Losing 50 kilos

So, it’s September 1st, and here’s the report for August results. In ( ) is the change from July results report.


 
Weight: 114.4 kg (-0.2 kg)
Bra size: C95
*(I haven’t bought a new bra in a while, then again the sports bra I bought recently is D85)
Waist: 109 cm (-11 cm)
Hips: 120 cm (-4 cm)
Bust/below: 114/100 cm (-6/-4 cm)
Thigh: 75 cm (-1 cm)
Dress size: 48-52
*(I need my tops still to be size 52, but I can already fit into size 48 jeans.)
BMI: 40.5 (40.6)

I didn’t lose lot of weight, but I certainly lost a lot in centimeters.

Below the August weight graph:

The first ‘uphill’ came when friends living abroad were visiting for a weekend, so we ate and drank well. After that my weight was going down as it should, until I left for the countryside last week and was away from the scale (and again drinking and eating well).

In overall I’m more than happy with the August results! :D

I read an article recently in a magazine telling a story about a woman in her early thirties who managed to lose 61 kilos in two years. She had been fat her whole life – weighing already 24 kilos when she was just a two-year-old, and 67 kilos when she was 11. At her heaviest she was 128 kg, being only 166 cm tall. When I looked at the ‘before’ picture of her, it was like looking a whole different person. The ‘old’ her had triple chin and her clothes looked big enough to house a half of an army platoon inside them. The ‘new’ me was a beautiful woman who looked happy with herself.

One thing that caught my attention was that she mentioned using NLP (neuro-lingvistic programming) as a psychological aid in her weight loss. Many diet guides tell you to “think yourself slim” but as she had never been normal-weight in her whole life, she had no encouraging memories to return to. She had to imagine herself as a normal-weight person and discover her true personality under all those layers of fat – what she’d wear, how she’d act, what kind of things she’d be doing when finally in her normal weight. She had cut and pasted her face into some pictures where the person had a body she liked, and then attached those pictures to her fridge, bathroom mirror and all kind of places where she would catch a glimpse of them. That, she said, helped her to keep in focus of her future “slim me”.

I started doing that too – always when going to sleep, I like to imagine myself in the life I’d be living when I’m finally normal-weight. Being normal-weight won’t make me instantly rich or famous – that I did accept already before. But being able to wear clothes that I want and being healthy – those are something that getting normal-weight is worth the effort.

My favorite NLP visualization is though this – I’m standing on a beach, it’s windy and I’m building a sand castle with my future children. I have twins, girl and boy, they’re about three years old and both have light, curly, sandy-colored hair. The boy sees a pelican further on the beach and waddles after it, quite fast as three-year-olds can go. I run after him, and I can feel the wet, soft sand underneath my bare feet, and how light my stride is when I run and catch him before he decides to wander to the sea. I carry him back, and he feels light as a feather, because I’m strong enough to hold him on my arms, thanks to regular gym exercise. My husband returns, bringing ice cream to the kids, and while they’re eating and messing their clothes with it, he grabs me to embrace and flings me around in the air. I feel light and I’m not afraid that my husband’s back would break from lifting me up. He kisses me, tells me that he loves me and that this day, spending time with his family, is the best thing that has happened to him.

I’m not normal-weight yeat; I don’t have kids and a husband either. The day I finally have them, I want to feel like that.

I guess it’s time to admit it – my relationship is in shambles. It’s not a surprise really – it’s me who’s been initiating the break-up. We’ve been together for five years, of which I have lived two years here in the Netherlands (after moving from my native Finland). The thing is, with me approaching 30 in couple of years, my need for having children and getting married has grown just unbearable in the past year or so. When we started dating, both of us were rather undecided about the subject. Now it’s grown to the point that I want the whole traditional family setting, and he doesn’t.

My boyfriend is afraid that having a family will kill his creativity and freedom – he works as a DJ and is away a lot, doing gigs around the country and sometimes abroad. We don’t live together, which is just a financial arrangement – in the Netherlands it’s cheaper to keep two small apartments than try to find one big one somewhere. I’ve never shared really the everyday life with him, all the nagging about dirty socks on the floor and drinking milk straight from the carton. Maybe that’s why this hasn’t been so heart-breaking and teary as I thought it would be when the time finally came.

I weighted about the same when we started dating, until we went thru a rough batch last year and I gained another 10 kilos or so. But now the weight loss has proven to be therapeutic – I can control my weight, I have the power over it. By the time I consider getting pregnant with a new partner, I want to be normal-weight, to make the pregnancy safe and healthy for both me and the baby. Of course attracting a new partner is easier when you’re 50 kilos thinner too, but I’ve managed to do it with this weight too, so it’s not a problem.

If there somewhere is a guy who’s willing to marry, have kids and values fidelity, let me know. I’ll be ready to emerge from my cocoon next year – trophy wife in making!

The usual morning – you wake up feeling energetic, svelte, and rush to the toilet to lose those last drops of fluid off your body - then hopping on to the scale to see those magic number, preferably lot less than yesterday or week before. I can imagine the look on your face when the numbers haven’t changed – or even worse, they’ve gone upwards. Even though you know with rational reasoning that you haven’t exceeded your daily calories, you’ve exercised and slept well, the reading on the scale doesn’t make any sense. You begin to sink into this hopelessness that you can’t do anything right, and your weight loss project is doomed to fail.

I used to laugh at women like that. This morning I understood what it is all about. The dreaded weight loss plateau had come to get me.

I track my weight at both Hacker’s Diet and PhysicsDiet because they give me these nice graphs and charts that I so much love ogling (the word ‘ogle’ comes btw from a Dutch word ‘ogen’, to make eyes at). Both sites tell me that my weight is going down despite the recent changes and the plateau phase, but for some reason it doesn’t really comfort me at the moment. I’m slave to the scale – it tells me the Ultimate Truth, and nothing else matters. I think I know the reason for this change now – I’ve been simply eating too much, not exceeding my calories but my daily deficit has been more like 200-300 kcal per day instead of the traditional 600-800 kcal. But the charts still say my weight is GOING DOWN. What the hell am I then worrying about?

I am so waiting for the day that I’m confident enough with my eating that I can do it by intuition. Until then, I’ll just keep counting and measuring.

1. Eating regularly

I learned this the hard way – if I don’t eat in over 4 hours, I’m going to have unhealthy cravings, usually hamburgers and ice cream. When I do eat every 3-4 hours, I can eat just the healthy stuff. I’ve had a pack of ice cream in my freezer and chocolate in my cupboard over a month now – both unopened. No hunger, no cravings. My normal day rhythm goes like this – breakfast at 9 AM, lunch at 12 PM, afternoon snack at 3 PM, dinner at 6 PM, and evening snack at 9 PM and night snack at 11 PM. I work from home so I have more freedom with my schedule. Night snack is usually something very light, like a yoghurt – I usually go to sleep around 1 AM, so I need something small before going to bed (I can’t sleep when I’m hungry).

2. Bacon and eggs for breakfast

Probably all diet guides would say this is highly unhealthy – but it has worked for me. I even use the normal bacon, and fry it in (EEK!) canola oil, so it’s even extra, extra greasy! The idea in this is that the combination of fat and protein will keep me energetic longer than the traditional oatmeal with fruits (it makes me saggy). Yes, my blood test results are normal. No, I’m not on Atkins’ diet. This just works – for me, at least. I usually add one piece of full wheat toast and glass of grapefruit juice – the sour taste of the juice really wakes me up!

3. Increase everyday activity

In the end my changes to physical activity were rather small. I sometimes walk to a bigger store that’s 1, 5 km away, than the small one closer to me that’s just 300 meters away. I also choose stairs instead of escalators and elevators (my apartment building doesn’t have an elevator, and I live on the third floor) , and I walk couple of bus stops further instead of taking the one closest to me.

4. Don’t deny yourself anything

The reason why I keep the ice cream and chocolate in my pantry is that in case I want them, I can have them. The one you don’t have, that’s what you crave the most. The idea of knowing that I have chocolate ‘in case if’ makes me calm and makes me crave it less – in the end I even forget about it. If I go to eat with my friends, I’m not going to settle with a salad if I really want a steak like the others are having – if I’ve eaten proper earlier in the day, I don’t have that overwhelming need to finish my plate straight away. I first eat the salad, then the meat, after that the potatoes / rice / whatever comes with it. If the steak is swimming in a cheddar sauce or similar, I’ll scrape most of the stuff off before I eat it. You wouldn’t believe how little amount of sauce makes it just as delicious as the ‘normal’ amount.

5. This isn’t a diet

When I started making these changes, I realized that I need to make only changes with which I can comfortably live the rest of my life. I don’t want to eat salad every time I go to a restaurant, or buy all my dairy and meat as non/low fat versions. The changes I can happily follow though are walking more from place to place, eating vegetables and fruits on every meal, using whole wheat bread and pasta instead of the regular ones… and so on. I don’t feel I’m missing on anything.  If I think of myself in the past, slouching on the sofa watching movie with ice cream – that’s the kind of life I don’t miss.

I went to the shop today just before closing time to get some cottage cheese and canned fruits for my evening snack. While standing in the line with my groceries, I noticed a morbidly obese woman standing in front of the potato chips shelves. I couldn’t help peeking into her shopping cart – diet soda, full-fat cheese, chocolate pudding, doughnuts. Standing there myself weighting 114 kilos, I didn’t have much of a say about her groceries, but it still made me think. Finally she picked one of those “35% less fat!” bags and came to the line behind me.

Do all fat people want to lose weight? Do all fat people know how to lose weight? I’m not the type that would go educational strangers in a grocery store, but her groceries made me think – would someone buy diet soda and less fat chips just for the taste of them? If you aren’t planning to lose weight, why don’t you buy the ‘full’ versions then? If you are planning to lose weight, why do you then buy all the other unhealthy stuff?

This is a sensitive matter that doesn’t really have an answer, since everyone has their “treat” day – maybe I just happened to notice this woman when she was having hers. But generally, I do feel bad when seeing morbidly obese people despite being one myself – I’d like to help them, but I don’t know if my help would be appreciated.

After all, losing weight isn’t about luck or quantum physics – it can be done if you really want to do it.

I was born with club foot (or so I was told), so I’ve always had problems with my right foot. Usually a pair of shoes always break down on the right side first, and sometimes I feel nerve pain on my right foot as well - the toe next to big toe goes all numb on the tip I also have flat feet, so I’ve worn orthotic insoles most of my life.

Due to my foot problems I was rather sure I could never run like other people. I’d like to complete the Iron Man triathlon competition someday - consisting of a 2.4-mile (3.86 km) swim, a 112-mile (180.25 km) cycling and a marathon (26 miles 385 yards, 42.195 km). But that’s the ultimate dream - the Sprint distance (750 m swim, 20 km bike, 5 km run) is though doable maybe already next year :)

But back to the running experience. After reading a lot of barefoot running on the Internet, I just realized that the park across the street from my house is actually perfect for barefoot running training - it has big grassy fields. I went to the park after sunset (when there’s not that much people) and put my shoes to my backpack, starting just to walk around the grass field to get myself warmed up. I guess couple of times I hit dog poo, but it got washed away by the dew on the grass.

Just walking on the grass with bare feet felt really sweet, and I noticed how different I walk with no shoes against a soft terrain. When I had warmed up enough (about 10 minutes), I decided to take couple of running steps.

WHOAH!!

I would had never believed how smoothly I started running. My legs were working quite different from running with shoes on hard surface (like trying to catch a bus) - on the grass my ankles were more mobile, and the ‘pushing’ force of every step came from the ball of the foot. I’ve never before been able to run so much (and so long) than out there on that grass. I don’t think that running on the grass is “cheating” - I can tell you, my shirt was all wet on the back after an hour of interval (walk a bit, run a bit) practise.

Funniest thing is that even though I carry 113.8 kg of mass on top of my feet, I didn’t feel pain at all - not on my legs (though usually I get shin splints almost immediately), not on my knees, hip joints or lower back. The running was overall pleasant experience and I felt afterwards so euphoric that I just wanted to go back and do it all over again. I’ll though restrict myself and won’t do it again tomorrow either, to give my body some rest and to prevent myself of getting bored too fast.

Who said fat girls can’t run? ;)

Must say, I’m totally in love with different kinds of charts and graphs. I track all kinds of things, and so far it has helped me to keep focused and motivated. Nothing wrong there, right?

So, it was time for me to make a proper plan for my virtual walking trip to Scotland. Though in real life I don’t move out of my hometown during my walk, every step takes me closer to my goal - to which I’m planning to travel next year. That is Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in United Kingdom, located at western side of the Scottish Highlands.

Below is my plan put in detail in nice Excel file.

The numbers in the first column are referring to the steps in Google Maps on the route that I should travel in order to get where I’m going. I’m sorry I can’t really share the map with you in that sense, since it would reveal my home address. I can reveal my hometown though - I live in the Hague.

The ‘Length (M)’ column is length of every step of the map, in meters. I found easier to keep it that way to use it in calculations with my stride length. ‘Steps’ is how many steps are required to complete one map step.

‘Length (total)’ shows how much I have walked, in total - same goes for the amount of steps. I decided to put the total length in kilometres, since the end numbers would had otherwise become too big if kept in metres.

‘Money’ tells how much money I have gathered by walking so far. I promised myself that I’ll pay myself 1 euro per every 1000 steps. Today (Aug 13th) I walked 4217 steps, so I rounded it and paid 4.20 euros to my ‘bank’.

‘Achieved’ tells me when I completed a map step. I guess I’ll be doing just fine until I reach the virtual border of Belgium - after that the lengths of every map step become longer, longest one being 298 km after reaching Scotland. It’ll take ~432 000 steps to complete that one alone.

I love this kind of challenge!

EDIT: I updated the ticker to match the new goal - Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in UK.

I decided I need some kind of goal for my walking. Me and my boyfriend have been talking about having a vacation together next year, but before this we hadn’t agreed on the location. I’d just like lay on the beach and he likes active city holidays. We both decided to step out from our comfort zone and do something we both could consider doing. Hiking on the rural Scottish Highlands countryside? Deal! (I thought of Ireland first but apparently he wants some MOUNTAINS, living in the Netherlands after all :P)

So, I needed a route for ‘training’. I chose Glasgow as the goal, even though a real Scot would murmur that it’s still on Lowlands side. From my hometown, it’s 1164 km there. My stride is 0.69 m, so that’s around ~1.7 million steps. Even if I do just 5000 steps a day, it’s still just 340 days - well enough to be completed before we embark our journey (we were thinking about early September 2011).

I actually had to tape a paper inside my front door to remind me that I keep pedometer with me every time I leave the house (I don’t use it inside, because my apartment is rather small). I guess I’ll start with the 5000 steps a day, gradually increasing it when I get into better shape.

This will be interesting :)

I wasn’t always overweight. Bit plump, maybe, but not really fat. I come from a small city without working public transport, so I had to cycle everywhere, for years. Even under this layer of fat, my legs are in pretty strong condition still. I could eat what I wanted, since I got so much physical exercise every day. When I turned 18, my BMI was around 27, so I was about ~5 kg away from normal weight.

When I moved away from home to my first apartment, I got depressed. I went to a doctor and he prescribed me the medicine, Remeron. I didn’t feel that it was helping at all - I felt tired all the time. And hungry, so I ate. And ate, and ate. I was especially keen on ice cream, those 2 litre boxes you can eat straight from. I remember that on worst days, I could eat four boxes. That’s 8 litres of ice cream per day. And that totals to over 6000 kcals per day - from ice cream alone.

I started gaining weight, but didn’t really realize it first. I started getting stretch marks and my clothes didn’t fit, but even then it didn’t really dawn on to me, because I was so messed up from the medicine. When a doctor finally noticed the weight gain and stopped the medicine, it was already too late.

In just 6 months, I had ballooned up to 107 kilos. That’s about 30 kg more. 5 kilos per month. I had stretch marks all over, and suddenly my 46/48 dress size had changed to 50/52. I was just a wobbling pile of flesh.

I managed to keep the weight on 107 kgs (+- 5 kg) the next 7 years. I tried dieting couple of times, usually losing about 10 kgs in two months but when I got tired of counting and filling the food diary, they all came back. When an unhappy relationship derailed me again, I started piling on weight again. When I started this final weight loss on July 1st, 2010, I weighted 120 kilos. Not a gram less or more.

Today (Aug 12th) I weight 114,8 kg - so far I’ve lost 5.2 kilos and still going down. I’m not in a hurry - this is the last time I will lose weight in my life.

And this time I will succeed.