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A Tale of Diet, Weight Loss, Exercise, and Ups and Downs
I've been planning to write up a post about my history of diet and weight loss and such for a long time, but I'd been putting it off. However, yesterday I passed a milestone: for the first time since the summer of 2007, I stepped on to a scale and it said I weight less than 155 lbs. (it was only a shade under, but hey, I'm still really happy about it.) So I think now is the time...
I was a really lazy kid. Sure, I did some ice skating for a couple of years; I played softball (badly) for a few years; I rollerbladed a few times a year...but I hated gym. I remember in middle school we had a gym teacher who would make us run 20 laps around the gym, and though I could do it (with immense difficulty) I was convinced that this was a new and especially cruel form of torture (even as I thought very poorly of the girls who got lazy and stopped after 2 or 3 laps - I might hate it, but I wouldn't let that bitch of a gym teacher beat me, I was gonna run the whole thing!). Nothing really changed in high school; I disliked gym intensely, avoided anything resembling hard exertion, and, other than some occasional horseback riding, detested all things physical.
The only real exception was walking. As a New Yorker, I never thought of it as exercise, so it was a different category - walking was a means of transportation, that was all. I prided myself on the belief that, if I had to, I could pretty much walk as far as I wanted to (available evidence suggests this isn't true, though - the 6 mile walk for Aids Walk would leave me achy the next day, so I doubt I could have comfortably done much about 10). And I did walk a bit, especially when they switched us to the only 3 ride a day metro cards instead of train passes, cause then I had to conserve my trips on the train for the big parts. I also, one summer (after Junior year) walked from NYU to my apartment three times (it's about 5 miles)...but I didn't do it often.
As for diet, well, the less said the better. I had highly disfunctional eating habits (I was incredibly picky) and pretty much none of the things I would eat were healthy. As a result, by my junior year of high school I was 147 lbs. However, in my senior year I lost seven pounds, such that I graduated at 140 lbs. How did I manage this? Mostly by not eating. I skipped breakfast, I'd eat (literally) a single pretzel rod and a fruit roll up for lunch (mooched from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ultimabaka or Adam), and then for dinner I'd eat something ridiculously unhealthy, but it didn't matter cause I just wasn't eating that much. This, needless to say, was not a good way to lose weight.
As an undergrad, my attitudes didn't improve much at first. I took horseback riding gym my first semester, but after that I didn't take gym again in college for another two years (then I took Tai Chi). I didn't change my eating habits the first year, either, and thus gained the freshman 15 to the number - when I returned home after my freshman year I weighed 155 lbs.
Obviously, I wasn't happy about this, but it didn't seem like something I could control. I didn't eat what I ate cause I wanted to, I ate what I ate because I was so picky that those were the only things I could eat! If I could change that, I would (so I told myself). As for exercise, well, I walked to class, that surely counted, but beyond that...why? I hated exercise!!
Things started to change the following year, though, when I started living withdeadmanwade, who was the first person I'd ever encountered who really took the time to figure out what flavors I liked, what the issues with my eating were, and work with me in a laid back way to fix my picky eating. I really am so indebted to him; and over the following four years (from my sophomore to my super-senior year, I graduated in 4 1/2 years, in fall of 2004) we made a lot of progress through a variety of means. It tended to come in spurts; I remember the day that we went skiing with Don and Aaron, and went to Red Lobster afterwards, and I tried one of every single thing that J had ordered - I think that's the first time I ever ate a red onion - including all the salad components. I had gotten to the point by then (that was winter, 2003) that I could try things and wouldn't gag just cause I didn't like them. Sure, I didn't like any of the salad bits I tried that night - but I liked the scallops, and a new item was added to my diet. Likewise, I remember when mom took us (me, J, Ryan, dcsproductions, and maybe...er...Aaron? Was someone else there? I can't recall) out to Kampai to celebrate my graduation from college (this was in May, 2005), and Ryan ordered sashimi, and I tried every single kind. The me who started college would never have DREAMED of trying raw fish, much less liking it - that's the progress that was made.
At first, this wider range of eating had no impact on my diet, though - I mean, I ate new things, but they were equally unhealthy, so it didn't matter. Ultimately, adding mozzarella cheese sticks to my eating wasn't going to do me much good, and as much as I love cheesy bacon fries, no one should eat them, like, ever. Don't get me started on cheesecake...thus, by the time of my graduate (December, 2004) I was flirting my way towards 175 lbs., and I hated it.
In the interim, there had been some exercise, though. Several attempts were made to go to the West gym on a regular schedule, but they always fizzled after about a month. I occasionally walked home from campus (which was about 4 miles), but not often enough to really make a difference. When I started working at Waldenbooks, I would walk to the junction (about a mile) to catch the bus. But I hated the gym, I hated physical exertion, I thought myself completely incapable of, for example, jogging, and I just thought if I tried, it wouldn't matter.
Things started to change my last semester. I took the gym course "Weight Training for Women," and shocked myself by...liking it. And I noticed an improvement in my strength. And while I didn't lose much weight, I didn't gain any more either (despite eating terribly because of stress). This was a promising beginning.
Then, that winter, J started dieting, and as a result we both learned a great deal that we hadn't really understood about weight, diet, and calories. I horrified myself by computing how many calories I had consumed at the graduation dinner that my dad treated us to (it was at Outback, and I was full for 24 hours afterwards - which doesn't excuse that I consumed more than 3000 calories in that one meal).
So, the day after Valentine's day, 2005, I went on a strict 1000 calorie diet (which, in practice, was almost always actually 1200 calories).
And I lost weight.
Meanwhile, we moved to Bloomington on June 1st, 2005, and that entire summer I started playing DDR for exercise. I had to stop when we got downstairs neighbors, though, so throughout the fall I didn't exercise at all. Despite that, sticking like glue to the diet, I was 138 lbs. on my birthday in December, 2005.
How did I do this?
In retrospect, badly. 1000 calories a day wasn't, given my still fairly restricted diet, very much at all. I would skip breakfast, and then for lunch I'd eat a sandwich, and for dinner I'd have either bagel bites or flake mashed potatoes. Often as an after dinner snack I'd have popcorn. And, aside from the Sunday "day off" policy, that was basically ALL I ate for, oh, months. No wonder I lost weight!! But it was starch heavy, lacked any variety, and if I'd known more I'd have realized that ultimately it was not a recipe for sustained success.
Sure enough, in 2006 I first was stressed out (writing my first grant and going to school) and then my whole life was shook up (I broke up with J) and the end result was that I entered fall, 2006 back up to 165 lbs.
Still, this also marked a signal change for me. The summer of 2006, J held on to our car, and I didn't get it back until August. As a result, I walked EVERYWHERE (or, rather, I generally walked TO places and then solicited rides home from friends). Furthermore, with the addition of the puppy Jonie dog, I had to do crazy crap, like walk to work (1 mile), then walk home to walk the puppy and back during my lunch, and then walk home. I worked 3 - 4 days a week, and as such I was walking a minimum of 4 miles per day many days a week. To put it in perspective, when I calculated it out at the end of the summer, I had averaged 3 miles a day.
I would say that this was the first time in my life that I really exercised regularly for an extended period of time, and it was only because I had to, but I discovered that I really liked to walk. Since I didn't have a choice, I stopped caring about how long it took, and I just did it...and while it didn't stop me from gaining weight, it did get me a good head start on exercise.
In the fall of 2006, I followed this up with continued efforts at dieting and with a bunch of DDR playing, but by December I was getting frustrated; I had dropped 5 lbs. very quickly, and had edged down in to the lower 150s, but nothing I did got me any lower; this persisted through the entire spring semester, and I was very discouraged. Those who watched how I ate agreed with me that it made no sense that I wasn't losing weight; I was basically what I'd done the first time, but with a better variety of food, more protein, and less bad stuff all the way around - it made no sense!
Things changed again in late spring of 2007, though, whenschenker28 and I started going to the gym. We ended up going 5 days a week for almost 3 months, and I really saw how it made me feel GREAT, look much better, and lose weight; I was about 153 when we stopped, and I thought I looked really thin, and was very happy.
That's when I left for Japan. And Japan changed everything again. First, I walked EVERYWHERE, with the result that I got a ton of exercise. Furthermore, the diet there is very healthy, and even when I ate a lot, it just wasn't the kind of food to pack on lbs. While I wasn't actively dieting, still I was pretty careful, and the result was that I came back at about 155. However, none of this is what made Japan so signally important. No, what made all the difference was the language barrier. See, I was still a somewhat picky eater. Much better than I had been, there were still entire things that I just wouldn't even consider eating. But in Japan, I had no ability to ask what I was getting in any specific terms, or to find out if, for example, there were onions on something, so I could ask for no onions. Thus, if my dish came out with onions, there were onions, and even if I removed them, my whole dish would still taste like onion, and I'd just have to fricken deal.
This really fixed me. I mean, I fricken hated onions when I went to Japan, but now I eat them almost every day!
I came back feeling good. I moved to NYC, settled in, and started to eat pretty well, but I didn't really exercise enough (though I walked a ton) and by summer of 2008, I was about 160. I wanted to get down, somoonartemis76 introduced me to the GI Diet, and that's really what brought about the final iteration of how I eat, which is where I am now.
I'm going to preface this by saying, I don't consider myself to be dieting. I've changed how I eat completely from how I was in HS and college, but I feel strongly right now about the importance of eating when I feel hungry and feeling full. If I don't eat to meet these needs, I go stir crazy and end up eating things I really, really shouldn't. Now, if I want a slice of pizza? I go and have a damn slice of pizza! If I want dessert? I eat dessert. And I (really try) not to beat myself up about it. I don't always succeed at that, but it's gotten steadily better.
So what do I eat?
-lots of whole wheat and fiber. I need this for health reasons, but even if I didn't, it's proven to be yummy. I hated whole wheat at first, but now white bread tastes funny to me. :)
-salad. I have a salad every night as part of dinner.
-protein. Cheese and meat.
-starchy sides.
I also try to cook. I always buy low fat or fat free options if I can; I always get no sugar added if I can. For me, it's about making good choices at the super market; the rest takes care of itself.
I went to the gym for a couple of months last winter, but things kept happening to derail me, and though I started to drop weight, I didn't get far. The current drive to get my weight down started the day after Origins in 2009 (right around July 1st). I was 163 lbs., and not at all happy about it.
Since then, despite a lot of travel (when I'm never very careful), all the holidays, and a whole lot of Crumbs cupcakes, I've lost 9 lbs. I've been going to the gym regularly since November (now the longest I've gone consistently) and I'm starting to really have trouble imagining not going - I've even gone on days where I've ended up having to wake up at 5 AM to make it work.
Through repeated cycles of gym, no gym, one of the main things I've learned is how GOOD it feels. When I miss about a week, I get lethargic and depressed. Even on days like I don't go (like today) because that's just the schedule, I still can kinda feel the difference. I know I need the days off, but it's getting harder and harder to convince myself not to go for just a little bit on these days, just to get that adreniline. It really is addictive. :)
Anyway, I know a lot of my friends have struggled with their weight and with exercise routines, and while I don't claim I've figured out the answer, I do seem to have found a formula that is working for me. I've only lost an average of a lb. of month, but that's absorbed all the Christmas pigging out, three weeks in Europe, etc. - times when I came back weighing 2 lb. or so more than I did when I started out.
The realization that has made me happiest is one I've already said to some people in person. For most of high school, I was 145 - 147 lbs. Now, 10 years later, I currently weigh less than 10 lbs. more than that. I know that that is something special - that there aren't many people who can say that - and it makes me happy, because I've worked really, really hard for this, because it was something that I wanted.
Anyway, I don't have any idea if any of this will be helpful to any of you, but I've been wanting to put it all down for some time now, and now it's done. :)
And, dammit, it's still not snowing. I'm starting to give up hope. :(
I was a really lazy kid. Sure, I did some ice skating for a couple of years; I played softball (badly) for a few years; I rollerbladed a few times a year...but I hated gym. I remember in middle school we had a gym teacher who would make us run 20 laps around the gym, and though I could do it (with immense difficulty) I was convinced that this was a new and especially cruel form of torture (even as I thought very poorly of the girls who got lazy and stopped after 2 or 3 laps - I might hate it, but I wouldn't let that bitch of a gym teacher beat me, I was gonna run the whole thing!). Nothing really changed in high school; I disliked gym intensely, avoided anything resembling hard exertion, and, other than some occasional horseback riding, detested all things physical.
The only real exception was walking. As a New Yorker, I never thought of it as exercise, so it was a different category - walking was a means of transportation, that was all. I prided myself on the belief that, if I had to, I could pretty much walk as far as I wanted to (available evidence suggests this isn't true, though - the 6 mile walk for Aids Walk would leave me achy the next day, so I doubt I could have comfortably done much about 10). And I did walk a bit, especially when they switched us to the only 3 ride a day metro cards instead of train passes, cause then I had to conserve my trips on the train for the big parts. I also, one summer (after Junior year) walked from NYU to my apartment three times (it's about 5 miles)...but I didn't do it often.
As for diet, well, the less said the better. I had highly disfunctional eating habits (I was incredibly picky) and pretty much none of the things I would eat were healthy. As a result, by my junior year of high school I was 147 lbs. However, in my senior year I lost seven pounds, such that I graduated at 140 lbs. How did I manage this? Mostly by not eating. I skipped breakfast, I'd eat (literally) a single pretzel rod and a fruit roll up for lunch (mooched from
ultimabaka or Adam), and then for dinner I'd eat something ridiculously unhealthy, but it didn't matter cause I just wasn't eating that much. This, needless to say, was not a good way to lose weight.As an undergrad, my attitudes didn't improve much at first. I took horseback riding gym my first semester, but after that I didn't take gym again in college for another two years (then I took Tai Chi). I didn't change my eating habits the first year, either, and thus gained the freshman 15 to the number - when I returned home after my freshman year I weighed 155 lbs.
Obviously, I wasn't happy about this, but it didn't seem like something I could control. I didn't eat what I ate cause I wanted to, I ate what I ate because I was so picky that those were the only things I could eat! If I could change that, I would (so I told myself). As for exercise, well, I walked to class, that surely counted, but beyond that...why? I hated exercise!!
Things started to change the following year, though, when I started living with
deadmanwade, who was the first person I'd ever encountered who really took the time to figure out what flavors I liked, what the issues with my eating were, and work with me in a laid back way to fix my picky eating. I really am so indebted to him; and over the following four years (from my sophomore to my super-senior year, I graduated in 4 1/2 years, in fall of 2004) we made a lot of progress through a variety of means. It tended to come in spurts; I remember the day that we went skiing with Don and Aaron, and went to Red Lobster afterwards, and I tried one of every single thing that J had ordered - I think that's the first time I ever ate a red onion - including all the salad components. I had gotten to the point by then (that was winter, 2003) that I could try things and wouldn't gag just cause I didn't like them. Sure, I didn't like any of the salad bits I tried that night - but I liked the scallops, and a new item was added to my diet. Likewise, I remember when mom took us (me, J, Ryan, dcsproductions, and maybe...er...Aaron? Was someone else there? I can't recall) out to Kampai to celebrate my graduation from college (this was in May, 2005), and Ryan ordered sashimi, and I tried every single kind. The me who started college would never have DREAMED of trying raw fish, much less liking it - that's the progress that was made.At first, this wider range of eating had no impact on my diet, though - I mean, I ate new things, but they were equally unhealthy, so it didn't matter. Ultimately, adding mozzarella cheese sticks to my eating wasn't going to do me much good, and as much as I love cheesy bacon fries, no one should eat them, like, ever. Don't get me started on cheesecake...thus, by the time of my graduate (December, 2004) I was flirting my way towards 175 lbs., and I hated it.
In the interim, there had been some exercise, though. Several attempts were made to go to the West gym on a regular schedule, but they always fizzled after about a month. I occasionally walked home from campus (which was about 4 miles), but not often enough to really make a difference. When I started working at Waldenbooks, I would walk to the junction (about a mile) to catch the bus. But I hated the gym, I hated physical exertion, I thought myself completely incapable of, for example, jogging, and I just thought if I tried, it wouldn't matter.
Things started to change my last semester. I took the gym course "Weight Training for Women," and shocked myself by...liking it. And I noticed an improvement in my strength. And while I didn't lose much weight, I didn't gain any more either (despite eating terribly because of stress). This was a promising beginning.
Then, that winter, J started dieting, and as a result we both learned a great deal that we hadn't really understood about weight, diet, and calories. I horrified myself by computing how many calories I had consumed at the graduation dinner that my dad treated us to (it was at Outback, and I was full for 24 hours afterwards - which doesn't excuse that I consumed more than 3000 calories in that one meal).
So, the day after Valentine's day, 2005, I went on a strict 1000 calorie diet (which, in practice, was almost always actually 1200 calories).
And I lost weight.
Meanwhile, we moved to Bloomington on June 1st, 2005, and that entire summer I started playing DDR for exercise. I had to stop when we got downstairs neighbors, though, so throughout the fall I didn't exercise at all. Despite that, sticking like glue to the diet, I was 138 lbs. on my birthday in December, 2005.
How did I do this?
In retrospect, badly. 1000 calories a day wasn't, given my still fairly restricted diet, very much at all. I would skip breakfast, and then for lunch I'd eat a sandwich, and for dinner I'd have either bagel bites or flake mashed potatoes. Often as an after dinner snack I'd have popcorn. And, aside from the Sunday "day off" policy, that was basically ALL I ate for, oh, months. No wonder I lost weight!! But it was starch heavy, lacked any variety, and if I'd known more I'd have realized that ultimately it was not a recipe for sustained success.
Sure enough, in 2006 I first was stressed out (writing my first grant and going to school) and then my whole life was shook up (I broke up with J) and the end result was that I entered fall, 2006 back up to 165 lbs.
Still, this also marked a signal change for me. The summer of 2006, J held on to our car, and I didn't get it back until August. As a result, I walked EVERYWHERE (or, rather, I generally walked TO places and then solicited rides home from friends). Furthermore, with the addition of the puppy Jonie dog, I had to do crazy crap, like walk to work (1 mile), then walk home to walk the puppy and back during my lunch, and then walk home. I worked 3 - 4 days a week, and as such I was walking a minimum of 4 miles per day many days a week. To put it in perspective, when I calculated it out at the end of the summer, I had averaged 3 miles a day.
I would say that this was the first time in my life that I really exercised regularly for an extended period of time, and it was only because I had to, but I discovered that I really liked to walk. Since I didn't have a choice, I stopped caring about how long it took, and I just did it...and while it didn't stop me from gaining weight, it did get me a good head start on exercise.
In the fall of 2006, I followed this up with continued efforts at dieting and with a bunch of DDR playing, but by December I was getting frustrated; I had dropped 5 lbs. very quickly, and had edged down in to the lower 150s, but nothing I did got me any lower; this persisted through the entire spring semester, and I was very discouraged. Those who watched how I ate agreed with me that it made no sense that I wasn't losing weight; I was basically what I'd done the first time, but with a better variety of food, more protein, and less bad stuff all the way around - it made no sense!
Things changed again in late spring of 2007, though, when
schenker28 and I started going to the gym. We ended up going 5 days a week for almost 3 months, and I really saw how it made me feel GREAT, look much better, and lose weight; I was about 153 when we stopped, and I thought I looked really thin, and was very happy.That's when I left for Japan. And Japan changed everything again. First, I walked EVERYWHERE, with the result that I got a ton of exercise. Furthermore, the diet there is very healthy, and even when I ate a lot, it just wasn't the kind of food to pack on lbs. While I wasn't actively dieting, still I was pretty careful, and the result was that I came back at about 155. However, none of this is what made Japan so signally important. No, what made all the difference was the language barrier. See, I was still a somewhat picky eater. Much better than I had been, there were still entire things that I just wouldn't even consider eating. But in Japan, I had no ability to ask what I was getting in any specific terms, or to find out if, for example, there were onions on something, so I could ask for no onions. Thus, if my dish came out with onions, there were onions, and even if I removed them, my whole dish would still taste like onion, and I'd just have to fricken deal.
This really fixed me. I mean, I fricken hated onions when I went to Japan, but now I eat them almost every day!
I came back feeling good. I moved to NYC, settled in, and started to eat pretty well, but I didn't really exercise enough (though I walked a ton) and by summer of 2008, I was about 160. I wanted to get down, so
moonartemis76 introduced me to the GI Diet, and that's really what brought about the final iteration of how I eat, which is where I am now.I'm going to preface this by saying, I don't consider myself to be dieting. I've changed how I eat completely from how I was in HS and college, but I feel strongly right now about the importance of eating when I feel hungry and feeling full. If I don't eat to meet these needs, I go stir crazy and end up eating things I really, really shouldn't. Now, if I want a slice of pizza? I go and have a damn slice of pizza! If I want dessert? I eat dessert. And I (really try) not to beat myself up about it. I don't always succeed at that, but it's gotten steadily better.
So what do I eat?
-lots of whole wheat and fiber. I need this for health reasons, but even if I didn't, it's proven to be yummy. I hated whole wheat at first, but now white bread tastes funny to me. :)
-salad. I have a salad every night as part of dinner.
-protein. Cheese and meat.
-starchy sides.
I also try to cook. I always buy low fat or fat free options if I can; I always get no sugar added if I can. For me, it's about making good choices at the super market; the rest takes care of itself.
I went to the gym for a couple of months last winter, but things kept happening to derail me, and though I started to drop weight, I didn't get far. The current drive to get my weight down started the day after Origins in 2009 (right around July 1st). I was 163 lbs., and not at all happy about it.
Since then, despite a lot of travel (when I'm never very careful), all the holidays, and a whole lot of Crumbs cupcakes, I've lost 9 lbs. I've been going to the gym regularly since November (now the longest I've gone consistently) and I'm starting to really have trouble imagining not going - I've even gone on days where I've ended up having to wake up at 5 AM to make it work.
Through repeated cycles of gym, no gym, one of the main things I've learned is how GOOD it feels. When I miss about a week, I get lethargic and depressed. Even on days like I don't go (like today) because that's just the schedule, I still can kinda feel the difference. I know I need the days off, but it's getting harder and harder to convince myself not to go for just a little bit on these days, just to get that adreniline. It really is addictive. :)
Anyway, I know a lot of my friends have struggled with their weight and with exercise routines, and while I don't claim I've figured out the answer, I do seem to have found a formula that is working for me. I've only lost an average of a lb. of month, but that's absorbed all the Christmas pigging out, three weeks in Europe, etc. - times when I came back weighing 2 lb. or so more than I did when I started out.
The realization that has made me happiest is one I've already said to some people in person. For most of high school, I was 145 - 147 lbs. Now, 10 years later, I currently weigh less than 10 lbs. more than that. I know that that is something special - that there aren't many people who can say that - and it makes me happy, because I've worked really, really hard for this, because it was something that I wanted.
Anyway, I don't have any idea if any of this will be helpful to any of you, but I've been wanting to put it all down for some time now, and now it's done. :)
And, dammit, it's still not snowing. I'm starting to give up hope. :(
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