dianaschnuth

James is kicking that ass, and is down 1.6% from his Spring starting weight.

I, on the other hand, am 1½ pounds up from my Spring starting weight. I ate poorly during my weekend Aikido seminar, on top of having sore and swollen muscles, so my weight shot up drastically. Then, as I was finally starting to drop the excess weight mid-week, I got a cold — the kind of cold that, at the beginning (while my nose still worked properly), made me just want to curl up on the couch under a blankie and eat mac & cheese while watching TV.

Where’s my motivation?
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The short version: Both James and I lost one pound each this week, after a weekend of poor food choices and general culinary debauchery. That makes him down 0.4%, and me down 0.5%, just by virtue of our different starting weights.

The long version I’ll put after the jump, as it’s come to my attention that not everyone wants to hear the same diet and fitness crap week in and week out. Which is pretty much what it’s come to, isn’t it?
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Happy Spring Equinox!

Today is the day when James and I reset our Weight Loss Challenge. Since both of us did relatively well in January, then started to slack in February and March, James came up with the idea of having a do-over starting the first day of Spring. And here we are:

(I know my feet look grotesquely veined and aikido-scarred in this light. So be it.)

James has informed me that he’s going to win before I leave to go on vacation on May 7th, so I guess I’d better step it up. I’ll have to lose just under two pounds a week to hit my goal of 194.5 in time to maintain it for a week before leaving for Hawaii. For those of you keeping score, 194.5 will be a recent record low for me; I think my record is 195, actually, and I only saw that for a day or two several years ago.

So, how am I going to do it? Well, I figure that doing what I was doing back in January would be a good start, since I lost an average of just under two pounds per week through January and into February. My plans would therefore include a.) attending Aikido regularly; b.) planning my meals in advance (sometimes making a week’s worth of lunches on Sunday night); and c.) practicing restraint and portion-control on weekends. My general guide will be the Reasonable Diet’s “I-Week Diet,” at least in the beginning: fruits, veggies, lean meats, whole grains, and no sweets (although that’s a terrible oversimplification). As for calorie breakdowns, I’m planning to keep it reminiscent of the Zone Diet: 40% carbohydrate, 30% protein, and 30% calories from fat. That seems to work well for me.

As usual, I’ll be tracking my food with my DietOrganizer Palm OS app, which totally rules. It’s actually a big part of my strategy, as I can see my calorie percentages as they readjust during the day. The only thing it doesn’t do that I wish it did is sync to my computer so I can see the graphs and manipulate the data on a larger scale. I also bought myself a fancy pedometer that I’m going to calibrate tonight and start wearing tomorrow. It came with tracking software, too, so I can sync it up to my PC and track how far I’ve walked over time.

Something else that’s going to be important is sleep. Yes, sleep. I’ve read about enough studies that link changes in sleep with changes in weight, so I’m going to make a concerted effort to get a minimum of 8 hours a night. I usually only get around seven hours during the week, if that; I tend to sleep in on the weekends, though, usually getting about ten hours, and sometimes twelve if I’m feeling especially lazy/snuggly. My plan is not to expect too much of myself during the evenings, as far as productivity goes, and to turn off my computer by 9:30pm. (So, if you see me on Google Talk or AIM after 10pm on a weeknight, tell me to wrap things up and go to bed already!) 🙂

I’ve lost 7½ pounds so far this year. (More than that, actually, but I gained back a few and re-lost them.) I’m back to where I felt stable and quasi-comfortable last year. Now it’s time to step it up and get down to where I’ll start to actually feel good again.

It’s been a week of ups and downs for me, weight-wise. The weekend was bad. Very bad. Worse than it should have been, mainly because of my inability to STOP EATING.

(One piece of Enchilada Casserole for Sunday dinner would have been OK. Two was pushing it. Three was definitely being bad. But four? Four was redonkulous. And I knew it. And I paid for it in physical discomfort for some time afterward. Aaron and I polished off an entire 9″x13″ pan of Enchilada Casserole in one sitting, and it was a Poor Idea™. But not really Aaron’s fault, as I could easily have begged off after having seconds.)

All last week, I chose not to log my food, just to see what would happen. What happened was that I steadily lost weight: half a pound a day, give or take. Then the weekend happened. But on Monday, I turned it around, and by today’s weigh-in, I was back down to having lost 3% of my body weight since January 1st.

James and I have really been having a time of it. I did really well for the first five weeks, then my weekly average weight chart started heading the wrong direction for the next four. This week, I’m finally on the decline again, so far:

Today, when James and I were checking in with each other via e-mail, he made a suggestion: Why don’t we make this challenge a Spring Fling and call a redo starting March 20th — the first day of Spring? I’ll go with that, sure! (Especially since a Thursday weigh-in will keep me going to Aikido on Wednesday nights.)

So, next week begins a new challenge, a new starting point, and a new attitude. Rather, a continuation of the new attitude I’ve cultivated so far this week. Plus, I could use a new starting point to determine a new ending point; I want to have this competition in the bag by… *calculates a reasonable date by which to lose ten pounds* …by the time I go to the World Crokinole Championship in Ontario, early this June. (No joke. I’ll tell you all about it later.)

Really, though: there’s no shame in calling a do-over when both parties would benefit from a fresh perspective.

These weights are snapshots of each Tuesday, not weekly averages, but dang. We’re both slipping off course in a big way.

Aikido will be a big help in upcoming weeks, as I start going back to class. I’ll be ramping up my participation in Aikido over the next few weeks in preparation for the weekend-long workshop with Bill-Sensei, my Sensei’s teacher. It’s a big deal, and not to be missed, but I’m concerned about me being able to last through a Friday evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning. Hence, the ramping-up of activity to prepare.

I choose to give myself one week of not journaling my eating habits, during which I’m going to take a long, hard look at what my goals are and what I’m willing to do to achieve them. I’m just coming off of a weird time at work, with lots of training out-of-town (well, two out of the last three weeks, anyway), and I feel like I need time to settle my brains.

I’ve also been kind of slightly depressed/jealous after seeing a friend’s vacation photos from Barbados. (I know you didn’t mean it, but girlfriend, you look super-curvy-hot.) My friend — we’ll just call her BG, but she can speak up here if she wants — is probably my same BMI, but shorter, and… well… there’s no sensitive way to put it: she has HUGE hooters. Huge. And she looks mighty fine in a bikini, let me tell you. Curves in all the right places, and all smooth textured skin. If I were into girls… well, since I’m not, we won’t go there.

I looked at last year’s “before” pictures of me in my first-ever-as-an-adult two-piece swimsuit (that will probably never be seen by anyone in public), and was highly disappointed. My stomach has this weird indent around the waistline from wearing too-tight jeans all through junior high and high school (why didn’t anyone ever tell me about the Muffin Top?). My thighs are all dimply, and I’m a little knock-kneed (although I’m probably the only one who notices).

I know I shouldn’t compare myself to my friend BG, but it’s hard. I can compare me now to me back in 2003, fifty pounds ago… but that seems like an old victory. I’ve stayed within a ten-pound range for the past four years or so, but I’m not done with myself. I have a good thirty or thirty-five pounds before I’m where I’d love to be, although I’d be satisfied with losing another fifteen for now.

It’s all a matter of what I’m willing to do. I need to sit down and give that some thought this week.