FastDay User Blogs

I feel like I've entered the doldrums of weightloss, where everything goes sooooo sloooowly.... But I've finally touched the 152's! Yay! And I went clothes shopping this past weekend (my body was looking so frumpy in my baggy old clothes) and I now wear 8's and mediums (USA) instead of the 12/14's and L/XLs I was wearing before!!! I felt fantastic, to say the least! And I'm only just over halfway to my goal weight! When I was 142 lbs, I remember being able to fit into 6's, and I imagine when I get to 136 lbs (my goal) I'll be fitting into 4's, which I've never done in my whole life!

My progress is reminding me of my friend who first told me about 5:2 three or four years ago and successfully lost a significant amount of weight on it over the course of 6 months. I'm so delighted to be following in her footsteps!

Going back to the subject of slow weight loss, I realized that the reason I have been so frustrated with the slowing pace of it has very little to do with this method of eating and more to do with an event coming up on Nov 18th, a big Friendsgiving event held every year when pretty much everyone I know gets together to celebrate. I was hoping to be further along by that event than I will actually be. But, then I realized, I look really great! And I definitely look better than last year! I definitely will get comments and compliments, so what the heck am I so worried about???

I think the other thing that was making it feel so slow is that I was cinching up the strings of eating a bit too tightly and was starting to make it feel more like a diet (unsustainable) rather than a regular way of eating (which has been what has made this so successful so far). (Pretty sure that's what was causing my to have mini-binges this past couple weeks.) Things like fasting 4x a week instead of 2-3, forcing myself to eat waaaaaay more vegetables than I enjoy (talk about some wasted food there....). Cutting out most of my treats. And it's just NOT SUSTAINABLE THAT WAY for me, at least right now. Maybe one day it will be. Maybe one day I'll be a panacea of veggie health, but I'm realizing that this may simply be some odd ideal in my head. I think I may simply like the IDEA of it rather than the REALITY of it. Much like I see skilled yoga practitioners and want to be that, but in reality I'm just not going to. I don't like the doing of it enough.

Along those same lines, last week I started adding daily exercise to my regimen to supplement my eating. It wasn't really meant to help lose weight, but more to get my blood flowing a bit more. The point was to just do it, not get crazy with it. Honestly, I think it took almost as long for me to change into my workout gear as it did to actually work out. And yet I didn't keep up with the planned workout I had: kettlebell swings and jumprope. I clearly recall enjoying these exercises in the past, and yet..... I really did not find myself enjoying them, even though I was only doing 100 of each (prob took 10 minutes total). It may sound like I'm saying that health should always be easy, but my actual point is that it should be sustainable. If it feels like a chore then it will be and that will quickly turn you off from it. Which means it's not helpful at all. How does the saying go? "The imperfect workout you do is better than the perfect workout you don't do" (also could insert "diet" here)?

So, I still need exercise. It's good for me. But what then? So, I've switched to steps. Loaded a pedometer app on my phone, and away we go. I track all steps in a day, and currently my goal is 6000 (sustainable, remember? I will push it upwards soon enough, but let's just get me used to the bottom line, ok?).

In tandem with this, I have changed to working with my BMR with the steps burnt added on top of it (instead of simply with my TDEE which simply guesses at my daily expenditures), which actually brings my TDEE much lower. Now, speaking of sustainability this may sound like a bad idea, and yet, the few days I've been doing this, it has felt great! I had issues before with trying to drop my TDEE to 1650, and so on, and it didn't work out; whereas, this drops my TDEE into the 1500's sometimes, and yet no problem! Goes to show that there's a big psychological aspect to all of this! Maybe it's that I feel that I have more control this way? Because I can earn more calories this way, even though it's less than the calories I was simply given by the TDEE calculator before? Who knows?

I feel like I'm blathering on, so I'll finish up.

Lessons learned this week:
-BMR + calories burnt through steps counting = fun game!
-Greek yogurt + maple syrup + homemade granola = delicious and filling (now my go-to meal)
-I don't like kettlebells and jumpropes as much as I remember
-you don't have to eat lots of veggies to get the recommended daily intake of fiber
-edamame is a great addition to my food repertoire