Weigh-in #6

I have to refer to two posts back (the fun one with Don Draper) to keep myself level-headed this morning. I stayed the same this morning; lost zero lbs. I kind of smelled this one coming; in fact I thought maybe I'd have the dreaded first gain of the year. I stepped on and off three times hoping to even see the number drop a tenth of a pound; but no. Exactly the same. So okay.

The picture above is a tad grim, but the message is pretty fucking spot on for someone who needs to lose 150 lbs. Just keep walking this path; keep going. Over the weekend I had two good gym workouts and I managed to spend time at a friend's house for Oscar Night and stick with all keto foods (cheddar, nuts, chicken breast) and stay away from pretzels and other random appetizers that don't fit with my plan. I did polish off almost a whole bottle of red wine and felt a little dry-mouth and bloat-y this morning so the 'same' on the scale may be related, but I can't really over-analyze; I just have to shove on.

For March and April, my plan is to keep alcohol consumption to 1-2 days MAX per ten day period. That will allow me to still work in the occasional indulgent night out (or in) but stay on a more level routine on other days. Just checked MyFitnessPal and wow yeah this past week I drank 'something' on Tue, Wed, Thurs, Sat, and Sunday. Yikes. I now measure and track, but that's still 300-600 extra calories every time and I bet I would have been down one pound or more if I hadn't.

So, yes. Same Same. Here we go.

Two Months! Drive By Picture Post.

Weigh in is Monday so no numbers to report. I just got back from the gym and here is a post-workout progress comparison. Two solid months of low carb eating is making me a healthier, happier, more comfortable being.

Weigh-in Number 5 of 2014!!

I deserve that wink. I was actually looking for more of a 'celebration' type gif that would fully express my JOY at the scale this morning, but I decided to keep it classy. I feel like Don Draper would be totally on board with a Keto diet; they ate lots of steak and real butter in the 60s. You're welcome, ladies.

So. I am down SIX POUNDS since my last look at the scale. Needless to say, I am feeling super motivated to 'stay the course' because this brings me to 17 lbs off in less than two months and it's a nice pay off.

A few things I've noticed that are important for me to remember and might be helpful for you if you're doing low carb:

-Every day matters, but you don't get to see results on a daily basis. You just don't; so stop getting on the scale every morning, stop taking so many selfies, stop looking at your bedazzled-pocket size 11/13 jeans from 2001 hoping they fit you yesterday.

-Tracking matters.  I've personally railed against this but I'm giving in completely. I credit tracking to this current breakthrough and now that I've found My Fitness Pal members through the Reddit xxketo board I'm getting great ideas- and I like tracking with others. If you're on MFP, please friend me-saradalhed is my username. I've logged in for at least two weeks straight and it's becoming a habit.

-The 6 lbs I 'lost' in the past 10 days were actually lost over the past 30 days. The WHOOSH is real; don't let it mess with your head.

-Notice the small things.  Ooooh look-this bra I only wore once before it cut off my circulation now fits perfectly! Heeee my wedding rings are spinning around again! Yay; I can pull off these linen pants without unbuttoning them; etc. 

-Keep going. Settle in; this will take awhile.

Oh, and here is a progress photo for Photo Friday:

Have a super weekend everyone and thank you so much for your support!

feeling shrinky!

Friday will be day 50 and I get to weigh in again soon, but I feel like checking in. Did you see that little phrase there- 'get to'?   I am genuinely excited for my next look at the scale and I'm just trucking along with low carb eating. Even though my last two weigh-ins were ho-hum5000, I'm seeing so many signs of weight loss that I know I'll see a drop on Friday. Today I put on a sweater that was body-hugging over the holidays and now is baggy around the stomach. Happy.

Speaking of ho-hum5000, it's a little dead out there in BlogLand. I saw a facebook post from Brooke Not on a Diet that said today is when most people crap out on their New Year's Resolutions. Maybe that has something to do with the lack of posts.  Honestly, I think 6-7 weeks is generous- in years past I was lucky to make it to Weight Watcher meeting #3 before deciding to skip a week and never go back. I'm starting to feel in deep-down-full-body-womanly-knowledge way that I will see this low-carb/high-fat year through. I'm still holding four months in my head as an amount of time that will somehow cement my status as a true low-carber but almost two months feels pretty legit.

The only thing I did fuck up royally is the no-drinking-at-all until March promise. January was completely dry, but I've secretly had a couple of drinks (always low or no carb) in the past few weeks. Last night I had my first glass of red wine since December 31st and it was TERRIFIC. I do not plan to pick up the 4-6 times per week habit again, but I've clearly decided to let in some monitored booze. I don't want to slow down my weight-loss and I cannot afford to have lots of high calorie days, so I'm planning on no more than once per week.

In other braggy news, I managed to makeover my living room and kitchen this past weekend while Adam was out of town. The fact that I ran around shopping, lifting heavy items, cleaning, assembling, craigslist-bargaining, and making our apartment awesome INSTEAD of laying around watching El Bachelor is clearly a reflection of how I'm feeling about myself.

See you Friday. Enjoy your week!

underwhelmed, yes. determined, you betcha.

Day 40 on low carb/high fat/keto/modified atkins/paleo with cheese/whatever you want to call it. I broke my stall and lost two diced organic tomato cans full of fat. See photo:

That lump is a pound of fat, and I lost two. Hooray. (sigh).

Here's what's been happening:

I am still fully on board with this eating plan. I don't eat simple carbs. The few I take in come from incidental carbohydrates in things like cheese, spinach, avocados, lettuce, half-and-half, and almond butter.  The first 10 days I lost 6 lbs, the second 10 I lost 3, then ZERO, and now this morning as of day 40 I lost another 2 lbs. Should I be pleased that I'm down 11 pounds in forty days? Should I be happy that I am reducing without hunger, discomfort, and only occasional exercise? I feel like yes, I should be. Instead I'm annoyed because it's starting to sink in that NOTHING IS EASY, ESPECIALLY LOSING WEIGHT.

Is keto/low carb a godsend for those of us with insulin resistance and carb addiction? Well, fuck yes it is. I know it is for me. My drives to work in the morning are very different. I no longer want to stop at the Bristol Farms on my way to work and buy a 900-calorie cinnamon roll, eat it in the car, and then realize I've started a chain reaction of all-day eating. After a 'breakfast pastry' I'm hungry for lunch like three hours later, and then when a 1000 calorie takeout lunch is not enough I eat a twix bar and cookies from the work kitchen two hours after that, and then drive home cranky and HUNGRY because I've been eating carbs all day and I can't...stop. That feeling, the whole awful shameful shitty habit and compulsion of overeating- it sucks. I haven't binged or felt ashamed of how much food I've eaten in 40 days. For that I'm grateful.

So what has to be refined? I do have to watch my intake. I'm eating too many calories. The 'nothing is easy' comes from the gobsmacked realization that-despite the testimonials of regular sized people from Internetlandia who claim you don't have to watch portions or count calories on low carb diets-it's pretty easy to take down 2500-3000 calories in a day of lowcarb eating. Because I'm 37 and sedentary like you read about, I can't lose weight like that. I need to add in some movement and I need to shoot for 1800-1900 calories a day. The other thing which I've been dragging my feet (mentally) on is considering limiting dairy to cream in my morning coffee. I am going to try calories and exercise first because I want to keep my close personal relationship with CHEESE alive and well. But I swear to Xenu losing 150 lbs is more important to me than any food and I will do what it takes.

Hope you all do what it takes this week!

Build me up, Buttercup.

Sometimes you 'need' to read stories like this one; it's a first-person piece titled The Power of Gradual and Consistent: here

The long and short of it is that if you commit to starting something, and then you make a habit of doing just a little bit- but doing it consistently-you will eventually be surpassing goals you couldn't have imagined reaching in the first place. Before the author gets into fitness he talks about money and putting away just 1% of his meager pay checks and then adding a percent until suddenly he was saving 10% of his income. I want to go back and edit out the word 'suddenly' (but I won't) because the whole point of that person's story is that things DON'T happen suddenly; it takes work over the long haul. On the fitness side, he now runs 5 miles a few times a week, but he started by doing 1/4 mile runs- that's it. He could have done more but he wanted to go slowly, and he states that he was able to work up to regular runs completely injury free. How many times have you started an 'exercise plan' and been sidelined by pulled muscles or an aching lower back and then let the habit slip away? I've personally done that plenty of times.

In the past 35-odd days since I restarted low carb high-fat, I've neglected exercise. Part of me wants to cling to the theory that exercise will only crank up my appetite and that I should allow the diet to do its job. I do believe that food intake is 80% or more of one's weight loss success, but I'm ready to give myself an exercise-related 10-20% boost. I also live in a building with an elevator, I commute an hour each day to work, and I sit for 8 solid hours at a computer 5 days a week- so I re-heallly don't move much. The additional calorie burn, though, is less important to me than how I feel when I move my body and actually sweat. This morning before breakfast I went to the gym for the first time since October (!) and did 30 minutes, then I walked to the bank and the grocery store before returning home. The entire act is putting me in a super-productive, positive mood, and I'm spelling everything out so that I can come back here and read it when I'm losing motivation to get out of the house on the weekend.

My next weigh-in is this coming Tuesday; February 11th is day 40. As of day 30 I was down 9 lbs since Jan 2, but I lost zero lbs between day 20 and day 30. Without limiting myself or freaking out, I decided to begin tracking my food intake via My Fitness Pal. Here is what's going on: my nutrition breakdown has been coming out to 5-6% carbs, 70-75% fat, and 20-25% protein. Those macros keep me in purple tinkle-stick ketosis; I am rarely hungry, and I completely ignore simple carbs like a champ; however, my calories are pretty high. I'm eating 2100-2300 calories daily which technically gives me a deficit but if I keep that up and I don't expend more calories I will lose at a glacial pace. I set my calories at 1900 and now my plan is to keep to the 5% 70% 25% macros but stick to 1900 or less calories per day.

Oh, by the by, I added the MyFitnessPal weight-loss ticker to the top and it reads 17 lbs lost because it reflects my entire loss from Sept 2012 on rather than just the current plan. I'm looking forward to Tuesday's weigh-in because I'm confident I will break my stall, and I'm also excited to hit 40 days on plan. Enjoy your weekends, and see you Tues!

Day 30 Check in/Weigh in/Face Pics

So there is my face Dec 28 vs Jan 31. I'm leading with some NSV progress, y'all, because I have to post a goose egg on the weigh-in chart. I have been reading about the attractively-named phenomenon of PISS -Post-Induction Stall Syndrome- but I thought it wouldn't affect me until I was at least 40-50 lbs down. Well, not so much. I am reporting zero lbs down this morning. Fucking fucksticks, fuckers. It's now officially February and I am behind.

So i'm annoyed with:

1) I was sure I'd be down 15 lbs by now and I am not.

2) The fact that I probably have to cut down on the truvia/splenda/coke zeros. I've been obese since I was 5 and I believe I am especially insulin resistant and sensitive to sweet tastes.

3) There may be more carbs than I think in the take out lunches I eat during the work week so I have to clean things up and/or start bringing my lunch to work.

4) I am going to start tracking.

Here is the good stuff:

1) I stayed faithfully away from sugar, flour, sweets, and was in ketosis (at varying degrees) every single day.

2) I kept my promise to abstain from alcohol. I don't remember the last time I took a full month off, and today is day one of month #2. Luckily February is the shortest month, because I am ready for a glass of wine.

3) Because of my protein/fat intake and almost no policing of LCHF/Keto foods, I was never hungry and I feel more than ever that this type of eating is both sustainable and right for ME.

4) I am down 9 pounds! 9 lbs times 12 months is 108. As someone posted on one of the reddit keto boards, 'this year is going to go by whether you lose weight or not'. Pretty cut and dry but it has stuck with me- I can't HANDLE another year just 'going by'.

5) I know I'm reducing. Pants and shirts fit better, my face is de-bloating, and my bras fit better. Despite the scale stall, I see and feel progress that keeps me motivated.


One of the low-carb bloggers that motivated me at the start of January was JLovely, and he has stated that you have to push through to four months on this eating plan before you can fully judge. The wonderful Leigh at Poonapalooza also let me know that when she did Dr. Poon's diet early on and was in ketosis she experienced the 'whoosh' of big scale losses after some frustrating stalls. There are so many stories and pics on reddit of people like this nerd couple who lost 90+lbs each in a year. I also look at Kaki's slow and steady 50 lb+ loss and I know that STICKING WITH IT is so much more important than what the scale said today after only 30 days. So stick with it I will.  Happy Weekend, friends!!