Over at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, Crystal has succeeded in losing 12 pounds in 10 weeks, in spite of a vacation in San Antonio. w00t!
So that’s encouraging. It shows what can be done, even with the occasional lapse. Before I came across Crystal’s post, I’d been reflecting on the whole weight loss experience. So far, I’ve lost 15.4 pounds since May 13, with 5.9 more to go. Hope to be down to 135 pounds by the end of August…actually, the target is slightly less than that, since I figure once I quit trying to lose weight, a few pounds will probably come back.
CardioDoc, that lithe old boy, remarked that you can’t lose weight unless you’re slightly hungry all the time.
Well. That’s just not my style. I’m too self-indulgent to go around hungry and cranky all the time. And it doesn’t appear to be true — I’m rarely hungry but, except for a week or ten days on the “plateau,” I’ve been losing weight steadily.
But one thing has become apparent: if you go to bed just slightly hungry, you do wake up a few ounces or a pound lighter. It’s not a matter of trying to sleep while you’re ravenous — just going to bed on a lightly packed stomach.
I think that means that you should eat your larger meals earlier in the day — at breakfast or lunch. Since I’ve been occupying myself most mornings with exercise (walking, until I went lame; now swimming or doing physical therapy exercises), I haven’t really felt like eating a lot in the morning. But by early afternoon I’m ready for a real meal…so that’s when I’ve been eating dinner, including a glass of wine. Today it was a gorgeous curry with chicken and lots of veggies…not too tacky.
Swimming seems to burn at least as many calories as walking. It only takes about 35 minutes to swim 30 or 33 laps of the pool in the backyard — about a half-mile. By contrast, the 3½-mile march around the park consumed about an hour and fifteen minutes. And now that I’ve fallen off the “plateau,” I’m losing weight as fast as I was with the walking.
Even at dawn and sunset, it’s hotter than the hubs of Hades out there. It was 112 when I climbed into the pool around 7 o’clock this evening. The water is now so warm that after about 15 laps, just when I’m getting on a roll (uhm…on a row?), I can feel my face getting red. I actually get overheated in the water! It’s like swimming in a bathtub.
But so far, I no longer look like a pregnant grandmother. My shorts are falling off. The jeans aren’t–but they’re made of a stretchy fabric, and besides, they were too tight to begin with. Now I don’t have to lay down on the bed or the floor to zip up the damn things.
The blood pressure is still under control at 107/66, despite my having abandoned the irbesartan several days ago. The little home blood pressure monitor runs about 6 or 8 points lower than the one in the doctor’s office, so the real systolic measure is probably around 113 to 115. However, the irbesartan’s effect on blood pressure persists for at least two weeks after you quit taking it. But…however x 2: it was never this low while I was on the drug.
So this brings us to the Big Question: Once you reach the target weight, how do you stop losing weight but not gain it back????
Obviously, the number one trick will be to work daily exercise into the fabric of my life. And if the back and hip pain don’t stop before the weather gets cold, that’s going to be a trick. Really, I can barely walk. Right now the hikes are flat out of the question, which is fine while it’s 95 at dawn and 112 at sunset. But when the pool is too cold for swimming…then what?
My friends gave me a perfectly fine bicycle, which I suppose I’ll have to start using. Problem is, I don’t think it’s very safe. You can’t get from point A to point B without having to navigate traffic. And Phoenix is decidedly not a bike-friendly city. Some of those crazies out there will swerve at you, cut you off, and behave as though they’re deliberately trying to hit you. Even wearing a helmet, with nothing but a T-shirt and a pair of jeans between you and the pavement, you run quite the risk of serious injury.
There are few things I dislike more than gyms. As the odd kid out, I grew up hating gym and the general miseries associated with coping with mean brats and air-headed PE teachers. Gives me the creeps to go into those places. No way am I gonna pay for the privilege of using unsanitary equipment in a place that would give me the willies even if it weren’t populated with lithe young narcissists. Yuck!
Nor am I at all interested in decorating my house with treadmills and stationary bikes.
Soooo…if I can’t walk by October, it looks like the only choice will be bicycling. Guess I’ll need to buy a better helmet.
I’m not a big fan of the gym, either, but it’s a necessity for me to visit at least once or twice a week to get some exercise in. I’ve been riding horses twice a week for the past few months which gives me some good exercise outside the gym, but now that the weather is humid and sticky in Chicago I don’t want to spend a lot of time doing anything outside.
Since I don’t have home exercise equipment either, I must go to the gym. :-/ I try to keep it minimal by working out only once a week with the trainer and then taking a spin class one evening a week. Doing home exercise is somewhat of an option. I have both a yoga mat and a thicker exercise mat, as well as an exercise ball. I’ve found a few good yoga videos on Youtube and could potentially go in search of some good routines that are more aerobic in nature. I’ve also heard of sites where one can subscribe to exercise videos, but haven’t checked them out. Then there’s the tried and true DVD route (and it seems used exercise DVDs are pretty cheap at the resale shops). Now, if I could just get over my issues with getting sweaty I could lose some more weight, too.
Yoga’s great. I’ve found if you can get several people together sometimes you can hire an instructor to come to one person’s home. That turns the whole “exercise” thing into a social event and makes it a lot more tolerable.
I live a couple of blocks away from a public pool where I take my laps. It’s one of the coldest pools in the city, but I find the exercise is even more enjoyable in cold water – you shiver getting in but by the time you go through a couple of laps. you’re fine. You might find if you’re doing laps for exercise, the pool might be viable for most of the year.
As for cycling, it’s my primary mode of transportation, but I’ve been doing it all my life, and if I didn’t have my honed instincts and traffic navigation skills, it would be suicide. And that’s in a bike-friendly city.
Treadmills are great. I laid out some serious cash for a good one last year and have used it since. I watch nice, violent shows on a DVD player (Sopranos and Breaking Bad) and the time just whizzes by. You will find that walking or running on the treadmill is SO much easier than doing it “for real” outside – the cushioning effect of the running bed, and the hip-friendly effect of a very slight incline, are great. Pop a nice big fan in front of the thing and you never over-heat. Highly recommended.
One of my friends used to swim 12 months a year. There’s a limit to how cold I’m willing to get, though. That water gets pretty icy in the winter, especially when we have a hard freeze at night.
The treadmill at the doc’s office was fun. But it takes up SO much space!!! Where on earth do you put such a thing? Also, for the time being it’s moot in these parts: I can barely walk. The pain caused by putting any weight at all on the right leg is just astonishing.
I have kept 35 pounds off for 7 months so far and the things I’ve learned are:
Remind yourself you are bored, not hungry when you get cravings (that are from boredom)
Watch the carbs
Know which small pants have no stretch or size variations from washing and drying, and put them on periodically for fit
Apparently, your idea of eating larger meals earlier in the day has been proven to help lose weight! http://on.wsj.com/12Y7OXK