weight loss

An interesting thing happened while I spent today being snack-free. Actually, it happened many times throughout the day.

I thought about snacks. Specifically, I would be sitting (or standing) and suddenly think, “A snack would be nice.” This would happen regardless of whether or not I felt hungry or if I had just eaten. The first time it happened today I had just finished breakfast. I sat down after cleaning the dishes and instantly thought about getting a snack.

My amateur psych analysis of this is simple: snacking has become a substitute for something I need or crave. I don’t snack because I’m hungry, I snack because it provides comfort, it makes me feel better (unless I plow through half a box of crackers and feel gross and somewhat regretful after). The phrase “comfort food” looms large, like a giant box of chocolate glazed donuts. Mmm, donuts…

Anyway, I ended up not having to engage in any of the cheap tricks I listed yesterday to keep myself from snacking, because I also felt headachy and kind of listless for most of the day, so getting up and gathering snacks never registered as more than a distant thought. On top of the headaches today, allergies the past few weeks have been beating me up like never before. I can see myself becoming a nasal spray addict before the end of the year and having to join Nasal Sprayers Anonymous or something.

However, to bring things back to a positive note, I made it through the day and did not snack. Go me! If I’m up in weight tomorrow, I’ll just chuckle at how day-to-day fluctuations don’t matter, it’s the long term trends that show the real results. (I’ll still be mildly peeved, just because.)

It is time I faced a certain reality: I like shoving things into my face–specifically, snack-type things which go into my mouth, then to my stomach, then to the fat reserves around the mid-section of my body, which are now sufficient to sustain me through several winters.

Although my weight has been starting to trend back in the right direction recently, it is moving downward at a pace I would describe as extremely gradual. Given my current weight loss goal, my on-a-napkin calculation is I will reach that goal when I am 576 years old.

While I hope to live a long and fruitful life, I suspect I will not live top be 500+. But science has worked miracles before.

Barring scientific miracles, I need a new plan, and here it is:

Going cold turkey on all snacks. This starts tomorrow, as I’m considering the last two weeks of August to be a trial period of sorts. Here are the rules I have invented:

• No snacks at all. This includes:
  • crackers
  • cookies
  • muffins
  • strudel things
  • potato chips
  • chocolate bars
  • Turkish Delight
  • brownies
  • donuts
  • even things that are technically not donuts, but are really donuts, like chocolate eclairs
  • anything else that is high calorie, comes in a bag and is not exactly “natural”
• One exception: the chocolate I share with my partner each night as a ritual sort of thing (he started it, I am not as big on ritual sort of things, but when they include chocolate, I am more willing). These are 46 calories each, which is not too bad.
• Cheat days? No! No cheat days! Cheating is not just wrong, it weakens my resolve, because a little cheating leads to a little more cheating and suddenly the pantry is devoid of all snacks.
• If not full cheat days, how about an occasional cheat, but only if I exercise enough that same day to cover three times the calorie cost? So a 100 calorie snack would require me to burn off an extra 300 calories to make up for it. This seems like a reasonable approach and I may hold it in reserve, but for now, I am still in the NO camp, because it’s too easy to snack, promise to workout, then whoops, I forgot to workout and it’s too late now oh well.

I figure for this to work I need to have two things ready to go:

• Snack substitutes. I figure peas and carrots will do, along with the occasional banana or other piece of fruit. Small cubes of cheese might be okay, but that can lead to a calvalanche, because cheese is yummy.
• An immediate counter-action to take when the urge to snack hits. I have a few things I can try:
  • Drink water
  • Meditate
  • Listen to a favorite song to distract myself
  • Write 300-500 words about anything, as long as it isn’t a lovingly detailed description of blueberry cheesecake
  • Go for a walk of suitable length
  • The above could also include hitting the treadmill
  • Play a game
  • Take a shower. Not a cold shower, just a shower

We’ll see how long this bold new plan works. Today I stepped on the scale and was 175.8 pounds, 25.8 pounds away from my target of 150. We’ll see what the scale says in two weeks.

July was like June in reverse. Instead of being up 2.6 pounds, I was down 2.6 pounds. My body fat also dropped by half a percent and actual fat itself by half a pound. I am up three pounds on the year, but that’s down from a peak of nearly six pounds.

I am still fat.

But all signs are trending in a positive direction now and I’ve made real progress on curbing ye olde snacking, so I am reasonably confident the weight loss will continue.

I’m not going to aim for anything crazy like dropping below 170 by the end of August, but at least such a goal is no longer implausible.

Stats:

July 1: 177.4 pounds
July 31: 174.8 pounds (down 2.6 pounds)

Year to date: From 171.8 to 174.8 pounds (up 3 pounds)

And the body fat:

July 1: 23.4% (41.5 pounds of fat)
July 31: 23.1% (40.5 pounds of fat) down 0.5 pounds)

As you can see from the title, I am up a not-insignificant 2.6 pounds for the month of June. But there is an asterisk on this weight gain, you just can’t see it.

On June 1, I had a sudden and unexplained weight drop, going from 177 pounds on May 31 to 175.1 on June 1, a drop of 1.9 pounds. I was only 175 pounds one other day in June and that was June 2. If you exclude these anomalous days…well, I still gained weight, but a less drastic 0.7 pounds.

Still not good.

I am making more changes for July. I swear! This time I have added pressure after my virtual doctor visit.

With that said, I remained donut-free for the month once again. Here are the stats:

June 1: 175.1 pounds
June 30: 177.7 pounds (up 2.6 pounds)

Year to date: From 171.8 to 177.7 pounds (up 5.9 pounds)

And the body fat:

June 1: 23.7% (41.5 pounds of fat)
June 30: 23.4% (41.5 pounds of fat) (no change)

A miracle in the plaguelands! While the world struggles to flatten the curve, I have struggled to flatten my own curve and the past few months of working from home have led to me getting dangerously close to my previous high bar on weight (from 2008). Not good.

But for the first time in awhile, my weight has gone down instead of up.

This month was the first real attempt to curb snacking and exercise a bit more. I have been walking more and did a treadmill run, but regular jogging is still not a thing, so I have work to do on exercise, but at least I’ve (re)started.

I have cut snacking, but not enough. Despite being down 1.5 pounds for the month, my actual body fat increased slightly, so I’m in a holding pattern right now.

For June, then, I need to improve my efforts, to break out of the holding pattern and start seeing numbers drop. I’ve done it before; I can do it again.

May 1: 178.5 pounds
May 31: 177 pounds (down 1.5 pounds)

Year to date: From 171.8 to 177 pounds (up 5.2 pounds)

And the body fat:

May 1: 23.2% (41.4 pounds of fat)
May 30: 23.5% (41.7 pounds of fat) (up 0.3 pounds)

There is no sugar-coating this month’s report, though it might seem accurate to say everything in the report was coated in sugar, then eaten by me.

I am up 3.9 pounds for the year to date. This is not good, as I had been trending down. Looking at the calendar, I see that I impressively gained five pounds in the ten days from March 21-31.

What happened? Cookies, and plenty of them.

But also the global pandemic, which is actually connected to the cookies. While others were hoarding toilet paper, I was hoarding food, specifically hoarding it in my mouth and then in my belly. More than any other time in recent memory the stuff I ate was comfort food. I apparently needed a lot of comfort.

It’s not a coincidence that I started working from home on March 18.

For April I simply vow to improve. The cookies are gone, I’m going to resume regular workouts, and just generally try to do better on what I eat. At least I didn’t have any donuts.

The fat-filled stats:

March 1: 169.8 pounds
March 31: 175.7 pounds (up 5.9 pounds)

Year to date: From 171.8 to 175.7 pounds (up 3.9 pounds)

And the body fat:

March 1: 22% (37.3 pounds of fat)
March 31: 22.4% (39.4 pounds of fat) (up 2.1 pounds)

It’s a Christmas miracle in February!

But not really. I shall explain.

The good news is that I am indeed down 0.9 pounds for the month vs. where I was at the end of January, and I did it with two fewer days in the month, too. Not only that, it also means I’m 2-2 for the year to date, which is pretty good for the winter “eat everything you can get your hands on” months.

There are a few caveats, though. The main one is that I weighed myself around 9:30 in the morning, about fours later than normal and this typically means I will weight less, due to the way my body processes food. Now, it’s true I might have weighed more anyway if I’d eaten a box of donuts before stepping on the scales, but fortunately I did not do that (I did break my donut rule, though–see below).

The other caveat–though that’s not precisely the right word here–is that my body fat has been climbing of late. In part this is expected, as you can shed weight faster than the overall body fat of your body, meaning that you can go down in weight, but the overall percentage of your now-thinner body that is fat actually increases (temporarily) and that’s where I’m at now.

Anyway, I ate a giant jelly donut yesterday (they were a special end of month treat at work), was trending up in weight for the last three days and still went down, so I’m sticking to Christmas miracle in February.

February 1: 171.5 pounds
February 29: 169.6 pounds (down 0.9 pounds)

Year to date: From 171.8 to 169.6 pounds (down 2.2 pounds)

And the body fat:

February 1: 21.6% (36.7 pounds of fat)
February 29: 21.9% (37.2 pounds of fat) (up 0.5 pounds)

It’s a new year and time for new fat! Well, hopefully not.

First, a review of last year. I started the year at 167.5 pounds, 17.5 pounds from my target of 150. I ended the year at 171.8, up 4.3 pounds. As weight loss plans go, this was not exactly the ideal. The only positive is that I got through the month of December without gaining (or losing weight), a somewhat impressive feat given how much candy and treats one gets plied with over the holidays.

I start this year at 171.1 pounds, which is down for the month of January. I had dipped even lower thanks to the flu, but some last minute indulgences pushed me back over 170 pounds. I used food as comfort again, which was bad and I feel bad. But it was yummy. But still, bad.

So here I am 21.1 pounds away from my goal. I am almost recovered from the flu and will start running again. I have managed to keep the snacking under control lately, so who knows, maybe this will be the year I actually dip below 160 again.

January 1: 171.8 pounds
January 31: 171.1 pounds (down 0.7 pounds)

Year to date: From 171.8 to 171.1 pounds (down 0.7 pounds)

And the body fat:

January 1: 21% (36.1 pounds of fat)
January 31: 21.6% (36.9 pounds of fat) (up 0.8 pounds)

This post is brought to you by spin. When you have bad news to present, spin spin spin!

There is not much to spin but here is what I have: my weight gain slowed for the month. Last month I picked up a cement bag-like 4.1 pounds. I still marvel at that (in horror). This month, though, I only gained two pounds!

But I am still up and that’s where the spin ends. The rest of the news is fat and bad.

On November 12 the Fitbit app officially declared me overweight with a BMI of 25. I lucked into normal on November 27 when a rounding error declared the BMI to be 24.9, but was otherwise deemed overweight for the month of November. Yes, I’m aware BMI is a controversial measurement. But my waistline is non-controversially more expansive than it was a month ago. I am gaining weight and as the stats below reveal, it ain’t muscle.

A couple of things have contributed to the weight gain:

• Yeah, that whole putting food into the mouth thing. Especially snack food. All attempts to curb this failed, with one notable exception: I promised myself a last oatmeal fudge bar from Starbucks yesterday, walked to the store, then turned around and left, a rare moment of impulse control.
• Along with the food-in-mouth problem, I didn’t run much. This was due to a couple of things, like the usual “too dark after work” issue that plagues me during late fall through early spring. I also managed to pull a muscle in my lower back, then a week later pulled another muscle in my upper thigh. The latter was especially vexing. I was given opiates for pain! I did not become addicted. When I did finally run again, I was very slow, but I was also carrying 170+ pounds by that point.

My burdensome current weight reminded me of when I was at my most svelte. This was back in the summer of 2012 when I was running 10Ks three times a week (and walking 4 km to and from the lake each time). I recently found some shots from the MyFitnessPal app I took on my iPhone at the time that showed my current weight. This one is from July 29, 2012:

Yes, I was 144.8 pounds. That seems surreal now. It was also 27 pounds ago. Even the starting point of 159.8 (I apparently can never shed that last 0.8 pounds) is still 12 pounds lighter than I am today.

But there is hope ahead, even as we head into December, the snackiest seasons of the year:

• As mentioned above, I’m off the oat fudge bars
• I’m still off donuts
• I swear no shortbread this year. The shortbread most readily available at nearby stores is covered with sprinkles and crap, so I’m unlikely to be tempted
• Still running on weekends
• And the one new change: I’m getting a treadmill. Woo! It’s actually commercial grade and honking big. I’ll be able to use it for my weekday runs when it’s too dark/snowy/scary. And then I’ll be able to use it any other time, too. In other words, I’ll be exercising regularly again, which is also what I was doing in 2012 when I was impossibly thin.

So here’s to December being the month the weight starts dropping again, instead of continuing to pack on like it’s being fed through a particle accelerator.

The fatty stats:

November 1: 169.8 pounds
November 30: 171.8 pounds (up 2 pounds)

Year to date: From 167.5 to 171.8 pounds (up 4.3 pounds)

And the body fat, now fatter than ever:

November 1: 18.3% (31.1 pounds of fat)
November 30: 20% (34.3 pounds of fat) (up 3.2 pounds)