Weekend

Friday I accidentally ate about 200 extra calories due to misreading the package on the fish stick container, so I ended up with a HUGE COLOSSAL amount of.... 1750 calories. Still far below my "normal."

I ended up losing yet another full pound the next day. So that is something like 7 lbs lost in 5 days, mostly water no doubt, but incredible none the less.

Yesterday I was back to "perfect," right at 1500 calories, but of course as I knew would happen, the insanely rapid loss stopped and I rebounded a little, +2 lbs. But of course I'm smart enough to not be bothered by that, since I'm still at a insane, breakneck pace of a lb per day (which won't last, obviously).

So far I've managed to execute this plan during the weekend which is always harder for me. So far, so good, feeling optimistic!

Goal........ mostly met! (January 27th)

Calories: well, you know. 1500. Again.

Steps: still waiting until Monday to get rid of this lingering cough/cold.

Measurements:

Huge loss in weight this week. Mostly water, to be sure, but welcomed anyway! I lost almost 6 lbs this week, which puts my total loss from the start of this blog to:

-4.4 lbs

This is significant (though still a small number) because it puts me back to where I was before I moved halfway across the county in late November. Holiday malaise defeated! Now to make fresh progress.

Measurements:

Lost a half inch from the chest, and a quarter inch from the waist. So this puts me at:

Chest: -3"
Waist: -3.25"

The trick here will be to wash-rinse-repeat this new eating pattern. I'll have to consult with my nutritional advisor if or when a refeed might happen to prevent stalls. I've done that before, when doing a cyclic keto diet, but this isn't really that (though I do try to lean towards protein and fat for max satiety).

My goal in January was to lose a pound a week and an inch from the start of the month. The goal is mostly met- I've met it in terms of lbs lost (4.4 lbs lost so far) and I'm getting close to that 1" lost (need another .75 inches lost on the waist, and another .5" on the chest for that). We'll see if the measurements move a little more in the next few days left in the month.

It's working

1500 cals a day achieved for the past two days.

Steps aren't relevant right now since my cold is still hanging on (getting better, though).
I'll resume my step goals on Monday.

So while my official weigh in isn't until tomorrow, I've been keeping track and the weight is pretty much flying off now that I've managed to have a couple of days at this threshold.

How is it going?

Yeah, sure, sometimes I'm hungry. Somehow, so far, I'm able to just kind of whisper to myself, "sorry, I can't eat right now. I just can't, just wait," and I make it. The worst periods of time for this are between 3-5pm and from 10pm until I wake up.

I'm splitting the cals between a light breakfast and heavier dinner.
Would like to make breakfast even lighter so save more of that 1500 for end of day, but this current split is working well (basically 500 then 1000).

crunch time

So I have basically a week left in the month and I'm just getting over this giga-cold.

So I'm going to have to have a kick ass week to meet my goals :(

Been doing some studying, and I think one problem is that there are two methods for "guesstimating"  BMR (the basic caloric burn rate for the day), and all of my apps and things use a formula that makes it much higher than the "other" formula some people use.

I have no doubt, based on my (terrible) results, that on days I think I'm "breaking even" I'm probably in a surplus, and days in which I think I'm in a deficit are probably just breaking even or something like that.

So I need to cut way back. I'm now shooting for 1500 calories a day.

Certain critics might think this is a prelude to a long fast :p Sigh.

Yesterday's calories was ~1950, so not quite there yet. Let's see how we do today.

Have I mentioned the best way to lose weight is to not get fat to start with? :/

Sick days

I got hit with a mack truck of a sinus infection, which hopefully will be on the mend soon, especially since controlling calorie intake is really challenging when you feel like crap (and no, this is not the sort of sickness where you puke and feel crappy that way, alas!).

Calories:

18th: 1800
19th: 2300
20th: 2600

Steps: 18th was 9k, but the rest was about "bleh" due to The Sickness.

Comment:

It is crunchtime. I simply have to accomplish my goals, as the new year is rolling on, and we're planning a large trip for April, and I want to be thin enough to enjoy the trip without thinking about anything.

The 18th reflects the "war on hunger" I've been fighting, with generally effective tactics, but on Thursday I began getting a cold which hit full on Friday morning. It's super hard to be spot on, but I have to at least tread water until this cold is gone so I can hit this thing REALLY HARD.

I haven't weighed myself (all the fluids I'm taking and such are going to skew that) but I did measure myself, no changes there good or bad :(

January 17

Calories 1800
Steps 3000

Steps are coming back with a vengeance tomorrow.

January 16

Calories: 2190
Steps: 3000

Comment:

Not good enough re: calories. Also need to get back in the exercise groove (long holiday weekend and all that).

I do feel like the increase in water intake, use of almonds, etc. is starting to help.

Weekend Jan 14 and 15

14th calories: 2300
14th steps : 3000

15th calories: 2600
15th steps: 4000

Meh. Not awesome. New week, gotta do better.

January 13: Green Tea, Almonds and Apples

Steps: 3000
Calories: 1800ish

Comment:

On the advice of my "nutritional advisor," I'm going to attempt to use green tea (first "real" green tea, then green tea extract when it arrives in the mail), raw almonds and apples (once they arrive from the department of grocery acquisitions) to curb hunger more. Hunger is the culprit here, and why it's been a struggle to maintain a calorie level that is going to bring about a reasonably steady and reliable weight loss.

I've noticed in the past that raw almonds have a "don't need to eat a lot to feel full" quality to them. I've noticed that about apples too!

January 12: DANG YOU SCALE

So my weight didn't budge at all (ok, it went down .2, not worth mentioning, barely).

SCREW YOU SCALE.

I'm not toooo worried about my January goals yet, as I know my "weight loss pattern" is "hold hold hold DUMP," but it's still freaking annoying,

Oh well.

I suppose I should make 1800 the true target, and I suppose I should do one meal a day IF again.

January 11

Calories: 1800
Steps: 9000

Comment: Overshot the mark on my goal for Wednesday and Thursday, but not by a lot.

Jan 9 and 10

Cals for Jan 9: 2200
Cals for Jan 10: 2300

Steps 9k for each day.

Comments:

Good week so far, though my goal for today and tomorrow is to hit 1700 calories, to ensure I'm on target for my monthly goals, while maintaining my step goals.

January 8

cals 2400
Steps 4000

Weekend done, now to have a great week!

January 7th

Calories: 2285
Steps: bleh

Comment: Not a lot of steps, but a decent, non-blowout Saturday, so a win.

Jan 2-6... really!?

The funny thing about maintaining this blog is it is easy to fool yourself into thinking you are just "a day behind." All week I thought, "gotta update it, meh, it'll wait, I'm not that far back." And now here we are :p

So let's do a summary:

 Steps: Monday was the only day that I did not hit my goal of 9k or more (that day was 5500 steps). The rest of the days were at least 9k, usually topping out at 9200-9300.

Calories:

My low was Monday, at 1800 calories. My high was 2200. So a pretty good week! Today will be something like 2300 also.

Measurements:

Weight: The same as last week. A little frustrating, but I had a non-scale victory, so I know that this is just the scale being a liar, as usual.

Measurements:
Was down 1" in the chest, so now I'm back to -3" since the start of this blog on chest circumference. This is great because the chest size affects my day to day life more than any other measurement (the ol' man boobs make shirts uncomfortable, more so than the gut). The waist was basically the same, I could have said I lost maybe a quarter inch, but I like to be conservative (it's easy to fool yourself via posture or whatever). I'm still at -3" overall on the waist.

So with a significant size reduction AND a good week eating and exercising, I know that the unchanged weight number is just scale BS and I'm optimistic this will show soon.

JANUARY GOALS:

New year, new goals.

My goals for weight are:


-4 lbs by Friday the 27th. Obviously this assumes a 1 lb per week loss which hopefully I can do better than, but I'll be perfectly happy with this otherwise.

Size goals:
Another inch from the chest and waist.

January 1

Calories: 2600
Steps: 3500

Comment: Steps were bullshit; probably should have had at least 5000; the vivofit from Garmin is terrible at detecting housework type stuff.