putting myself back together again
Last night for the first time in several years - at least five years, I'm not sure - I actually set up and did a proper High Holiday ritual. It's weird that I have a space I can actually leave set up with my altar arranged the way I like it. (Though I was reminded of the sheer number of things I have that are poorly stored and organized, and also the number of things I would prefer to acquire rather than my mix-and-match habit right now.) It was...comforting, in a way. Familiar despite the length of time. Though also I had not prepared by unpacking all my things properly so there was a bit of flurry and fluster and running upstairs to find the lighter and so on. (I also wasn't feeling well--weather-change headache that's still with me today--so I probably was not in as great a frame of mind as I could have been, but. Sometimes that's how it goes.) I did it, and I'm proud of myself.
Content Note: Discussion of body size, weight, food, fitness, etc. - including specific numbers. Also, mention of disordered eating.
I have been trying to work on improving my general food intake, since when I went tot eh doctor in December I had a moderately high blood sugar - not enough for immediate action, certainly not as bad as my hilariously freaking awful vitamin D levels, but enough that my doctor commented on it. She basically said that it might just be holiday treats, but I should be aware.
I've been working on losing weight since last July since my body at 175 pounds was not a place that I feel comfortable or feel like I look as I'd like to. I am a small person - in college, when I was fairly active just by virtue of walking several miles a day, I was 5'3" and 125 pounds. I'm never going to get back to that because among other things I haven't got time to walk everywhere (and also unlike in college I am not failing to eat because the dining hall food was inedible and I was in a horrible depressed hole that I could not properly identify or deal with! There were whole weekends freshman year when between lunch on Friday and lunch on Monday I would eat, like, a bowl of ramen and drink a 20 oz. bottle of pepsi. Because leaving the dorm was too much trouble and food wasn't interesting. ANYWAY that was freshman year, that was very stupid of me, I know better now, moving on.
My goal is to get back down to 135-140, which is a reasonable weight and one I felt pretty good at six or seven years ago, and one that I can maintain. My highest weight in July was 176; my lowest since is 163, which I hit early in January, and then bounced back up to 164 and have stayed there. I have mostly been hitting a 500 calorie per day deficit, and even when I go over that I don't usually go over the number of actual calories my body has used (as measured by my Fitbit, so allowing for wiggle there.) I have also mostly done this with food alone, rather than exercise, which I will need to change going forward. But the thing is that I was maneuvering other things around the fact that I quite like sugar in my tea, and that I like sweets. So, I decided to really try to cut those out. I determined that I don't like the taste of most sugar substitutes plain in tea (though I drink diet soda just fine), so I've switched my tea to half sugar, half stevia and that tastes acceptable and also cuts a ton of calories. I also just dropped sweets entirely for about three weeks, although then MyFitnessPal, which I use to track food, had an absolute fit over my sugar intake STILL because I was eating a lot of fresh whole fruit. Which I am mostly ignoring, since everything I have looked up pretty much says "yeah whatever ignore the sugar in fruit unless you are specifically told not to." (I do not sugar my fruit with the occasional rare exception in summer of sprinkling a little bit on strawberries.)
Having cut out almost all of the added sugars in my diet, I was finding it really easy to stick to 1500 calories a day, such that when I gave myself a break on calorie counting (per advice from Sev and from what I researched myself) it has been remarkably hard to actually eat the same amount I'm putting out, without resorting back to sugary things which I am trying not to do. It's so instinctive at this point to choose a low-calorie breakfast and a healthy lunch that yesterday after dinner I had about 600 calories left and I was like "....what. WHAT DO I EAT?!" (Today I am doing better at that since I've been actively planning out my day, which is weird to think that I have to plan out how to eat MORE instead of how to eat LESS.)
I know that calorie-counting alone is not going to get me to where I want to go, but it's easier for me than exercising, because it's actually fairly straightforward for me to say to myself "no you may not" and close the pantry, rather than get up, put on workout clothes, go downstairs, get on elliptical, etc. (I assume some of this is my brain having fits about the time spent working out, which is a holdover from the last couple of years where there just wasn't time for that kind of thing unless I cut things I really enjoyed; that is no longer the case. I mean, I still have to give up time with video games or whatever, but I can use the time to catch up on my TiVo backlog and other things I enjoy.)
My local park district has a beginning yoga class that I think I'm going to sign up for and see if paladin wants to join me as well. I liked doing my yoga video when I was doing that reliably (and the difference in my flexibility then vs. now was huge). I suspect it would also be good for my brain meats.
So, yeah. This week: back on the exercise horse. Next week: Back on the reduced-calorie-intake horse. Past experience suggests I seem to hit plateaus about every 10 pounds or so, so hopefully end of March I will be ready for another break, if I work at it harder than I did before.
I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1137869.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has
comments.
Content Note: Discussion of body size, weight, food, fitness, etc. - including specific numbers. Also, mention of disordered eating.
I have been trying to work on improving my general food intake, since when I went tot eh doctor in December I had a moderately high blood sugar - not enough for immediate action, certainly not as bad as my hilariously freaking awful vitamin D levels, but enough that my doctor commented on it. She basically said that it might just be holiday treats, but I should be aware.
I've been working on losing weight since last July since my body at 175 pounds was not a place that I feel comfortable or feel like I look as I'd like to. I am a small person - in college, when I was fairly active just by virtue of walking several miles a day, I was 5'3" and 125 pounds. I'm never going to get back to that because among other things I haven't got time to walk everywhere (and also unlike in college I am not failing to eat because the dining hall food was inedible and I was in a horrible depressed hole that I could not properly identify or deal with! There were whole weekends freshman year when between lunch on Friday and lunch on Monday I would eat, like, a bowl of ramen and drink a 20 oz. bottle of pepsi. Because leaving the dorm was too much trouble and food wasn't interesting. ANYWAY that was freshman year, that was very stupid of me, I know better now, moving on.
My goal is to get back down to 135-140, which is a reasonable weight and one I felt pretty good at six or seven years ago, and one that I can maintain. My highest weight in July was 176; my lowest since is 163, which I hit early in January, and then bounced back up to 164 and have stayed there. I have mostly been hitting a 500 calorie per day deficit, and even when I go over that I don't usually go over the number of actual calories my body has used (as measured by my Fitbit, so allowing for wiggle there.) I have also mostly done this with food alone, rather than exercise, which I will need to change going forward. But the thing is that I was maneuvering other things around the fact that I quite like sugar in my tea, and that I like sweets. So, I decided to really try to cut those out. I determined that I don't like the taste of most sugar substitutes plain in tea (though I drink diet soda just fine), so I've switched my tea to half sugar, half stevia and that tastes acceptable and also cuts a ton of calories. I also just dropped sweets entirely for about three weeks, although then MyFitnessPal, which I use to track food, had an absolute fit over my sugar intake STILL because I was eating a lot of fresh whole fruit. Which I am mostly ignoring, since everything I have looked up pretty much says "yeah whatever ignore the sugar in fruit unless you are specifically told not to." (I do not sugar my fruit with the occasional rare exception in summer of sprinkling a little bit on strawberries.)
Having cut out almost all of the added sugars in my diet, I was finding it really easy to stick to 1500 calories a day, such that when I gave myself a break on calorie counting (per advice from Sev and from what I researched myself) it has been remarkably hard to actually eat the same amount I'm putting out, without resorting back to sugary things which I am trying not to do. It's so instinctive at this point to choose a low-calorie breakfast and a healthy lunch that yesterday after dinner I had about 600 calories left and I was like "....what. WHAT DO I EAT?!" (Today I am doing better at that since I've been actively planning out my day, which is weird to think that I have to plan out how to eat MORE instead of how to eat LESS.)
I know that calorie-counting alone is not going to get me to where I want to go, but it's easier for me than exercising, because it's actually fairly straightforward for me to say to myself "no you may not" and close the pantry, rather than get up, put on workout clothes, go downstairs, get on elliptical, etc. (I assume some of this is my brain having fits about the time spent working out, which is a holdover from the last couple of years where there just wasn't time for that kind of thing unless I cut things I really enjoyed; that is no longer the case. I mean, I still have to give up time with video games or whatever, but I can use the time to catch up on my TiVo backlog and other things I enjoy.)
My local park district has a beginning yoga class that I think I'm going to sign up for and see if paladin wants to join me as well. I liked doing my yoga video when I was doing that reliably (and the difference in my flexibility then vs. now was huge). I suspect it would also be good for my brain meats.
So, yeah. This week: back on the exercise horse. Next week: Back on the reduced-calorie-intake horse. Past experience suggests I seem to hit plateaus about every 10 pounds or so, so hopefully end of March I will be ready for another break, if I work at it harder than I did before.
I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1137869.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has
comments.