At Least It's Still January, Bitches

After the post below (the one about how fat doesn't mean miserable, though WHERE THE HELL ARE YOUR PROM PICTURES?), I bet you're all I'M NOT GOING TO ASK HER HOW THE DIET'S GOING! And perhaps that's smart of you, my husband would attest, but it's going okay.

My "plan" was simply to go off sugar and most carbs for two weeks, including alcohol. (AHAHAHAHA!) And then figure out something for the next two weeks. After the first two weeks, I wanted to start going to the gym. Nothing major, just start going and doing...well...anything.

Here's what's actually happened.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sunday (Jan 3): good

Monday: mostly good, slight cheesecake mishap

Tuesday: good
Wednesday: good
Thursday: good

Friday: good! Get on scale and discover...practically minus 6 lbs! Think: THIS IS GOING TO BE EASY. (Because I don't learn.)

Saturday: good
Sunday: good
Monday: good
Tuesday: good

Wednesday: good...until.
Well, see, my friend PinkJaime came over! She came up to visit and some of you might recall back from when I began this blog that I worked in a crazy office and Jaime was one of my bestest friends ever there because we had a lot in common, like gin.

We used to tell this one joke -- let me know if you've heard it before -- it goes: "Hey, do you want to go out for a drink after work?" "Well, okay, but ONLY ONE."

Hilarious!

(As earlier reported, by the end of any of our our "one drink" outings the bar would be closing, Jaime would have a new boyfriend and I would have a new blog entry about the pathetic state of my dating life. Ah, memories.)

Anyway, so Jaime came to visit and we went to lunch AT A TAVERN and do you know what I ordered? Chicken, salad, and a diet coke. A DIET COKE. AT A TAVERN.

FTMFW!

But. At some point Eve went to bed and we were just hanging out and talking and Ish had joined us, and somehow, as if by magic, wine appeared and then I had some.

Turns out that my tolerance had changed in just a few days, though, because after just a few glasses of wine (WITH dinner, no less) I was all, "Ugh." And didn't drink anymore and put myself to bed and then woke up totally hungover. Which served me right.


Thursday: good
Friday: good

Saturday: It had been 14 days and we had long before invited friends over for dinner. Therefore, Saturday afternoon through dinner/dessert I took "off." I had planned for this and had no guilt about doing so. With help from Ish, we made a delicious dinner (and I even produced HOMEMADE PEPPERMINT ICE CREAM that was amazing. If I do say so myself. And I do. Because it wasn't a complete cinch to make because I have never made custard before and didn't understand that there is approximately a .015 second window between when the custard is a runny mess and when the custard is scrambled eggs. Now I know.).

Sunday: good. Decide that I have not given this low/no carb transition the full attention it deserves, and agree (to myself) to continue it for two more weeks.

Monday: good, except that my back pain (which has been sore since a week before Christmas) has become totally unmanageable. I go to the doctor and discover two things.

One: the problem is simply muscular, and will work itself out. But I won't be going to the gym this week.

Two: my weight at doctor is notably different from my scale, and suggests I have only lost 2 pounds. I cannot fathom how two nights of bad behavior can sabotage such progress, so I decide that between our two scales, plus the difference of water weight, plus going to the doctor RIGHT after lunch means I should ignore the random weigh-in altogether.

That night, I discover it is actually possible for me to consume a single glass of wine. Hurrah!


Tuesday: good...until Ish and I decided to celebrate our (one-year) anniversary with a little champagne. Which led to a little wine. Which led to a little dessert. Fail. (Slight win? No more peppermint ice cream in the house.)

Wednesday: good
Thursday: good
Friday: good

Saturday: We went out to our anniversary dinner, which was actually lunch since we haven't found a babysitter in Napa yet and Eve is no longer comfortable falling asleep in her carrier when it's past her bedtime. (Which means Ish and I haven't been out for dinner in months.) WHEEEEE.

The rest of Saturday was not particularly "good," either, but at least it was fun.

("Fun" = bourbon + Twitter)

Sunday: good. Also marked the beginning of week 4 and -- oh joy of joys -- my special time of the month. Not only does this mean fun things for my back-muscle pain, but I'll also be experiencing a special kind of bloat and weight fluctuation and hooboy, I'm not going anywhere near a scale until it's over.

Monday: good.

Tuesday: good.
* * * * * * * *

My next weigh-in will be at the end of this week. I was kind of hoping to be down 10 pounds after one month, but I'm not sure how much I should alter that hope given my three half-days off and total lack of gym-going. I guess "at least down 6" should be reasonable given that's what my scale told me I had accomplished less than a week in.

Whatever it is, I won't lie to you.


By the way, a few of my in-real-life friends have jumped on the weight-loss, get-in-shape wagon and are blogging their progress. (A couple others of you are doing similar things but NOT publicly, which I get.)

I highly recommend you check out:

The Pie Stops Here, by Jane Dough
Jane had never had any issues with her weight until she turned 45; she bravely includes pictures and is straight about what she eats and how much she's exercising.

She also has some really interesting points of view about clothes-shopping, since she's someone who had always been "normal-sized" and only recently had to learn to forage in the "plus-sized" fashion world. She had no idea how much IT SUCKS, and she's not taking it quietly.


* * * * * * * * * *
So tell me. How is YOUR progress?

Comments

  1. I do so well during the day but then my sleeplessness gets me. I wake up, have to eat something to have a chance to go back to sleep. Ugh! It's a bad habit I picked up while I was pregnant. However, have lost 10 pounds since 1st of January which is a miracle. Fell off the wagon seriously today because of my birthday tomorrow. I will pay for it.

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  2. my progress = nada.

    oh wait. i haven't even remotely started TRYING yet. i have a trip coming up in may to punta cana, where my two, gorgeous sisters-in-law will be in attendance. here comes the frumpy mama of two, WATCH OUT!

    however, eric has lost 10 lbs. this month and still drinks a lot of bourbon, so it can work. i cheer him on while i sit on the couch with my bowl of cereal.

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  3. I'll have finished week 3 of Weight Watchers tomorrow and am down about 7 lbs from the start. I've successfully put off starting an exercise plan. Because exercise makes me sore and sad. And when I'm sore and sad I want to eat more than the measly 1 POINT of food I get for exercising in the first place.

    I'll try to find a pic of the Junior Prom I went to with the son of my Mom's then-best-friend. Just as exciting as that sounds.

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  4. Yeah, that whole losing-alcohol-tolerance-when-being-healthy thing is kind of a bitch. I'm trying to think about it as my body telling me it's able to cope with less in the way of toxins now, since booze (delightful as it can be) is essentially about as toxic as you can get. In other words, it just takes less of the good stuff to work. :)

    If it helps any, I'm having a similar sort of January (I did the big 60-lb weight loss a few years ago and am now trying to finally kick it up to a level of 'healthy and athletic', whatever that means), and I'm finding that after a few weeks, my appetites for sugar etc have actually gone waaay down. Seriously. I've always heard that and not believed it but ... it's true. RAWK!

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  5. Here's where I started:
    The Battle of the Bulge, Pt. 1
    http://musingsbygina.blogspot.com/2008/04/dear-mr-haagen-daas-battle-of-bulge.html

    Here's where I got stuck:
    The Battle of the Bulge, Pt. 3
    http://musingsbygina.blogspot.com/2009/02/battle-of-bulge-part-3.html

    Here's what motivated me:
    Retail Therapy
    http://musingsbygina.blogspot.com/2009/09/retail-therapy.html

    And here's where I am now:
    Winning the Battle
    http://musingsbygina.blogspot.com/2009/08/winning-battle.html
    (I've lost another 12lbs since I wrote that)

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  6. Love the Pie blog ! I added it to my sidebar as well ... Even though I am on a plan that espouses a "free day" each week, I have discovered that my concept of "free day" seems a bit excessive, and I spend the next 5 of 7 days undoing the damage. So I've had to rein myself in and have a free MEAL and even that needs to be ... reasonable. I guess at age 40 it's okay to FINALLY learn when "reasonable" means. Teh simple truth: losing weight isn't always fun. Boo.

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  7. I tried the HCG diet.

    It is NUTS. Basically, you starve yourself and you take HCG hormone shots and you don't use lotion and - I don't know - spin around three times in the dark and whisper "please make me beautiful" and it all works together to make you lose weight. (Or else, as I suspect, it's just the fact that you are STARVING YOURSELF that is effective and the rest is all bullshit.)

    I lost 14 pounds in 8 days though. And then I started blacking out, so as of yesterday, I switched to Atkins. OH, SWEET FOOD. SWEET CHEESE AND EGGS. SWEET NOT DYING OF STARVATION. SWEET BRAIN CLARITY.

    So yeah. That's my story.

    Good for you for not trying it.

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  8. it sounds like you're doing great, kristy!! 18 good days out of 23...that's really fantastic and way better than i've been able to pull off, good for you!!

    i think i've been doing okay this month (keep in mind, i have no desire to be an "A+ student" so my definition of okay includes lunch at the food carts once a week) though i did take the first two weeks off drinking just to try it out (not a DROP! there were some nights it was really rough, but knowing that i had light at the end of the tunnel helped me) and during that time it was much easier to stick to my healthy eating plan. i don't know that i actually lost much weight because of it, but i sure felt/slept a lot better.

    since then, i've really been trying to regulate my drinking to the weekends, but really the hardest part has been learning how to have a beer out and (1) not scarf the communal plate of fries that some GREAT friend bought for the table and (2) stop at one or two. i keep telling myself it's a process, haha.

    what's really been working for me this month though is the gym...it's taken eight months of going to 24 hour fitness and a personal trainer (that ends next week and i'm really freaked out that i'll lose my will) to get me to make a habit of being there, but i've learned some tricks to make me go (make plans to meet a group of friends there, bring gym clothes as my only change to work, buy my groceries only at trader joe's [right next door]). i'm sorry to hear you're having back troubles, but if you can, i recommend going even just to walk on the treadmill for 10 minutes or do a bit of stretching and then just go home. making the place familiar and a part of my routine has really worked and even on days that i'm not into it at all, i end up saying "well, i'm already dressed and here". i'm pretty sure i've said that to myself at least 25% of the time i've gone this month and it has resulted in some good workouts.

    i know i've been babbling away, but i love sharing what i've learned/learning from others in my boat. on that note, as someone who loves the internet, you might want to check out My Daily Plate on the Livestrong website. it's a way to keep track of everything you eat during the day (most user friendly site i've ever tried) and even beyond calorie counting, it's super interesting seeing how much fat/protein/carbs you're eating. i've used it more to help me plan a good eating schedule rather than logging each day, but actually seeing how certain foods can add up has put a lot into perspective for me (i knew drinking a six-pack of beer was bad, i just didn't think it was all-of-my-calories-for-the-entire-day bad).

    aaaanyways, i think you're doing a great job and i look forward to hearing how things continue for you! :)

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  9. Proof today that you do not have to be skinny to have men think you are hot:

    I was walking back from lunch and there was this guy walking toward me. Out of nowhere he addresses me and says, "Rubenesque is so in in this city. You look fantastic!" I smiled and said thank you and continued on my way.

    For those who do not know:

    Main Entry: Ru·ben·esque
    Pronunciation: \ˌrü-bə-ˈnesk\
    Function: adjective
    Date: 1913

    : of, relating to, or suggestive of the painter Rubens or his works; especially : plump or rounded usually in a pleasing or attractive way (a Rubenesque figure)

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  10. I haven't had a drink in 7 months *sob* and I've gained 20lbs. The GOOD news is this is because I'm pregnant. I always thought I'd be one of those ladies that just exploded while prego but luckily have not. I think 20lbs in 7 months is pretty good and all my tests are normal. YAY Now what happens after the baby is born we shall soon see! :)

    JL

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  11. I started Weight Watchers (*sigh*) again last October, and as of Christmas day, had lost a bit over 20 pounds. Was awesome. Thought I was going into the new year with a much-improved attitude and some momentum already behind me. Oh, and size 12 jeans, something my ass hasn't seen since 2004. Then ON Christmas day, I ate a meatball that was supposed to be yummy but tasted more like a mothball... Which meant that I was (*gasp*) pregnant (unplanned, not unwanted) again. Baby no. 3... Promptly stopped my beloved WW program, which pissed me off because I wanted to get pregnant this time around and have an actual "baby bump" rather than becoming a 1st trimester bloatation device, with gas pushing my girth forward so much that when people ask me if I'm pregnant and I say Why Yes, they balk when I say I'm only like 10 weeks along...

    I keep thinking that at least I've got a great excuse for eating an entire bag of chips with salsa in one sitting (thinking this will make the nausea go away, ha), but this, I recognize, is what my grandmother used to call Tom Foolery. So I'll live vicariously through other people's weight loss blogs and will gladly cheer you on. It does suck, but man, does it feel worth it once it's visibly noticeable, so best of continued luck to you!

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  12. Had to peep in that I TRIED your ground beef, salsa and blue cheese dressing thingy and am ADDICTED!!! Low carb? Yes, if you don't eat it as a DIP for a bag of tortilla chips!!! Ugh!!! It's delish - I've made it twice and tonight will make it with ground turkey...Mostly I eat it on "Shreds" as a salad type thing (but the chips creep out if no one is around!)...

    Keep it up with your effort! I am working out 6 days a week Since Jan 4)and logging food, counting calories and heinous stuff like that, with only *TWO* lbs lost (of the 18 or so to lose)...I want to shoot myself...(if it would help me lose weight, that is!)

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  13. Keep up the great work! It is always hard, just keep doing your best. I started eating healthier on December 6th, right about the time I started dying from severe anemia no one ever diagnosed me with. As I lay dying, for about a month I lost weight because I couldn't even get the energy to cook!

    Now that I'm recovering, trying to lose weight for a hysterectomy, and am focusing on health, I've lost 29lbs since December 5th. I cut out fried foods, don't eat out unless I can get grilled chicken or fish and veggies, and I have yet to start exercising.

    All in due time...

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  14. My weight loss progress is pretty slow...one step forward, two steps back kind of thing. So much is dependent on the baby's mood, behavior, and cold. When he has a bad day, I have a bad day.

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