Dec 15. Tuesday

morning all.

thanks for everyone' honesty.  'Tis  that time of year when carbs seem to SHOUT from all corners.  

My scale reflects poor choices.  And all the walking does not seem to help.  Kairk, so admire your intense workouts.  My legs are strong but upper body pathetic.  We only have one gym and in the beginning it was truly family oriented but later it turned into something for jocks and runners.  And roly poly self did not feel at all comfortable.  

I hear you about toxic family and feel your pain.  

I may be on here sporadically for the next week or so as the house, while already bulging, is going to get busier.  I enjoy the guests but loathe and despise the cooking that goes with it.   The love and laughter will see us through.

hang on in there fellow travellers.  These are just bumps in the road.

happy Tuesday.

Scale up 1.8 lbs. I think I was dehydrated a bit yesterday so that is why the scale was lower then. I'm going to try a workout today on the treadmill, much lower speed/grade but at least something to get me back into the swing of things. Hopefully the legs will do okay.

Concert last night was good. One more this week and we will be done for a while. Have a few last gifts to get and need to plan the Holiday meals. We always do seafood on Christmas Eve and I think I will do a spiral ham for Christmas Day.

Happy Tuesday everyone!

     Well, being deliberate about maintenance is a totally new experience and skill set for me !!  I've lost 100+ pounds several times before, and every time "I got to my goal", the diet "ended" and my life went back to normal. "I'm thin, I can have this !" was my thought process.  Yesterday really illuminated the difference between my former disordered experiences and this transition into a healthy lifestyle.  It's going to take some vigilance to replace those "old tapes" with new ones !  In the mean time, I am scared.  I simply don't know how "doing this right" looks or feels.

     Yesterday, I was on the road and out of town, accompanying my significant other to a job interview.  He has always been at a normal weight and deals with stress and traveling as an "eating adventure".  I packed my healthy options to make sure I'd have good planned, choices.  We had dinner at a café that had a "hidden and very much unanticipated bakery".  The breads, cookies, and desserts were overpowering !! The smells and visual input overwhelmed me.  I hadn't planned to face that.  I wanted to skip the protein first salad, and put those calories toward the 300 I had in limbo, and "treat" myself for the first time in almost a year.  Luckily the next "tape" that came to me was from my OA days.. "If you are not in recovery, you are in relapse."  The sweets weren't planned and I just was too afraid of old habits if I went there.  I did not have any of those items.

     I know I need to do some work around this, as rigidity is not healthy either. I need to find that sustainable place where there is flexibility, and I can get myself turned back around immediately when I have had something atypical of my new eating pattern, be it planned or unplanned. I don't want to give food "power" by thinking of it as a treat/reward... but I also am not "bad" or unsuccessful if I eat outside of my typical range in a reasonable way. 

     I am so grateful to have all of you while I strive to figure this out.

Good for you for resisting the sweets! You are strong! You have this!

I was super scared of entering maintenance too and I don't think that was a bad thing at all. Over time I've become more comfortable because I've had the range of experiences and for the most part dealt with them successfully.  

I think of maintenance as playing in the same playground as I did during weight loss, but the fence got pushed back to make the safe area bigger to play in. It also means I can play newer, more complex games ;-) but I'm safe as long as I stay within the boundaries.  

Good for you Diane!  It's so much easier sometimes to listen to the demon tapes and not to the more sane ones.  While my OA days weren't always pleasant, what I learned there has been invaluable during this journey.  I had forgotten the saying of "If you are not in recovery, you are in relapse".  What a powerful statement!

Weight down a whole .3 of a pound today. Had a right on plan day. Arms and quads are still a bit sore from Sunday's workout. 

Ocean, there is a book I can recommend that you read about dealing with the rigidity in thinking around food. I do not agree with all that is espoused in the book, but I think many of us with disordered eating patterns/habits can identify with the ideas the book deals with. Here's a link: Intuitive Eating

The book is not a maintenance plan, so don't look at it for that. It deals with our thinking around food, how we treat ourselves when we are bad, and especially the "if you're not on plan you're in relapse" thinking (which I think is utter bull**** btw. That mindset is so self defeating. It's one of the main thought processes I believe keeps the obese obese! But, to contradict myself, we all have to do what works for us as individuals!). 

Carbon, upper body strength is very easy to gain, even just doing things around the house. You can do "lady" push ups to start adding strength to your triceps. Don't want to get on the floor? Do Wall Push Ups.  Soup cans (especially the larger ones) are great for beginning bicep curls. You could also invest in a home TRX set up. It's about $150 U.S. TRX is an incredible way to build strength using your own body weight. Here's a link: TRX Home Gym

I met with my NUT yesterday. We glossed over the idea that as we reduce in size that we need fewer calories and that to continue to lose weight we need to up the exercise, etc.... I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that 1200-1300 calories could be my maintenance level. That makes no sense to me. She also doesn't want me to ever go below 1200 calories. I'm not sure I buy that either. Thoughts, people? I mean, hell, I spent 7 months on far fewer calories than that and lived to tell about it and didn't lose a strand of hair in the process! 

What was fun was talking with the NUT about going off the rail over the weekend. I realized how NOT upset I was about it and also being able to admit without embarrassment or negativity directed at myself. I was able to look objectively at what happened, too. Clearly at some level I intended to "go off" to a degree. What I didn't anticipate was the disappointment of not being able to eat what I had planned to eat on Saturday at the party and then the Cluster F*^k that ensued due to eating around my initial "want".  Overall, it was a very good learning experience.

I'm also pleased by how quickly and easily I am now able to get back on plan, too. This is the type of thing will happen again and again. It's part of life - or my life anyway. Learning how to get back to a regular eating plan is going to be key to my long term maintenance. 

Devon a clarification question. Is your NUT suggesting you not drop your calories below 1200 for weight loss? 

Yes. You must remember she is a NUT that specializes in working with people with disordered eating. The majority of her clients are recovering anorexics. And she is one who believes that dropping calories too low is never beneficial in the long run. As a well educated man, with a lot of research behind my belt about WLS, radically how calorie diets, etc... I take what she has to say about calories with a WLS patient perspective. If I need to drop to 1000 calories a day, then I will. This extra weight is coming off. END. OF. SUBJECT! 

I get where she's coming from but I agree with you that us wls folks are different and can safely go much lower because of our decreased hunger levels. To step back for a moment, if we applied the 1200 calorie logic to a new post op, most of us would not have gotten to goal if we had strived to get to that number as soon as possible.

Also, like most of us here, I'm definitely in the disordered eating camp and looking back, I don't think I'm any worse for wear for eating 600 calories for the first 9.5 months. I didn't feel particularly deprived while I was doing it and I was getting the results I wanted, and I had no difficulty transitioning into maintenance.  

I think that the more important question in terms of setting your weight loss calorie number is whatever you think you can sustain for several months. And that varies from person to person.