Throwback Thursday: Analyzing the numbers

You can ignore this post if you don't want to read another angry post dripping with angst and anxiety about the scale.  I wish I was a numbers person, because maybe it would help me figure what is happening on the scale.  As Carl Sagan said: "You have to know the past to understand the future."

Since I began this BLE journey in January, I've tracked my weight everyday on a spread sheet.  This first block of numbers represents 13 days in February where my weight loss stalled. I had finished the 14 Day challenge, and was trying to navigate BLE without the vlog entries and other support available on the website. 🠊

🠈That streak was followed by a streak of 6 consecutive days of losses. I don't have an explanation for why these days were successful other than I was following the line almost perfectly.

🠈But now, I'm in the throes of a 12 day span of weird fluctuations that started with an inexplicable gain of 1.6 lbs.  I honestly don't know why I gained that weight overnight. I weighed myself at the same time of day, and it wasn't around the time of my cycle, which is my usual excuse. I was able to get rid of those pounds in 2 days, but then gained another 1.2 lbs overnight.   This gain, however, isn't one that I can honestly say is "inexplicable," because it was the morning after I ate my birthday cake, but I've been following my lines ever since, and as you can see, I kept going up.  I'm frustrated because a week ago, I was down 11.7 lbs total, but as of this morning, I'm only down a total of 10.5 lbs.

I don't really know what else to write. I'm hoping that the scale starts moving in the right direction, and soon.  I also hope that by reviewing these numbers, I can figure out the pattern. I'm continuing to do what I need to do on this program. I know the number shouldn't matter, but it does. Maybe the stress and anxiety from coronavirus is affecting my weight loss.

Taco'bout it Tuesday: Perfect Timing

You know how sometimes you see or read something at the exact moment when you need to see or read it?  I think it's called kismet... well that happened for me recently in my BLE journey.

Since completing the 14 day challenge a few weeks ago, I've been debating about whether to dive in even further to BLE world and do the Boot Camp program which I believe is 8 weeks long and costs a bit of money that I'm not really looking to spend at the moment.  Despite some weight fluctuations that I've documented in previous posts, I've continued to do well with the program, not perfectly perfect, but well.

In the FB group, people have mentioned the term "rezoom," but I couldn't find any information about what that means, until now.  Rezoom simply means resume, as in start again, and it's premised on the idea that things go well until they don't.  I felt kind of dumb when I figured this out, but in my head I was putting the emphasis on the zoom, as in "zoom around a track."  When you say the word rezoom outloud (instead of silently in your head) it makes sense that it means "resume"... it just took me a minute to catch on...

Anyway, because I've really embraced the concepts of BLE, I started looking for strategies to prevent the inevitable loss of momentum or relapse before it happens.  This Blog itself is a snapshot of what happens in my real life.  I go all gang busters on a program or an idea, and then something happens, as SPT says "life gets lifey," and I fall off the wagon or I an excuse (like I have with VIP) that it's just not sustainable.  What I'm trying to find is a way to prevent that from happening.

What I found are SPT's Vlog entries about the "Reboot Rezoom" program.  The graph above shows what happens in the average person's weight loss journey, according to SPT, and it resonated with me.  The red peak/valley line demonstrates that over time, like my own experience, people are successful with weight loss, they hit some sort of peak, then slide back down before having to start over, and this happens again and again for many people. SPT suggests that before you hit the peak, you need to figure out what causes a slide and take immediate action to correct it before you dip down into the "danger zone."  The danger zone is different for everyone, and based on what SPT talked about in the Vlog I watched, I suspect a slide into the danger zone for me would look like me not stepping on the scale, procrastinating or avoiding the habits in my bullet journal, pulling back from posting or talking about this journey, and making excuses that allow me to blur the lines more frequently and to a great degree.

SPT says that what she hopes for those of us following BLE is a journey that looks more like the blue sine wave on the graph above.  We need to raise the bar a bit higher, establish a bit of a cushion for those periods of time where we're not perfectly following the bright lines, so that when the slide inevitably begins, which it does for everyone, you can catch it before you fall into the danger zone where the potential for obliterating all of the previous success exists.

The strategy offered for rezoom-ing is called the FAS system, which stands for Food, Actions, and Support. These are the 3 areas to focus on to keep the sine wave smooth and the cushion comfortably above the danger zone.

For the food strategy, SPT reminds us that we need to take immediate corrective action if we find ourselves failing to prepare and plan.  The quote I wrote down from this part of the entry is "you've already failed if you're leaving your house and you don't know what you're going to eat for the day."  In my world, it's the equivalent of saying drunk driving is a choice, the choice to not drink and drive is made when you leave your keys and your car at home.  You've already made a bad choice about drinking and driving if you drive to the party/restaurant/event where you know there will be alcohol served and you plan to drink.  Planning and preparing ahead of time is an essential part of BLE, and if you don't take care of that part, then you're planning and preparing to fail, it's as simple as that.

As for the actions strategy, I think I've done myself a real service with my BLE bullet journal, especially the habit tracking chart.  It is a real-time visual of how I'm doing on a day to day basis with all of the BLE components, including committing, meditating, meal planning, weighing myself, etc.  As you can see below, I started a slide last week right after my birthday. I just kind of let things go for a few days by not planning ahead, not recording the habits, and blurring the lines somewhat dramatically (see my previous post about cake.) I'm not even near my goal weight, and I still let things slide, which is disappointing to me, but not unexpected given my history. I've been doing this for more than 50 days now, and generally speaking I've been more successful than not.  That said, I need to stop this slide now.  Fortunately, I still managed to have a "down" week on the scale.  Not by much, but at least it didn't go up. In some ways, I think it's good that this slide happened now, because it has reinforced for me how important the daily check-in with myself is for this process.  If I keep this tracking up, I'll be able to keep moving the sine wave up above the danger zone. Now I know that if I start getting lazy with the journaling and recording, it's the sign of the beginning of a slide.

Finally, according to SPT the most effective way to assess where you are on the sine wave is by how you use your support network.  Finding and developing a support network is critically important for success,  but it is underused by most people.  Many people, myself included, begin isolating or hiding when the fear of the slide starts taking hold or when panic about failing sets in.  It's at that point where you need the support the most, but if you haven't cultivated that support before the slide begins, then it's not there when you need it most, and it's even harder to reach out for the support you need. SPT says you need to invest in these support relationships when things are going well, in her words, "connect before the crash." For me, I guess one way I've tried to cultivate support is through writing this blog and sending it out for others to read.  When I stop writing and sending these posts, that might be a sign that I need support and maybe I'm entering a slide.  Honestly, I'm not sure how I can sustain writing 3 or 4 entries a week because I don't always have something interesting to write about, but I can try to continue to check in with my meal plan on Mondays and "taco'bout it" Tuesday entries.

So, friends, I'm relying on you for support.  If you see that I'm not posting or briefly checking in, feel free to give me a nudge, I'll appreciate it more than you know.  In return, tell me how I can help you with something you need help with, I'd be thrilled to "help!" 💖

They let me eat cake...

Yesterday was my birthday, and I wasn't going to eat any sweet treats. My co-workers helped me celebrate by bringing in fruit for me to eat during our celebratory luncheon.  Someone also brought in Bundt-inis from Nothing Bundt Cake because, "I'm not going to let your diet ruin my fun!"  I was good, I didn't have a little bundt cake, I ate the fruit and enjoyed it, but all afternoon I couldn't stop craving cake.

Last evening, we went out for a birthday dinner, and my husband encouraged me to order wine with dinner, "C'mon it's your birthday." But again, I was good, and I abstained.

We had a coupon from Coldstone Creamery for a free cake, so my husband ordered a cake for my birthday. It was "super tricked out," he said, with all sorts of mix-ins from brownie bits, Kit Kat bar pieces, and caramel swirls, and covered with a decadent looking chocolate ganache.  This, I couldn't resist. All of my inner voices, the saboteur, the food controller, the food indulger, and the isolator (I'll explain those in another post) all compelled me to have a piece of cake, "just this one time."  So, I did, and I felt guilty about it, immediately after!  I'm not even sure I enjoyed it, sure it tasted good, but I didn't enjoy it, and it left me with a heavy feeling in my stomach.

This morning I knew the scale was going to be bad, and it was... up 1.2 lbs from yesterday.  I'm not sure what else to say.  I have mixed emotions. On the one hand, why should I feel guilty about having cake on my birthday?  On the other, I shouldn't have caved, I know better, I knew this would happen. And now the weekend is upon me, a time when I always seem to struggle to maintain my weight for a few days let alone lose any.

Taco'bout it Tuesday: More "goal talk" featuring a milestone!

I've written about my goals here and here, and today I'm happy to report that I've reached my first significant milestone concerning my weight. I'm officially 10 pounds lighter!  Or, as they say in BLE world, I've released 10 pounds!  It took awhile, 38 days to be exact, but that's fine.  I'm posting this entry on day 44 because I wanted to make sure that the number on the scale wasn't a fluke, and given my recent fluctuations, I didn't want to brag about a 10 lb weight loss too soon. And, it's a good thing I chose to wait because as predicted, I went as low as 11.7 lbs lost, but then the number crept back up again slightly.  As of posting this entry today, I'm 11.1 lbs down!

I feel like releasing the weight slowly will serve me better in the long run. When I did VIP in 2015-16, I lost 23.5 lbs in 42 days and then another 15 lbs after doing a second 42 day round of VIP, but the weight came back on relatively quickly as soon as I stopped following the program.  With BLE, over the last 44 days, I've established a new way of eating, a new way of thinking about food and my relationship with it, a new lifestyle, if you will.  Unlike VIP where I ate the same thing everyday for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with BLE there's quite a bit more flexibility and variety from meal to meal and day to day.

Losing 10 pounds is just the beginning for me.  I'll be honest, it was a bit of a surprise the first morning last week when I hit the 10 lb marker because I had lost 1 lb two days in a row which hadn't happened in several weeks. I also thought I'd feel a lot happier about releasing 10 lbs, but I was more shocked than happy at first.  I think part of it is that my weight loss hasn't really been noticeable to others.  Though I've been posting these entries and have been public about trying to lose weight, I haven't really talked about it much outside of this blog, and no one has really noticed, which is fine, but I think that's why I'm not as excited about this milestone as I would have expected.  Also, I have a ways to go to get to my goal, so maybe it's better that I'm not overly excited, I'm motivated to keep going.

It's embarrassing to admit, but I'm still considered "overweight" on the BMI scale, which is probably one reason people haven't noticed or are reluctant to say anything, I'm still too heavy, and I still don't want to be in any pictures (Right?!?! Rosemary!).  I started with a BMI just shy of the obese range.  I've subtracted almost 2 full points from my BMI, but I still have 2.12 points to go to get into the normal range, which equates to about 13 lbs more to lose.  So, that's my next goal, to get my BMI down into the normal range.  If it took me 38 days to lose 10 lbs, I imagine it will take at least 48 days to get my BMI down to 25 which is the high end of normal. 💖

I've talked a lot about my goals, tell me yours.  What goal(s) are you working toward this year - health, weight or otherwise?

Meal Plan Monday: This job [was] making me fat edition

This post is not entirely timely, but better late than never as they say.

Fat Tuesday was last week, and around these parts that means it was paczki day!  Paczki (pronounced
"poonch - ki") are Polish pastries, essentially a deep fried, glazed donut filled with a sweet filling like jelly or custard.  Someone brought several dozen to our building, ostensibly enough for everyone. Above is the box that made it to the conference room where my office is located.  I think there were 12 to begin with, I love how someone ate half of one!  LOL! The average custard filled paczki packs 425 calories and 25 g of fat, so no wonder someone elected to have half... my guess, however, is that person had a whole one and then half of another.

I've never really been tempted by paczkis or donuts for that matter. Growing up I remember these as only being filled with jelly, and I don't like jelly filled donuts so it was easy to say no.  Maybe that was just a ploy my mother used to keep from buying them.  "You won't like them, girls, they're filled with jelly." Today bakeries sell them with all sorts of crazy fillings, like cannoli cream or pistachio custard, but when they're sitting in the bakery box, you can't tell what's inside without cutting into it. So I tell myself that I'd get the one with jelly in it, and that keeps me from eating one.  Too bad that doesn't work with a box of chocolates where I'm afraid to pick the one with cherry nougat... there, it's easy to spit it out and move onto another one. It doesn't work the same with paczki or donuts. 💖

Did you celebrate Fat Tuesday?  What did you eat?

Throwback Thursday: Goal revisited

If this entry sounds familiar it's because it mistakenly published before I finished editing it... I took it down, and now I'm re-posting for real.

I recently posted about my struggle to figure out my goal weight for this process.  I mentioned in that post how Susan Thompson refers to living in a “right sized body,” but I'm not sure exactly what that means for me.  After I published that post, I stumbled upon SPT’s video blog entry entitled “Goal Body” from December of 2018.  In it, she talks about abandoning the weight number as a goal, and focusing on what you want your body to be able to do. Thinking about a “goal body” also ties in with my previous post about why I’m even doing this. 

My main reason for trying to get my eating and weight under control is to see if it will make a difference with my back pain.  For the past eleven (11) months, I have been dealing with almost debilitating back pain. I say “almost” because it has been much better since I had a rhizotomy in December.  I can manage to get through each day, and I’m still able to work, but I feel like I have the body of 65 year old with the amount of aches and pains I deal with daily. I’ve been doing yoga classes 3 or 4 times a week, and I have a short yoga/meditation routine that I do each morning right after I get out of bed. Doing Yoga has helped, but I’m still in quite a bit of pain all day, every day.

I’m certain my doctor recommend that I lose weight in response to hearing me complain about my back.  There are plenty of articles like this one correlating weight loss with back pain reduction. Since I'm having trouble with the scale, I thought I would document some "goal body" ideas. 

As I mentioned, to be pain free is my number one goal. That goal seems lofty at this point, so maybe I should dial that back to seeing an overall reduction in pain, but that won't be satisfying. Along with the pain free goal, my second stated goal is to be able to walk for 30 minutes straight without pain.  If I ever reach that goal, I'll raise the bar to something else in a similar category.  My third goal is to improve my yoga practice and get back to doing Vinyasa classes on the regular. 

The fourth goal I have takes a little more to explain. In essence, I want to get to a point where I feel proud and confident with my body, regardless of what number shows up on the scale.  SPT talks about being a "good representation of yourself."  For me, that means looking as good as I feel about myself. Reading that aloud, makes me sound, I don't know... egotistical? In my role as a prosecuting attorney, I deal with so many different kinds of people, and I think outwardly I present myself as pretty well put-together and somewhat confident in my abilities. It's taken a LONG time to get to this point, but I finally like myself.  I am not perfect, in fact I know there are plenty of people who don't like me or my personality... I have a short fuse, I can be tenacious, and I've been referred to as pit bull in court on more than one occasion (I take it as a compliment regardless of how it is intended). I also can't stand defense attorneys whiners, beggars or people who won't take no for an answer. In short, I'm fine with who I am, and I don't care anymore if everyone likes me because I know not everyone does or will like me no matter what I say or do. What I'd like is to feel about my body the way I feel about myself.

I think I have the opposite of a bad body image.  You know how some people who are thin, look in the mirror and see only their flaws? I think it's called body dysmorphia.  I don't think I have that per se but sometimes the image I have of myself in brain is much better than the one I see reflected in the mirror or especially in photographs. Sometimes I'll see a picture of myself and think: "That's what I look like?!  No, way!  I'm prettier than that or I can't possibly be that fat!"  And that's what I'm hoping to change, I don't want to look in the mirror or at photographs and think "Eww, Ick!" 💖

Taco'bout it Tuesday: Bullet Journal update

Previously I shared with you my bullet journals.  Now that I've been doing BLE for more than a month, I thought I'd share an update.

Below is the habit tracker portion of my BLE journal for the first 25 days. As I said above, I'm well over 30 days into this program, but I had to start a new page as of day 26, so I'm just sharing these first 25 days. I'll share the next page once I reach 50 days!

By way of explanation, the entries down the left hand side come from BLE's nightly check list.  I actually track "commit" through "weight" in the morning, and then rate my hunger and cravings scales after my last meal and check off whether I've posted or been successful before bed.

What does each one mean?  Glad you asked:

Commit: Every morning while I meditate, I make a promise to myself to follow the bright lines as best as I can.

Meal plan: Though I do a weekly meal plan on Sundays, I assess daily whether I've actually followed through (or a reasonable facsimile) as best as I can before checking this habit in the tracker.

Mediate: I mediate first thing every morning for 15 minutes. It's become a ritual I love and hate to miss. As you can see, I didn't miss one morning in the first 25 days.  I incorporate yoga and other stretching exercises as well.  I started doing the stretching out of necessity last summer so I could get out bed each morning with my bad back, but now it is truly an essential part of my morning routine.

Sleep: I give myself credit in the sleep column if I've gotten at least 7.5 hours of sleep.

Weight: The scale is still not my friend because it only moves in small ounces.  As long as that movement is in the down direction, then I don't have too much room for complaint.  On those days when the scale has inexplicably gone up an ounce or two or stayed the same, I do get frustrated and think, "what would the scale say if I wasn't following BLE?!"  It's frustrating, but I remind myself that I feel better and my clothes fit better and hopefully the scale will eventually cooperate.  I've convinced myself that I need the daily accountability of weighing every morning.  I'm concerned that if I switch to a weekly weigh in, then I won't be as diligent on a daily basis with not blurring my lines.

Hunger scale:  This number is on a scale of 1 to 5 assessing how hungry I get between meals. Hunger hasn't really been an issue, the spacing between meals and amount of food that is permitted is satiating.  I'm considering adding a fasting component to this regimen which is also permitted under the BLE program. I don't eat anything after dinner which is typically over by 6:15, and I don't eat breakfast again until 6:30 am, so there's 12 hours of fasting anyway.  Some days I'll stretch that first meal until 8 am, after I get to work.  I could physically stretch the fasting window longer and eat only between the hours of 11 - 6 for a 17/7 fasting/eating schedule, but most days it's not conducive to eat while I'm at work at 11 am and then again at 2 pm.  I'm still tweaking this part of BLE and will update.

Cravings scale: This number is also on a scale of 1 to 5.  Mostly my "cravings" are sugar cravings, specifically chocolate. I haven't really been tempted by bread, pasta or cookies, though those items are still in my pantry, but chocolate is definitely a vice.  It's not reflected above, but I allowed myself literally two small bites of dark chocolate on days 28 and 29.  I'm not beating myself up over those slips, since I started this, I've successfully abstained from temptations such as wedding cake, bundt cakes, Valentine's chocolates, chocolate covered strawberries, Girl Scout cookies, pasta, crackers, wine, and whole host of other items that I love but no longer eat, so allowing myself 2 small bites of dark chocolate is not going to send me on a downward spiral of overeating sugar and flour.

Post: I give myself credit for posting if I write a blog entry or if I post a comment on the BLE Facebook page.

SUCCESS 😊: Means that I kept my commitment to follow my bright lines.  As with any measure of success, there's always room for improvement, so though I've given myself credit for being successful every day since I started this program, even though there have been days when I haven't been 100% perfect.  As I mentioned above, I allowed myself 2 bites of chocolate on 2 different days, but I still gave myself credit for "SUCCESS 😊"  those days because my success on those days far outweighed the small deviations, and importantly those small bites of chocolate didn't send me on a downward spiral of eating too much chocolate.  Another example is that I don't weigh every ounce of food I put in my mouth.  Yes, weighing my food is a bright line, and yes, I'm blurring it, but after awhile, because I eat mostly the same things everyday, it is a bit tedious.  So, when I eat something new or different, of course I weigh or measure it, but I don't weigh or measure every item, every meal, every day. 💖

Have you started a bullet journal?  I've shown you mine, now show me yours!