Starts and fits

Thank goodness there are no more MIL visits planned for the next weeks. The one we did last week surprisingly ended with a stall, weight-wise, which means that I can now go for the loss I have been trying to achieve too often already. And I took advantage of a special offer at a local store on my favourite protein powders, so, there´s enough of them in the pantry to get me through some serious recondensing these next weeks. Of course, DH might interfere, but I am, this time, wildly determined to do what it takes to get me back off this plateau. And that includes cutting down on having dinner together. I am convinced by now that nothing short of an almost-fast will get me through that barrier, so that is what I must do. 

The first time I went below this weight, DH wasn´t in town most of the time which allowed for absolute moderation already when shopping for food. Not having it around meant I couldn´t eat it. And, while I really like having him around, in the presence of DH that kind of frugality just isn´t possible. At least he only wants two meals a day and not three like MIL.

I´ll try to cook a lot of veggies for myself so he won´t notice how little I am eating. 

Gotta stick to my guns this time, or I´ll never get this fat off me again. 

Julia

Two-oh-five

For well over a month now, my weight has been dithering around the 93 kilograms mark. 205 pounds. That seems to be where my weight stabilizes naturally right now. I remember that I was weighing roundabout the same before the reaction to medication I had to take catapulted me up into morbid obesity and a BMI 42 in a matter of months. Three years ago, that was also where I hit my first serious plateau on the way down. So, I should probably not despair if it takes me some time to get off this point. 

Being in for yet another MIL visit, with the attendant problems concerning what to eat, doesn´t exactly foretell greater losses in the next week. She´s a veritable diet hazard. But I´ll try to avoid the stuff that is worst for me, namely, bread. In other aspects, there´s a problem. She will refuse almost everything made with vegetables claiming her delicate stomach doesn´t digest them well, which means that the number of veggies she still eats has dwindled to about four or five, and those only when they are cooked almost into a mash. Ugh!

If I could stay at the weight I´m at today, I might perhaps be able to restart recondensing once we are left again to our own devices food-wise. And tonight, I´ll have a big ass salad. Raw, and with many different veggies in it. Get my nutrition in as long as I can. 

Julia 

Stop Before You Turn

I´m back to doing almost all of the things I did when I started out recondensing three years ago. I log my food, keep under my calories, weigh myself daily and record the results. The only thing I haven´t restarted yet is exercise. I have no idea how to fit that into my schedule right now. 

The result is... a stall. Or, more charitably, maintenance. Instead of the hoped-for loss. Rowing as fast as I can only to avoid being sucked into Niagara Falls, instead of making headway. 

At first sight, that would be sheer frustration. But the good news is that I have finally stopped gaining, even though it´s on a much higher level than I had hoped for. 

Before I can turn my weight curve around, I must first stop gaining. So achieving this is a sign that things are going back in the right direction after all. 

Now if the multiple work overload I´m labouring under were to go away, I might even make time for exercise again. It won´t be easy, the bit of physical fitness I had reached being long evaporated, but I might get an exercise buddy in the guise of DH, who has been advised at his orthopedist´s that, of all things, nordic walking might be just the thing his shoulder joint needs. Go figure. 

We would not even have to purchase any additional equipment as we already have the sticks from way back. 

The only thing keeping us from starting is exhaustion. Finding at least half an hour each day for exercise gets hard when one is either busy at work or coming home so tired that one just drops down into an easy chair, puts up one´s feet and dozes off in a matter of minutes. I don´t think I have finished watching the evening news for several weeks. 

The lifelogging appliances I use tell me about my sleep time at night being way too short. Having to get up an hour earlier several times this week didn´t help that particularly. I wish I could but once get the uninterrupted eight to nine hours of sleep I know I run best on. Right now I am lucky if I get more than six. Knowing the effect of sleep deprivation on weight, that is definitely something I must work on. 

If only knowing what to change meant doing the change.

Julia

Strawberries, Asparagus and Wasps

After a rather frenetic last week, I had been looking forward to a nice relaxed weekend puttering around at home, including trying to catch some sun on our balcony. 

Unfortunately, we had visitors. 

For some days already, we had noticed that a wasp was regularly circling our balcony table, disappearing underneath it and reappearing some time later. Well, we weren´t certain it was the same wasp, so we paid no attention to it. 

This weekend, the wasp had brought a buddy along for company. As DH is allergic to wasp stings, having two of the critters buzzing around us all the time was out of the question. And they still kept flying underneath the table. So, we decided to find out what was so interesting down there and turned the table over. What we found was the openings that table had near where the legs are fixed jam-packed with yellow pollen and the greyish stuff wasps use for building their nests, plus, there were also several already-developed cocoons squeezed in there. Eeeek! To think that if we had not looked for some reason, there might have been a fully grown wasp´s nest down there...

In the building stage it was in, what we did was immerse the part in question in scalding hot water, then pry out the whole construction, all the while circled by the parent wasp who took two days to realize it (she?) had just been evicted and leave the balcony. Opposite that much tenacity, it was all too clear that reconstruction work would start immediately if we were to leave the offending table where it was. So we took it apart and put it in the basement (it´s plastic so the humidity won´t destroy it), and then went for a new table to put in its place. One that has no holes or ridges a wasp could use to fix a nest to. Even after we set up the new table, the wasp was back. I don´t know if it was still looking for the destroyed nest, or looking for a place to rebuild. In any case, after some time, it left. 

As it was, the critter had cost us almost all of Saturday afternoon. But we do have a new balcony table to show for it. I had actually planned to replace the old one for some time, it being a bit too large in diameter for our relatively narrow balcony, and the one we bought now is about fifteen centimeters smaller across, so, the balcony, too, looks more open and spacious with it. 

Losing Saturday afternoon to the wasps meant having to do laundry on Sunday, which in turn means I did not get around to doing the ironing as the clothes weren´t dry yet (I line-dry my laundry). 

On the food and weight front, I did buy myself some fresh strawberries for the first time in several years. It used to be that I was so busy that I kept missing out on strawberry season, thinking I would get some when the time for them was right and finding it was already over when I went to look. This year, I finally got some in time. 

The daily protein shake (with fresh strawberries in it) and cutting down on the nibbling have, at least, stopped my regain. I actually had the Fat Watch curve register a net loss for the week for the first time in about a year. Just 70 grams, but I did not gain. 70 grams a week, if repeated for a year, would mean seven pounds down. Which is not what I want to stop at, but the important thing is that I seem to have succeded in turning around that roller coaster back downwards at all. 

Having fresh asparagus with new potatoes and almost fat-free serrano ham as Sundays´ dinner was another of the joys of spring that one has to be careful not to miss out on, and on top, it´s recondensing-friendly. 

Finally, there´s hope of getting back to where I was one year ago. 

Julia

Egging Myself On

It´s been eleven months now since the inundation and as many months of having regained. 

I am still convinced that the regain and the flooding were somehow connected, most probably via some toxins that were set free in my old office. 

In spite of being out of there for good, it wasn´t like the regain stopped immediately or the weight started to drop off from the day I changed rooms. 

What I have managed by now is slowing the regain from a rate of 270 grams a week to about 80 grams a week, on average. Which still has me at 93 kilograms and a 33.3 BMI. Actually, I might have been further down had we not been duty-bound to visit with MIL for a week twice  (she expects us down there for every bank holiday). Every time that ended with a three-pound regain that I had to try and get off before even thinking of recondensing. 

As it is, I´m sick and tired of being stuck at this weight. Sick and tired of being thick and tired. 

That´s why I have switched my breakfast from bacon and eggs to a protein shake, and I am trying to replace as many meals as possible with shakes. Otherwise, I try to halve the portions of what I eat. 

I had actually, over the years, succumbed to another case of portion creep. The smaller dinnerware we use has been limiting the damages, but still, having three instead of two eggs for breakfast means about a hundred more calories, and if I don´t cut down on my eating elsewhere it partly explains why I´m still stuck in gaining mode. 

Total weight regained: 13.8 kilograms or 30 pounds. 

Distance to goal of being normal-weighted: 23.8 kilograms or 52 pounds. 

DIstance to goal at my lowest weight reached: 10 kilograms or 22 pounds. 

So, this regaining thing more than doubled the distance to goal. 

 Or, in other words, if I were to restart recondensing at a going rate of half a pound a week, I´d take another year to get back in the vicinity of the place I had already reached. 

I´ll try to be there sooner. 

This time I won´t be doing this just for myself, DH, too, has grown quite a paunch during the last year. As DFIL was type two diabetic for many years, I am afraid DH might put himself over the edge, too. Offering healthy meals, which I had been criminally neglecting since the flood, is therefore important. 

And for myself, resisting those extra nibbles and sneaky snacks in the time between coming home and putting dinner on the table. 

I have done this before. I can do this again. 

Julia