Tonight, a good friend drove me to Weight Watchers because afterwards, she and I were going to go shopping for invitations to a wedding tea for her daughter, who is like a second daughter to me. Over the last several months, my friend who is naturally lean has lost 35 pounds due to a tremendous amount of stress. Her jeans were floating around her legs and behind. Mine were too. While I went and weighed in, she went to Baskin-Robbins and was enjoying a huge butter pecan ice cream cone when I got back to the car. It didn't bother me at all. That felt good.
When I weighed in, I have to admit that I was bothered, even though I lost. I'm getting a little too fixated on numbers, and I fear I'm hitting another plateau. The weight I'm at now was what I weighed for years. This is a size and a weight range where my body feels pretty comfortable. It knows this size, even though it's been sixteen years since I weighed this. It may be one of my set points, and I've been dancing under and over the same weight by a little more than a pound for about four weeks now.
To break a set point, one has to increase their metabolic rate. Well, my daily recommended points allowance hasn't changed, and I will not be intentionally decreasing my food. One of my dieting rules now is that I will not go hungry. I'm not talking the kind of hunger you get when it's been a bit too long between meals. I'm talking the kind of hunger that can provoke frustration, anger and enough resentment to toss a diet to the winds. This is a quality of life issue, and the point of me losing weight is to have a better life, so why would I sacrifice quality to achieve it? Excess food restriction can also trigger the body's famine response, encouraging it to hold onto fat stores and actually lowering the metabolic rate. Why would I want to do something counterproductive?
So I have basically two things I need to do to kickstart my metabolism. The first is more exercise. It's still not enjoyable yet, but I am doing it. I just need to do more. I've given myself a target goal of ten exercise points a week. To translate that from Weight Watchers speak, that's roughly three half hour workouts a week at an intensity level of increased heart rate, regular sweating and breathing at a level where I can talk but probably wouldn't want to and definitely couldn't sing. I've only met that goal once in several weeks, and I'm going to make a more diligent effort to meet it. To maintain a challenge level that feels both difficult and achievable enough, I may need to break the workouts down to 15 minute increments.
The second thing I need to do is watch the details of my food intake better. Keep a closer eye on the sodium. Make greater efforts to limit caffeine and soft drinks. Make sure that I get my daily servings of oil. In the TMI realm of dieting, I thought that the increased fiber would have a stabilizing effect on my digestion. Well, it did for a long time, actually slowing the process down to a much more comfortable level. An irony about fiber intake is that while it can make the digestion and elimination process smoother and more regular, a big increase can have the opposite effect. My recent efforts to up my fiber content may have backfired on me, and making sure that I get the healthy oils I need can counteract that.
The bottom line this week though is that I lost weight. The lessons learned this week is that details do matter in learning how to treat my body like the temple it is.
Weekly summary: Weight loss -- 1.4 pounds, Total weight loss -- 70.6 pounds, Average weekly weight loss -- 1.64 pounds.
health and wellness, weight loss, diets, Weight Watchers
When I weighed in, I have to admit that I was bothered, even though I lost. I'm getting a little too fixated on numbers, and I fear I'm hitting another plateau. The weight I'm at now was what I weighed for years. This is a size and a weight range where my body feels pretty comfortable. It knows this size, even though it's been sixteen years since I weighed this. It may be one of my set points, and I've been dancing under and over the same weight by a little more than a pound for about four weeks now.
To break a set point, one has to increase their metabolic rate. Well, my daily recommended points allowance hasn't changed, and I will not be intentionally decreasing my food. One of my dieting rules now is that I will not go hungry. I'm not talking the kind of hunger you get when it's been a bit too long between meals. I'm talking the kind of hunger that can provoke frustration, anger and enough resentment to toss a diet to the winds. This is a quality of life issue, and the point of me losing weight is to have a better life, so why would I sacrifice quality to achieve it? Excess food restriction can also trigger the body's famine response, encouraging it to hold onto fat stores and actually lowering the metabolic rate. Why would I want to do something counterproductive?
So I have basically two things I need to do to kickstart my metabolism. The first is more exercise. It's still not enjoyable yet, but I am doing it. I just need to do more. I've given myself a target goal of ten exercise points a week. To translate that from Weight Watchers speak, that's roughly three half hour workouts a week at an intensity level of increased heart rate, regular sweating and breathing at a level where I can talk but probably wouldn't want to and definitely couldn't sing. I've only met that goal once in several weeks, and I'm going to make a more diligent effort to meet it. To maintain a challenge level that feels both difficult and achievable enough, I may need to break the workouts down to 15 minute increments.
The second thing I need to do is watch the details of my food intake better. Keep a closer eye on the sodium. Make greater efforts to limit caffeine and soft drinks. Make sure that I get my daily servings of oil. In the TMI realm of dieting, I thought that the increased fiber would have a stabilizing effect on my digestion. Well, it did for a long time, actually slowing the process down to a much more comfortable level. An irony about fiber intake is that while it can make the digestion and elimination process smoother and more regular, a big increase can have the opposite effect. My recent efforts to up my fiber content may have backfired on me, and making sure that I get the healthy oils I need can counteract that.
The bottom line this week though is that I lost weight. The lessons learned this week is that details do matter in learning how to treat my body like the temple it is.
Weekly summary: Weight loss -- 1.4 pounds, Total weight loss -- 70.6 pounds, Average weekly weight loss -- 1.64 pounds.
health and wellness, weight loss, diets, Weight Watchers
1 comments:
Fiber is tough (literally...) If you're going to take it in, you need to take in enough of something else to flush it out. I know my digestion liked the increased fiber/fluid intake of the WW system. Every other diet I was ever on, I would get horribly...blocked up...?!
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