Weigh in #9 for 2025

 9 weigh ins completed for the year 2025!   I have to be honest though and say that I have mixed feelings about it though!  It's kinda like the common thoughts that wow it's been 9 weeks  already, where has time gone but in the same breath thinking 9 weeks, it seems like a lifetime ago!   That is how I feel about the weigh in.  I have two totally conflicting emotions in regards to my weigh in. 

Let me just put it out there right now.  I lost 0.4 pounds this week.  I am not looking a gift horse in the mouth.  A half of a pound is fantastic!  It's a loss.  It's incredible.  But....shouldn't it be more.  I mean, I am working my tail end off with exercise.  I have tracked my food religiously and kept within my set boundaries.  I have drank my water.  I have done incredible (Thank you 75 Hard)!    

And that is where the divide lays.  I am tickled.  I have lost just about 10 pounds this year.   Yay.  10 pounds gone!  I am all about celebrating the loss of those 10 pounds.   That turns out to be just over a pound a week.   I'll take it!  Gladly!   Any loss is a win.   But at my weight, which is currently at 264 pounds, I should be dropping weight like mad!  It should be a whole lot more than this weeks measly half pound.  It should even be more than the 1 pound average that I have been posting.  It should be flying off of me so fast that people around me should be ducking to avoid it!  But it's not. 

I had recently talked about adding more protein into my daily diet.   Protein is more difficult for me because I am not a huge fan of meat.  I don't really like eggs. (Well, I like eggs...but they have to be hidden within a delicious cake or a soft gooey cookie!)  Protein is difficult for me.  In a quest to add more, I turned to 'products.  One of those products was a protein pancake mix.  Great option, right?  Except that I was forgetting that carbs are a kryptonite for me.  I love them....once I start I can't stop!   And even worse, I know for my body that I can't indulge complex carbs (pastas, white potatoes and breads.....including pancakes) more than one time a day.   I loved every last morsel of that box of pancake mix.  And when it was done, I still had some pancake syrup here at the house so I just made my own from scratch.   Bad bad bad.   I recognized the pitfall and didn't buy another box of pancake mix nor did I buy more maple syrup! 

 While I was super focused on the protein my calories slipped upward.  I know from experience that I don't lose weight at 1500 calories.  I lose weight when I am between 1200 and 1350.  Yet I was eating my protein with wild abandon and ignoring that wee little fact.

So where does that leave me?    I need to get back to basics.  I need to get my calories back down to the level where I know I lose.  I need to limit my carbs (goodbye pancakes).  And for my body and for my AGE, I need to keep my protein levels higher.   I will keep the protein higher by adding in protein bars (which I had already started)  but also by doing something I swore off years ago.   What am I talking about?  I am talking about yogurt.  Years ago (wow I was still at the bank so more than 10 years ago) I wrote about how I was not going to eat foods that I don't really like simply because they are 'good for me'.  I can't find the post at the moment, but I remember sitting eating a cup of yogurt. (It was a weight watchers brand yogurt that I had picked up at the grocery store....do they even still make those things?)  As I shoveled the yogurt into my mouth I thought to myself "man, I really don't like this" and at that moment I made a decision to stop eating something that I don't really like just because it is 'good for you'.      Well, I am backtracking.  I would rather eat some yogurt versus meat!    So Yogurt it is!  I will be buying a weeks worth of yogurt and seeing how that goes.  Will it last more than a week?  I am not sure, but I'm going to give it a go!  

I was surprised

 Part of the 75 Hard challenge is to set up a diet plan for yourself and follow it religiously.   The term diet does not mean a diet in the negative weight loss connotation.  The rule to set up a diet plan is just saying to set up an eating plan for the time frame.   It does not have to be a plan that will encourage your body to lose weight.  It could be something as simple as limiting how much soda a person drinks, or cutting alcohol or going sugar free.  Anything!  I have one follower on my youtube channel that decided to do the 75 hard along with me and for her diet plan she simply made the rule that she has to track her food each and every day.  It doesn't matter WHAT she eats, she just has to track it. Sure she is trying to keep it under a certain caloric goal, but her plan is to TRACK.    For me though, I decided to set up a diet plan that would 'encourage' my body to lose weight.

I decided that my goal would be to stay under 1500 calories!   I could do that, no problem right?    Well let me tell you, at the beginning it was tight!  But I quickly settled down and got used to eating the fewer calories.  And the first week or so I lost big....I lost 5.5 pounds!   And then I hit a week where I actually gained! I gained 1.5 pounds!  What in the world?   I was working out, religiously.  I was drinking my water, religiously.   I was keeping my calories under 1500, religiously!  There should NOT have been a gain!  Yet, I was staring at the scales and seeing a gain!

I knew that something was dreadfully wrong so I looked deep and here is what I found.

1. I remembered that I typically do not lose at the 1500 calorie mark.   I tend to lose at 1400 and below but my calorie count that week was always JUST below the 1500 mark!  Yes, that seems low.  HOWEVER, I do not weigh my food all the time.  I do it here and there to 'recalibrate' my portion sizes.  But I don't do it all the time.  So I look at it as the lower caloric goal is my trade off for not having to be anal and weigh everything!  Plus, I share my food with pets.   Just this morning I had a banana and some peanut butter.   The dog ate a bite or two of banana and some of the peanut butter and the bird got a slice of banana and some peanut butter!    So my figures would be all skewed should I be weighing my food.  So I just figured out through trial and error where my calories need to be for my non weighed and animal shared meals.   (And man, now I feel guilty because I didn't give the crabs anything!) 

2.  Carbs.  I love them!  OH my word to I love my carbs!   However, I have long known that my body does not love carbs....or rather maybe my body loves carbs a little too much and those carbs stick with me! I have found that I can handle one serving of a complex carb each day.  That means ONE serving of a bread or potato.   Not two...not three.    In that week where I gained 1.5 pounds I was eating an undue amount of carbs.   Ok, maybe undue amount was a bit overdramatic, but I was eating  more than the one serving that my body 'allows.'    

So I was totally able to identify what the problem was that had led me to gaining weight that week and I vowed to make the changes for the upcoming week.  However.......

Yeah, the changes didn't happen.  I was drawn to the kitchen where I made homemade bread.  Then I made homemade English muffins.   And if that wasn't enough I then made homemade pretzels!  Of course I ate some of my baked goods!  Of course I did!   I was out of control!   Until I realized what was happening.  I was drowning in grief.   I was coming up on the first  anniversary of my mom's  death and subconsciously I had sought out comfort.  (You can read how I managed the week after her death and see a picture of my mama here.)  Comfort for me is baking.  Comfort for me is carbs.  In my grief as the anniversary approached, I was drowning myself in both.

I am proud to say that as soon as I realized what I was doing that I was able to turn it around.  The baking and carb-fests ended and I got back to the basics.    I weigh myself daily and I had seen the scales slide upward during those few days of grief laden indulgence.   I HOPED to turn it around enough to show a maintain on the scales for my official weigh in day (which is currently set at Wednesday).

I was SO surprised to step on the scale on Wednesday morning.  I didn't maintain.    But I didn't gain!   I actually LOST weight!   I lost 3.1 pounds!  I lost enough weight that I recouped my 1.5 pound gain from my official weigh in the week before AND added another 1.6 pounds to that loss!   GO me.

So a few things that I learned from this:

1.   The calorie thing that I talked about earlier in this post really does hold true.

2.  Carbs are the devil....for my body.  But thank heavens I CAN indulge once a day!

3.  Diet soda.........I'm not sure if this is a coincidence or not....BUT, when I turned things I accidentally stopped drinking my diet soda in the evenings.   My plan has been to drink water during the day...and if I am done with my required amount of water at the end of the day then I can indulge in a glass of diet soda.  When I turned the ship around in terms of my eating, I somehow just stopped getting my glass of soda.  IT was accidental really.  I was just not finishing my required (for the 75 Hard challenge) water early enough to allow myself that glass of diet soda.  Could the diet soda be part of that amazing weight loss (because seriously....  I officially lost 3.1 pounds, but in reality I had gained an extra pound before I turned it around....a pound that never was counted in an official weigh in.   WE are talking substantial weight loss in just a few days.  Coincidental?   I am not sure....but stay tuned, I will be keeping an eye of it!  

Wordless

Here we are, Thursday morning!  My week is winding down and I am ready for the weekend!   But as I sat here reflecting this week and looking forward to the next one, realized a few things.   One, I have a long weekend and two I had a word of the week failure!  Oops!

Early this week I sat down to calculate the previous weeks mileage for my 2024 miles in 2024 Challenge. (post talking about this challenge can be found here).  This is my typical routine.  I close out the previous week and I turn the page to the new week.  When I turn the page, I see the empty margin at the top and I put down my new word of the week.  Many times I don't actually have a word of the week planned, I turn the page, see it and just know what the word should be.  This week I turned the page and thought about the word of the week and what it should be.   Nothing came to mind.  I was stumped.  So I vowed to come back to it.   I just realized, I never went back to it!  So I guess the default word of the week is 'wordless'!

Just because the word of the week was missing doesn't mean that I am not still tracking my progress.  I am still tracking my food.  I am still accumulating miles.  However, the mileage has been a lot lower as I have been really lax on exercise.  I ride the exercise bike to get in a fair amount of miles...but being honest, I knock out those miles fast and furious on breaks from work.   I rely on my step count to make up the rest of the miles and I have been so sedentary that I fear that this week I won't make my mileage goals.  If I make it, I am pretty sure that I won't be banking miles!  That's not cool!

 

My eating of late has been spot on!  A while back I talked about my frustration on the scales and that I needed to tighten up my calories and my carbs. (here and here)   I have been doing very well with the carbs.  I had one day where I splurged and had a sandwich for lunch and then had pasta for dinner.  But for the most part I have kept it at one serving!  I am not concerned about fruits and veggies and natural sugars/carbs.   The calories.  I have had some days where I have nailed the 1200-1300 calorie count that I am aiming for, but I am still most days sitting at closer to 1400-1500 calories.  So that one is still a struggle.

One thing that I AM doing is trying to focus on upping my intake of fruits and veggies.  I know that years ago when I was doing weight watchers I was eating a LOT of fruits and veggies (even before they were considered free).  At one of the meetings theWW leader was encouraging people to eat more fruits and veggies and people were complaining and lamenting about how it was impossible.   She asked the room if anyone was eating over 4-5 servings.  I honestly raised my hand.  I was the only one that raised my hand.   She got a huge grin on her face and just stopped and waved at me like she was Vanna White and said "there is the proof'.  Because you see, I had just shared at the beginning of the meeting my pounds lost for the week and we had talked about my total/overall loss, which at that point was amazing (as I was really close to reaching my goal at that point...so we were talking overall loss of over 100 pounds).   Zoey loves her veggies also (ok, Zoey loves pretty much any food....well except for lettuce/spinach).

So I am excited to step on the scales for my weekly weigh in to see how I do this week!   That will be in my next post!  :-)

I have been going up to my mom's once a week to work on sorting and cleaning and trying to figure out what to do with her belongings.   It's a crazy thing dismantling my parents life.   Sad on one hand because my parents have things from their childhoods, from their parents....so we are talking 80-100 year old memories.   But it's also cathartic as we share memories and laugh.  We have tried to be quite judicious with what we are taking.  For me I have a three point criteria and something has to fit in that criteria before I take it.  

    1.  It has to have sentimental value to ME.

    2.  It has to be something I actually need.

    3.  It has to be something that is better than what I own....making it an upgrade.

So far that has worked. The sentimental items that I have gotten include my dad's toy cash register that my brother and I both played with.  (we used to play restaurant and every restaurant needs a cash register right?  This is all metal and was given to dad when he was about 4 or 5 making it 75-78 years old.

I also took mom's doll bed.   I also played with this as a youngster.  I was REALLY into dolls, so I used this a LOT! At this point, this doll  crib would be at least 72-74 years old.

There are some other random, smaller things.   A few pieces of glassware, some items from the restaurant (my grandmother owned a diner) and probably more to come!  I am taking a fair amount of my parents wood furniture.  It is solid walnut ....and in really good condition, and better than my current furniture!

So there is a lot of shuffling of furniture and belongings here at my house!  But it's fun, and all stuff that brings so many memories. 

The weather has been warm one day cold the next!  I am so ready for spring!  I see signs but it's still cold (at least today!)

Come on Spring!!!!