G's Weigh-in: 78kg

I hyperventilated a little when I saw that number yesterday. Then I did the conversion to pounds and I hyperventilated a little more.

I'm going to use this blog a lot in the next few weeks as I suspect there are many upcoming situations, both celebratory and stressful, during and after which I will want to eat. I'm glad we're in this together (which is not to say I'm glad everyone wants to lose bunch of weight. Body acceptance, blah blah blah. You know what I mean).

PS: Despite the abundance of cheap and delicious Malbec in these parts, I'm on the wagon for now. As Sparkly D observed almost 2 years ago, "one glass of wine and my hands become calorie shovels." Word.

C's weigh-in: 142.4

I'm eating well. I'm hitting my points targets, getting lots of fruits and vegetables, and limiting sugar and flour.

I'm sucking at exercise. I planned to do a Turbulence Training workout yesterday and I put it off until yesterday evening. I only got in half a workout before it was time to put Griffin to sleep. I am so out of shape! Seriously, I'm having trouble with kneeling push-ups. I guess it can only get better from here, but in the short term this really sucks.

Pants

When we arrived in Buenos Aires in December I bought a pair of less-backpackery pants to wear out in the city.

Last night I could barely get into them. Motivation? Yes. My big thing has been, oh, when I get back to Canada I'll start the project. But if I stick with that I'll probably have yet another 5 pounds to lose by then, which will make the project a month longer.

So it starts now.

I'm in

I was in a groove. Exercising regularly, eating mostly healthy food, staying between 130 and 134 pounds without tracking what I ate. Then there were excuses and I stopped exercising and my weight crept up to 136. Then I freaked out and decided to try this and then this. Then more excuses and I've spent the last three months eating everything in sight "while I still can!" This morning I weighed 143 pounds and I only have two pairs of pants that fit me.

I'm going back to what works for me. Tracking food with weight watchers, less carbs, turbulence training. And this blog. Hello again!

Mystery Solved

Today I was jiggling my thigh and mused (aloud, but really to myself), "How did this happen?"

Ken quietly picked up the (empty) Reeses peanut butter egg wrapper on the table.

No regrets

I do not regret having the best BBQ of my life at the The Pig in Memphis. I don't regret all the beignets at the Café du Monde. I don't regret the mufuletta or the red beans and rice. I don't regret ordering iced tea so sweet you could stand a spoon up in it every day for a week. I don't regret the chips and candy road food. Furthermore, I don't regret not getting up to exercise because I've been staying up late with my husband watching True Blood, drinking red wine, and eating brown sugar ice cream.

So, I guess I can't regret that this morning I weighed 134.6 pounds.

Knee trouble

My knees have been bothering me for over a year. Writing that down it seems crazy that I waited so long to see a doctor. I spent a lot of time thinking it'd get better when I lost a little more weight. Then I thought I was just getting old. Gillian helped me get good shoes for running and told me how to stretch properly, but still my knees hurt. At first only when I was running, but then more and more often going up stairs, and then most recently my left knee started hurting whenever I use the clutch in my car and sometimes when I'm not doing anything at all. I thought taking a whole month off exercise might fix the problem, but no.

I finally went to see my doctor, who diagnosed it as Patella Femoral Syndrome. This is a pretty vague "knee pain" diagnosis, she referred me to a physical therapist to get a better idea of what's going on.

I saw the physical therapist yesterday and the problem seems to be that my hips are both too tight and too weak. My knees can go out of alignment because the hip muscles aren't holding them in place securely enough, and also the tight IT band across my left hip is pulling on my left kneecap. I have stretches and exercises to do twice a day and physical therapy for six weeks. The therapist seemed to really know what she was doing, so I'm hopeful that this is going to work.

Track-O-Rama

This week I've tracked almost everything I've eaten, which in some kind of way that I'm sure can be classified as OCD, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Also I'm sticking with mostly plants and meat, with a bit of dairy thrown in for good measure. The exception is breakfast - that meal will continue to be oatmeal until I buy a nonstick pan to make omelettes. (I'm pretty sure both Ken & I are now at high-risk for Alzheimer's given the state of the pan we currently have.)

God knows what's in store for us in Brazil in terms of eating, but apparently there's a lot more fresh fruit, and Ken is already teaching me how to order the chicken & pineapple sandwich (in Portuguese, natch).

Oh, and I made this crazy promise to myself to work out every day in June. So far I'm 4/4, and leaving for the gym as soon as I post this!

Reality Bites

I'm still here, and I obviously need to be here more than ever.

This morning when I went to the gym, Adrián made me get on the scale, even though I broke out in hives and a cold sweat as soon as we got near it.

It turns out eating more veggies doesn't work so well if you slather said veggies in dulce de leche.

"Last time," Adrián announced, pointing at the 71kg mark, "you were here." He slid the weight across the top of the scale and I waited very impatiently for it to level off. 72. 73. Nothing. Finally the scale was level, at 74 kilos.

SEVENTY FOUR KILOS, which means I have gained 3 kilos, or 6.6 lbs, since we arrived in the land of meat and alfajores. Which also means I have to get back into the 150s before I can even think about the 140s.

My Five Stages of Weight Gain:

1. PANIC: Oh shit oh shit oh shit.
2. DISGUST: Argh.
3. DESPAIR: In three weeks I'm going to be a fat 35-year-old.
4. DESPERATION: How little can I eat for the next three weeks?
5. HOPE: Could any of that be muscle?
6. OPTIMISM: At least it wasn't 5 kilos!

I'd bargain (there's always anorexia and bulimia!) but I love food and hate throwing up, so unfortunately those are out. I definitely haven't been walking much around here lately (especially since Spanish classes come to us now) and with the weather getting colder (oh hello, Southern Hemisphere) I just want to sit around in track pants eating cookies. Instead, I'm going to try Sparkpeople for a few weeks to track what I'm eating, and hopefully add a couple more stages to the list:

6. ACCEPTANCE: It's all a project.
7. HOTBODY: 'Nuff said.

Back on track, over and over again

I found out that the bright side of stress and insomnia for me is weight loss. I spent a month not exercising and freaking out about papers and projects and finals and my weight went to 127. Then I turned in the last paper and my appetite came flooding back and I gained 5 pounds in 2 weeks. We took a trip to Chicago and ate lots of deep dish pizza and cheesecake so I'm sure that didn't help. I'm back at 132 and trying to focus again on healthy and sustainable.

You all around?

Ideal body

I've been thinking a lot lately about goals. I never imagined I'd be a size six, but still I'm dissatisfied with my body. Much more so than I was at size sixteen. Objectively I look pretty fit, but there are still parts that are squishy and I still don't have much visible definition in my arms. I'm not sure what to do now, though. It seems almost disordered to want to be a size four?

Skwigg is a fitness blogger I love and she just had a great post about her changing definition of an ideal body.

G's Weigh-in: 71kg

71kg is not bad considering that I've eaten pretty much whatever I wanted and gone to the gym twice in the past three weeks. Note that "pretty much whatever I wanted" includes but is not limited to: ice cream, empanadas, provoleta, and lots of beer and steak. Not to mention vino tinto. ¡Dios mío!

I started working out with a trainer yesterday. We're going to meet 3x/week for the month of April at least. Then I'll make a call on whether to train for the Buenos Aires marathon in October!

C's weigh-in: 130.6

I got sick again and took another week off of exercise. I'm so used to fighting excuses that it was hard to deliberately not exercise for a week and not feel guilty about it. I'm also not counting points anymore, but somehow I lost three pounds in the last two weeks. When I was feeling sick and melodramatic I decided I was wasting away from tuberculosis and possibly also cancer.

I feel better now and started a new turbulence training workout yesterday (tk5). I can do spiderman push-ups now, I couldn't the last time I did this workout.



I don't know how much exercise contributes to weight loss for me, but I really need it for motivation.

C's weigh-in: 133.6

I'll try to remember that any damage that can be done in a week can probably be undone in a week. When I go off track for a day or longer it's hard not to decide that it's all ruined and I might as well just give up.

Also, I got about half way to a chin-up yesterday. I'm doing one of the Turbulence Training workouts for women and it says if you can't do a full chin-up you can boost yourself to the top and then slowly lower yourself for each rep. Instead of doing that I've been attempting a chin-up on the bar and then doing pull-downs on the Bowflex for the actual reps. I'm using 140lb of weight on the Bowflex for the pull-downs, and I'm not going airborne so the Bowflex is lying.

We're going to an indoor waterpark with a group of friends next weekend. I bought a new swimsuit yesterday and have strong motivation to stay on track this week. It'll be hard to eat well next weekend but there's a gym at the hotel and I'm looking forward to working out someplace that isn't my basement.

B Weigh In: 144.0

I should be mad about this but I'm not. a 1lb gain is nothing after spending 3 days at Disney World (aka "it's next to impossible to eat healthy here so hell, I'll have french fries for breakfast World") I'm just happy not to have gained.

I am however having some issues with the gym lately. My motivation to work out is all but gone. I have never had any luck incorporating exercise into my weight loss plans. Even though I know that scientifically exercise *should* mean I can eat more food and still lose weight I never see it working out that way. The treadmill is constantly claiming that I've worked off 250 calories but my body seems unwilling to recognize this exchange. I don't doubt that working out will make me healthier but I suspect it will never make me skinny. For that I need to eat less french fries and sometimes that feels super depressing.

C's weigh-in: 138

Yeah. I got sick and stopped exercising. It felt like I had bronchitis crossed with mono so not exercising was probably the right choice. Then around Thursday I decided it was a good idea to eat cannelés for breakfast and have been eating like that every day since. Probably not the right choice.

G's Weigh-in: 155.6

Holding steady. I'm not sure how (I was expecting a gain) but I'll take it.

Next week is detox week! Difficult because my Waterloo peeps want to feed me cheese all the time, but I'm laying down the law, at least today, in my head. We'll see how it goes.

C's weigh-in: 134.2

That's more like it. I guess I'm still vaguely targeting 128, but I can get there slowly from here. I just bought a few pairs of size six jeans, I would not have thought this was possible a year ago. So, I'm trying to be happy with where I'm at.

B Weigh In: 142.6

No real change this week which considering my Vday spread (which included at minimum 5 egg yolks) I can't complain. The really story this week is how I got weighed at the doctor yesterday and my nightmare scenario where I stepped on his scale and found out my scale was broken and that really I weigh 160lbs did not come true. Huzzah.

G's Weigh-in: 155.6

Don't even talk to me about it.

I did learn something, though, which is that it's pretty much all about how you eat. Sure the exercise is important, for "health" and stuff, but just to give you a sampling of my week: On Monday I worked out (TT), Tuesday I did a yoga class at lunch, ran home from work (4.something miles), THEN did a 45-minute spinning class, Wednesday I did a regular TT workout, and Thursday at lunch I did a spinning class.

I ate badly last weekend (more on weekends later, seeing as we're kicking one off!) but I definitely didn't go overboard during the week.

Mainly I'm blaming stress hormones.