It Happens to Me, Too!!

I wanted to write a quick post to let you all know that stalls happen to me, too.  In fact, most of the time, I feel stalled.  I've just gotten to the point where I just let the process happen.  I eat my macros and I wait it out.  Sometimes, when I step on the scale (like yesterday) I'm 10 lbs heavier!  10!

Now, bear in mind that 10 lb increase over a month, is likely different than a 10 lb increase in 2 days.  Unless you are severely over-eating, it is IMPOSSIBLE to gain 10 pounds of fat over night.  What is likely is that it's water weight.  It's unlikely to gain any fat over night like that!!  So whether it's 2 lbs or 10 lbs.  Try not to worry, it happens to all of us!

Ok, now be impressed with my technological savvy.  Here is a pic of my graph for the past year with My Fitness Pal. I'm too lazy to take a screen shot and my husband is probably cringing right now, but it is what it is. This graph show that there were many weeks where I had no loss.  It doesn't show the first part of my weight loss because

it was not included in the graph.  I lost about a pound every day for the first 3 weeks.  I'd say it was a few every few days.  Now, that doesn't happen at all.  In fact, the weight loss seriously slowed after a few weeks.  Now it's around 5 pounds a month.  Or it was.  I'm not really worried about that at this point.  I just kind of know that it will keep decreasing and trust the process. 

I get messages about this all the time.  So I figured I'd take the time to address it.  In My Fitness Pal, I also only report the decreases.  Frequently, the scale goes up a few pounds.  Our bodies are constantly trying to keep themselves even and stable.  This is normal, it's called homostasis.  They want to hang on to the fat storage we have.  Water weight varies from day to day in most people by a few pounds.  This is completely normal.  There are many reason for this.  Injuries, dehydration, medications, foods we eat, sickness, menstrual cycle.  This can all play a role.  Try not to stress too much about it.  Just know that it happens to all of us.  Whether you are losing for first pound or your 77th pound.

I know for myself what caused my 10 pound gain.  I also know that it's something that won't be repeated and I can tell it's finally going back down!  I am hoping to lose a few more pounds so that's good news!  And while it bugs me, I am not going to let it worry me.  I'm going to keep eating what I know works for me and just trust the process.

Hang in there, friends!!

A Ketogenic Lifestyle

For probably the last month I've been particularly stressed. It started in a personal area of my life with a distant friend. Before I knew it, it was seeping into my every day life, I was crying more. The weather hasn't been sunny and happy. So when it was time for derby evals, which I find stressful anyway, I let all that affect me. Which is not an excuse for poor performance, but it is not helping me to keep my cool. (I must have been not very humble in my past life, because this life is lesson after lesson in correcting that!) I decided to write about something I've been successful at and that's my diet.

In the past, I'd let all this stress become an excuse to eat whatever I wanted.  I'd totally derail my diet or any healthy habit I was trying to have. Right now, I'm not sure what I want to do. Maybe I'd like to skate or work out or something that would help me achieve the goal I have my eyes on. But honestly, I'm stuck on how exactly to fix it. So I guess I'll write and hopefully that will help.

This time last year, I had just gone back to skating after being off for 6 months from a derby injury and I was skating, and eating healthy (limiting calories and healthy grains, low fat) but I was gaining weight at an alarming rate. I was desperate to find something, so I started looking into gastric bypass surgery. I have a couple friends who were successful with this and I was thinking, "I've tried everything!". Well, my insurance doesn't cover it, so that didn't get off the ground very fast. I had a brilliant idea after watching My 600lb Life, I could attempt to eat what they were eating post surgery, they lost weight not from the surgery, but from what they were and weren't eating. Also the Doctor on the show seemed to push higher protein and lower carbohydrates in general. I looked up a "post-surgery sample diet" on bariatric doctor's website and followed that for a few days and was surprised to find that my cravings were diminished.

At the same time, I belonged to a group on Facebook. This group was all about eating a Low Carbohydrate, High Fat diet. I was just part of the group, lurking, at first. The ideas they were throwing around went against everything I ever considered in diet advice. If I was hanging onto 40%+ in body fat, then how exactly could I lose weight by eating 70% of my diet in fat? All conventional medicine has told us the exact opposite. My mother changed us to skim milk back when I was a kid. WIC taught me to give my kids skim milk, to reduce fat, after they were two years old. So I watched their posts and I was surprised by what I read. Not only were these people controlling their Type 2 Diabetes, lowering cholesterol and triglycerides, they were losing weight, they were having less inflammation, they weren't craving sugar. They were eating until they were full. To be honest, after a few days on a diet meant to accommodate a smaller amount of food from a decreased stomach size, I was ready to expand... figuratively. So I started off by just looking for low carb choices that were higher in fat. If I was hungry, I ate fat. After about 2 weeks, I stopped even being hungry. Especially since much of the time, I wasn't really hungry anyway. It was stress eating, combined with a blood glucose level that was slightly elevated from continuing to feed my cravings and stress with sugar. When you are constantly eating lots of carbs your blood glucose gets used to being a little on the high side, even if your insulin is working like it should. Your body starts wanting it to be higher. Then your insulin gets higher. Your body likes this, because it signals that there is a surplus and it's cashing in! It works harder to get you to eat more sugar (carbs). If only I could get my brain to think of money the same way! This way of eating is a way to get you to start "spending your fat" instead of saving it for retirement or a rainy day!

During the first week doing this, I lost 8 lbs. Yes, it was probably water. But 8 lbs of water that I don't really need. I could instantly feel a difference in my joints. I had just had surgery in my left knee just the August prior. I had been waking up daily with swollen, hurting fingers. I felt old. That day, with that water loss, no one else could see it, but I knew something was different. It made me keep going. After that, nearly every day for the next 2 weeks, I lost another pound (this doesn't happen for everyone, but I was 235 lbs and close to 50% bodyfat) I had lost 21 lbs by the 21st day of this diet. Then things started to slow down. 

I could see that I could do it. I started researching this diet more, I read The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living. I read everything I could about it on Lyle McDonald's site. I joined a couple of other Facebook groups namely, ketogenic dieters and ketogains and I just took it all in. I started taking pictures of myself, and thought, "I'm never, ever sharing those!" (Ha!) and was able to see a change in myself. I continued to lose weight at a rate of about 5 lbs a month. 

It's actually easier to pick up on stress when you eat this way, because when I'm not stressed, the hunger signals are different. My body will alert me that I'm hungry, but I can easily put it off. When I am feeling stressed, I wander around trying to find something to ease my stress and try eating to ease that feeling. At first I really had to listen to my body, but now, I just know, if I feel like I need to pace and I'm opening the fridge, it's usually not hunger.

I started following the macros on the Ketogenic Dieter's page probably in May. A ketogenic diet is based off a percentage of fats (usually about 70%) and keeping carbs super low, but usually AT LEAST as low as 50 grams per day.  You'll find most people keep them around 20 grams. The KD group has their own macros that they use. Instead of eating 70% fat, they take into consideration that you have fat on your body that you are trying to use up instead of store. So my macros are more like 55% fat, 5% carbs and the rest protein. I aim for 120 grams a protein a day. My muscle mass has definitely gone up since I started this. This is common for people who are following the macros the way I do. I try to keep my carbs at 20 grams NET (this is total carbs listed - fiber count - erythritol, if it's an ingredient).

I know when I first started on this diet, I had some concerned friends who pointed out that your brain needs 50 grams of glucose a day. Which is totally true. What is also true that your body can make all glucose that it needs, whenever it is needed. Since I eat adequate protein, I've had no issues with muscle loss or anything of the sort, like I said, my muscle mass is increasing and I can feel muscle definition that I didn't have previously. 

To date, I've lost 77#. My asthma has been drastically decreased. My joints no longer feel like I'm 100 and I can get up off the floor like I don't have a small child on my back. I no longer feel like I need to eat when stressed out, which is allowing me to find different, healthier coping mechanisms for dealing with stress. All those things are huge.  It didn't happen overnight.  There were times when I went several weeks with no loss what-so-ever. But I don't worry about it much. I just keep eating what I eat and over time, the scale moves in the right direction. I should add that at some point in this process that my thyroid wasn't working correctly either, but that's a whole blog post for another day. I lost about 30+ before that was figured out. I hope this answered some questions and I hope you all have a great day! 

One Year

I've started off 2016 74# pounds lighter than when I started 2015.  It's pretty cool.  I can't even begin to explain the benefits I've found from losing weight and changing my way of eating (diet).  The benefits range from the need for my asthma inhaler a lot less to an increase in self-esteem.

When I started off last year, I decided to make a change, not just in my diet, but in my thinking.  I decided to celebrate every pound I lost by posting publicly on Facebook.  I did this because, I thought it would help me stay on track.  I would be publicly holding myself accountable. That worked.  I didn't realize that so many of my friends and family (and even their friends and family!) would be watching.  I was prepared for some backlash and eye-rolling.  But you know what happened? No the backlash and eye-rolling!  I became an inspiration to myself.  Which in turn has inspired other people.  My Facebook posts may revolve around eating and losing weight (along with kids, derby, politics and things that amuse me!) but there is now a lack of the self-depreciating posts that I used to have, I didn't have a lot, but I had a lot more than I deserved. Humans mostly learn the best if they feel safe and loved.  For some reason our culture as a whole seems to teach us that we don't deserve to feel safe and loved from ourselves.  We apologize for being ourselves! Let me tell you, you're awesome and deserve to be your own biggest cheerleader!!  So if you are trying to learn a new derby skill or you are trying to start a new way of eating, you should be gentle with yourself. Expect that you are going to make mistakes. Expect that you will eventually figure it out. If you need help, don't be too proud to ask for it. Give yourself props for just trying. Each time you do this, your are reinforcing the positive part of learning.

I get posts in my inbox now, asking me how to get started, if a recipe will fit into macros and the best ones...thanking me for posting my progress and how they have seen a difference in themselves and how me publicly posting about my change of lifestyle has made a difference to them. 

On those days when I have on "fat goggles", those types of things inspire me back.  When someone posts that they lost 1 lb, I feel over the moon for them.  Because, I know first hand the struggle sometimes to lose just one stinking pound.  I know the tears and the depression I felt when I was doing everything that I had been taught in nutrition classes and it didn't help AND I WAS STARVING. 

I'm so happy that I decided to share my journey. I'm not sure if I would have been as successful had I not, if I would have continued to fear publicly failing (which is code for publicly learning). Thanks for being there for me!