Calories, Sugar, Fats, and SCIENCE

Eat less. Exercise more. Burn more than you eat.
A simple formula for weight loss that is obvious and has failed me--and I certainly blame my self control, my perseverence, etc. Clearly burning more results in weight loss, but there are more factors that work against this than I knew about.

However, I've been doing research on food/sugar/insulin related issues with respect to my diagnosis of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). PCOS (as the name indicates), results in ovarian cysts, but part of the reason it does so is due to a malfunction in the insulin receptor (which is involved in follicle formation and release of an ovum). Due to this malfunction, the body (because it thinks it doesn't have enough insulin), makes more insulin than it needs. Insulin is super-efficient at shuttling sugar into fat stores. Sugar that is eaten is rapidly stored as fat, and the body (rather than wanting to use its fat stores) craves more food, because it needs more energy. Vicious cycle. Fortunately, I have never approached the danger zone of type II, but I am an excellent candidate should I not correct my health/weight issues.

Here's a little video to illustrate the relationship between insulin and fat.

The idea behind the video encompasses the hormones insulin and leptin. Leptin is a recently discovered hormone which assists in the regulation of hunger. It tells the brain "I've had enough." However, when there is an overabundance of insulin in the body, the insulin blocks the receptors for leptin.

So what to do? Buy a glucometer to keep my blood sugar at a healthy level? If I do want the leptin pathways to be functional, how do I kickstart it? Also, how do I find the balance between nourishing my body's cells (without harming this leptin-insulin imbalance) while still finding enjoyment in my food? Is it possible?

Sure. I guess. The first step is to acknowledge that in the light of my insulin issue, a calorie is not a calorie. It kills me to even think that. I used to think that it was a matter of physics--intake/burn. Period. But I just have to acknowledge that for me, that is NOT the sole consideration that I must make.

Again, at heart I am a scientist. I did a lot of research on how to re-enter the cycle of leptin's healthy intervention on food intake. Most of them endorsed a carbohydrate fast. Essentially, the goal was to intentionall put the body in ketosis and starve it for sugar. The body down-regulates insulin, utilizes fat stores in order to fuel its cells with energy. This results in metallic taste in the mouth, foul smelling urine, acetone-breath, and often what is called a "keto-flu" as your body adjusts. Doesn't that sound unhealthy? It does to me.

But, what can't be denied that over the last 30-40 years, our genetic pool hasn't changed a whole lot, but our food resources have. More grains, less fat. Low fat. No fat. More sugar in more places.

Of course fat can make you fat. Huge amounts of calories make you fat no matter what, and fat is VERY calorie dense. However, considering the insulin-sugar shuttle, sugar makes you fat, too.
So I decided to try something crazy, something I swore I'd never do. I decided to do a modified low carb thing. I did not (and do not) want to enter ketosis. I decided to consider cutting out starch (ALL grain--pasta, bread, rice, quinoa, etc, corn, and potatoes) and sugar (except that which comes from fruits/veggies/honey).

WHOA! What the hell? Seems like a big change. Well, truthfully, it wasn't. I didn't eat a lot of pasta, rice, or quinoa in general. Most of the potatoes I ate were french fries, and talking myself out of that wasn't hard either. The hardest things to think about were bread and corn. Bread! Cake! Tortillas! Cookies! Bah! And in truth, so far, I'm not missing them. I know that sounds improbable, but I don't. As for the sugar, that's a bit harder. I love ice cream. And occasionally I miss it.

But the changes I have made in my eating in other ways have MORE than compensated for what I was "giving up"--so much so, that I don't feel like I was giving much up at all. The reason being that I personally believe that I have adjusted my body's ability to feel satiated. I don't CRAVE like I did. I feel full with less food--way before I had ever expected to. How? I'll tell you...

NEXT POST (this one is long enough. phew).

SPRINGTIME

I think it's something about springtime that kicks me into gear. It happened last year, and it's happening again. I won't make statements like "maybe this time it will stick," or shit like that. But this is what I know:

D and I are getting married in August. I don't want to embarrassed to see photos of myself on such a wonderful day as that.

During my roly poly hibernation from health and exercise, I have REFUSED to buy new clothes. I wore my size 14s and large to XL tops, somehow managing to keep my weight JUST under stuffed sausage in those clothes.

I had a miscarriage in January. During that time, I had several medical appointments where I weighed in (clothed) at 190, 195, 199.9. CRAP CRAP CRAP. Seriously! Heaviest ever.

I dealt with emotional turmoil, hormonal flux, and stress like I always do--accidental weight loss. I somehow, without trying, went back down to my official re-weigh in: 187.75.
For a reminder, this is 7 pounds heavier than my prior "let's do this" moment. And with that plan, what I did was eat healthy, work out 4-5 days a week, and monitor my activity with a fitbit (pedometer type thingy). Here is where I feel I went wrong:
When I was eating "healthy," I was constantly managing calories, portion control, stressing out over not having a daily calorie deficit, etc. I was trying very hard to cut out fats, eat veggies, and eat other foods that would help me feel full. Additionally, I would do things like eat Chick-fil-A (nuggets and fries), note the calories, and adjust my remaining daily allowance accordingly. I figured, if I just keep below X number and work out X amount, the weight would come off.

And to some extent it did. But I was becoming QUICKLY exhausted with this micromanagement. It was all I thought about. So my micromanaging dwindled off, and I stopped controlling portions/balances, but kept eating what I liked. Surprise, surprise--weight gain!

Additionally, I started out all enthusiastic about "lifting weights." I was doing a lot of those machine weights at the gym--you know, the ones way less intimidating than free weights. Obviously, no one can see muscle gain/tone until the fat comes off a reasonable amount. So my enthusiasm for the "lifting" dwindled as I saw no appreciable improvement or results. So I stuck to cardio--which is so mind numbing and boring that I dwindled off of that, too.

With fitness, and more specifically, with weight loss, everyone is looking for that thing--that plan/regimen/ideaology that will "change their life for real." Something more permanent--or at least something they can stick to until the goals are achieved.

SO, like the good little scientist I am, I hit the medical journals. I delved into every relevant peer reviewed thing I could find (obesity research, PCOS research, type II diabetes research, macronutrient/diet research) to try to fish out what is a good fit for me.

I'll write more about this next time. For now, I'll let you know that I started over again on April 30, 2012 weighing in at 187.75. Yesterday, May 9, 2012, I weighed in at 181.5 Here we go, body. Let's do this.

Bless me, someone, for I have slacked

Slacking is not the word for what I have done. I have embarrassed myself. And as it was last time, the camera is what did me in. Photos of myself that were horrifying. I have gained all the weight back that I had lost, and then some.

At the pinnacle of my weight loss in the spring, I bought some size 10 pants that were fitting me. A little snugly, but they fit. Now, I'm buckling into size 14s again. They're not tight, but they fit. Before, they fell off me. I'm actually pretty emotional about it.

Meanwhile, Boyfriend and I are doing splendidly. Which may have been part of the problem. Happy Teresa eats. And unless nightly sex counts as cardio, I haven't been doing hardly any. My gym membership has become a fat tax. It's humiliating.

I almost feel like I need to go to a different gym so that the people that work at the old gym don't judge me when I come in, head hung low.

I have a friend, Angela, that I've totally let down. She has this great blog and people who joined her in their weekly weight loss reports. As my shame, embarrassment set in, and my lack of drive to keep eating healthy and working out dug deep, I didn't even respond to her weekly emails with a lame "hey." I just ignored them. I not only lost my own accountability, but I began ignoring the external accountability that I had set up for myself.

So here's what I want to do:
Go to the gym.
Reluctantly, and maybe tearfully, weigh in.
Slowwwlly, get back to working out. Walking on a treadmill. Elliptical. Something I enjoy like that. About a week ago, I rolled my ankle pretty badly, so we'll see how I do there. Maybe swimming? I don't have a lot of experience swimming for exercise.
But the goal is to not feel like I'm punishing myself for my failings. Everything in me is telling me that it's a punishment, so I just need to get back to that feeling I had when I thoroughly enjoyed working out.

I dunno. I'm pretty low. And roly poly. :(

As an addendum: I measured myself. Since my last measurement in mid-May, I have gained 10.3 inches. the largest gains (no surprise) are in my chest, waist, and hips. Wahh waahhhhh.

Ugh. Gains and Bad Attitudes

It's obvious. Every time I give myself permission to slack, or every time my bad attitude (often cycle-related) gets in the way of my goals, the scale suffers. After sitting pretty at 170 for a few days, eating sushi (in moderation--but not moderating the soy sauce like I should) and giving myself permission to eat fast food, the scale showed me 171.25 today.

Laaammmeee.

Water weight? I dunno.

PS: BF and I are pretty much patched up. YAY! Also, the extra calorie burn that comes from being "back to normal" with him is helping, too! (tee hee)

170?!?!

Holy crapfuck?!? I lost 15 pounds? In just under 14 weeks?

WHAT?!?!?!

We'll see on Thursday (my official "weigh-in" day) if this is a real number.

Weighing 170 makes me feel several things:
1) Almost to the 160s. I wonder how much time I'll spend there.
2) Oh god, oh god. I've lost 15lbs. I'm only 3.5lbs away from losing 10% of my starting weight.
3) I should start lifting weights more seriously. When I feel on my arms, I feel lots of fat. If all of that fat burns off, I'd have some damn scrawny arms. I never want to be scrawny. My legs/shoulders are super muscular. I need to develop my:
Biceps/Triceps/Delts
Lats
Glutes
Abs
4) According to BMI, I'm still 25lbs away from getting out of the "overweight" category. I've said goodbye to "obesity." 25lbs seems like a faaarrrr way to go, and it would only still put me at the cusp of "health" and "heifer."
5) I'm loving how exercise has so easily become incorporated into "routine." I don't dread it. I look forward to it. Even if most of the time, it's a 20-25 minute lunchtime cardio adventure.
6) I'm going to take photos every two weeks. I think it will help me better catalog my journey. Especially if I start to hit a plateau.

170.75 and some early progress photos.

I was encouraged by a buddy to maybe take pictures every month? I'm not so sure that I'll do that, but I wanted to compare the starting vs. current photos now.

Front view; Left 171lbs, Right 180lbs

Right side; Left 171, Right 180

Left Side: Left 171lbs, Right 180lbs

Backside; Left 171, Right 180

Face front, Left 171, Right 180

Face Right; Left 171, Right 180

Face Left; Left 171, Right 180

 Anyone see a difference? I sorta can. 

??? Disappearing posts and my recently awful job.

Okay. So last time I posted, I wrote a long thing complaining about a problem with the BF. Yesterday, I couldn't log in to blogger (no one could for a while, apparently). Today, I show up, and that post is gone? I don't feel like rewriting it, and I don't have it saved anywhere.

SO, here it was in a nutshell. BF (who quit smoking in October) has been smoking for the last two months and hiding it from me. I got super upset because when I caught him, he lied about it, and then finally came clean. My own neuroticism (due to my history with my lyin' cheatin' ex husband) lead me to believe he was having an affair (he's not) and get SUPER upset about him lying to me and hiding it from me for so long. Especially since I'm pretty sure he knows that I wouldn't have even been all that upset about finding it out in the first place.

Anyhow, because I under eat when I'm stressed, I had a day where I worked out twice and ate less than 1100 calories. I decided to nip that in the bud right away, especially since BF and I are well on our way to working things out. I don't want to stall my healthy journey by being fatigued due to undereating.

At work, we're putting together all the final documents for submitting our recent research to a journal. It is a LOT of work. Everyone compiles their data into a document that should be uniform in format. However, my coworkers are idiots that don't understand "uniform" or "format" or "data," so I'm having to go through pages and pages of things that look like this:
¹H NMR (500 MHz, CDCl₃) δ = 7.41 – 7.21 (m, 7H), 7.22 – 7.16 (m, 2H), 6.35 (dd, J = 1.4, 6.1, 1H), 6.16 (qrt, J = 7.0, 1H), 5.94 (d, J = 6.1, 1H), 5.22 (s, 1H), 4.74 (dd, J = 3.4, 9.8, 1H), 3.95 (d, J = 16.1, 1H), 3.74 (d, J = 16.1, 1H), 2.54 (d, J = 9.8, 1H), 1.69 (d, J = 7.0, 3H). ¹³C NMR (126 MHz, CDCl₃) δ = 166.99, 163.23, 137.78, 135.76, 135.11, 132.41, 131.73, 129.35, 129.01, 128.43, 128.31, 127.77, 127.45, 100.04, 94.18, 81.95, 78.16, 48.01, 43.13, 11.16.

And make it look like this:
¹H NMR (500 MHz, CDCl₃) δ = 7.41-7.21 (m, 7H), 7.22-7.16 (m, 2H), 6.35 (dd, J = 6.1, 1.4, 1H), 6.16 (q, J = 7.0, 1H), 5.94 (d, J = 6.1, 1H), 5.22 (s, 1H), 4.74 (dd, J = 9.8, 3.4, 1H), 3.95 (d, J = 16.1, 1H), 3.74 (d, J = 16.1, 1H), 2.54 (d, J = 9.8, 1H), 1.69 (d, J = 7.0, 3H). ¹³C NMR (126 MHz, CDCl₃) δ = 167.0, 163.2, 137.8, 135.8, 135.1, 132.4, 131.7, 129.4, 129.0, 128.4, 128.3, 127.8, 127.5, 100.0, 94.2, 82.0, 78.2, 48.0, 43.1, 11.2.

I have to do tiny tiny things like changing the types of dashes used, italicize all the J's, reverse the orders of the constants, for example, changing (dd, J = 3.4, 9.8, 1H) to  (dd, J = 9.8, 3.4, 1H), and changing all the two decimal place ¹³C to having only one decimal place. Oh, and did I mention that I have to count the number of H's represented and C's in each molecule (for example, this compound should have 20H's and 20 ¹³C peaks. Oh, and I also have to make sure that the ¹H data makes sense (for example, making sure that if a peak is a dd, that it has two J constants).

Obviously, each one of the TINY MOTHERFUCKING MINUSCULE DETAILS must be changed one by one. And because my boss doesn't trust the idiots that fucked it up the first time to fix it, it's MY JOB. Even though I tried to explain about 20 times the right format. And this sort of thing is not conducive to being active and on my feet all day like I'm used to. Unsurprisingly, I'm left MORE tired at the end of the day than when I'm up and about. I'm tired just writing this by now, so that'll be all until next time.

Yikes!!!

So today, I weigh 171 lbs (BMI 29.3). WHAT THE HELL?!?!?! TO show you how crazy my weight loss pattern has been in the last month, have a look at this lovely graph:

Sorry about the image quality (clicking on it shows it much larger and clearer). Apparently, you can't save a "chart" as an image directly from excel. You have to paste it into MS Paint. At least, that's how my feeble computing skillz had me do it.

Also, you'll notice I added a ticker. Bonus: I'm growing out my hair (and hopefully, cutting out all color treatment of my hair), so the image of the gal on the bike with the long flowing locks seems appropriate.

Sad news about my hair, though. So during my divorce, I decided I needed a change. My hair is naturally a dark ash blonde/light ash brown color. "Hair-colored-hair." I had dyed it dark brown for YEARS upon years. I bleached the shit out of it and toned it to a light ash blonde in the hope of getting close to my natural color again (because the stark blonde roots against the dark brown hair was a nasty look. And growing it out with such a harsh demarcation was out of the question). Obviously, it fried the shit out of my hair, and I cut it from armpit length to just below chin length. In the ensuing months, it became obvious that I had aimed WAYYY too light. My darker roots were just showing through like mad. And again, I hit a point where I needed a change. With such light blonde hair, I felt like I looked SOOO young. With my big cherubic cheeks, I just looked like a doll (and not in a good way). I had also lost a lot of weight at that time (this is in the late spring/early summer of 2010), and I felt like a VIXEN.

172.75

That's what I weighed in at yesterday. I rode my bike to the gym, did some weights (triceps and chest) and a little bit more cardio before riding my bike home. It felt good to use my muscles again. It also felt good to feel like I'm heading in the right direction again with my weight loss.

I'm slowly making my way back towards eating healthier. Sort of. Yesterday, I hadn't eaten very may calories by the time dinner rolled around. D and I went to my favorite Indian buffet. I did a really good job of sticking to healthier choices (nothing fried, nothing with thick creamy sauces, plenty of veggies). I only ate a few bites of naan, but I did have a banana lassi. In all, I ate a LOT of calories anyway in that sitting, but I did end up sticking to my daily calorie goal.

I cooked up some BIG batches of food, so I've been encouraged to (and enthused about, really) eat at home.

SO! I intend to just get better and building and keeping healthy habits. It's so hard not to feel DEPRIVED when I avoid foods that are...troublesome (like french fries, for example). I'm working on both adjusting my mindset and doing various things to avoid binging (which is basically what I did about a week ago).

Something about Wagons?

So I weighed in at 174.75  today. DANNGEERROUSLY close to 175.

I have officially fallen off the bandwagon off the beaten path short of my goals off of my bicycle in a few ways (a new and improved metaphor! See below for details).
1) I ate some fried food.
2) I succumbed to the desire to eat Taco Bell (wth!?!?!)
3) I have not been exercising 5 days a week like I had hoped I would be doing.

SO! Back on the...wagon? Why is that even used? People only talk about "the wagon" when they're wanting to get back on it. But when someone's doing good and sticking to their plan, do they really say they're on a wagon?

To me, being "on a wagon" implies that something (a parent, a horse/donkey/mule, a vehicle of some sort) is doing the hard work. So when I'm doing a good job at this weight loss business, I'm not sitting back and letting someone/something else do the hard work--I'm doing it.

Additionally, a wagon is so far removed from modern society's luxuries that the use of it doesn't bring an actual "wagon" to mind, just the idea of a journey, maybe? Back on the road? On the beaten path? But again, that implies that the route is already forged.

I hereby retire the phrase "Back on the wagon." While I'm at it, I will also retire the term "happy camper."

So I'm back on the (metaphor), and here's what I'm gonna do:

1) I'm going to be more strict with logging my calories (I skipped more than a few things on my food log these last two weeks). And by "more strict" I mean I'm not going to skip anything. AT. ALL.
2) I'm going to re-start my 5-x-a-week-for-12-weeks goal (of exercise). I did two weeks in a row of 4 days a week, promising myself to add an extra workout in the following week. No more of that. I won't bargain with myself anymore here.
3) I'm going to cook meals at home at least twice a week. I let myself slack on this, and I suffered the consequences (and so did my wallet). If I cook two big meals a week, end up with enough food for lunches and dinners for the whole week.

A mini-goal is to save money this month. I think the cooking will definitely help.

All right, guys. Back on the bicycle for me! (HA! An exercise-based thingie that is powered by me and helps me move forward. Way better than any sort of silly wagon. Plus I actually want to bike to my gym anyway, so....ba-DOW).