing is.... exercise. Moving my body above what is unavoidable in my daily life.
When I started on my weight loss journey, I was doing two rounds of about forty minutes a day of nordic walking. The action with the walking poles helped with the back problems I had.
Then came winter and weather that was too cold for walking outside. So I quit. When spring came around, I did not restart.
I had so hoped I could get to goal without having to resort to exercise, especially since I was convinced that any weight loss caused solely by exercising would not be maintainable for me.
So, it seems that I won't be able to avoid facing that body of mine after all if I need its cooperation. The problen with that being that I still hate my body. I'm still uncoordinated, and the ravages of obesity on my joints and on my skin have made me even less anticipate any enjoyment from moving it.
It hurts, it jiggles in places where it should not, it is clumsy, and it feels increasingly weak, as if the last, say, ten pounds I lost had been the muscles I had used for dragging around the weight I have already lost.
I have no idea what my body fat percentage is right now. It used to be too high for my bioimpedance scales to measure, giving me an "err" reading instead. What I am afraid of is finding out that what I lost would be lean tissue instead of blubber.
I'm not usually so shy about facing the truth.
Whenever I read someone's description of how they enjoy moving their bodies, whenever I read about "positive body image", all I can feel is envy of people who can generate enjoyment from their bodies, and resignation at my own inability to do so. The worst part of it all being the knowledge that I was probably born with that ability and lost it somewhere along the way. I haven't yet found a way to reclaim it.
Perhaps I should just pretend. Act as if I knew how to perceive moving my body as a thing to be enjoyed instead of a chore to be avoided. Others have managed it.
And then I would have to find the time for doing some exercise.
And pick one to do regularly.
The problem being that my schedule of late has been so irregular that I am glad if I manage to get six hours of sleep in. Making time for an hour of exercise (counting in the time to shower afterwards) will require some major tweaking of my timetable.
And, as walking or nordic walking are about the only kinds of exercise I know how to do at all which require neither equipment nor participation in a group activity, and right now we have ten inches of snow and sub-freezing temperatures, I have some time to make those tweaks before I can start again.
If only my knee-jerk reaction to the proposition of exercise weren't so much like that to the proposition of having a tooth pulled without anesthesia.
Actually, I'd probably prefer the tooth.
Being stuck with a body that requires regular maintenance beyond feeding, cleaning and sleep sometimes sucks. Big time.
Julia
2013/01/14
End of holiday
Hello world, I'm officially back.
Weight over the holidays was fairly stable, until yesterday, that is, when my weight from one day to the next exploded upwards by five pounds which I suppose is mostly water weight, me having not even eaten five pounds of anything yesterday or the days before. So, it's back to my regular eating program now and hoping for the best.
Otherwise, the two weeks of R+R have helped me to recover from last year's madness, and I hope that the new year will be calmer as I have also been relieved of some of my caseload.
Which suits me just fine. What with the plateau I've been vacillating around on for almost a year now, I fear that I won't be able to break through it unless I restart exercising (just what I like, spending an hour a day on anything but necessary stuff like work, housework, and relaxation, and then having to spend that hour in the morning because there simply is no way I could carve a whole hour out of any other part of the day).In any case, with the sub-zero freezing temperatures and sleet we are having, that decision is postponed for now.
On with life...
Julia
Weight over the holidays was fairly stable, until yesterday, that is, when my weight from one day to the next exploded upwards by five pounds which I suppose is mostly water weight, me having not even eaten five pounds of anything yesterday or the days before. So, it's back to my regular eating program now and hoping for the best.
Otherwise, the two weeks of R+R have helped me to recover from last year's madness, and I hope that the new year will be calmer as I have also been relieved of some of my caseload.
Which suits me just fine. What with the plateau I've been vacillating around on for almost a year now, I fear that I won't be able to break through it unless I restart exercising (just what I like, spending an hour a day on anything but necessary stuff like work, housework, and relaxation, and then having to spend that hour in the morning because there simply is no way I could carve a whole hour out of any other part of the day).In any case, with the sub-zero freezing temperatures and sleet we are having, that decision is postponed for now.
On with life...
Julia
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