A blip in the road

I knew it would happen. The dreaded time when the weight would stop the downward trend and either stall or start to creep up.

Normally this would not bother me but it does because it's around that magic number again that I repeatedly have issues with. It's honestly like my body rejects losing any additional weight.

My weight this monday was 189.0 back up 1.5 lbs. Now, I know that it's TOM weight as I'm right smack in the middle of it and I know I didn't not drink as much water as I should have this weekend but still, it's that damn magic number.

One thing to note is that my cycle was 29 days this month as opposed to the 24-26 days that it has been for the last year or so. Not sure it means anything, just worth noting.

Back to my weight - hopefully this time I press on and continue to work at getting the number down again.

I've decided to add IF (intermittent fasting) into my daily life as well, at least on the weekdays. I've done it before but I've been a little slack lately and my eating hours have been creeping later into the evening.

I don't eat breakfast unless it's on the weekend but I do get up early so this could be tough. I will ease into it.

Today I'll do a 10-6ish and then try to work my way up to 11am. I do like to have my BPC in the AM as it keeps me full until lunchtime, but I'll have to put that off until later in the morning now. I still want to have it because I get my healthy fats in with the coffee which I don't necessarily get later in the day. Plus I think it's better to eat the fats in the am rather than at night. No scientific reason or proof for that other than it makes sense to me! :)

So mini goals this week - drink more water and try to get on IF routine.

The heat should be leaving us later this week - thank god! It's been crazy hot.... need to get back out for my daily walks with the pup!

Successes for Weight Loss

Having been on a number of diets over the past 16 years I've come to the conclusions that when dieting, certain things will lead to success. No matter the diet, I have had success when I follow these things:

• Weigh in Often (whether it be daily or weekly) as it keeps me accountable 
• In some way, track calories - it doesn't matter whether you are low carb, high carb, low fat, tracking points etc, it still matters how many calories I stuff into my face daily 
• Write down my thoughts and feelings - whether it be here in this blog that is generally just for me or in a diary somewhere. It's good to write out feelings and thoughts as they add to the accountability aspect
• Plan  - I don't plan my entire day but I will try to plan out what I will eat as best as possible. Breakfast and lunch are usually pretty easy but dinner can be a struggle. If I know I'm going out I try to peruse the menu before I get there to understand what I should order. 

They seem like common sense but I have been in the habit of when the weight starts to come off and I feel happy about how I'm doing on the weight loss journey, I tend to slack off on the list above. I might stop weighing in every day or weekly and suddenly it's a month since my feet have touched the scale and low and behold there are 5 new lbs on it. 

When I get comfortable, the tracking stops. I am actually getting to that point already and I need to be better at it. When the tracking stops, the calories usually increase too! I stop planning my meals and wing it when getting to the restaurant and tend to make not so great choices. 

It's a way of life and I want it to be easy but I also need to be a strict with myself as possible. Who knows what will happen when/if I get to my goal weight and I have to switch to maintenance. Hopefully by then eating and making great choices will be a way of life for me and I won't need to track as much. I still have a long way to go before I start thinking about that. 

Found a great little low carb bakery this weekend and bought a stash of breads, and cookies etc. Everything is made with a flax flour so a slice of bread weighs a lot but it's good for curbing the craving. Had a slice yesterday with an egg on top and it was very filling. The cookies will be good for when I feel like I need a sweet (like around the TOM) which is coming up real soon! 

I changed my weigh in day to mondays. I don't like sundays as I usually indulge on friday/saturdays so my weight seems to be highest on sundays with all the salt retention etc. Also, monday is the official start of my week so it makes more sense to be on a monday. I used to like thursdays as well but we will go with monday for now.  Yesterday's weigh in was 189 (magic number y'all)!!! Actually it came back pretty quickly after last sunday but I didn't want to officially count it until this week. And I DID decide to change my weigh in day last night (not this morning) and this morning's weight and official weigh in WAS...........

187.5 !!

say what?!!!! Holy Shit batman!!! 

Goal Weights and Disappointments

Last week was ho hum. Nothing too interesting to report other than the same old story. I do feel like I have more energy this week and I'm working at building the energy even more.  IT's been hot this week however, so some of the tiredness etc is weather related.

I had a true HIGH and LOW this weekend. My high was that on Saturday when I weighed myself I was 189.0. This is the lowest weight that I have been in over 10 years. Last year I managed to get myself down to 189.5 but then right after that I inched higher until I gained back enough to put me back over 200 lbs.

So, imagine how I felt all day saturday... I felt amazing and even more excited to be able to record the great number the next day on sunday. Well I weighed in sunday and I was back to 190.

I tell myself over and over that the scale numbers don't matter. But they do!

So after having my minor pity party I recorded the 190.0 in my journal which still puts me down 1 lb but it wasn't the magic number that I wanted.

Here is the deal though.... if i didn't weigh in daily, I would not have seen that 189.0. Trying to decide if that is motivation that I did actually see it or if it would have been better if I had not?

Oh and went for dins with friends on friday night and again, nobody noticed the loss. :(  I thought I was noticing something when I looked in the mirror, but to add to my disappointment, I took progress pics of myself yesterday and I look exactly the same as I did 10 lbs ago. EXACTLY THE SAME.

When will I see a difference? I feel a difference, but I don't see it yet. Will it be 25lbs, 30 lbs etc? 

Maybe it's the fat from inside my body that is melting, or maybe it's just water weight. You still would think there would be less bloating or something.

Oh well, pressing on.

Plugging along

I have to admit, I feel a good 50% better than I did last week. Maybe it was a cold, maybe it was Keto flu but whatever it was, it's gone..

I still lack some energy but I think that is still part of the diet. Can't wait until I get a BURST of energy, like so many talk about.

WI yesterday showed down another 2 lbs! Woot woot.. That means I'm at a total of 16 down.

Had a bit of a scare on Friday - the previous friday I had my annual mammogram and on friday (one week later) I received a call from the hospital that I needed to return for an ultrasound. Luckily they were able to schedule me in within the hour so I didn't have much time to fret and worry.  Of course I did take to google to see what the percentage of cancer was found on "call back" mammograms. The numbers never look good online do they, even if it is only 17%.  It just ended up that I have a boob full of cysts, with the biggest being .6 cm.  Technician said nothing to worry about but they wanted to get some new measurements seeing as it had been almost 5 years since they measured them last. So.... after that excitement my weekend was kinda blah!

Went to a friends for dinner on friday night and I have to admit I was a bit disappointed that they didn't say anything about my weight loss. I def thought it was noticeable but I guess it's not as much as I thought. I hadn't seen them in a few moths either so it's not like they have seen me every day since I began this new way of eating. Oh well, I press on.

Good points were that I was able to stay on track at the dinner. I did end up having 4 drinks and I have to admit that I really cannot hold my alcohol any longer. OUCH.. I used to be able to drink a bottle of wine and now it's 2 or 3 glasses and I'm feeling loopy!

Sunday we lazed and just did chores around the house. Tried a few new recipes yesterday and and they were all failures!  Some things just can't be substituted!

Eg.  Roasted Radishes for roasted potatoes.. NECHT!

Low Carb cheese buns..  They will do in a pinch but I can't say I enjoyed them that much!

Hubby is slowly starting to fall off the diet. He ordered a beef dip this weekend when we went out for dinner and he had higher carb beers.  I'm not going to nag him even though it pains me to see him not taking care of his body. And the selfish part in me just wants him to do it with me, cause it's so much easier when you are doing it with someone.  He was happy with his results the last month but I think the boredom of food just got to him.  Maybe he will jump on the band wagon again..

Summer sickness

I have a cold.. or Keto flu - whatever it is, I don't fee good. No energy, my nose is all plugged up and I have a headache. This is going on day 5...sick of it.

Although the throat does not hurt as much as it did last week, but it is still nagging and the phlegm is nasty. Oh well, lots of fluids, plugging through it.

Weigh in was Sunday - which was also my start of Shark Week!

193 bitches!!! that's down 3 lbs from last sunday.

I was pretty excited to see that figuring I would be on the upturn of the scale with the TOM week and all but looks like I held strong.

I have been hungry... so hungry so I can attribute that to TOM of month week for sure and the scale kinda showed that today. I was up 2 lbs from sunday... but I have faith it will be gone by next weigh in. Or it better be!!

This week is all about keeping healthy, getting my water in and a few walks. No Zumba for me tonight, I'm just too tired.

A few things I've noticed on this diet so far:
1) I'm rarely hungry - other than TOM
2) I do not crave sweets much at all anymore and I LOVE SWEETS!!  I could devour an entire bag of candy before if it were put in front of me!
3) I am getting to love veggies. I used to like veggies but I would rather eat a banana or apple over a cup of broccoli  I think much of that is because I am limited in what I can eat.
4) my skin is so much better!! I always had some sort of rashy-thing on my torso and it appears to be gone now!
5) little to no heart burn.
6) very little gas :) oops.... scuze me.

negative things I have noticed:
1) Carbs are in everything as are sugars so it's hard to stay completely away from them.
2) Limited food to eat
3) when I ask for no starches or breads to be brought with my dinner in a restaurant I don't always get a substitution and I have to pay the same amount.
For example on sunday we went for breakfast and I ordered an omelet and asked for no potatoes or toast. My bill was not any cheaper and I was not offered anything as substitution. Oh well..... the price we pay I guess.
4) I really dislike the taste of sugar substitutes
5) eating out is challenging sometimes.
6) muscle pains if I don't get all my electrolytes in!!

It's all still early in the process though, and so far I will take the good over the bad for sure.

We press on.....

1 month today!! :)