Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Transparency and Distended Bellies

We're coming up on our fourth weigh in (not counting the starting) and I'm excited and nervous about my results.

I've been continuing with the squat challenge and have increased to the point where I can do 100 squats in a sitting. Sure my legs are shaking and I can't walk confidently for a while afterwards but progress is progress. Just yesterday I managed to do 260 in a night which I believe is my current record! Speaking of squats, I've started developing some silly habits when it comes to them. I play a lot of video games and when I get to a particularly long loading screen, or a long que to enter a dungeon I've started grinding out some squats while I wait. I can only imagine how silly I look, holding a controller in my hands and squatting repeatedly while staring at the T.V. But it doesn't stop there. The other day I was showering before bed and realized that I hadn't met my squat challenge quota for the night. Instead of finishing, towelling off, finding a spot and cranking out some squats before bed I just stood there in the shower brushing my teeth and squatted under the spray. Now that's multitasking!

It hasn't been all good this week though. Earlier we had a potluck in my department for someone's birthday and there was so much delicious food that I couldn't help but go over my calorie limit for the day. I know it's fine to have a sort of cheat day every now and again but the following day we had the same thing. Two days in a row of overeating and boy was I feeling it. On the plus stuffing myself those two days in a row made me realize something. I've been steadily decreasing my meal size and I feel that by now I've gotten to the point where my meals are close to what the average person should be eating. On those two days I ate what several months ago would have been perfectly normal meals for me. The sheer contrast in meal size really drove home the point that I was eating way more than I needed to. On both days I not only ate my fill, but stuffed my stomach to bursting. This is what pre-2016 Me thought it meant to be full. Growing up I had just thought that that bursting almost queasy feeling was what people were talking about when they said they were full.

When it comes to this month's challenge in my company's weight loss challenge I think that we had all given up any thoughts of winning once we saw the statistics for week one. The top team for the week had more than doubled our second place position. This was a bit of a disappointment for my whole team and I know a lot of people pulled back or gave up entirely but I was happy to see that most of my team were still soldiering on with a focus on weight loss instead of winning the challenge. People were sending challenges back and forth and even though our numbers did dip, the change was only small and we were still grinding out some pretty big numbers. Another surprise I was happy to see was that I wasn't even the top person on my team numbers wise. I had figured that as soon as those intimidating numbers were shared that my team would lose it's motivation and I would be the only one logging any numbers but no, I wasn't even the top person on my team! Some people did fall off and stopped entering numbers but at least two people in my team are out producing me. Go team green!

I've also come to a decision with regard to my weight. I'm by no means a shy person but I've decided that I'm really going to be open with the numbers on my weight. I've danced around it saying things like I weigh a lot, or I've lost a little but I want to be 100% transparent. I started this competition at 336.2 lbs and as of our last weigh in I am down to 319 even. My goal weight which according to the math of my calorie counting ap I should reach in a little over 500 days of good behaviour is 186 lbs. I found this number by consulting google to find out what my healthy weight would be according to my height and age. There were several different weights according to a few different formulas and I may have picked the largest number but as a longterm goal I thought it was a good place to start. Also it ends in 86 and I just plain like that number.

I've also noticed a few things in the past few weeks both good and bad. First off, I've begun to fall off with my calorie counting. The counting feels less necessary to me now that I'm sort of on track with meal size as well as cutting back snacks but I know I have to tighten that back up in order to keep from straying. As a reminder I've started setting the connected website as my homepage so every time I use the internet I still get a reminder to enter my food. I've also been ignoring the gym recently. After a painful introduction to lunges which it took me a few days to recover from I took some time off from the gym and have been putting it off far too often. I've caught myself justifying my actions by saying "oh I'm still doing my squats every night, I don't need the gym too," or something along those lines but I need to nip this in the bud before I drop the activity entirely. Speaking of nipping things in the bud, I've also noticed that I was beginning to develop a habit of grabbing a large breakfast from the cafeteria at work. Just like with the gym I always had a justification of "my lunch is small today so I'll have a big breakfast." The moment I realized I was doing this I stopped it entirely. That was just too tempting and I knew it would become a permanent thing if I didn't stop it immediately. On to more positive things, I've noticed that some of my clothing has been feeling loser. At the time of writing this I'm currently wearing a shirt that was almost embarrassing since the pulling of the buttons would create lines on my stomach as the shirt pulled tight. It now fits me almost as good as any other shirt in my wardrobe. This brought me to another goal I will be adding to my list. I have one specific shirt which used to be my favourite unfortunately I haven't been able to wear it in several years. This red silk dragon covered piece of clothing is straight out of the 90s but god did I ever love it. My newest goal is to be able to one day wear it like I used to in college.

What I've learned:
Stop bad habits the moment you notice them. That egg sandwich might be nice to tide you over this morning but before long a big fast food breakfast could become part of your daily routine. Learn to notice these signs and put a stop to them!
My meals have gotten much smaller in the past few months. Those two days of putting up with a grossly distended belly have just reaffirmed that I'm making positive changes in my life and need to keep it up!

#WeightLossJourney

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