Healthy Food – Naturally

One thing I’m realizing about weight loss is that there are no easy answers.  For the first few months I saw my weight loss as a pattern (and being a programmer, I like patterns).  Then last month and this month, the pattern went to hell.

After my last report, I began gaining weight and not only that I gained it quickly.  From the end of last month’s report, I gained 4.8 pounds in 9 days.  I wasn’t eating anything weird, I was exercising and the weight went up. For much of my life, something like that would have frustrated me and I would have thrown up my hands and just given up.  But not this time. And I think I have this blog to thank for that.

My brother told me on the phone that he thought I was doing something extraordinary here. Putting myself out there for the world (or at least the very small subset that reads this blog) to observe, comment and I’m sure, judge.  But for me, it’s a way of holding myself accountable in a very real way.  I’m a 49 year old woman, who eats well, knows quite a bit (but not enough) about nutrition and wants to lose weight to be healthy.  By making myself accountable, I can’t just give up.  What would that say about me and who I am (and who I want to be) if I did that.  So in a real way, knowing that you read this keeps me on this journey.

So I didn’t give up.  I just kept going.  Of course circumstances kept me out of the gym a lot this month.  In the summer food preservation takes a large priority in my life.  Picking peas for 2 hours left me very sore and cramped in my lower back and backs of my thighs. The idea of going to a gym and trying to do my squats, push ups and that horrible Tabata was just not something I could do.  So I slowly lost weight after that peak.  It came off slowly for a few days. .2 pounds a day, then I went up a pound and basically erased the gains of that week.

Then I had another camping vacation.  I cooked for myself and with the exception of some chocolate and mead/alcohol, I kept to my diet.  In fact I brought loads of cheese and crudites and pork rinds to share with my friends to make sure I was never tempted by their foods. But something interesting happened.  After I got back from vacation, I weighed myself and I was down a pound from when I left. And slowly the weight dropped until I reached the 184.6 I am today.

I think I have to just trust the process.  I’ve finally found something that works for me and if I keep doing it, the weight will come off.  Not as fast or in as straight a line as I hope. I also need to not blame myself for something I have no control over. (and not having control of something is not great for me). But if I know I’m doing the things that help me lose weight. (low-carb, fermented raw milk products) and I’m not cheating (no grains, sugar), then I just have to trust the process, no matter how twisty the path.

I think there is a tendency in many of us to micro-manage this process. I know that weighing myself every day is not recommended, but it helps me see the patterns so long as I don’t freak out that I’ve gained weight on any given day. My official weigh-in day is the weight that I use here and in other places when I talk about my weight loss. But in weighing myself daily, I see the larger pattern, I see my body rebelling to the weight loss and putting some of it back on and then gradually accepting it. What I see is a pattern of gain and loss that in some ways helps me through the times when it seems I’m not losing.

I don’t know if what I had this month would be considered a plateau. But its taught me to trust the process, don’t give up and do what I know works, even if it doesn’t seem to at the moment.

 July 2012 Measurements

Measurement	Starting	Current	Difference
Weight	200 lbs	184.6 lbs	-15.40 lbs
Chest	39.00″	37.00	-1.25″
Waist	36.50″	32.50	-4.00″
Stomach	43.00″	35.00	-8.00″
Hips	45.00″	41.00	-4.00″
Thighs	25.25″	23.25	-2.00″
Biceps	15.50″	15.00	-0.50″

The measurements this month don’t really accurately reflect what happened.  The day after I wrote the last report, I began gaining weight and in fact gained 4.8 pounds in about a week and a half.  After that, it was a slow weight loss down.  In relative weight lost in May, I actually lost 5.6 pounds instead of the measly .8 pounds I saw from the end of that report to the end of this one.

I think accountability helps keep me in the process.  Fitocracy, while not about weight loss, keeps me going to the gym. Keeps me going through my work-outs.  Not only cause I love earning a lot of points in a workout and getting props, but because everyone there that wants to can see my workouts.  Accountability in many of its forms is what is different for me this time.

Fitness Report Series

• Report 1: Eating Healthy Food isn’t Enough
• Report 2: Fitness Report – Month 1
• Report 3: Fitness Report – Month 2
• Report 4: Fitness Report – Month 3
• Report 5: Fitness Report – Month 4
• Report 6: Fitness Report – Month 5
• Report 7: Fitness Report – Month 6
• Report 8: Fitness Report – Month 7

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