Just FYI, I want you all to know that I'm writing this as I listen to my dad's girlfriend giggling from behind closed doors at the other end of the hallway. OH joy. I need to turn on a fan or something...
Anyway, I'm thrilled to report that, after much hard work and self-deprivation, I have dropped 7 pounds :) I'm not exactly sure of the time frame, I just know that sometime within the past 4-5 months I got on the scale and just about dropped my teeth to find that I weighed more than I've ever weighed in my life. Borderline "heavy" for my height, according to the charts in the doctor's office - 132. I realize that for you tall people that seems like nothing, but remember, I'm 5'2". All through college I struggled to keep it below 130, usually averaging somewhere between 128 and 130. But luckily, it didn't seem to matter if I fell of the exercise wagon and ate like shit - I never passed 130. It also didn't seem to matter how much I worked out - I couldn't seem to break 127. I was stuck in this 3 pound rut. It's strange though - three pounds becomes pretty obvious when you slap it all into one spot on a small frame (namely, "the belly"). I won't say all one spot - I could usually see it in my face too. But I could tell when I was reaching the upper limits of my set point - I knew just from looking in the mirror that if I weighed myself, I'd be 130 on the nose. At which point, of course, I'd buckle down and start hitting the gym, and after 2 or 3 weeks I'd feel like I was getting back to my plateau of 127ish, and in my satisfaction, I'd fall off the wagon again, or get sick or something, and the cycle would begin again.
At least I was never yo-yoing by 10 and 15 pounds, but it's always been SO frustrating to me that so little weight made such a difference in the mirror on my small frame. I always wished for extra height simply for the sake of having more space to stretch a few doughnuts over! I mean seriously, when a girl who's 5'8" gains 3 pounds, you don't see it. Grrr to you tall people. But it's been a constant battle, no matter how piddly some of you may think it is. It has driven me nuts. Over the course of college, I went from a size 2 to a size 10 or 11, with a total weight gain of probably 10 pounds or so. 10 pounds isn't so bad over 4 years given the particular time of life I was in, not to mention the extra obstacles you battle in college (beer, crappy sleep patterns, late night snack food, lattes, eating on the run, being too busy to work out sometimes...). But 10 pounds meant FIVE sizes for me. FIVE. I think part of the size issue is my hips. They definitely expanded in college - make no mistake, I have child-bearing hips. And that's ok with me. I'm fine with having a woman's body, though I won't lie, I get a little jealous of the 17 year olds at the gym who haven't quite gotten into the full swing of "womanhood" yet, and still have hips that match their waists. Makes it easier to shop for jeans. So, ok, I won't harp on the jeans size too much. My holy grail has always been the elusive flat stomach. I can get over the hips if I can just have a flat stomach. I could do without the thigh-rubbing also, but I'd take the flat stomach over anything else. It always eluded me in college, even though at times I really felt like I was working my ass off. But I never truly did anything about my eating habits. I'd "watch what I ate", but I don't think I had much concept of just how many calories I took in in a day.
So, here I am today, BELOW my college average and having lost about 7 pounds since I started getting serious (whenever that was), at 125 (with wet hair I might add). And I have to say, the stomach is getting there. I have this strange "rib fat" as I call it - like over my upper abdominals - that won't go away and leaves a little bulge, but the lower part is really starting to look awesome :) I can't tell you how good it makes me feel! I feel confident enough to wear tight shirts again, and to work out in tank tops... it's wonderful!!! And I don't get as hot :)
What's my secret, you might ask? Haha. Well, I hate to tell you, I definitely don't have one. I just have to kick my own ass and deprive myself. I've done south beach, I've done calorie restriction, and none of it does enough good to keep me motivated. I HAD to get to the gym. I think part of the magic of working out is just the positive attitude it gives you. You can't help but feel good about yourself when you're finished, and the more you go, the more you want to go. It really is addicting - something to do with the endorphins I think. I started out running about a mile and a half (alright, we'll call it a jog) and have worked my way up to running 3 miles of intervals (30 seconds of sprinting that gets harder each time, and 1:30 of recovery - still jogging - in between). Sometimes I do a similar program but on the elliptical just to switch it up. That takes about 31-34 minutes depending on how I'm feeling. I also spend about 45 mins to an hour lifting - shoulders biceps and lower back one day, triceps chest and back the next, and legs the third. Trying to firm up the arms in particular for my strapless dress :) I try to work in abs whenever I have the time, at least once or twice a week. For those, I do four different exercises right in a row (as many reps as I can do with about 10 seconds rest in between different exercises), in three sets. It takes about an hour and a half total. That's a long time - it does suck, giving up that much of my evenings. It helps that Ben and I are there together. We've worked our way up to going about 4 times a week - when we started we were lucky to get there twice :) It's been a process, but it's become a habit. You get to the point where you really don't WANT to miss a day - you feel crappy if you don't go and you can't wait til the next day to go make up for it! It just takes time to get into the habit.
As for the food part... I haven't been on a diet, per se. For the past month (which is when I've started noticing the most difference), I've been drinking a meal replacement shake twice a day. That's not to say that I'm giving up two meals. Before that, I basically only ate a granola bar and a travel mug of coffee (with creamer) for breakfast. I've replaced that with the shake (GNC's Lean Shake), and I usually have a shake when I get home from work before the gym, to keep myself from grazing, since I'm always starving when I get home and I know I can't work out feeling that empty. It's actually quite filling, because it's loaded with protein and fiber. I won't say loaded - it's a healthy amount. Not an amount that's going to cause you to gain weight if you're not working out liek a banchee (like body builders drink). I read on WebMD that the only proven weight loss supplements are calcium, fiber, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), green tea extract, meal replacements, and orlistat (aka Alli, the OTC weight loss pill/program). One Lean Shake has 50% of your daily calcium requirement, 32% of your fiber (WAY more than most people get in a day actually), and it's a meal replacement - 3 of the 6. I also replaced my morning coffee with green tea (Arizona Tea's pomegranate acai green tea - DELISH!), although I haven't been as religious with that - I have an hour an a half commute, and if I drink the shake (I make it in about 12 oz of water) AND a travel mug of tea, I have to pee so bad it hurts half-way there. I thought about taking a CLA supplement too, but I've read that it can lead to gall bladder issues and since I already have those I decided against it. I didn't want to make anything worse, especially right before the wedding. For lunch, I've been eating Healthy Choice's cafe steamers - they're in the frozen foods section and they're awesome! They're 250-350 calories generally, and they taste awesome, and they're easy to grab on the way to work and to make once I'm there. TRY THEM. I don't know how much they cost though - my dad buys them for me :) Ahhh, the joys of living at home... for now... Anyway, I usually have an apple with peanut butter or an orange or something like that too, and I might have a light 50-cal yogurt as a snack if I'm dying between lunch and breakfast. Breyers light yogurt is awesome - much creamier than the dannon light n' fit stuff I'd been eating, and tastes less like artificial sweetener. So, at the end of the day, if I stick with a relatively low calorie dinner (around 400-500 calories), I'm usually well below 1500 calories. Ideally I'd like to be around 12-13oo in a day, but it's hard. Especially when people bring in doughnuts or something... ugh. I also invested in a calorie counter - it was $70 on Amazon. It really helps me to keep track and to undersand exactly what I'm putting in my body. I knows the calorie content of most common foods, and even has a lot of fast food restaurants and stuff in it (did you know that a lot of Panera's sandwiches have as many as 300 MORE calories than a Big Mac? NO JOKE.). Anyway, that has been a help too, though I haven't been using it as much lately. Using it even for a few weeks just helped me to become more aware of calorie contents in general and to make better choices even when I wasn't using the counter religiously. But I don't completely deprive myself. I usually allow myself something sweet or generally crappy for me in some way, about once every day or two. A snack size bag of UTZ bbq chips... a cookie... And I probably get at least one source of chocolate a day, whether it's a few M&M's on my way out the door, or a little mini-size milky way or something like that, that's just calling out my name... Anyway, I just didn't want anyone to think that you have to completely turn off your inner desires to control what you eat. You just don't make it a habit, and you don't eat a giant piece of whatever it is you're "cheating" with - you take a sliver of the doughnut, or ONE cookie when you might otherwise take 3. And seriously, working out also keeps you from going nuts with that kind of stuff - you feel like, "why did I just do all that hard work just to ruin it?" It makes you really question what's worth it and what isn't. And you start thinking things like "if I'm going to waste the calories, I'm going to make it GOOD..." so you'll save up for something you REALLY love later in the day, rather than grabbing whatever it is that's looking pretty good at the moment but that you could live without.
Holy CRAP, I had NO intention of making this so long. I guess I had more to say than I thought! Well, now it's bedtime - I've officially eaten up my entire hour surplus that I had to kill before bed (and I NEVER have an hour to kill before bed). The main take-home message is, if you really want to get motivated to get into the shape you've always wanted to be in, my best advice is GET ENGAGED! It worked for me! All the swimsuit seasons, all the special occasions, all the standing in the mirror and hating myself... none of it was enough to whip me into shape. It took the idea of a photographer following me around for a day snapping a thousand pictures that I'll want to treasure for the rest of my life to get me motivated :)
And, as a side-note, I apologize if I sound like I just wanted to brag or something. I just wanted to share my little success, however small it may be, because I've been feeling really great about it. I've struggled for a long time to get myself onto the path I'm on now. Talking about it and recounting my hard work makes me feel even better about staying on that path - it's more for my own benefit than anything else!
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