Getting A Life

Weigh-in Wednesday, one day late

I actually did this yesterday but neglected to write about it, so here you go:

237 | 226.5 | 140

A certain unwelcome auntie is visiting, so this might be because I’ve been eating like crap, or it might be hormones. Can’t tell.

I picked up the latest Body For LIFE book from the library yesterday. It’s had me thinking…

Weigh-in Wednesday

237 | 225 | 140

Oh gee, a whole half-pound lost. Yay? But I didn’t stay low-carb the whole time either. Although… come to think of it… that’s actually kind of funny.

I decided to be more strict-Atkins and to use SparkPeople again. It feels obsessive but whatever; at least this way I can perhaps dissuade myself and others from eating out so much!

Wednesday Weigh-in

237 | 225.5 | 140

Not only am I not following strict Atkins, I’m eating things that would have given him conniptions, like the bun I left on my burger yesterday or the Starbucks drink I got for my daughter (the smallest size) and helped her drink last night. But–and here’s the crazy part–I must be staying within my personal carb allowance limits because I’m still in ketosis.

Nevertheless, both not losing weight and gaining half a pound are kind of bummers for me, so obviously going more by the book is called for now.

I still suspect something’s going on hormonally, mind you, but until a certain monthly visitor shows up to shed (ahem) some light (I wish) on the situation, I won’t know for sure. Of course, if that’s what it is, I’m going to feel very, very silly.

Not that I’m not silly anyway.

Weekly weigh-in

237 | 225.0 | 140

Two-pound gain from last week but some of it is bound to be hormones. I had a sashimi bowl last night for supper, but on the heels of not having had much to eat all day and I am still in ketosis this morning, so I don’t think I derailed anything. It was the third successive day of dealing with my daughter having moderate to severe behavioral issues and as I think I’ve mentioned here a time or two, I can be an emotional eater. Not that I sit around eating gallons of ice cream when I’m upset–it isn’t that bad–but I will tend to rationalize a lot more when I’m upset, and in the case of food it involves saying something to myself like, “I need a bowl of sticky rice. I’m stressed out.” It isn’t even properly a food craving. More like acting from a place of defiance.

And I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to be defying, but anyway, I’m fine today so there’s no point beating myself up about it. Said bowl of sticky rice also contained raw salmon and shredded lettuce, carrots, and daikon, so overall the dinner was rather good for me, and I skipped the sweet potato tempura I usually get from that place.

So, not too bad. I’m about due for Aunt Flo to visit anyway, which probably means it’ll happen in another week and a half *sigh* …but when it does I’ll probably drop about five pounds or so in a week. It’s happened before.

Weekly weigh-in

Still nice and strongly in ketosis, still going strong on this different way of eating.

237 | 223.5 | 140

By the way, that first number is approximately what I weighed on July 1 of last year when I first began Atkins in earnest. I have made a couple more attempts in the time since, and have kept jumping off the wagon. Now I’m to the point that I’m really fed up with being in this condition and I think about how I would be almost done with my weight loss had I kept up my efforts consistently to begin with and… I’m seeing it through this time. I have to.

Wednesday Weigh-In

I weighed in at 227.5 this morning. Yes, quite obese, nice high BMI, but almost a year ago I was at 237, so I’m still ten pounds less than when I started.

237 | 227.5 | 140

I might do photos this weekend. Don’t know yet.

Not that I’m dieting at the moment, but…

Weighed in, and I’m at 231.5.

I started low-carbing last July at 237, maybe 237.5. A couple weeks ago I was at 230.5. I mean, obviously I’m eating crap here and there. OK, maybe more than just here and there. Now, oftentimes the “crap” consists of things like rice cakes and popcorn. You wouldn’t think those would make you fat, but… And I’m sure the pizza didn’t help either. Crust City.

I need to get a handle on this. I don’t want to spend another year above 200. This is not natural for me and I’m sick of it.

230 / 231.5 / 140

Weigh-in and setback

I was going to write about this last night or the day prior and got distracted, plus I don’t know that I was ready to go blabbering about it here, but since the trip to the sushi restaurant I’ve just… not been great about my diet. The worst was last night when my little girl’s dad came over with pizzas (he cleared it with me beforehand). It has left me asking myself again, seriously, why I want to be on a diet at all if I’m just going to pull crap like this. Intent without action is just empty posturing, and besides, going very low-carb and then bouncing back up again is probably not doing wonders for what glucose metabolism I have left.

I started last weekend at 230 and I gained half a pound for my trouble, and I’m not sure I ever went into ketosis at all. I also keep using the glucose meter I picked up via FreeCycle even though I haven’t tested it yet (I need to get the test solution first), and this morning it informed me my fasting glucose was 103. To be fair I don’t think I had gone completely without food or drink after midnight; I had a couple swallows of coffee. I don’t sweeten my coffee with real sugar anymore, but it also had powdered milk in it, and fat-free milk at that, which is pretty high-carb. At the time I tested, though, I couldn’t remember doing that, which just goes to show how valuable blogging can be for me, even if my rambling about this stuff bores my readers to tears.

Anyway, coffee has an insulin-raising effect, so I should have had a lower fasting glucose if the meter is measuring correctly. I’m not sure how much the milk would have offset that effect. I literally drank less than four ounces of the stuff and then slept about four or five hours. Heck, the lack of sleep could have done it too. See me fretting over this? Isn’t it stupid? I’m just going to have to be smarter about this to set my own mind at ease. So what I need to do is:

• get the testing solution and use it to check the meter;
• if the meter is accurate, get at least eight hours’ sleep;
• concurrent with the previous, ensure complete fasting after midnight.

If it’s still high-ish at that point, then I’ll worry. They say to not use a glucose meter as a diagnostic tool but if it’s so inaccurate that it shouldn’t be used for that, why do they have diabetics monitor blood sugar with them? Seems like it would be more dangerous to hand an inaccurate meter to someone with high blood sugar than it would be to attempt to diagnose diabetes with a meter.

…No. What I need to do is get right the heck back on the diet. Whatever the hell it does for weight loss, it keeps the sugar down. What’s done is done as far as the underlying metabolic imbalance. I might be able to improve it slightly with better habits but it’s basically fried. I need to work with it now rather than against it. If I don’t I’m going to be fretting about not being able to afford diabetic meds a year or five years from now.

I should still keep track of my sugar either way, because even if it would not diagnose diabetes if I were low-carbing, it would at least let me see how well my glucose was being controlled–as well as I can possibly find out with not having insurance and therefore not having access to a hemoglobin A1C. So… a medical supplies purchase is on the horizon, yay. Thankfully the strips are not prohibitively expensive and the testing solution is even cheaper.

I wish someone had told me that fighting with yourself is the hardest battle there is. I doubt it would have helped, though.

230.0 / 230.5 / 140

Weight-loss journey begun anew

So I weighed in yesterday and I’m at 230. When I began Atkins this past July I was at 237. I did get down into the two-teens, such that I could fit into size 18W shorts, but then I started making excuses to myself and cheating and other fun stuff. Then my grandfather died in November and I asked myself, seriously, what I thought it was going to profit me to put off eating yummy food when he was gone and couldn’t eat it anymore. Of course it didn’t seriously occur to me that one of the reasons he went the way he did was because he ate all the wrong stuff. High blood pressure doesn’t just descend from Mount Olympus like one of the classical gods to grace us with its presence; we have to invite it. It didn’t help that he didn’t take his BP meds regularly, either, of course.

Anyway I had noticed my pants were getting snug and I’m starting to have the stupid pizza cravings and to have edema (swelling from water retention) in my hands fairly regularly so I thought I had better rein this in before those last seven pounds creep back on.

If you are interested in following along, I have an account at SparkPeople. It’s going to be interesting doing low-carbing on a site that rigorously preaches the virtues of low-fat and low-calorie dieting despite the cliché that one of the signs of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, but I’m not there for the dietary advice, I’m there for the software. It is really helpful to me to have a place where I can keep track of what I eat and drink and get some idea of whether I am meeting my nutritional goals.

More on this later, I just wanted to remark upon it briefly to start. I may post “before” photos later. Because I am a masochist, and stuff.