New Year 2015: Physical State-of-the State.
Since my Come to Jesus meeting with the PA after my physical last year, I've been working on re-examining my nutrition practices and working with a PT to strengthen my back and the support muscles around my knees. I've also been meeting with an endocrinologist to assess my long-term nutrition plan and steps that we might need to take to cut heart disease off at the path.
The horn tooting: I've lost 23 pounds over the past several months. I did this even with the intervening Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's holidays. My pants fit. I missed my pants. I can wear the clothing that was given to me by my mom for Christmas. My left knee is feeling substantially better. I feel strong when I do strength training exercises. I'm going for walkies on the regular with a friend.
What I've been doing: I've pulled refined sugar out of the equation and I'm focusing on getting protein, healthy fats, and fresh veg/fruit into each meal. I've also nuked flour and most grain based things for the short term to see what that does. Rice and oatmeal have stayed put, but I haven't been having bread, baked goods, crackers, what have you.
What puts the fear of God into my system: My endocrinologist. She is talking about putting me on Lipitor and Topomax, one to counteract high cholesterol and the other to suppress appetite in a neurological way. I don't want to go on any more medication. We're holding off on this until the end of January/beginning of February, as a few months of clean livin' may have had a positive impact on the dangerdangerdanger numbers.
How I feel: I have mixed feelings about losing weight, as I want to embrace my body as is and I don't want to go back into a hyper-vigilant state with weight/food/exercise tracking. I have a black-and-white/all-or-nothing personality that vacillates between neurotic self-monitoring and gleeful binge eating. In short, I don't listen to what my body has to say. My mission in the new year is to listen. If it's hungry, I eat. If it's full, I stop. If it's wound up, I meditate or exercise. If it's tired, I sleep.