A couple weeks ago I was hoping to see 195, but today I weighted in at 193.6, six pounds down in 23 days. My thoughts:

• I’m feeling tempted to spend money on fitness stuff, which is strange, because I’m doing ok as I am (heart rate monitor watch (what for?), personal trainer, gym membership)
• I’m starting to think about not just getting out of bad shape but into good shape. I have no history with being in good shape. I don’t know how to get there or if I want to. What would it be like to actually develop some strength and look better than just “not fat”? Is it worth the time to me? Is “I want to look good with my shirt off” really a strong motivation?I honestly have mixed feelings.

Six days ago, I was hoping to see 197 within a few weeks, but I saw it today! I know I only *saw* it. It’ll take a while longer before I’m reliably 197, but seeing new numbers as my low-fluctuation is still an indication of progress. So, awesome: *saw* it ahead of schedule, and now maybe in the 1-2 more weeks I thought it’d take, I’ll BE 197 and SEE 195.

Did the fastest, longest walk/run so far on my treadmill today — pushed myself. I want that number to stick around or come back as soon as possible.

I’ve had ups and downs for the last couple years, but am in a really motivated phase right now. Just posting to share that. Doing treadmill once a day, putting in intervals of running to burn about 550kCal/hr, am eating right (and not much), and am thinking about going to 2x a day on the treadmill and even going back to martial arts once I’m back in any kind of cardio shape. Next session I’ll try doubling the length of the running intervals, or maybe even speeding them up (ouch).

As far as I can tell I’m at a plateau at 200 lbs, but I’m thinking I just haven’t been focused enough for a couple weeks at a stretch. Another few weeks of this and I can just see the 198 or 197 on the scale. I think it’s a good sign that I’m starting to listen to metal on the treadmill again — might have to buy some music!

Hope this finds fatbloggers well. Will check in again when there’s something to report.

I’ve had a pretty rough year, and have really let myself go. I’m afraid of weighing myself and finding that I’m nearly back where I was two years ago, and I also dread everything that comes with “starting over”. Dusting off the calorie-counting software, facing the treadmill every day, and not having food as an answer any more.  But, on the other hand, it will be nice for my clothes to fit better, and nice to feel more attractive.

I started today by eating a small lunch at home instead of something fast while running errands, and I will get in some exercise. I picked a bad time for this, because there’s a lot of stress at work after the tenth round of layoffs, I have an exam to study for over the next couple months, and relationship problems are draining me emotionally. I don’t WANT to make my life all about losing weight again!  But I can’t let it go another few months either. I’m going to try my best to look at this as introducing something needed, not another burden.

Back after a long absence. Hope everyone made it through the holidays ok!

So in May I was all excited: exercised my ass off, ate 1300-1700 calories a day.. down eight pounds by mid-month! Then I stalled somehow, and had it all back — plus one — at the end of the month. I assign the blame to three things:

1. Serious undereating. Cannot have been good for the metabolism.
2. Exercising to the point of burnout.
3. Relying on daily improvements in my weight for motivation.

It’s kind of fun, in a way, to fix a severe short-term goal: I would want to see a lower number — even 0.2 pounds lower — the next morning so much that I’d eat even less, exercise even more, etc. The feeling of success was tremendous, and so motivating. But, one big meal somewhere brought back a few pounds of water weight, which was heartbreaking. It set back a week of “progress” and made my numbers much, much less superhuman.

This is just me rehashing for myself, guys, and trying to drive home my lessons learned. They were: eat less, not too much less. Exercise more, but lightly or moderately, something you can tolerate. And, above all, weigh no more than once a week. Don’t get sucked into competing with yesterday’s number! I’m happier, losing weight, and I don’t really care how long it takes, since I feel fine. The only hard part is maintaining all this patience!

My routine:

1. Consume 1800-2200 calories daily. If I’m not hungry or am too tired, I have some wine or a cocktail to reach my minimum, which feels great. No more 1300-1500 days allowed!
2. 1 hour on treadmill at 10 degrees incline per day, every day, at 2 mph — burns about 400 calories. I play fast-paced, fairly simple computer games to make this go very quickly. (I suggest plantsvszombies.com and surfshelf.com)
3. Eat out, but lightly, and only foods that will be easy to enter into my calorie-counting software! Its too easy to lose the routine once you start leaving things out.
4. Big attitude change: only Monday’s weight “counts”. I’ll weigh myself other days, but I never write it down or enter it in my software, and it gives me some context if the next Monday turns out not to be my best day of the 7. I am not banking on dramatic weekly improvements, either: I can wait to see a two- or three-week trend, and if it’s more than a pound a week, awesome.

Last, I’m not calling myself successful here. I read that telling people your plans gives you a premature feeling of completion. Well, this is just getting started. No success yet here. I’ll be done when all my clothes fit well, when I’ve gained back a couple of belt notches, and when people notice that I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’m thinking it’s going to take 2-3 more months for sure.. but we can do that. Thanks for letting me use this space to reflect on it!

As much as I talked about my calorie-counting and exercising, that was NOT was I was actually doing. I was crash dieting. I did it with good tools, but it nevertheless what I did! I realize now that I would get really gung-ho and seriously overdo it. I would adopt an aggressive diet in my software and under-eat for it, and I would exercise for very long sessions that I got sick of within a couple weeks.

All of this was sustained by daily progress — daily weighings that showed me the pounds were melting off. Well, maybe you see this coming (I didn’t), but (this is how I understand it) my very low calorie diet did my metabolism no good, and it was in bad shape by the time I quit exercising and, burned out, started indulging in my diet. So.. I gained the weight back, and then some. All in the course of a month! I was down eight pounds by day 12, but UP a pound by day 31.

So now I am doing a much less aggressive diet: four months to lose 18 pounds. I’m allowed 2300 calories a day, and — huge change — I EAT THEM. I am (so far) exercising for 30-60 minutes 3-4x a week. And, this part is very difficult, but I am not weighing myself daily. I’m going to look for weekly results from now on. First weighing is this Saturday. Today’s challenges: a potluck at work and an event at a Brazilian restaurant tonight. I’ve already exercised, and I vow not to overeat at either event!

I’m not going to spin out all the details, but I had a setback — a lapse in discipline, we’ll say — when I had some meals that weren’t easily entered in my diet software, skipped a couple days of exercise, etc.

Any kind of slip seems to create a cascading effect, so, I need a better “plan B” approach, one that’s not an abandonment, but more of a reduction in intensity. Today, I’m not going to count calories.. but I will eat small portions, pay attention to whether I might be eating for a bad reason, and exercise!

Hope everyone has a safe holiday!

Ok, so I’m not back to where I was a year ago. I lost 30 and gained back 14. I’ve chipped away at 4 pounds of that, so now just 10 more to go! I want to reinforce the “winning moves” by committing to them to everyone:

• today someone brought donuts, and I didn’t eat one. I was tempted, but I don’t want to delay reaching my goal for ANYTHING, much less for a donut that’d just leave me wanting another one. NO WAY.
• Salad for lunch at a pizza place. It was a very good salad. I never use dressing, the stuff in the salad has plenty of taste.
• Tuesday and Thursday are raiding nights in World of Warcraft (25 people get together to fight their way through a tough area with bosses and stuff), which runs for about 3 hours. I stayed on my treadmill the whole time this time, as opposed to 2 hours last time! I use a 10-degree incline, so a significant number of calories were burned. The treadmill says 978. Either way, I considered NOT getting on the treadmill, but I overcame the temptation and DID. Funny how my justification for thoughts of not doing it was “well, you already did it once”, when the truth is “If you do this 46 times, you’ll meet your goal.”

I’m posting this stuff to reinforce my commitment, but also to see if anyone else uses this method to “build willpower” or “build momentum”. Happy Friday everyone!

One thing I learned from IOWL (inside-out weight loss) is that we all self-correct. Yo-yo dieting is self-correcting, just not sustainable. Letting myself go for a year then getting back on the wagon is self-correcting, too, but awfully slow. I will have greater success and create change when I self-correct in a shorter window: take only a day off the diet, not a week, or have only a couple extra bites, not the rest of a plate that I don’t really need.

So, 3 things I did right or self-corrected:

• I was tempted to order a pizza, but didn’t! I’m not going to get anywhere if I say “screw it” too easily. I’ll have the pizza sometime, but I’m going to wait for some occasion, not just being tired and not wanting to cook.
• I got on the treadmill while playing WoW and forgot I was on it for over 2 hours. I had started out on the couch, and could have easily just stayed there, but I knew that I wouldn’t succeed with that behavior. I’m not going to avoid the couch, because each time I get up from it in the future, I will be demonstrating my self-control and making it stronger with exercise.
• I ate my calorie limit by early afternoon, but resisted eating more, even though I was hungry. I knew I’d had enough, and the feeling soon subsided. One thing I did wrong, to put myself over my limit so early, was to eat a “pre-meal snack” because I was impatient for lunch to be ready. I didn’t eat less lunch because of it, it was just extra calories! So, next time I am inclined to eat something handy because I don’t want to wait 10-15 minutes for a meal, I’ll get up and make some tea or something, just to kill the time and get past the impulse. It’s ok to be hungry for a few minutes!