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One journey ends, another begins

I’m in a state today. As I get more and more mobile, I can’t help but think of how immobile I’ve been over the last five to eight years or so. I’ve really been enjoying my neighborhood walks; seeing how people keep their yards; what fancy little touches they add to their homes; what kind of animals they have; what kind of yard furniture they have; what they’ve planted and whether the plants are doing well. All sorts of little things I haven’t been able to enjoy in so long and which simultaneously heralds the end of my journey with cancer, and the beginning of my journey to lose weight.

I have to admit I’m in a place where I don’t really even think the term “diet” as in a short term eating plan for weight loss. I’m going to be monitoring everything I consume for a really long time. I’m imagining at least a two year journey to even get close to where I want to be, and even then I think I’ll always have to carefully manage my portions. That I think is my biggest downfall, I’m absolutely no good with portions, unless I’ve been given guidelines and I use a digital scale to measure everything. Strangely I’m pretty good at eyeballing quantities; I just have no idea what a portion is without guidelines and measuring. I think that’s where my dietitian has been invaluable. She’s laid out portions for me for nearly everything I eat… It’s all still such slow going though.

It’s also a bit disappointing when the quickly lost water weight falls away, and you’re left with the ever so slow going fat loss, and balancing what you’re eating so that you’ve cut back enough to be losing fat, but you’re still eating enough to keep up your metabolism is a frustratingly inexact pseudo science. It was a challenge last week to not be down over actually gaining weight in spite of staying very strictly within a calorie range which in and of itself should have ensured a loss; add in the fact that I’d also doubled up on both the speed at which I was walking and the duration of my walks, and it could have really been a downer. Luckily for me all the exercise must’ve really revved up my endorphins or dopamine or some other magical brain chemical because I really took it in stride, & I’ve even managed to step up my workout game a little more again this week; well that, and I take measurements across the whole of my body, and my mass had shrunk. I continually bolstered myself with the knowledge that at least I’d physically shrunk, even if my weight had increased (all the while praying I don’t become the most dense thin person ever… a size 8 who weighs 200 lbs ;) .

I occasionally read things people write about how easy it is to lose weight, just put down the fork and do something, and it makes me laugh because it’s obviously been written by someone who’s never actually had much weight to lose. Fat can really be stubborn, and weight fluctuations are some sort of voodoo when you’re actually in the trenches. You read so many stories of people doing everything right, but gaining or plateauing, and so many stories of people breaking a plateau with a fat slice of pizza or a sugar binge. It’s sometimes seems like a joke your body is playing on you, and at least in the short term, it’s a lot more complex than calories in / calories out would make you believe. Still calories in / calories out over time does do the trick. You just have to keep moving the bar all around the place because one of the many amazing things about the human body is how readily it adapts, and it sure adapts quickly to exercise. I take it as a mental challenge as well as a physical challenge. Figure out when my body has adapted to one form of exercise and think of a way to change things up to trick it back into burning fat like I want it to. Staving off Alzheimer’s while defatting my form :)

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 12:55 am and is filed under J's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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