A Small Bit of Progress

Yesterday, I was 282.8.

Today, I'm 279.8. So, I was happy to change the sidebar weight back out of the 280's I'd been in all the week.

Man, I must have been holding some water, huh.

Skip Enviga, Does Squat

Read this if you're a dieter using Enviga.

Another Reason To Get Trim and Fit: Obesity Link To Cancer Stronger

Man, this is scary stuff. If risk of stroke and heart disease and diabetes were all not enough, add the increased risk of cancer to the worries of the obese--like moi.

Yeah, read it and weep:

A new report released yesterday by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research states that most cancers are preventable.

Poor diet, lack of exercise, obesity and smoking account for the vast majority of cancers; the role of genetic factors is by far overrated.

Indeed, the dramatic impact of obesity on cancer is now increasingly appreciated – one in three cancers may be caused by obesity (or as a result of lifestyle factors that promote obesity). It is therefore perhaps not surprising, that large prospective studies have shown an almost 60% reduction in deaths from cancer with bariatric surgery.

Full post on the study is at Dr. Sharma's blog.

I go in for an endometrial biopsy in three weeks. I think this finding will be weighing on my mind until I get those results.

And for a while after.

It may be what I needed to make a good choice for supper tonight, too.


Have a healthful weekend, folks!

Madagascar 2: Big And Chunky featuring Moto Moto and will.i.am

Someone loves us the way we are, plumpy and chunky.

This song rocks. I can't stop playing it. Hat tip to CC of Journeying to Lose 200 Pounds.

I'm gonna dance with my chunky self.

What's On My Plate and Focusing on A Positive

I had a big breakfast. At, like, mid-afternoon, mind you. I was thinking what I really wanted, and thought, "I really want bacon." Now, I haven't had bacon in a while, but there was some in the fridge that I bought Sunday, cause I was craving bacon then. Only that craving passed, so there it sat.

To go with the three rashers of bacon, pork, not turkey--I used to make turkey, but that Oprah show where it was decided pork was better as it had less sodium and about the same calories--I made a small egg-white frittata with onions, tomatoes, and yellow peppers with a sprinkle of 2% cheddar. It came out nice and light and very veggie. I liked it. I wish I'd added zucchini, which I have some, but I got lazy.

The papaya is nice, btw, and I will finish it after this post with my second cup of coffee made in my spanking new Technivorm, which makes gorgeous coffee. I can actually taste the nuances that you read about in reviews of gourmet coffee, but my old Mr. Coffee and Melitta makers never achieved. Gosh, good. I decided to have the whole wheat Englsh muffin to increase my fiber for satiety. I want this meal to hold me through to dinner with hubby, unless he comes home late, in which case, I'm whipping open one of those light soups (a Campbell's select harvest light).

Three glasses of water, too. I have NOT at all been drinking enough. Maybe one cup a day. I know, bad.

It's not the most healthful breakfast, and all told I had 12 points--about 600 calories. This will require a light "lunch" so that I don't go over 900, 1000 max, between both meals. This will let me have a good number of remaining points/calories for supper and still keep me under 1800.

It's good to be conscious again of what's going in the feeder hole. I've just been totally lax in noticing, noting, jotting, calculating, etc. Which is why the weigh-in was scary. (Well, the sodiumfest which was Wednesday--feta cheese loaded Greed salad with lunch yesterday and the Chinese food at dinner--didn't help, either.)

So, I was sitting and munching down on brekkie, and my hand was on my thigh, and I thought, hmmm. Firm. This time last year, I could not have said that. But after months of Pilates, my thighs have density, not just wobbly fattiness. There's muscle there. And the little muscle I celebrated last year on my bicep is now quite comfortably larger and harder. I gotta say, it's really nice to feel solidity here and there when I touch parts of me. I used to kid that all my muscle tissue had disappeared from years of couch potatohood and bingeing, but I was only half-joking. I had become this soft huge blob. Now, I'm a huge blob with more definition and much more muscle.

Things like sitting up in bed or turning to switch off the alarm FEEL different, cause it's easier to roll up. I got me some abdominals under all that adiposity! Even my forearms are denser. My calves.

I figure I should remind myself that I've worked hard in ONE area, at least, and it has benefits.

I need to visualize daily what benefits can come from doing the hard work in other areas.

I've lost ground. Lots of ground. Ten pounds worth of ground. But the war ain't over.

Be of good cheer today, and never give up.

A Depressing Update...And Clearly, I Haven't Accepted The Hunger Factor

I updated my weigh-in at left, sidebar, and it's not good news.

The lethargy continues. I did see my new endocrinologist on Tuesday, and I need to get to the lab for the blood test. I'm still feeling muffled, damped down, apathetic, though I'm self-talking like mad, trying to get my spirit revved up. And on top of all that, I gotta get my uterus biopsied after getting ultrasound results. Lovely. It's been the year of the medical appointments. Four so far with three docs.

But seeing the increase on the scale is always that little shock to the system, and it doesn't help the mood. I want to feel angry enough to get the mojo back, but all I feel is defeated. I won't wallow too long, but it's the emotion of the moment.

As if I didn't already know, I read an article today, which says what a lot of us already know by trial and error--it's the calories. The rest plays an assisting role--exercise, group support, journals, green tea, supplements--but it's all about the calories. Whether it's via self-control and strategy and planning, or via gastric bypass or via gastric banding or via stomach stapling or via diet pills: The reason people lose the weight is cause they EAT FEWER CALORIES.

The benefit of surgical/medical intervention is that it offers an escape from hunger. Doing it the old-fashioned, low-tech way means you really do have to learn to live with some or a lot of hunger, which, frankly, sucks monkey butt.

Here's an excerpt from "It's Not What You Eat, It's How Much," but you might wanna read the whole thing over at ABC News:

In terms of dieting, community support can be critical but choosing a plan is up to an individual, and the hardest part of losing weight may be accepting the hunger factor.

Past studies have shown that calorie restriction is the biggest determining factor for successful weight loss, even greater than exercise.

"There are those with unrelenting optimism, who think [dieting] is going to get easier," said Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. "But if you are eating fewer calories than you are burning, you are going to be hungry."

But the study's findings encourage experimentation, Sacks said, and the flexibility to find the best balance of calorie restriction and satisfaction for individuals.

"The hardest thing, having been born and raised in America, [was that] I thought I was entitled to eat as much as I wanted whenever I wanted and I would stay the same weight," Termini said. "But you can't do that. And it's not healthy."

So, off to see how well I manage the hunger and food choices today. I'm telling myself to be good, to nurture the optimism, to find my inner warrior.

My inner warrior now needs to get my outer wimp over to the kitchen, where a whole papaya sits on the counter, waiting to be prepped for breakfast--yeah, breakfast. I woke up today at 12:30 and I've moped around feeling like I didn't sleep at all. Lack of energy sucks monkey butt, too.

I want to have eggs and toast and papaya and coffee. I have a mango I can have with lunch, which will probably be a light soup (I took the cans out of the pantry last night and put them on the counter, so I wouldn't ignore them.) A tiny bit of conscious effort to remedy the sad upward course of my weight since late last year.

I could do so much better, I know, if I didn't feel this pressing lethargy. I feel like I'm walking through concrete, like my face is this flat, expressionless mask. I wish I could give up feeling sucky for Lent.

Now, off to get this day going. With some hope, some prayer, and a papaya. :)

Have a great Thursday.

And The Bracelet Goes To...

Lee of Fit By Fifty!

I always used to use the wee papers in a sack method. But thanks to other blogs, like Pasta Queen, I learned about Random.org. And boy, is that easier than making paper number or name bits. Heh.

Lee, I'll be emailing you to get your info.

Thanks to all who entered.

Now, I'm off to enjoy my 49th birthday on a beautiful Miami winter day. A cold front moved in last night, and it's clear and cool and lovely. Yay!

Last Chance To Enter Giveaway For Calorie/Points Counting Bracelet

I'm only accepting entries for the giveaway through midnight tonight. I'll announce the winner tomorrow.

So, if you want to enter, follow the rules/directions AT THIS POST FROM FEB 11. I'll only take names from comments on that post.

Note the particulars of the prize, which is the same in look , but not identical in the shade of blue as the photo at right. :)

Thanks.

Mopey Weigh-In, My Birthday Moccamaster, a Maharani's Feast, Meal Calorie Calculations, and the LHJ Model

Today was a tough weigh-in. I had avoided the scales for, what, just over a week, but it was time to face up to the damage done. (Cue classic Neil Young, one of my fave hippie-era songs, only the Princess version would be "The Eating and the Damage Done.")

279.6

That's the highest I've been since October of 2007! A huge step backward, really.

It is just too damn easy to regain, people. Look upon my weigh-in and be very afraid if you are thinking of slacking off even a little. Don't!

Ah, well. At least I felt calmer today. Not worse. And I didn't have crazy cravings. For breakfast I used 9 points, about 450 calories as follows:

~2 lowfat blueberry pancakes from Diet-To-Go (found them stuffed in my freezer from late last year) with one soy sausage.
~I made some sugarless compote from some blueberries hubby bought me Monday, because the berries were super-gritty and not fun to eat. The compote was passable. Start with a not-great berry, get not-great compote. But, hey, it was fruit and a pretty juiciness on the pancakes.
~I also had 1 organic, free-roaming, vegetarian egg, fried in Pam, with 1 slice Horizon organic American cheese. Just the egg and cheese was 4 points, but I wanted the extra protein/calcium.
~The highlight of my breakfast was using--for the first time--my birthday gift from hubby: a hand-made Technivorm Moccamaster coffeemaker with the gourmet coffee I ordered with it. Yum. Best cup of coffee I ever had.

What a wonderful coffeemaker. But not cheap. But hey, I'm turning 49. I need the consolation of superior cuppa joes.


So, breakfast went okay.

For lunch (which I just had, so it's more like dunch or linner), I decided to go vegetarian with spicy Indian food, so I could maybe feel comfortable with lots of flavor without having to eat a bingey 2000 or 2500 calories. I had half a cup of dal and half a cup of matar panir with a cup of rice and a very small piece of nan (about 3 inches by 2 inches) with a tablespoon of onion chutney, and one veggie samosa with a tablespoon of tamarind chutney. I had water and another cup of coffee, too.

I have no idea what the calories are (have to look it up), but my guess is that it's gonna be something like the following in points(respectively) 3 + 5 + 5 + 1 + 1 + 3 + 1. That's 19 points. About 950 cals.

Total Points: 28 so far, about 1400 cals.

And I still need to get more fruit and maybe a small salad before bed, so I get my produce in.

Now, on that Model Thing: I was browsing the March 2009 issue of Ladies Home Journal, and I noticed the model in one of the fashion/style spreads was a regular at my Pilates studio. If you want to take a look, go HERE and it's the model in the green dress, smiling. If you click the back arrow at the top left, you go to a previous page with her looking to the right out a window. Though I've only chatted with her a few times in passing, she's very amiable. (If you own the magazine, she's on page 51, 52, 54, and 56).


Updated: Thanks, Lyn. I have no idea why I wrote Neil Diamond. That's weird. :)

Pondering a Derailment, Praying for Progress

I have not been on plan. I have no diet mojo. I have head mojo--as in "I know"--and I have desire mojo--as in "I want"--but the will is not cooperating. The will is rebellious. And I'm a spoiled brat.

I say this because I'm just not putting effort into this weight loss thing, and I have not been consistent or focused or goal-oriented. I've been floating and feeling defeated.

So, it's time to ponder this derailment of my goals/objectives, eating plan. Only my exercise has been consistent and that's suffering from my lethargy of will and body. This week, due to the holiday and my birthday on Friday, I only have one scheduled session instead of two. But I'm back to three next week, so that's a temporary blip.

I remain on the verge of depression. I can feel that weird apathy crawling upon me that makes me want to sleep a lot, eat a lot, and not do much else--not errands, not chores, not even happy stuff. Hubby was off this weekend, and he offered to take me here, there, everywhere, and I never even got dressed once until Monday. I even said no to a Valentine's Day outing--though he was willing to do or go wherever I wanted, no matter the cost. And my sister is still waiting to hear what I want to do for my birthday, and I keep saying, "I don't know," cause nothing sounds inviting--not a picnic, not a barbecue, not a party, not a beachfest, nothing. I feel like a pile of gray putty, like the immoveable object.

This is not an "I give up" post, btw. This is an "I know I'm in doodoo, in the pit, and I'm talking this out publicly and trying to figure out why I am my own saboteur, why this stupid cloud of the blues wants to rain on my parade, why I can't pick myself up and move forward."

But of course, I could. That's the thing. I feel defeated, but I'm only defeated if I remain where I am, just coasting and letting illness, lethargy, and depression BE MY LIFE.

It can't be my life. Why am I not fighting? I want to be a warrior against all these odds!

Anyway, hubby is going out of town tomorrow. I get to have the whole day to assemble what forces I have remaining and take a stand against all internal and external foes.

I want to be like those women in Ladies Home Journal and other magazines that you see as the AFTER story, who went after their dreams with focus (whether it was a career goal, a weight goal, a family goal, etc) and are photographed smiling and triumphant. I'd like to get to THIS GOAL, among others, but yes, THIS GOAL. The reason I started this blog.

I know I'm not alone in this sort of rut, frustration, backsliding, failure, call it what you will. But it's a painful thing to feel as if I'm the one sliding away from myself. I'm the one who is my own enemy, and I'm allowing it.

I'm allowing it.

All the reasons/excuses I can mount up don't measure up. I'm allowing it.

People with bigger obstacles than mine have made progress. It's not impossible.

But I'm allowing the obstacles to get to me.

Okay, big whine over. I will go to bed. I will get up to say bye to my traveling sweetie. I will work to make Tuesday better than Monday, and I will look into that place where wants and will meet and talk to that stubborn, defeated, depression-plagued part of me is aching to make progress.

Tomorrow--er, today--is gonna be a prayer day.

I'll also keep in mind Kate, who is at this moment away from home to have her WLS. At this moment, feeling leaden and slow and out of fuel, even gastric bypass doesn't seem as offputting and drastic as it usually does to me; perhaps that's because of this weight of frustration, perhaps that's because it seems easier than the daily struggle with appetite. But I know when I'm rested and myself again, I'll fear that surgery again and nix it as an option, even though I've seen many good results, even though I understand why it's a necessary option, even though I keep it in the back of my own mind as an option. The last one. I hope Kate's results are great. She deserves it.

And I hope those of us doing it without WLS or other surgical interventions, those of us going it solo, so to speak, do a bit better today, just a bit better, week by week.

God help us all who travel on our various journeys.

Oh, and I welcome prayers. Yes, indeed, I do.

Cause I'm not giving up...