Wanted: one Spring, sunny, warm and last seen one year ago in these parts. Special signature: flowers and sprouting leaves. Usually accompanied by one Sun. There's a reward out for capture.
Seriously, it looks as if this winter will never end. We still have constantly sub-zero temperatures, occasional snow showers, and a cuttingly cold wind.
Any good intentions about restarting my morning walks are, er, frozen for the duration.
No good catching another cold with the work situation unchanged.
The only thing I can do is watch what I eat and get those five pounds off again.
Keep calm and carry on...
Julia
2013/03/27
2013/03/26
Perfect Shitstorm
Sometimes, things just seem to go along fine. Business is slow (I'm not paid by amount of work, so that is positive) , what work is to be done can be done easily, everyone in the family is healthy, the weather is fine and the eating is okay.
And then there are the times when everything hits the fan at once. Caseload exploding, having to do all of it alone because my estimated colleague has called in sick, plus everything going wrong at once, necessitating lots of unnessecary mop-up operations, plus several cases of sickness in the family. The double caseload has me working overtime every day, so I didn't get around to do any substantial grocery shopping for the last weeks, which meant having to live off our stockpiles of non-perishable or frozen food. Luckily, the pantry was sufficiently stocked. Still, most of it was rather carby and low in fiber. Think rice or pasta, pepped up with half a pound of frozen veggies and some chicken breast from the freezer. For the long days at the office, I mostly stick to protein shakes. Nothing out of the ordinary, and no excessive portions, either. Still, my weight has gone up by about five pounds, sending me back to quite exactly where I was one year ago.
Part of it is from eating the wrong things, part of it is stress-induced (even though I have managed to escape bingeing on cookies or such, I tend to eat more carby stuff when stressed out, such as having a slice of full-grain rye bread for a snack).
With a rising stress level, I think there are some changes in the way my body operates when it comes to food. None of them are, unfortunately, conducive to weight loss.
If only the colleague were back...
Julia
And then there are the times when everything hits the fan at once. Caseload exploding, having to do all of it alone because my estimated colleague has called in sick, plus everything going wrong at once, necessitating lots of unnessecary mop-up operations, plus several cases of sickness in the family. The double caseload has me working overtime every day, so I didn't get around to do any substantial grocery shopping for the last weeks, which meant having to live off our stockpiles of non-perishable or frozen food. Luckily, the pantry was sufficiently stocked. Still, most of it was rather carby and low in fiber. Think rice or pasta, pepped up with half a pound of frozen veggies and some chicken breast from the freezer. For the long days at the office, I mostly stick to protein shakes. Nothing out of the ordinary, and no excessive portions, either. Still, my weight has gone up by about five pounds, sending me back to quite exactly where I was one year ago.
Part of it is from eating the wrong things, part of it is stress-induced (even though I have managed to escape bingeing on cookies or such, I tend to eat more carby stuff when stressed out, such as having a slice of full-grain rye bread for a snack).
With a rising stress level, I think there are some changes in the way my body operates when it comes to food. None of them are, unfortunately, conducive to weight loss.
If only the colleague were back...
Julia
2013/03/18
Pesky beasties, snow and the usual snafus
First, I caught a cold that kept me coughing and sniffling for the better part of two weeks. I had a holiday planned for already around my b-day, part of which we intended to spend at MIL's, and the remainder at home, recuperating. What happened instead was the return of snow and cold, so bad that all airports were closed down, and the road forecast was so bad we decided to wait the worst out before driving home. The cold bugs, in the meantime, seem to have migrated to the colleague I work together with, and he's home sick for the whole week, after which- you guessed it- it's his turn to go on holiday for another two weeks. Saying I'm pissed doesn't quite describe it.
On the bright side of things, my parents are giving me a brand-new refrigerator for my birthday. I picked a model that has an especially big drawer for storing vegetables, and optimum energy use levels. Quite expensive, but from the reduction in energy use alone, it will probably pay for itself within seven to eight years. Besides, the old one has been making funny noises for awhile, so it's probably as well I'll be rid of it, before it starts a fire or something. The new one will probably be delivered next week.
What with the weekend being spent at home, I have started to make room in the kitchen for removing the old one and setting up the new one in its place.
Which, once again, led to several items being evicted from the premises. A fruit basket that had its feet so close together that it kept toppling over when I tried to use it, and a plastic microwave dish I had originally thought I'd use at the office went to the trash, as well as some bottles I had kept for their decorative value. The magnetic pinboard, i.e. the fridge door, was cleared of the magnets and paper attached to it. Part of it went to the freezer door, and several freezer magnets have gone into a drawer, pending a decision on whether I will use them again or not. One five-liter stockpot has gone to the cellar, as well as several empty flower pots.
What keeps surprising me is that at virtually every occasion where I have to do some rearranging I come up with a bunch of stuff to declutter, too. Then again, we still own plenty of stuff so it should be a given that not all of it is a necessity.
I'm actually looking forward to having that new fridge. That crisper drawer means I can, perhaps, buy more non-frozen veggies, which I mostly avoided because the old fridge had little room for them and our kitchen is too warm to store them outside of the fridge. So, any fresh veggies I bought have been for immediate consumption only. As we grocery-shop biweekly at most, that probably was not optimal for getting my nutritients in.
On quite another vein, that fridge replaces something I already own which I need daily, and which is on the point of breaking down. It reduces my energy bill and my carbon footprint, and the old one will be taken away and recycled, too.
So, it is the perfect minimalist gift. No extra clutter and good for the environment and my wallet.
Now if the fresh veggies that go into it were helping me to get back on the weight loss track again...
Julia
On the bright side of things, my parents are giving me a brand-new refrigerator for my birthday. I picked a model that has an especially big drawer for storing vegetables, and optimum energy use levels. Quite expensive, but from the reduction in energy use alone, it will probably pay for itself within seven to eight years. Besides, the old one has been making funny noises for awhile, so it's probably as well I'll be rid of it, before it starts a fire or something. The new one will probably be delivered next week.
What with the weekend being spent at home, I have started to make room in the kitchen for removing the old one and setting up the new one in its place.
Which, once again, led to several items being evicted from the premises. A fruit basket that had its feet so close together that it kept toppling over when I tried to use it, and a plastic microwave dish I had originally thought I'd use at the office went to the trash, as well as some bottles I had kept for their decorative value. The magnetic pinboard, i.e. the fridge door, was cleared of the magnets and paper attached to it. Part of it went to the freezer door, and several freezer magnets have gone into a drawer, pending a decision on whether I will use them again or not. One five-liter stockpot has gone to the cellar, as well as several empty flower pots.
What keeps surprising me is that at virtually every occasion where I have to do some rearranging I come up with a bunch of stuff to declutter, too. Then again, we still own plenty of stuff so it should be a given that not all of it is a necessity.
I'm actually looking forward to having that new fridge. That crisper drawer means I can, perhaps, buy more non-frozen veggies, which I mostly avoided because the old fridge had little room for them and our kitchen is too warm to store them outside of the fridge. So, any fresh veggies I bought have been for immediate consumption only. As we grocery-shop biweekly at most, that probably was not optimal for getting my nutritients in.
On quite another vein, that fridge replaces something I already own which I need daily, and which is on the point of breaking down. It reduces my energy bill and my carbon footprint, and the old one will be taken away and recycled, too.
So, it is the perfect minimalist gift. No extra clutter and good for the environment and my wallet.
Now if the fresh veggies that go into it were helping me to get back on the weight loss track again...
Julia
2013/03/07
Time is running...
... and I missed my two-year blogoversary on March 1st!
So, it's been two years by now that I tentatively hit "send" on my first post. I was still some thirty pounds heavier than I am today, with a BMI of 34.6. Still, the weight I had reached on the way down was one I had not been at for over seven years. In between those dates lay my fattest ever point, at a BMI 41, loss of mobility, loss of self-respect and complete loss of hope. I hated what my body had become, but after several failed attempts at losing that blubber, I did not believe in my own ability to ever come down from that weight again any more.
What, in the end, really started me off on the way down was the day when I put my back out so badly that I could barely walk and suddenly finding myself face to face with what my body had become in the mirror, without being able to twist myself around so I wouldn't look as bad. So, I started walking. On the first few days, it was rather dragging around myself with a pair of trekking poles, having to pause every 200 meters because I was completely breathless. Even then, I did not believe I'd lose a substantial amount of weight. I just wanted my back muscles to work better so as to avoid recurrence of that immobilizing back pain. But, for curiosity's sake, I wanted to find out, too, if I could lose any weight at all. So, I changed what I was eating, too.
And I started recondensing. The first couple of pounds, I was expecting the losses to stop at fifteen to twenty pounds down. When I reached 25 pounds lost, which in kilograms also meant getting down to two-digit weights (still about 220 pounds, but as my scales are metric, seeing that number was a big psychological motivator), I did, for the first time ever, dare to hope I might be able to continue recondensing.
Around that time, the idea for this blog was born.
I wanted to share what had worked for me, and I also wanted to keep myself accountable.
Like almost everybody, I have not been perfect. After losing in total about seventy pounds and reaching the limits of morbid obesity, I stopped exercising. You might say I let life get in the way. As my back has been re-starting to act up, I will have to restart my exercise as soon as the weather allows.
As to food, I have found out that it is harder to stay on plan when work gets stressful, and I also found out that some things to me are a surefire trigger for cravings and binges. Harmless-sounding things, even, like a slice of bread.
I have been maintaining- or perhaps rather preventing major regains- around that limit of obesity for about a year now. For my looks, that might even have been beneficial, as I think my skin has been reconstricting a bit during that time. But still, it's not where I want to stay. If going from class three morbid obesity to overweight makes such a difference, then coming down to normal weight from the upper limit of overweight should be even better.
Time to get back on track, if I don't want to join the ranks of the trainwrecks for good...
Julia
So, it's been two years by now that I tentatively hit "send" on my first post. I was still some thirty pounds heavier than I am today, with a BMI of 34.6. Still, the weight I had reached on the way down was one I had not been at for over seven years. In between those dates lay my fattest ever point, at a BMI 41, loss of mobility, loss of self-respect and complete loss of hope. I hated what my body had become, but after several failed attempts at losing that blubber, I did not believe in my own ability to ever come down from that weight again any more.
What, in the end, really started me off on the way down was the day when I put my back out so badly that I could barely walk and suddenly finding myself face to face with what my body had become in the mirror, without being able to twist myself around so I wouldn't look as bad. So, I started walking. On the first few days, it was rather dragging around myself with a pair of trekking poles, having to pause every 200 meters because I was completely breathless. Even then, I did not believe I'd lose a substantial amount of weight. I just wanted my back muscles to work better so as to avoid recurrence of that immobilizing back pain. But, for curiosity's sake, I wanted to find out, too, if I could lose any weight at all. So, I changed what I was eating, too.
And I started recondensing. The first couple of pounds, I was expecting the losses to stop at fifteen to twenty pounds down. When I reached 25 pounds lost, which in kilograms also meant getting down to two-digit weights (still about 220 pounds, but as my scales are metric, seeing that number was a big psychological motivator), I did, for the first time ever, dare to hope I might be able to continue recondensing.
Around that time, the idea for this blog was born.
I wanted to share what had worked for me, and I also wanted to keep myself accountable.
Like almost everybody, I have not been perfect. After losing in total about seventy pounds and reaching the limits of morbid obesity, I stopped exercising. You might say I let life get in the way. As my back has been re-starting to act up, I will have to restart my exercise as soon as the weather allows.
As to food, I have found out that it is harder to stay on plan when work gets stressful, and I also found out that some things to me are a surefire trigger for cravings and binges. Harmless-sounding things, even, like a slice of bread.
I have been maintaining- or perhaps rather preventing major regains- around that limit of obesity for about a year now. For my looks, that might even have been beneficial, as I think my skin has been reconstricting a bit during that time. But still, it's not where I want to stay. If going from class three morbid obesity to overweight makes such a difference, then coming down to normal weight from the upper limit of overweight should be even better.
Time to get back on track, if I don't want to join the ranks of the trainwrecks for good...
Julia
2013/03/05
There but for fortune...
When I visited the USA with my parents in the late seventies of the last century, I was astonished about the number of people I saw who were decidedly obese. People who were lumbering instead of walking, people who were looking like fifty-year-olds(or what sixteen-year old me thought fifty would look like), but probably were not even thirty. People who were chewing on junk food or inhaling liquid junk food. People who, on top of being fat, were dressed in absolutely tasteless gaudy-colored polyester garments that accentuated their fatness.
Back home in Europe, at that time, true obesity was rare. There were some people who were overweight, mostly older ones, but very few were obese. The kind of obesity I saw in the US was, to us, an American thing.
But then, in Europe, most people lived mainly off unprocessed foods. Most meals were cooked from scratch at home. Fast food restaurants in the American style were few and far between, and visiting them was a rare occurence.
Today, there's at least one of the "American specialty eateries" in every city. Supermarkets have shelves and shelves of processed and prepared food-like substances.Many young people would not know how to cook a meal from scratch if their lives depended on it.
Which they probably do.
When I go to the mall today, or wait at the tram stop, a sizable number of the people I encounter are morbidly obese. The most shocking part being how many of them are relatively young. Sixteen-year olds with quadruple chins that make them look like forty, and who are carrying packages of fast food.
Fifty-year olds who are barely able to walk, or use crutches or electric carts. Women who look as wide as they are tall. Men who take up a whole two-seater bench on the bus.
I cannot help comparing their lumbering, painful gait to that of the normal-weighted persons next to them, or their drawn, downturned mouths to the smiles of their slimmer counterparts.
Been there, been that.
Don't anybody tell me these people are completely happy with what they are.
Because they are not. Not even if they try to hypnotize themselves into it with so-called fat acceptance.
I'm feeling sorry for them. Sorry, and thankful that I have been allowed to find a way out of that prison.
But for fortune, that woman on the cart might have been me. But for fortune, I might still be that woman on crutches.
The most tragic part being that the key to the prison door is within everybody's reach.
Watch your portions.
Don't eat crap.
Eat for fuel not for entertainment.
Don't eat your feelings.
Move your ass.
For most of the obese, following these might mean freedom.
As simple as that.
But, of course, that would require them to own up to the fact that their obesity is not a mysterious curse fallen on them, but mostly the direct result of their own actions.
Owning up to that was the first step for me on the road back to being normal-weighted.
I still have quite a distance to go until there. But the actions that brought me below morbid obesity already should get me there, too. It's just a matter of time and perseverance.
Julia
Back home in Europe, at that time, true obesity was rare. There were some people who were overweight, mostly older ones, but very few were obese. The kind of obesity I saw in the US was, to us, an American thing.
But then, in Europe, most people lived mainly off unprocessed foods. Most meals were cooked from scratch at home. Fast food restaurants in the American style were few and far between, and visiting them was a rare occurence.
Today, there's at least one of the "American specialty eateries" in every city. Supermarkets have shelves and shelves of processed and prepared food-like substances.Many young people would not know how to cook a meal from scratch if their lives depended on it.
Which they probably do.
When I go to the mall today, or wait at the tram stop, a sizable number of the people I encounter are morbidly obese. The most shocking part being how many of them are relatively young. Sixteen-year olds with quadruple chins that make them look like forty, and who are carrying packages of fast food.
Fifty-year olds who are barely able to walk, or use crutches or electric carts. Women who look as wide as they are tall. Men who take up a whole two-seater bench on the bus.
I cannot help comparing their lumbering, painful gait to that of the normal-weighted persons next to them, or their drawn, downturned mouths to the smiles of their slimmer counterparts.
Been there, been that.
Don't anybody tell me these people are completely happy with what they are.
Because they are not. Not even if they try to hypnotize themselves into it with so-called fat acceptance.
I'm feeling sorry for them. Sorry, and thankful that I have been allowed to find a way out of that prison.
But for fortune, that woman on the cart might have been me. But for fortune, I might still be that woman on crutches.
The most tragic part being that the key to the prison door is within everybody's reach.
Watch your portions.
Don't eat crap.
Eat for fuel not for entertainment.
Don't eat your feelings.
Move your ass.
For most of the obese, following these might mean freedom.
As simple as that.
But, of course, that would require them to own up to the fact that their obesity is not a mysterious curse fallen on them, but mostly the direct result of their own actions.
Owning up to that was the first step for me on the road back to being normal-weighted.
I still have quite a distance to go until there. But the actions that brought me below morbid obesity already should get me there, too. It's just a matter of time and perseverance.
Julia
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