Chris

Right after I posted the last message about “Did I break through?” I thought I had cursed myself, because I then gained seven pounds in two days.  But it was a short-lived water bump; since then I’ve slowly but surely dropped through the 370’s.  Today is not my official weigh-in day but I did get on the scale and got 373.0.  That marks a 20-pound loss from my starting point.  Better yet, I need to get a new belt or start punching new holes in this one, as I am now on the last notch on this one.

I have given up a bit on the regular daily exercise but I’ve been more active during the day to make up for it, and it seems like a little activity outdoors in the 100 degree heat “counts” for more than longer activity in air-conditioned indoors.  Is it all about the sweat?  Am I losing more real weight or just sweating out more water?  Maybe it’s because it makes me drink so much more water (and, on really hot days, sugar-free “sports drinks” to keep my electrolytes up).  I don’t know, but if I lose at the rate I’ve been (knock on wood), my official weigh-in on Sunday may be in the high 360’s.

I am exactly halfway toward the “wall”: 353 pounds.   That 353-pound wall has stopped my last three or four serious weight loss attempts in their tracks, starting in 2006. That is why my short-term goal is 352 and not 350. If I can get to 352 I’ll be at my lowest weight in ten years.

I’ve been complaining for a month about not being able to break through the 380 barrier. I hit 380 quickly when I started this journey, but I kept bouncing back up to 390, over and over. A week ago, my weight settled in at 380 and stayed within a pound or two rather than bouncing up, and this week it has finally started to fall. I am at 376.6 as of this morning.

Am I through the plateau at last, or is it just a tease? If anything my calories have gone up and my exercise gone down, so I don’t quite understand it. I have been working on my car outside in the heat a lot, though, so maybe it’s water loss. I don’t know, but I am cautiously optimistic.

I’d started to make progress last week, getting down to 380 and briefly fitting into size 54 jeans (down from 58).  But the “success” was short lived. I bounced right off the 380 barrier and gained 5 pounds in two days again, and once again those size 54 pants don’t fit.

Today I stopped taking my G;lyburide in case that is part of the problem. My blood sugar was fine today but tomorrow will tell the tale.

I am starting to have problems with exercise. I’ve slowly bumped my walking from 40 minutes a day to 70 (3-4 days a week), but by the end of today’s 70 minutes my hips and lower legs were just in so much pain and my fingers have really started to swell up when I do cardio. I added crunches to my strength training today but the crunches quickly made me nauseous and I felt like my strength just fled from me; I did my dumbbell chest presses today same as always but my arms started to falter and I nearly dropped a 30 pound dumbbell on my face.

I logged all my food today looking for a pattern but I actually took in less calories than I thought, about 2000 (SparkPeople wants me to take in 2500 a day), and that was even after a mini-binge. After dinner, I just got this burst of hunger and started shoving all kinds of food into my mouth, but good shopping and at least a semblance of control guided the “binge”, as I ended up eating a nonfat lite yogurt, a sugar-free jello mousse, a low-carb ice cream bar, a banana, and half a skinless chicken breast. Not good, certainly, but would have been worse if I’d dug into the rest of the family’s chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

So now not only is the weight coming back again but exercise is getting harder, not easier. I’m doing everything right, aren’t I? Two solid months eating right and exercising without a single cheat and all I can muster is an 8 pound loss?

The previous “wayback” post mentions sodium. There was a completely separate blog post after tha on sodium, which I would also like to share. So once more into the time machine, dear friends…

Lurking sodium crystals,
waiting for their chance to strike.

“But I just don’t understand it. I’ve been good, I’m just not losing weight. I’m even gaining it.”

She seemed just as puzzled as I was. “What have you been eating?”

“Salads,” I replied. “For the last four days I’ve had a McDonald’s salad every day for lunch.”

Sometimes when you start turning over stones you don’t like what you find underneath.

This was my situation a couple of weeks ago, and I set out to figure out just what was causing my problem. McDonald’s has a great Web page where you can select all the items in your meal and it gives a full nutritional breakdown. I had a Bacon Ranch salad with grilled (not crispy) chicken and ranch dressing, so I plugged this into the page and took a look. Calories? Not bad at 430. Fats are appropriate for a meal, saturated fats are low, carbs look good, sodium is…

Holy mackerel.

The sodium in my salad was 1530 milligrams, 64 percent of my maximum recommended intake for the day. 530 of that was in the measly two tablespoons of Newman’s Own Ranch Dressing provided with the salad. To put this in perspective, a Double Quarter Pounder with a large french fries has only 1240 mg of sodium! (In all fairness, if you add cheese the burger meal barely outstrips the sodium in the salad.) I was, to put it mildly, shocked.

The big culprit, besides the dressing, was the chicken. Poultry is routinely “enhanced with a solution” that is mostly just salt and water. Salt is the fastest and cheapest way to add flavor to something. I knew this, of course, but never imagined that a salad would pack in so much.

I calculated a full day’s worth of food the other day, and came up with a figure of about 9000 mg of sodium for the day, and I didn’t think I was eating all that badly. Take a look around and see what is hiding in your food. If you have trouble losing weight, stealthy sodium may just be the culprit.

On a previous attempt to lose weight, I kept a blog as well; looking for some old information I stumbled onto an old blog entry I thought I should share.

Please note this entry is 5 years old; the progress mentioned in it is sadly lost. But the plan I followed then is the plan I am following now, and the notes about my feelings and history are still true. So with that introduction, please step into my time machine….

It lay there on the floor, an unassuming white slab huddled in the corner.  A sharp tap in the center brought its impassive black face to life.  The scale activated, I stepped on it gingerly, as I do many mornings, with a combination of hope and trepadation.

Taking a deep breath, I looked down (having to lean forward to see past my belly, I noted) to read the numbers on the display: 361.9.

Three hundred and sixty-two pounds.  For most people, seeing a weight like that pop up on the scale would be heartbreaking.  I, however, was elated.  In mid-April, this same scale reported 383, just one pound from the dismissive -Err- it issues as it passes its silent judgment, “You’re just too fat for me to measure.  Please get off me now.”

All my life I have waged war with scales; I have usually lost.  From 185 in high school, to 250 in college, to 330 when I got married, to 370 as I moved from Los Angeles to Missouri.  In Missouri I met my current boss, who introduced me to low carb; it literally took public humiliation from her on Halloween to get me to try it.  Low carb was a great success; fourteen months later I triumphantly weighed in at 291.  Facing a two-week vacation to California for the holidays and a move to Georgia soon after, I knew I could take a break and start up again at the beginning of the year.

Then the wheels came off the cart.

With my momentum lost, the pounds rocketed back.  I was at 330 before I realized I was in trouble.  The pounds were back, and they had brought friends.  I shot right past the 370 I had topped out at in California.  I don’t even know where I ended up, as I was beyond the reach of any bathroom scale and even my doctor’s scale; I estimate that at my worst I’ve been around 400.

Most of my life I had escaped the health detriments of my weight, but now my body was starting to rebel: horrible swelling in my left leg, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, climbing blood sugar, and depression.  I would continue to attempt various diets and lifestyle changes, and I did make enough progress to slowly bring my average weight into the mid-380’s.  Another attempt at losing weight late last year brought me down to 363 before I lost it over the holidays and settled in around 375.

It was during rehearsals for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast that I finally realized that if I didn’t do something, I was going to die.  Soon.  I had gained back to 383 and saw no sign of stopping. During rehearsal, I struck up a conversation with a woman in the cast who had just lost 60 pounds doing nothing more than running.  I started walking that night. 

It’s been a roller-coaster since then, but since mid-April I’ve hit my stride and am on a consistent downward trend.  I am not following any particular diet trend; the only foods I’m really cutting back on are obviously bad things like candy and ice cream.  What I am doing, however, is putting about half as much food on my plate at home.  I felt seriously deprived at first, but now it feels like a normal amount; in fact, eating the huge meals I used to makes me feel bloated and uncomfortable.

So yes, I am doing the happy dance at 362 pounds.  362 is one pound lower than I reached in my last weight-loss attempt, and is the lowest weight I’ve been in years.  The number on the scale, however, tells only part of the story.  With consistent exercise in the mix, I feel better and my clothes feel looser than they used to when I was down to 350 on low-carb alone.  Thus, even though the scale only reports a 21-pound loss, it feels like more.

What is my enemy now?  A most insidious one, lurking in unexpected places: salt.  But that, dear friends, is a subject for another blog entry.

With the rumored impending shutdown of BuddySlim, I’ve moved back to SparkPeople.  I was actually there first; what kept me at BuddySlim was the people: my dear dear Dennise, Dana, Debra, Viv, Suzy, MJ, Leida, Michael, long lost friends like Theresa, Andrea, Debbi, Kylie Jo, Dianne, Renee, Lisamarie, Tonya, and someonehelpmemyspacebarisstuck who I don’t think ever let her real name slip out.  I’m sure I’m forgetting a dozen of you, but the key is that you all inspired me, made me smile, and most of all stuck by me through my darkest hours.

Many of us have already landed at sparkpeople.com and an ex-BuddySlim’ers group has been set up at http://www.sparkpeople.com/myspark/groups_individual.asp?gid=51001. My personal Facebook is at http://www.facebook.com/celamantia and you are all welcome to add me, just say BuddySlim in the personal message in case I don’t recognize your name (I’m looking at you, someonehelpmemyspacebarisstuck!).  For those that think SparkPeople is too “busy” and hard to navigate, you may want to try http://www.weightlossbuddy.com.

For those of you who would rather set up shop on your own, you can keep your blog by going to Manage, then Export in your Dashboard and downloading the export file; you can then use this if you build a new blog for yourself (it’s free) at http://www.wordpress.com.  I think many other blogging platforms will accept the export file too.

I hope we can all keep in touch!

Love to you all,
Chris

I started to write this as  a response to comments on my last blog post , where Dana said she had a hard time believing I wasn’t losing weight if I was eating well enough to keep my sugars down.

I agree that I should be losing weight, but let’s be honest: if losing weight was as simple and straightforward as that, none of us would be overweight.

The 390’s are not my top weight; sometime late last year I was over 400, so those “easy” first 10-15 pounds were already lost before I started on this on March 27th.  In retrospect, I think I am fighting one of my body’s built-in “plateau barriers”.

I think that as our bodies spend time being a particular weight, they “learn” how to live at that weight efficiently, so they can maintain that weight even with fewer calories coming in,  The low 380’s are an area I spent many years weighing, so I think my body knows how to maintain that weight and makes it difficult for me to cross that barrier. 

From experience, I know have similar barriers just over 350, 330, and 300, and will probably face my final fight between 240 and 250, which is what I weighed in my college years.  My goals, not surprisingly, are tuned to these barriers, so when I hit 350, 330, or 300, I know I’m past thye “hard part” and can push forward to the next barrier.

Thus, for now I just need tyo be patient and keep doing things right, and when I see 375 I feel like I can be sure I won’t keep bouncing up to the 390’s.

Nothing new to report.  It’s the same as it’s been.  I’m eating right and exercising, my blood sugar is great, but my weight loss is a yo-yo… lose a half pound a day steadily followed by gaining it all back 3-4 pounds a day in a couple of days.  I hit 392 yesterday, bringing my total weight loss after two months to one pound.

Fortunately, tracking my blood sugar is the only thing keeping me from going back to eating the way I was, because really, what’s the point of denying myself everything that my family eats if I’m only going to lose one pound in two months?

Yeah, so nothing great or positive here, but at least I’m still here.

My stats for this week:

So today’s my official weigh-in day so I can’t stay off the scale, and I’m suddenly up three pounds.

This is not unexpected. Last night we didn’t have a lot of time so we gort KFC. I got the grilled chicken rather than fried, and had cole slaw instead of mashed potatoes and gravy, but I did eat a biscuit. In my prior blog I mentioned going to Outback the night before.

I think the takeaway from this is to remember the amazing amounts of sodium in restaurant and takeout food… it’s even worse than prepackaged food.

I’m going to the gym at the YMCA in a couple of hours… it’s the first time since I’ve started this latest round of weight loss. I did my walks yesterday without any pain in my knee so I’m taking that as a sign that it’s strong enough now for the gym.

Between this weight gain and last week’s issues, I’ve had to move back a couple of my goals to keep things realistic. I have a set of four goals, none of which is my ultimate goal, as I’m not sure there really is an ultimate goal. I mean, the “charts” say I’m supposed to be 160, but I’ve probably got 160 pounds of just skin at this point, so I know I can’t get there without some form of surgical intervention. Last time I was here my goal was 200, but if I can keep my muscle mass up I can be 250 and look like I’m 200 or less. So I’m not looking that far ahead. I have a micro-goal each week of being 3 pounds lower than the last weekend, my mini-goal of 352 which represents breaking past my last three stalling points (which was 353 each time), and a second mini-goal of 330 (I tend to stall just over that) before my final “short term” goal of 300. My minigoal of 352 by July 1 has been moved back to July 17, which is still aggressive as I need to lose 3 pounds a week to get there, and my second minigoal of 330 has been moved from September 1 to October 16. I’m leaving the goal of 300 at April 1 of next year, for now.

My stats for this week:

So we went out to eat tonight.  Given our financial situation this is an unusual treat, but we had come into possession of a $50 gift card to Outback, so I was looking forward to it.

We skipped appetizers (whew) and dinner went well… I had a little of their great bread but didn’t go overboard.  Of course at the end the waitress asked if we wanted dessert, and I quickly said “No”.  Of course, my wife said, “Well, we don’t want one but you can get one Chris.”

It’s like a little game they play.  They never want to order dessert, they count on me ordering dessert so they can steal bites off of it without feeling like they are “pigging out” by ordering dessert.  Again, though, I said no.

“Well, maybe we will get something”.  Uh oh.  Well, at least they’ll go for some chocolate overloaded thing.  I love chocolate, don’t get me wrong, but right now Outback has a waffle strawberry shortcake on the menu.  Waffles are one of my favorite things in the world, no exaggeration, and so are strawberries, and the tower of waffle wedges is cemented together with a cream cheese and almond layer betwen them with whipped cream on top.  I’d be all over it.  Fortunately, they are not waffle and stawberry people.

“We’ll get the Waffle Strawberry Shortcake.” *groan*

So I sat there staring at this absolutely delicious looking tower of everything I love, literally fighting back tears as they plow into it and ooh and ahh about how wonderful it is.  I didn’t take a single bite.  I still don’t know how.

Oh, and at the end of dinner my sister in law stole the salt and pepper grinders.  The one nice night out I thought I would have ruined by selfish people.  And they are my family.