There was pasta . . .

Weight: 244

Ouch.

In yesterday's post, I remarked upon my completion of 100 successful days of weight loss. Last night, however, I found myself veering off course.

Mondays and Wednesdays are hectic days for me. I have Arabic classes immediately after work. Arabic gets out at 9pm, and if I'm good I head to the gym after, meaning I get home around 10:30. Because of this, I bring a second sandwich into work on those days, which I have at the end of the work day right before I leave.

So, on an ideal day, I come home after Arabic and the gym, take a shower, and fall right to sleep. Last night was not ideal.

At work on Wednesday, I was more hungry than usual. I ate all my food relatively early, which I sometimes do and which isn't a problem if I can go right home for dinner. Only, this was a Wednesday, and I couldn't go right home for dinner. So instead I starved through Arabic, starved through my workout, and by the time I went home, I wanted cheese.

And cheese I ate.

A whole 800 calorie ball of fresh mozzarella, mixed in with half a box of pasta (another 800 calories), a box of cherry tomatoes and a good bit of marinara sauce. At the end, I felt sick to my stomach and wildly out of control.

So, yesterday I had a bad day. It showed up, quite visibly, on the scale this morning. I didn't really gain 3 pounds overnight, and I know that's mostly salt and bloat, but ouch.

Today's a new day, and today I'll do better. Enough messing around: I need to be back on track.

It depends on what your definition of is is

Well, actually, it depends on what your definition of morbidly obese is.

The most common definition, and probably the fairest, is a BMI greater than 40. However, there is another, alternate definition "100+ pounds overweight." Yesterday, no matter which way you cut it, I was firmly in the morbid category. Today, not so much.

Weight: 244.8

Normal weight for someone my height tops out at 145. This means I am no longer 100+ pounds overweight! As of this morning, I am a mere 99.8 pounds over a normal weight. Ah, the things we can rejoice in when we're as far gone as I.

Seriously, even though I think the 40+ BMI definition of morbid is more valid, today marks a substantive milestone for me. My weight loss goal is no longer in the triple digits. And 11.8 pounds from now, I won't be morbid by any definition. Good stuff.

In other news, last night I decided that I was going to stop messing around and make sure I get to 1200 calories every day, even if I feel like I don't really need the last 250 or so.

Now, conventional wisdom in the dieting world is pretty definitive on the "You must eat 1200 calories a day or BADNESS." The badness they most typically threaten people with is that if you eat fewer than 1200 calories a day, your body won't lose as much weight as if you eat just at or slightly above this mark. There's also some shebang about how it's bad for your body and how you need nutrients and whatnot. (The last point is one I mostly agree with, although I'm not entirely convinced of it's importance. Losing weight is self starvation, an inherently unhealthy process. The result is healthy, the value of shedding excess pounds makes it healthy on balance, but the self starvation part still pretty trying on your body. I'm not, for example, 100% convinced that the value of getting things done more quickly--thus spending fewer days starving yourself--isn't worth more than the value of getting perfect nutrients along the way.)

But okay, my real objection is with the idea that if you go below the 1200 calorie low bound, your body will go into "starvation mode" and that you'll lose less weight than if you were above it. It strikes me as absolute nonsense that one would lose less weight at 1150 than 1250 a day, or less weight at 900 than 1200.

The first thing that bugged me about it was that it clearly broke basic rules of physics. Diet industry, meet Conservation of Energy. You see, my buddy conservation is a rule. A real science-y rule, not one of your made up diet ones. That said, I do understand that bodies are complex organisms, and that going below a certain point could trigger your body to do other things that conserve energy, but it's not going to be enough to make up the difference. I'd absolutely 100% buy that because of your body's response there are decreasing marginal returns as you cut more calories (for example, that going from 1800 to 1700 would be worth more than cutting from 800 to 700, even that the cut from 800 to 700 only produces as much bonus weight loss as going from, say, 1800 to 1760), but decreasing marginal returns does not mean the effectiveness stops all together.

Besides, there's absolutely no way that all those people who are out there in the world starving are really just doing so because they're hitting 1300 calories a day, and if they only ate 1100 they'd be unable to lose weight. Ridiculous.

And then there's the fact that when you get into more medical settings, they do use sub 1200 calorie diets with great success. The 1200 calorie rule isn't just nonsensical in theory, it's flat out wrong in practice. Gastric bypass patients, for example, will be on a 600 calorie diet for a few weeks post op. Physician supervised very low calorie diets do exist for rapid weight loss.

So, all that, but: I'm committing to myself to hit the 1200 calorie mark every day for the next two weeks. This is tough for me. I enjoy heterodoxy for its own sake and I hate doing things that I can't independently make sense of. But after seeing my bugg burn values for the past few days (3527 Wednesday and 3172 yesterday), it occurred to me that relative to burn, the extra 220 or so calories I save on sub 1200 days just aren't worth it. I'm better off spending my mental energy pushing myself to get off the couch again to go for a walk than questioning whether or not I really need miracle whip on my daily sandwich (30 calorie difference), and is picking turkey over ham or roast beef (15ish calorie difference) really worth the decreased enjoyment.

Don't get me wrong, I still think diet is more important than exercise in terms of weight loss. And the difference eating 2000 and 1200 calories a day is huge, but right now, for me, it makes sense to stay in the 1200-plus club. For these next two weeks, I'm going to hit 1200 even if it means stuffing down an extra cottage cheese before bed. After that, I'll see where things are, and decide where I want to go from there.

I'm still a little in shock from how much I poured out in yesterday post, so apologies for the overshare. I've now officially told you guys a whole heck of a lot more about me than I ever intended, and even shared a few secrets I don't tell people in real life. But that's blogging, right?

A few more thoughts on that intern lunch

250.5

I almost didn't post my weight. Draft one of this post began with "I'm not going to post my weight today." I woke up late for work today, so I didn't really have time to go to the bathroom. It was one of those "stumble to scale, stumble to brush teeth, toss on clothes and get out the door" day. I, in fact, almost didn't weigh myself I was so late.

I'm extremely worried I won't have a loss this week. I'd need to drop 2.4 pounds day to day to even have a .1 pound loss week to week, which are not the best odds ever. I do have swings that big, though, and my weight this morning is artificially high, but it's still not looking great.

I did go to the gym on Saturday, and I'm glad I did so. Thank you all for encouraging me. I even tried running on the treadmill. It felt like I needed a bra for my butt. So, I think I perhaps am going to stick to the elliptical until I lose a bit more weight. I'm going to try to go to the gym today after work. If I don't mention tomorrow that I went, you all are encouraged to hassle me in the comments.

Last week, my post on the intern who wouldn't eat lunch generated two thoughtful response posts, one from Mrs. Sheila and another from Mommy2Joe. (Also, great comments on the post itself, I'd encourage you to read them if you haven't yet.) They both made good points about how we should try not to judge people for their food choices: for most intents and purposes I agree with that. (I think it's fine to discuss things here, in blog land, but it certainly would've been wrong if I'd come back from lunch and started gossiping with co-workers about the incident.)

Both of them also argue that we shouldn't subordinate our own eating plans to social/work situations: "But you know what? I’m trying to lose some weight right now. And it’s not easy, and I have to pretty much think about it every single minute of the day. . . . Maybe you care, maybe you don’t. But, it’s MY priority," wrote Mommy2Joe. "I have come to the conclusion I know what works for my body, and I won't 'take one for the team' to avoid being judged. You want to think I am so self centered that I only care about myself, then so be it. I can't eat your stinkin potatoes, and no matter how much you whine I won't even smell them!" said Mrs. Sheila.

Both of them, and many of the commenters, brought the issue into focus in a way I hadn't really thought about: what she was essentially saying with her actions was "sticking exactly with my planned diet is more important than minding my manners for lunch with my boss." Which to me says either she didn't understand that there were smart choices she could've made (picking at a green salad with no dressing is not many calories) or did realize those choices existed but valued dogmatism over being pragmatic.

One of the things Mommy2Joe brought up was that we would have been more accepting "If she was a vegan, or if she had severe food allergies, or if she just had dental work done." She's right, but I don't see any contradiction between the fact that those are acceptable excuses for doing something normally perceived as rude. "Not abandoning my moral principles that eating animals is wrong is more important than minding my manners for lunch with my boss." I don't share those principles, but I certainly understand the point. "Eating something I'm allergic to and needing an ambulance to be called is even more disruptive than not eating." That makes sense. "Not being in massive amounts of pain and needing to spend hundreds on new dental work is worth more than participating fully in the lunch."

She wasn't saying those things. She was saying "not picking at a salad and consuming maybe 15 calories is worth more to me than being respectful of my very important boss, who I'll eat lunch with precisely twice."

In the end, I think she made a bad choice, and conveyed a message that you don't want to convey. I don't know what got her to that point: as several of you pointed out, maybe she's lost massive amounts of weight to get where she is, maybe she had a big weigh in the next day. But, still, I don't see any of that as reason enough to not just order a salad to pick at.

It's a shame that we do have a culture of food, where it is rude in a business situation to not eat. And while individually, I'm going to strive to be someone who doesn't contribute to that, for now it is our reality, whether we like it or not. So, considering the circumstances, she made the wrong call, but I sure do wish the circumstances were different. In the mean time, I guess, we can all do our best not to judge, and not to contribute to the culture of food.

Weigh ins, challenges, and what's worth reading

Weight: 250.1
BMI: 42.92

There are lots of great things about being weighing in daily. There's some evidence that weighing in every day (as opposed to less frequently) might be beneficial for losing and maintaining weight. I find it motivating and helpful in staving off binges: there's no time for recovery, no chance to hide my mistakes. But, there are a few parts of daily weigh ins that suck. Like, when you do everything perfectly, like, say, eat 1200 calories and go on a two hour walk, and instead of rewarding you, the scale just says "meh."

Today I was hoping to see the 240s. I worked really quite hard yesterday to make sure I'd get a glimpse of them. But, sometimes, that's just not your luck. So, I'm up .1 pounds.

I'm also starting to worry if I'm maybe being too ambitious with my mini goal. Today's small gain (and the passage of time with the lack of a loss) combine for a scary 2.92 sustained loss for the rest of the goal, which is pretty darn close to the wrong side of reasonable. It's not all lost, though. On July 31st, after all, I was looking at a needed loss of 2.95 to make my last goal, and I made it with time to spare.

I think at this point I'm going to stick with it. It might be a bit too hard, a bit more than I can really do, but I'd rather be pushing myself than feeling like I can slack. If I don't make it, I don't make it, but I'm going to try.

One thing that will be absolutely key is not messing up this weekend. Describing how we're going to handle the holiday is part of this week's GAG challenge. (The second part of the challenge is a recipe, which I will pitifully attempt later in the post.)

My challenge this weekend is going to be sticking on plan with my brother around. He's coming down from Philadelphia on Saturday around noon. Since he's not coming till relatively late in the day, I plan on waking up early and getting in a good long workout. Lunch is probably going to be Five Guys. There, I'll get a little bacon burger with lettuce and tomato. Not the best, but better than it could be. We'll end up getting an order of fries, but I plan to eat not many of them. I'll try to discreetly count them out beforehand. That night we're going out to dinner at Matchbox. I'm planning on the cast iron roasted chicken. I'll eat the carrots first, then the peas, then some of the chicken. I'll avoid all the potatoes.

Sunday morning we'll walk up to the Dupont Circle Farmers market and I'll get some fruit for breakfast. Sunday afternoon and night he's going to be at a friend's bachelor party, so I'll go for a long walk and possibly do a gym workout. We might have to do some sort of breakfast on Monday, but it'll be okay. Both Sunday and Monday will be one meal things, so I can easily make up calories the rest of the day.

As far as a recipe, well, I don't have much experience cooking healthy things for large crowds. So here's a non cooking but still bringing something survival guide:

2 pints of strawberries
1 pint of blueberries
4 packets of splenda

Wash both fruits. Quarter the strawberries. Mix it all together with the splenda, which will help the cut up fruit keep in the afternoon and make it desert-level sweet. Bring a can of fat-free Redi Whip. It's 5 calories for two tablespoons, and the perfect touch.

And, there's my mini-challenge. I'm not sure I enjoy the writing silly response challenges as much as I like the rest of the competition, and may end up opting out of them before too long. The camaraderie (go, team Prancer go!), the competition? I'm there. The drudge homework assignments? Eh, perhaps not so much. (Don't take this as a knock against organizer Mrs. Sheila in any way shape or form. She's fabulously awesome and I'm so grateful she set up the challenge.)

I mean, why do we blog what we blog? If you look at a given post, each sentence and each paragraph has a point, a reason why we wrote it in the first place. Maybe it's to hold ourselves accountable, or to help ourselves figure out something and to help others do the same. Maybe it's to share good news, to (hopefully) make someone laugh, or just to link to something we think is really frigging awesome.

All of you people who stop by and read this blog, I adore you guys. I read your blogs, if I know about them, and comment if I can. There are others who read regularly but leave no footprints beyond showing up on Google Analytics. Every single one of you I know seems awesome from everything I can tell, and I'd be willing to bet on the coolness of those I don't. Because I have these awesome readers (not many, but awesome nonetheless), when I post stuff, it ought to be things that are worth reading. The simple act of posting something says, Trust me guys, I think this is worth your time. And, seriously, "Cut up some fruit and toss some artificial sweetener in there so it won't spoil"? That's not worth reading.

What if I had a better recipe? Would that be worth reading? Well, it might be, but I have no experience whatsoever with this. At 23, I'm just on the cusp of adulthood, and I've only lived as a post-college grown up for a year. I have not once in my entire life tried to cook something healthy for a large group of people. Sure, I could post a recipe I find online and hope it will be good, but I can't vouch for it, I can't say, trust me because I just won't know.

I posted what I was going to do with my brother and the "recipe" not because they were illuminating, helpful, or fun, but because I'm a dirty, dirty point whore. I love accolades and credit of all kinds. When I used to play video games with my brother as a kid, I could spend ages jumping up and down trying to get on a box to get on another box to get a single coin. "Hadley, it's not worth it," he'd tell me, but by gosh if there was a coin there I wanted it. Because that's who I am. I don't do things half way.

So, I'm going to have to figure out what I want to do as far as the challenges. I'm sure, down the road, there will be ones that I have an interesting take on that will work as normal posts. But for the rest? I just don't know. Maybe I'll accept that doing all the mini challenges isn't for me and just pick and choose a few. Maybe I'll cordon them off with a "WARNING: Lame post of Lameness" title so you unsuspecting readers don't accidentally wander in. Another theoretical option would be to actually research all the challenges enough that I could do a good job on them, but since the effort required would be far inordinate to my amount of care, that's just not going to happen.

Sigh.

The contemplation shall continue. Do you guys think you have an implicit contract with your readers to provide, well, posts that are worth reading? How would you approach the whole mini-challenge thing: try to do them all, or ignore all but the ones I find of interest? Do you have any experience with challenges and mini challenges in the past? And last but not least, how totally lame was that "recipe"?

Anyway, I hope you all have a fantabulous Labor Day Weekend. Enjoy your day off (if you get one) and take some time to treasure your family and friends. In all my "how I'll deal with food issues this weekend" shpiel, I left off how incredibly excited and happy I am that I'll get to see my brother. At the end of the day, there really is nothing more important than the ones we love.

Whole Foods

Weight: 257.1
BMI: 44.13

It's nice to see the scale going back down. I'm now only .4 pounds above my low. I'm hoping pretty soon I'll be able to stop treading water and start making progress.

Yesterday Jo at 282.5 gave me the Lovely Blog Award. Thanks Jo! I promise to soon write a list of all the wonderful blogs I read so I can tell you guys how very lovely you all are too.

So, I don't know how much you guys are following the health care debate, but right now, there's been a bit of a kerfuffle over an op-ed that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote in the Wall Street Journal. (Side note: about 90% of the work I'm doing these days is related to health policy, so I know more than one would ever want to about the debate. I've even read the 1018 page House bill, and no, Virginia, there aren't any death panels.)

The op-ed contains 8 policy suggestions and some commentary advising people to eat healthfully. Some of the suggestions are ones where reasonable people can disagree, like legalizing interstate purchase of insurance. Personally, I think it's a great idea because it would mean people can buy cheaper policies. Let's just look at an individual who works in Philadelphia and lives in the surrounding region. If they live in Pennsylvania, an average policy on the individual market would cost $167 a month. If they live across the border in New Jersey, it would cost them $288 a month. (Source, on page 18.) That's over $100 a month more! To me, this is just silly. I don't think it should be illegal to buy out of state health insurance any more than it should be illegal to buy out of state apples.

But, okay, I understand that some people think that it's really important to cartelize insurance so that community rating laws and other mandates are more effective, and while I think they're wrong and that people should get to pick if they'd rather have more regulations and higher prices or lower prices and fewer regulations, I understand their point. It's the sort of issue where reasonable people can have reasonable disagreements.

Other suggestions in the op-ed are honestly no brainers, though. Equalizing tax laws so individuals as well as businesses can buy insurance tax free: I know no one who opposes that. And I know a lot, a lot of health policy wonks from across the political spectrum. Making it easier for people to donate money to help people who don't have insurance? Seriously, who could oppose that? Do you oppose puppies and babies as well?

But some people on the left are mad because, you know, it's not an exact copy of what the Democrats want, it's something else. (For the record, I did vote for Obama but consider myself an independent. I'm left on some issues and right on others.) So they're starting a boycott and throwing hissy fits on blogs and I just can't for the life of me understand it. Radley Balko wrote a wonderful post detailing how well Whole Foods treats its workers, the environment, etc, and said that, because of the dust up, he was going to shop more at Whole Foods.

Which, I suppose, brings us to the point of this whole post. Yesterday, I went to Whole Foods. I bought a demi baguette and ate it for dinner. It was caloric and amazing. I also got some of the best tomatoes I've had in a while. Needless to say, last night I ate deliciously. It was a nice break from my regularly scheduled meals. It was great to eat something special while still staying within my calorie range. And I got a side of "Ha! take that militant people who are militant about anything!" to go with it. And that is calorie free and oh so satisfying.

Apologies for today's random policy rantings. I promise a return to your regular food and diet blogging tomorrow.

Hemming Pants

Weight: 259.4

Friday was reasonable. Saturday I skirted in just under my calorie limit but didn't accomplish anything like what I'd been meaning to. Sunday was a 1,964 calorie no-workout disaster. Today, though, I want to focus on the positive.

The weekend started well. I had a day off on Friday. I'd planned it a while back, just as sort of an "I'm going to need a break at some point" vacation day. I got my hair cut and, since I'd passed the 20 pound mark, decided to get a manicure and pedicure as well. I only worked out for 30 minutes (generally I do 40 or 45) but figured it was okay since I'd walked around the city so much.

Since my suits have been a little tent-like of late, I decided to head to Macy's and pick up a new smaller pair of black pants that I could wear with my existing jackets. I found out that they had the pants of my favorite suit on sale. I tried on and bought the 20s, happy that I easily fit into them. On a whim at the last minute, I picked up the 18s as well to shrink into.

Walking home from Macy's, I decided that I'd go to the tailor and get my new pants hemmed. Hemming pants has been this strange continual battle between my mother and I for many years. In middle and high school, I liked having pants that were slightly too long. More than that, I'm sure, I liked the immediate gratification of wearing new pants without having to send them away to the tailor for a few days. This drove my mother insane. She would push and push and push me to get my pants hemmed, which in turn drove me insane. Soon enough, it took on a life of it's own, to the point where I wouldn't get things hemmed because she wanted me to. Over the years, I might relent on an item or two, generally in exchange for something else I wanted. It was absolutely ridiculous, but is what it is.

In DC, I hadn't been getting my pants hemmed. Since I'm not incredibly short, it's really just on the border whether I need them hemmed or not, and generally it'll take a little while. Sure, eventually the hem will fall apart or get frayed (and it has on many of my work pants: I just stop wearing those ones) but they last a decent bit.

On Friday, though, I decided I was going to be a grown-up, get over this small random resentment, and go get my new pants hemmed. I went to the tailor, got into the tiny dressing room and put on the size 20s, and let her mark them up.

"Okay try on next pair," she said. Her accent was pretty heavy, and we'd been having some trouble communicating.

"They're just the same as these, can't you just make them the same length." In New York that was what they always did, so I was a bit surprised she'd even asked me to try on the second pair.

"No, is better."

"But it's the same pair of pants." Except for the fact that I'm too fat for the other pair . . .

"Is better. Try on next pair."

I went back into the dressing room, uncertain of what to do. Just put on the pants I'd worn and say, sorry, I'm in a rush, and get the 18s hemmed when they were closer to fitting? But then I'd have to come back again. After standing, pantsless, for a few minutes in the small changing room I figured I might as well try on the 18s. I was wearing a big and long enough shirt that if I could just get them up she'd be able to hem them, even if I couldn't button them. There was no harm in trying, anyway.

So I did.

And they fit. They fit! They zippered and buttoned and sure were probably a little tighter than I'd wear to work buy they fit. I was ecstatic.

Friday night went well. My Saturday morning free session with my trainer went very well. He's fabulous and I promise to write more about him at some point. Afterward, though, I felt so incredibly exhausted that I didn't do anything else that I'd been meaning too, and ate at the very top of my Spark range. (And generally speaking I don't use the spark range and stick to a hard limit of 1300 with most days under 12.) Sunday was bad bad bad and I didn't work out and ate almost 2000 calories.

But today's a new week, and a new day. I'm going to get back on track. I've got a size 18 pair of pants all hemmed and ready for me to wear them: I don't want to make them wait too long. I'm betting the weight is mostly bloat and salt from Sunday. Hopefully my official tomorrow will be better. We shall see.

I'm going to stick with the hard (existing) goal for my graphs and spreadsheet, but keep pushing myself to see if I can do better. After all, each day I do well makes the next day easier. I can do this.

A Grocery Store Disaster

To everyone who said I'd hit that 20 pound mark in no time: you were right.

Weight: 257.7
BMI: 44.23

That means I've lost over 20 pounds! YAY! I'm very very happy about it. It also means I've now lost over 7% of my starting body weight (7.30% if you're counting) and 3.48 points of BMI. In order to hit my first mini goal of 250 by 9/15, I now need to lose only 1.63 pounds/week. If things keep going as they have, I should not only meet my goal date, but beat it by a week or two.

Anyway, yesterday at work was a busy day. I left around 7pm, changed quickly, and headed to the gym. I did 50 minutes on the elliptical (550 calories) and even enjoyed some of it! Needless to say, I'm glad that the badness and misery of my Saturday/Sunday workouts wasn't repeated.

There was a dire need to replenish my healthy food supplies, so I hit up the grocery store post gym. I do this relatively often, just grabbing produce (which is right by the door) and going straight to the checkout before I head home. Today, though, I needed to buy lunch meat for work sandwiches, which brought me in to the belly of the beast.

It started with a 100 calorie hostess cupcake display. I'd had the last of my 60 calorie sugar free Jell-o pudding snacks two nights ago, so I needed to get some small new desert, right? Cupcakes it was. Oh, but if I have these you know I'm going to need a glass of milk to go with them. I should go grab that. The milk was in sight of the eggs. I'd been meaning to try the egg substitutes one of these days to see how they tasted, so shouldn't I get a package of those too? Added to the cart. I walked down the aisle . . . Cottage cheese! I used to love cottage cheese. Shouldn't I get one of those 4 packs of cottage cheese to see if I love it as much as I used to? And then Oh, yogurts, I'm running out of those. I might as well grab a few more. Then I hate hate hate that low fat cheddar I've got at home, oooh and this mozzarella has just the same number of calories. I couldn't NOT. And on and on it went.

The damage? $50 of groceries. Looking through the receipt, precisely $11.50 of that is stuff I'd been intending to pick up. Yeesh. While everything I bought still qualifies under the vague banner of healthy, it's much, much, much more than I needed.

While I do feel pretty guilty about my unplanned purchases, it's tricky because I also am really excited about them. I'm sad, but I'm also happy to get to try all this new stuff I bought. I don't generally rock frozen food, but I ended up on some blog (sorry I don't remember who you are! otherwise the link love would be yours) recently where they were raving about a few Smart Ones dishes, so I ended up buying four of those. I had their macaroni and cheese for dinner last night and it was oh so good. (I also had a salad with lettuce, tomato, apple, one cut up wedge of light laughing cow cheese and Italian dressing, which is a standard dinner salad of mine and is amazingly good too.) I'm excited to try the egg substitutes and see if I like them. I'm looking forward to the rest of the frozen dinners. I can't wait to see if cottage cheese is as good as I remember. And really, the anticipation for those hostess 100-calorie cupcakes is killing me.

I love food. It's bad. I'm making healthy choices right now because I'm dedicated to losing weight and it's something I really want to do, but good lord, in so many ways I'm still absolutely in love with food. I love buying it, I love trying it, I love making it, it's terrible. It's probably 60% of what got me into this situation in the first place.

This is no good.

I don't know. I think I'm always going to love food. I don't really think I'd want to not love food, which is probably just as well because I don't think I could stop even if I wanted to. And I think (or maybe I just hope) that it's okay to love food. I can love trying new foods and making new things, I just have to do it in moderation. I can love food, I just can't love it more than I love my life, my health, and my future.

I can love food, I just can't let my love of it negatively impact everything else.

That could work, right?

On Conferences and Free Food

Weight: 260.6
BMI: 45.73

(-.2 day to day, -17.4 overall, yada yada yada.)

One of the things I've always loved about my job is that I get to go to lots of events and conferences. Up until a month ago, "free food" was a wonderful, wonderful perk. These days, it's a bit closer to a nightmare.

For all of today, I've been at a conference. We had a continental breakfast where I was just able to grab a piece of fruit, but lunch was a sit-down, 3 course ordeal. Throughout this journey, my willpower's held relatively well, but lunch was just a disaster. I ate the whole salad, over half the lunch (of salmon, risotto, and asparagus in some unknown cream sauce), even a few bites of desert. There were pastries and other goodies provided throughout the day, but I was able to resist those relatively easily.

I wouldn't be despondent if I could, you know, just have something very light for dinner and stay within my calorie limits. But I'm not going to: I have to go to a dinner for the conference. And it's going to be a seated meal of at least three courses, lasting 90 minutes. In other words, it's going to be bad.

I've become excellent at resisting food temptations when left to my own devices. I'm even pretty good at not eating food when it's optional. But at a served meal in a social work situation, you can't really choose to just not eat. You have to eat something, to not do so would be some combination of weird and rude. Which isn't to say you have to eat the whole plate, but you have to have a decent bit.

And that's where the problem starts. I always, always, always end up eating more than I mean to at these events. It's like 90 straight minutes of sitting with food! Good, free food. That others are eating. It's badness.

So I'm probably going to overeat tonight. My gym stays open till 11, so I may try to go after dinner.

Oh, and bonus: the conference is a half day tomorrow, too. So, truncated weekend and a fattening lunch on Saturday. Oh joy. Grrr.

A New Colleague, and New Embarrassment

So, I work in DC as a low-level economist. It's basically an entry level job, the sort of thing one has for about a year or two before moving on to grad school or something else. My office is this shared, sort of U-shaped thing--you can't see the other person unless we both roll out our chairs about 5 feet, but we can always hear each other. It's about one step up from a cubicle in terms of privacy.

Last Friday, my office-mate, easily my best friend in DC, left for another job. Her new position is in Texas: close to her family, better paying, more what she wanted to do, all around an excellent and amazing step for her. But it means this wonderful, sweet girl who I loved to bits is being replaced with a stranger. And I just found out he starts on Wednesday.

I am petrified.

One of the things that's big for me is eating in bits throughout the work day so I'm not particularly hungry at the end of the day. I'm really bad with night time eating, but I've found that having a dinner early in the evening (6:30 or 7) and then essentially closing up the kitchen works really well for me. So, on a typical work day, I'll bring:

1 banana
1 fat-free yoplait yogurt
1 chewy chocolate chip granola bar or 1 polly-o string cheese
~12 baby carrots (I guesstimate when packing in the morning and count before I eat)
1 apple or other piece of fruit (today I brought 1/2 cup of blueberries)
1 sandwich, made of: 2 pieces of light style Pepperidge Farm bread, 1 slice of cold cut (right now, I'm working on a half pound of roast beef), 1 tablespoon of miracle whip, two slices of tomato, and a bit of lettuce.

This actually only adds up to about 600 calories throughout the day. Most days I have the banana and yogurt shortly after arriving, the granola bar around 11 or so, the roast beef sandwich at 1 or 2, and snack on the fruit and baby carrots throughout the rest of the afternoon. When I go home around 5:30 or 6, I'm hungry but not ravenous, and have 600-700 calories left to make myself a relatively extravagant dinner.

There are many, many reasons I love this system. The first is, quite simply, that it works. The lack of slip ups on work days is proof of its day-to-day effectiveness. I like that it doesn't feel like deprivation: I get to pack a whole ton of food in my bag each morning, and when I get hungry at work, it's fine because I've almost always got something left to eat. When I've eaten everything, I tend to be sated--there's a lot of fiber and a lot of volume in it. I like that it leaves me enough calories to eat a big dinner. I like that when I'm hungry at night, I can tell myself "it's okay, tomorrow you'll have enough food at work and feel better" and I like that it's true. I like that on mornings when I actually am ravenous--which has happened once or twice in my 4 weeks of diet--I can actually get something that's close to a binge in terms of satisfaction by eating the sandwich, granola bar, yogurt and banana all in the morning, and that I'll still have baby carrots and another fruit to get me through the day. I can (partially) lose control, but since all the food I have is the food I've brought in with me, I don't actually mess up my diet. I like that it's healthy and delicious and feels like it has variety: there are tons of flavors of yoplait, tons of different fruits I can bring, the sandwich is different depending on which meat I use, and I even get some chocolate in the granola bar.

There are many, many things I like about my diet. Up to this point, there's been precisely one thing I've disliked: people walking in on me eating. I can almost hear them thinking, Ew, gross fat Hadley, of course she'd be eating when I stop by her office. And, for self-conscious me, that's a substantive drawback. But it's rare enough that it's only happened a few times thus far, and is easily outweighed by all the good parts. 98% of the time, the only person who could hear me eating was my dear office-mate, who was possibly the sweetest and most non-judgmental person in DC. (Yes, I know that's like saying someone's the least corrupt person in New Jersey, but I swear she'd count as nice even by normal standards.) So yeah, she could hear me eating, and while I'd still rather she didn't, I wasn't really embarrassed because it was just her.

Now, the person who's going to hear me eating is some strange boy who could easily be thinking, Ew, gross, I can hear her eating like all the friggin' time. And who could tell people, "No wonder Hadley's so fat, I can hear her eating like half the day." Scary!

So, I have until Wednesday to figure things out. I need to balance the embarrassment vs. my continued success. And I think I want to not be embarrassed about my weight in the future more than I want to not be embarrassed by eating seemingly-massive amounts right now, but right now, well, I'm just scared.

Goodbye, 5% of my starting weight.

Weight: 263.6
BMI: 45.24

Let's start with the good news first: I'm more than half way to my mini goal! I'm 28 days in and I've now lost 14.4 pounds and 5.18% of my starting body weight. My deadline to hit 25--a 10% loss of my initial bodyweight--is 9/15/2009, which is 43 days away. No matter which way you slice it, I'm pretty darn happy with the 263.6 number.

Things, however, weren't looking so sunny immediately upon my return from San Diego. The first two days went relatively well. I perhaps ate a bit more than I would've if I'd been at home, but not by much. By mid week I'd succumbed to french fries and a glass of white wine. Thursday I went on an In-n-Out burger outing. Friday was pretty darn close to an unmitigated disaster. In the morning I ate a scoop of hash browns, two pieces of sausage, and berries and cream. On the flight from San Diego to Atlanta I ate both complimentary cookies and an $8 turkey, apple and brie Sandwich with honey mustard (delicious, by the way). Stuck in the Atlanta airport, I ate a grilled Chick-Fil-A sandwich and fries. Disaster. Delicious, delicious disaster.

And it showed. My weight on Friday evening was a super high 269.4. By Saturday morning I was down to the still insanely high 268.0.

I dropped quickly from there though. Yesterday, I joyfully hit a new low of 264.7, and today, an even lower 263.6. I feel like I might be in for a small gain tomorrow, but we shall see.

I'm on track. I'm more than halfway to my first goal. And I've lost an amazing 14.4 pounds in 28 days. Now if I can only stop dreaming about Chick-Fil-A's delicious, delicious waffle fries, we'll be in business.

A new low and food choices

Weight: 268.2
BMI: 46.03

Wowza. 268.2! I actually feel, for the first time, like I belong in the 260s. I'm incredibly, incredibly happy with that number. It means I've now lost 9.8 pounds in total. That's 3.53% of my bodyweight and 1.68 points of BMI. And that is pretty damn awesome. I honestly was smiling all the way to work. I'm so, so happy about it.

Yesterday I did very well foodwise, albeit making one slight mistake at dinner. I had a very light breakfast and lunch, and snacked on baby carrots at work. Friends and I were going to see the new Harry Potter immediately after work (it's excellent, you should see it), and it was decided to go to Subway for a quick dinner before the movie. Yesterday afternoon I spent a good bit of time on the Subway site, pouring over the nutritional information trying to make an ideal choice. I debated between going for the extravagant 380 calorie Subway melt, going with a turkey sandwich with light mayo (280 for the sandwich plus 50 for the mayo for 330), or, what I decided would be my choice, a 290 cal mayo-less ham and turkey. I knew I wouldn't be able to enjoy a turkey sandwich with neither cheese nor mayonnaise, so I'd ruled that out early on, but I thought maybe, just maybe, having two different types of meat on the sandwich might make up for the lack of delicious, delicious cheese and condiments.

So, when we got there, I ordered the ham and turkey. And then, in that second when he asked me if I wanted any sauces, I said yeah, just a little bit of light mayo. I stopped him to make sure it was just a bit, but it was still, in the end, either 50 or 10 calories more than I really needed (depending on how you count). Lyn, over at Escape from Obesity, had this great post about how you need just a split second of determination to do the right thing. And where she passed her test, I failed mine.

But the damage wasn't bad, I was still under my limit for the day, and I'm not going to beat myself up over it. I did the right thing for the rest of the night, refusing the many offers from my friends to have a few pieces of candy or a handful of popcorn. I did, overall, a really great job resisting temptation last night.

As I write this, I'm about an hour away from going out to a colleague's going away lunch. It will be challenging, to say the least. We're going to this pizza place called Ella's, which of course has no calorie stuff listed online. I've spent probably more time looking at the menu then I'd like to confess, and still haven't decided what I'm going to get. I know it might sound crazy to those of you who are used to being healthy, but I really don't want to call attention to the fact that I'm on a diet just yet, especially not to my colleagues. I know, I know, telling people is great and will help build you a support system and you'll be less likely to fall back and whatever else, but I'm honestly just still too embarrassed to at this point. I think ordering a salad would do just that, so I don't think I'm going to do so.

So, pizza it will be. The question between plain and veggie is up in the air. Plain pizza is my standard, and it's my favorite. Getting one of the varieties with vegetables on it—of those options I've been leaning towards wild mushroom—would be healthier and get more nutrients in. I'd also like it substantially less, and thus probably eat less of it. On the other hand, if I'm going out spending money and calories on pizza, it seems kind of silly to not get pizza I'd like. I'm not saying I should go crazy and order the four cheese one, or eat the whole thing, but …

I don't know. I'm possibly making excuses. I'm going to have a tough night (and a tough weekend) in terms of food since my parents are going to be here. I think I'll be able to at least somewhat minimize my food exposure by telling them I have lots of work, but there's no way around the fact that I'm simply going to be eating more than I've been eating since this diet began.

I know, I know, this is why you should tell people. I just don't quite feel ready to.

The worst part about this may be that I'm so damn close to 268, and with that the accomplishment of having dropped a full 10 pounds. It would be a big achievement, and I want to get there. Since at this point I'm just hoping not to gain up to the 270s while they're here, it's going to be tricky.

Hopefully I'll be strong, and even if I can't hit 268 this weekend, I'll hit it next week. And then, hopefully, I'll be able to not gain massive amounts of weight in San Diego.

It could happen, right?

I've got a long, long road ahead.