Primal Journal ~ Merryish page 3

[merryish]

Obsessed - that's how I get myself into trouble with rice! It always seems harmless, until the aftermath hits me.

Today's been a lot better. Yesterday I ate completely clean - dinner ended up being a LOT of steak tips cooked in coconut oil and garlic, and no actual veggies, but the day was more important for what I didn't eat than what I did. I avoided sugar entirely, dairy almost entirely, and definitely stayed far away from carbs. I also hopped on the exercise bike for a relatively slow 30 minute spin after dinner. My blood sugar was at 83 when I went to bed, and at 86 when I woke up.

I also got a solid 7.5 hours sleep. I woke up without the alarm, "naturally" -- if naturally can be described as "when my room mate got loud enough to wake me up." But I slept hard and woke up refreshed and not tired, so I count that as a good night. So much better than those two nights when my blood sugar was jangling around 120ish.

Today I had 3 eggs for breakfast, cooked in butter. Some black coffee throughout the morning. Lunch is a boiled egg and all the leftover steak tips from last night. I think tonight will be sausage and the broccoli I meant to have last night.

I'm in ketosis again as of this morning. I did check my weight - I'm trying not to do that as often now - and while I'm up 3 lbs, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. I feel like I'm solidly back on track now.

[merryish]

Fun fact: Checked my first journal post here, and I've lost 10 lbs since then. That was 7/17. Today I'm at 283. Not exactly the swiftest in terms of loss these days, but heading in the right direction. I had about two weeks of eating carbs (fairly clean ones, but still carbs) in there, spread out over the two month period, which probably accounts for the slowdown.

Things I've been doing well with lately:

1. Sleeping! Generally getting 7 to 7.5 hours a night. I'd prefer more, but I have to work for a living, and there's so much in the world to read!!!

2. Exercise. I've been getting in half an hour on the recumbent bike every day this week. Today I probably won't use it because I went out on my real actual BIKE BIKE BIKE today. CRAP my legs hurt! =D But I feel kind of awesome. I was around 310 the last time I was on that bike. 30 lbs can make a huge difference.

3. Medical care. I'm finally in a decent PT program for my ankle and my knees, one that actually gives me hope that I can get a decent chunk of mobility back. Also, thanks to getting strict with my exercise and low carbs again, my blood sugar is back in the 80's most of the time (after skyrocketing last weekend due to, uh, extreme badness.)

Things I need to work on:

1. I'm overdoing the dark chocolate again lately

2. I'm in danger of overdoing the sweet potatoes

3. I need to eat more greens/vegetables

4. I need to consume less dairy

[obsessed]

Hey Merry... 3 out of 4 of your things to work on i am trying to work on as well... I have been out of ketisis for a week now and have been lazy about getting back.... the strawberries have been on sale and I have a hard time resisting A LOT of fresh strawberries.... its definately enough to throw me out of ketosis as my breath is not so bad any more.

[merryish]

Kind of winding my way through a stall here, though I use that term very loosely. In my mind, a stall is something that hits even though you're working your program as usual. In this case, it's sort of a fortuitous stall -- since I've been off-plan for a couple of months now and would have expected my weight to go up a lot more than it has. I've actually lost a few pounds recently, but I suspect I would have lost more if I'd been more choosy in my choices.

I mentioned that to my room mate this morning, along with the fact that I've never really been a big fan of losing weight when I'm not actively trying to. There's been a lot of diabetes and cancer in my family; unexplained weight loss is just not my favorite thing. But she pointed out to me that even when I'm eating "badly" this year, it's "badly" by strict primal/paleo terms. Still great in comparison to my old lifestyle.

For instance, I haven't actually managed to cut back on my dairy, I've been eating a lot of nuts and dark chocolate, and probably overdoing the high-sugar fruit (bananas and apples) too. A bad "splurge" night for me is having rice with my curry, where once upon a time it would be having rice and a giant bag of doritos along with my curry.

I guess it would be more fair to say I've been slacking off on things like avoiding seed/soy oils and not avoiding sugar hard enough. I haven't been in ketosis, but I've stayed generally low-carb. It's just that I haven't been sourcing the oils very carefully; getting lazy, eating out too much. I'm still trying to yank myself back into line, but there's been a lot of temptation lately, and I haven't tried all that hard to resist.

Still, I'm hanging in. I don't feel guilty or bad about it, not really. I get twinges. But I sort of feel like my brain/body needs the break from hypervigilance. I've been doing better with sleeping - 7+ hours most nights - and I've been a lot more relaxed lately. Maybe I'm making excuses - to some extent I know I am! - but this doesn't feel like "falling off the wagon" to me, and I say that from a wealth of experience at falling off of wagons.

Maybe my head just needs a break every 100 lbs or so?

[merryish]

Still wobbling - I can resist anything but temptation, these days. Had an apple and a banana with coffee (and some coconut butter) for breakfast, and was predictably ravenous by lunch. Lunch was a nice batch of primal chili, made by my housemate. Then after lunch, more tea (I'm drinking a ton of tea lately, black or herbal, no doctoring) and a couple of squares of dark chocolate.

All perfectly primal, but not as low carb as I should be. On the other hand, I'm still losing weight. So while the wobble is still there, I'm doing a little better than I was over the last week or so.

10 lbs from now I'll be at 100 lbs lost. WACKY to think about that. Every time I lose a couple more lbs I wonder how much more I need to lose before my knees get better (they damn well better get better, at least a little). Not that I mind at all looking and feeling and BEING better every day, but I started this for my knees, and it would suck if they were the only things that didn't improve.

[merryish]

So, weirdly, until this morning, I hadn't done the math on the difference between my starting weight and my goal weight. I think I may have had a mental block about it - like if I didn't look at that number directly, it couldn't get me.

At first, I just needed to look at it in little bits I could accomplish, not one big terrifying block. But now I have confidence that I actually can get to (or really close to) my goal weight, so the number isn't as terrifying as it was. When I reach my goal weight, I will have lost approximately 240 lbs.

That's kind of wild, isn't it? You could make an entirely separate, morbidly obese adult person out of that!

As of today I'm down 90 lbs. That means I have 150 to go. In 30 more lbs and I'll be at the half-way mark. (I'm all about the math today.)

Some of the milestones I've marked:

+ My LDL and triglycerides are way down; my HDL is up. My blood pressure and blood sugar levels have hit normal, even though I'm still taking (a very low dose of) prednisone for an autoimmune condition. My WBC count is way down, indicating less systemic inflammation.

+ I started out wearing size 32 pants. Now I'm in size 22.

+ When I went car shopping in February, I had to push the seat back all the way to fit behind the steering wheel. Now it's two clicks forward, and I have room to spare.

+ In February, if I sat on the recumbent exercise bike in my living room, my hips pressed uncomfortably against the handles to either side of the seat. Now, there's at least an inch of clearance on either side.

+ I have three "aspirational" jackets bought last winter that didn't fit, that are now in permanent rotation.

+ I bought a watch last Christmas and I had to use the second to last notch to make it fit. Now I regularly use the sixth notch, sometimes the seventh.

+ I can wear necklaces of a normal length now. (And my room mate reports that she can now close her hands all the way around my neck, in case she ever needs to strangle me to death.)

+ In August, for the first time in about five years, I got on a plane and did not need a seatbelt extender.

+ People at work regularly notice my weight loss and comment on it.

I feel really good about all this, obviously! I have a long road left to travel, but I don't have any doubt that I can do it. The only thing that keeps me from being 100% happy about my health is the fact that my knees are still just incredibly painful. That's my main motivation, now - getting my knees back in shape, or, failing that, losing as much weight as I can prior to any surgery I might need.

[obsessed]

Good job Merryish... keep up the good work!

[merryish]

Still on the way down! I saw 275 at the beginning of the week, but I always see a new number before I officially "hit" it. Today I was 276.

It's weird how things go in waves. I had a couple of months where no one was commenting on my weight loss, but this week everyone has mentioned it. I admit, I love the feedback. And it's especially cool because I get it from such unexpected sources. A guy I only see every now and then around the office said yesterday, "Wow, you are disappearing. You look fantastic!" And today one of the company Execs (someone I used to work really closely with, and now only see sometimes) said, "I love watching this evolution, I'm so proud of you. I just look at you and think, look at those little shoulders!" (She is a doll.)

These things are especially nice to hear after a Halloween Night that involved way more Almond Joy than it should have.

I have some weird mental things going on now. It seems too early - I mean, I'm still 276, right? But I sometimes catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror in passing, and I think, I'm getting so small. I'm clearly not small in the slightest, but in comparison to where I was, wow. The difference in my face is really striking, and weirdly also in my wrists, and my legs around my knees. I've FINALLY gone down a blouse size - before, my jeans size and bust size were shrinking but the blouse size remained resolutely the same.

Or I'll be sitting in a chair watching TV, and think, wow, my stomach is really small. What on earth would it look like if it were actually flat? If I reach my goal weight, how much less of me could there actually be? After decades of being hugely overweight, I'm used to feeling like I could easily damage most of the things around me by lumbering into them, knocking them over, or just sitting in them.

Now, even though I have so much further to go, I sometimes get a glimpse of what it will feel like to be the other way around. I feel weirdly fragile sometimes, if that makes sense. My wrists look tiny to me. I'm 5'3", and I've lost over a quarter of my body weight. It feels weird, and not entirely good, to think that if I hit my goal weight I will actually be really little. I will be 1/3 of my highest weight. It feels a bit unsafe. How odd is that?

I've also started paying so much more attention to myself in terms of clothes and makeup. I've never been a make-up person - before this week, I probably wore it once in the past three or four years. I usually go without a trace of anything. But I'm up for a promotion at work, and trying to step up my wardrobe, so I'm dressing with a little more thought and style. I've bought actual necklaces and bracelets. I'm thinking about getting my ears re-pierced. And I picked out some tinted moisturizer, powder, eyeliner and mascara last week, plus a tinted lip gloss, which I've been wearing every day. It's very minimal, but it seems to make a big difference.

The odd thing is, I always felt too ugly and fat to bother with these things before. And I mean always. Even at far lower weights than this one. I remember being 180 and thinking I was a whale, that no one would ever want me, that I was too ugly and too fat and putting on makeup or trying to dress nicely would be like putting lipstick on a pig. (I was really horrible to myself on the inside, for a really long time.) I think on the way down, I have a better perspective and outlook. I can feel good about my appearance now because I know where I've been, and I know how to get through this process.

So, that's me, almost 100 down and about 140 to go, discovering that I'm actually a bit girly at age 41. Who knew?

[merryish]

New profile pic in honor of 95 lbs lost!

Here's before, for reference:

IMG_0393.JPG

And here's now!

photo copy 2.JPG

[merryish]

I'm at 97 lbs lost today. I've got a mini-goal in my head - I'd really like to hit -100 before November 30, the day I'm flying home to visit my dad for a week. And I think at this point, I can probably do it. Three more pounds in two weeks - if I keep up with the regular slow movement on a daily basis and stay off the sugar train, I don't anticipate any problems.

It'll be good to see him because he's my dad. But it'll be good for him to see me, too, because he hasn't laid eyes on me since I started eating primally in February. He'll have about 100 lbs less daughter than he did on my previous visit!

There's one thing that's a source of deep regret for me in life, and that's the fact that my mom passed away before my life changed. When she died, I was unemployed, unhappy, and at 370 lbs/38 years old, I had given up any hope of ever feeling healthy or having a normal life. Not long after, I found a great job I enjoy where people respect my abilities and care about me as a person, and then last year I discovered the primal way of living and started to feel in control of my weight, my health, and my life again. She would have been really happy, and really proud of me. So it really means a lot to me that I can show my dad how well I'm doing.

I can't wait to see him!