Scale Talking...Telling Me Lies...

I am quite proud of the fact that I worked out every day this past weekend. Yesterday, Sunday, I was onthe way to the shower, shampoo in hand when I heard someone step on the scale at the end of the row of lockers. These scales are the old metal, clanking scary ones. The ones that aren’t terribly accurate only because no one wants to take the time to gently tap tap tap the slider ever so subtly to the right hash mark. The kind that everyone knows when you get on one because unless you already know what your weight is and have it set for it the thing will whomp down and clatter around. Besides if you already know what your weight is to begin with, why are you getting on a scale?

Anyway, I heard the ever familiar tapping and then she spoke: “You have got to be kidding me!” I
couldn’t help but smile. I almost called out “I’ve said the same thing to that scale before.” It’s true, too. Although, my exclamation was more like “seriously?” I kept my mouth shut and meandered on to the shower.

As I lathered my hair I wondered, how many women have such similar conversations with their scales? How many women deliberately weigh themselves first thing in the morning, before coffee and bagel, after having gone to the bathroom, two-leg nakey just to step on the digital scale and say “Oh, COME ON!!” How far off are our expectations of our scales? What are we expecting it to show us? That even though you haven’t been dieting and only made it to a half a PiYo class you somehow managed to lose 12 pounds? In a week? We may be making our scales the scapegoats here.

It is the scale’s fault that I ate that entire chocolate…cake. You ate an entire chocolate cake? Your scale should have also pointed and laughed at you. Have some self-control, woman!

However, I have also had similar exchanges with a scale. My own, for example, I do not trust. It simply is not right. That’s why I have appointed my mother’s scale to be my official weight taker. My scale just makes me hate it more everyday. It’s wrong. How many of us, after weighing, just scoff as if to say that the scale simply doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Pssssh, call yourself a digital scale? Lying bastard.

But I was at my mother’s yesterday after the overheard scale conversation and decided to weigh myself.

And what I got was this:

All right, scale. You live another day.

Three pounds lost in 10 days.

**This was written several days ago, so there's no telling what I may have lost and/or gained in the meantime.

Oh. My. God, Becky...

This is going to be brief as not only have I opened this blog tonight but I have also posted three separate posts before this one.

Last night I went with my hetero life mate Rosa to the Y to work out. Usually we go primarily for Zumba, but we're branching out. So we both rode the elliptical for half an hour each. I learned something very important last night on the elliptical. Ear buds MATTER. I had forgotten mine so I just had my phone with my infinite playlist. So, in desperate need of music, I just turned it on so that I could hear it. Luckily, everyone ELSE had ear buds and didn't have a chance of catching the lyrics to Down With the Sickness or Baby Got Back that was wafting out of my iPhone. When you're music is under scrutiny it's a lot more obvious to you what might offend other people. Case in point the last verse of Down With the Sickness. Or every verse. http://www.metrolyrics.com/down-with-the-sickness-lyrics-disturbed.html

My bad.

We then proceeded to lift weights. It was then I learned, as I entered my cardio and weights into MyFitnessPal, that lifting weights does not earn you any extra calories. Thanks a lot. Good to know. So I earned myself a cool extra 310 calories for the day. Awesome.

The unfortunate part about being busy is that sometimes you just don't get around to eating. I know that you are supposed to eat something within 30 minutes of exercising to help the recovery effort. I did not do this. What did I do? I got home and put my kids to bed and woke up at about 11:30 asleep on the couch with my younger son. So I put him in the bed and realized I had never eaten. So at almost midnight last night I sat in the completely dark living room and ate a carefully measured bowl of Lucky Charms. And I still came out 371 calories under my limit. My FaceBook Status confirms it.

Then today I got up and cooked breakfast for everyone. I ate half a bagel and a scant spreading of cream cheese. I then acquired the Rosa and we went back to the Y for more cardio-mania. Having remembered my precious ear buds that seem to be warping the shape of my ear canal (thanks, Apple. 'Preciate it.), I was able to go for much longer on the elliptical. I ended up doing about an hour and a half and racking up alkmost 700 calories. Then I did some squats on the Smith machine. I basically started the day with almost 1700 calories. It was already noon. What was I supposed to do with that? Start eating fettucine alfredo? Not a bad idea, but no.

I had homemade tuna salad for lunch, of which I will be making more. Then I had roasted vegetables for supper. Doesn't sound like enough? It wasn't. I stand here as I type, the clock on the stove says 11:09, and I am still shy almost 1100 calories. I don't know what to do. I actually am hungry, but I don't know what to eat.

See, I may be all brave posting my weight and measurements and stuff, but I still hit points where I haven't got a clue in hell what I'm really doing. I do know, though, that if I eat too little then I will start to store it. This I know.

Where did I put the Lucky Charms?

Lose This.

Today is that day.

I promised I would post not only my current weight but also my measurements. So I am. I figure it's just embarrassing enough to feel the need to change it.

So in light of that fact...

There it is, my friends. The gospel truth. I don't think I can get away with saying that. I kid you not. That is it. Those are also my real toes. I considered using a body double, but their prices are ungodly at such short notice.

So that's done. But now for the other numbers.

Bear in mind that this physically hurts me to do...

Bust: 38"

Waist (the real waist that no one seems to be able to locate anymore): 31.5"

Belly button: 35"

Low rise (where low rise jeans would sit): 38"

Hips: 40.5"

Left thigh: 24"

Right thigh: 24"

Left bicep: 12"

Right bicep: 12"

So that's what I amount to at this point. A bunch of numbers. Numbers that may seem perfectly reasonable to some and laughably big to others.

I did this because so many people find it impossible and up until the last few days I was one of them. I would not post my measurements on the internet if I did not think I was about to change them.

And I will.

Draggin' In The Wind

No matter what diet you try, you have to give yourself time to get used to it and perhaps even tweak it where necessary.

I am only just learning this. If you’ve ever done a diet program, then you know either the book or the Nazi in charge tells you precisely how and/or what to eat to make this work for you. And you are not to stray from the program! Or it won’t work!

Luckily, I opted for my own brand of diet, which is just calorie counting. And I can alter it as I choose. And it looks like I might have to.

Yesterday was my second day on the reduced calorie plan. I also had Zumba last night. About a song and a half into the class I realized that I simply had no energy. It was all I could do to make my feet move when they were supposed to. About halfway through the class I realized why I was being so sluggish. I had not eaten enough. It hit me quite out of nowhere. It was then that I started thinking that I might have to add to my calorie bank.

Yesterday my food intake consisted of four strawberries and a half cup of cottage cheese for breakfast, two cups of chicken tortilla soup for lunch minus the tortilla (so really just chicken soup), a pear, 6 cubes of cheese, and two 90-calorie cereal bars. Sounds like a lot, right? It seems like a lot just to write. Well, it’s not! It wasn’t enough to get me through Zumba at my usual pace, which kinda bums me out. Once I got home, it took what seemed like forever, but I finally ate again before bed. Chicken tortilla soup, but this time with tortillas! I treated myself to a Sprite as well. After logging in my exercise, I had almost as many calories to consume as I had started the day with. After supper, I still had almost 700 calories left to eat. So I had a bag of M&Ms. Hey, it was within my calorie constraints! Don’t judge me!

Even though I had earned back almost 600 calories I really didn’t want them, which actually put me at a serious calorie deficit. To me it sounds like a good thing, but even I know that it’s not. MyFitnessPal asks you how many pounds you want to lose and then from there it tells you how many calories a day you are allowed. It gave me 1200. Twelve hundred calories is the absolute lowest amount of calories you can eat daily and not be considered starving, and I’m quoting a doctor on this one. Any less and your body is going to hang on to whatever you are putting into it on the assumption that you are starving.

Twelve hundred calories gives me the energy to, y’know, live and stuff, but it does not give me energy to work out at a pace that I like, which is fast. I did wonder, however, if maybe it was just an off day. So I decided to keep going at this pace for two weeks, maybe even as long as the one month mark and see how I feel. If I am still dragging during workouts, I’ll have to tack on about 300 calories more.

The only other time I used the 1200 calorie plan was in the spring of 2010. It did virtually nothing and I felt like crap. Of course, then I found out that I was three months pregnant so that might have had something to do with it. So I am calling do-over.

I plan to go to my Mom’s and weigh tonight and get my initial start weight and measurements.

Then it is so on!

Call. Raise you 30.

Go back and read the blog title again.

Here let me just type it again.

I Can’t Lose!

It sounds good doesn’t it?  Like something you would hear from some poor, gin-saturated soul in Vegas.  Except it’s me saying it and I think we can all agree that I am neither A) in Vegas, or 2) saturated with gin.  I don’t drink gin because my mother told me it tasted like pine needles.  Does it?  I don’t know but I can only assume she was right.

No, my new blog title has nothing to do with pine needle cocktails in front of a sparkly one-armed bandit.  Sorry, if that idea is what drew you in.  Said title is actually kind of missing a word at the end.  Were I to go back and add it, it would read:

I Can’t Lose Weight!

But then I would miss out on all the visits from gamblers and casino goers.  I simply cannot have that.

This blog is where I intend to chronicle my most serious, yet eye-rolling, of plans.  Yes, children, weight loss.  A topic that I’m sure about 97% of women can relate to either because they are attempting it themselves or because they know someone who is.  I was very hesitant to start this blog, partially because my blogs have been known to experience significant blackouts.  But weight loss for me is something that cannot be left on the back burner in my mind.  It has to be in the front, a rolling boil, for me to keep paying attention to it.  Is it sad at all that I just used a metaphor comparing weight loss to cooking?  All cuisine-speak aside, if you want to lose weight you have to give it priority.

Another reason for this blog is my husband and his extreme disinterest in my quest to lose weight.  This is not in a mean “I don’t give a crap what you do” kind of way, but more of a “you’re perfectly fine the way you are” kind of way.  Yes, I know that most women would love to find someone that felt that way about them, but I am not most women and it’s not my husband who is uncomfortable in a bikini.  Translation: I’m not losing weight for him.  He can lose his own weight, this we know.  Men and their stupid testosterone…but that’s another post.

As this is a blog about losing weight it also is a blog about…food!  Of course, food.  Where would we be in weight loss without it?  It is both the reason for and the cause of weight loss.  Oh, isn’t that deceptive?  Food is the reason why you need to lose weight and it can also be the reason that you do lose weight.  Oh, that’s profound.

So this blog is about losing weight, food, oh, and one more thing…ME!!  Yaaay me!  I hope to put pictures up fairly often and you will have to forgive me but they may very well be the self-taken kind that has the phone or camera in it as you look in a full size mirror.  At least it’s something.  Pictures are actually one of the reasons I want to lose weight.  Ever since I got the wild hair to want to model all those years ago, and no I will not say how many, I have loved pictures and photography.  The most expensive thing I wanted for my wedding was photography.    For a while I had so many pictures of me taken and then it tapered off.  Then it got to a point where I didn’t want pictures taken of me at all.  There are several years where there are absolutely no pictures of me.  When I was pregnant with my oldest child I allowed only a handful of pictures to be taken and that was three days before he was born.  There are none of the day of his birth at all, including of him.  That’s shameful, I know. 

It was only slightly different with baby number two the following year.  Pictures the day of his birth and a few right after he was born.  That’s all.  Most of the pictures I take and have these days are of my family.  Partially because I don’t trust my husband to take decent pictures.  He thinks that any angle is a good one.  Speaking as someone who has genetically inherited a double chin, I would respectfully disagree.  So naturally there are almost none of me.  I’m tired of avoiding pictures when I used to love them so much.

So my goal here is to lose 30 pounds by next February.  As the date today is August 18 that means I have to lose 5-6 pounds a month, which I feel is doable and somewhat healthy.  But for now I am not going to think about February.  Right now my main concern is losing 5 pounds by September 18.  I got a new scale and was going to rely on it to keep up with my progress.  Unfortunately it is a piece of crap and never tells the same weight.  So I will instead use the scale at my mother’s house.  I do so for two reasons 1) it is always in the same place, and B) since it is not at my house I can’t always be obsessively checking it.  I can, however, still use the crappy scale that I have to torment myself.  So I will make a point of going to my mother’s house tomorrow to begin the weight loss surveillance.  Maybe I’ll even get her to take pictures of me.  Oh, man, just the thought makes me queasy.

My plan of action for this weight loss is two-fold.  The first is a reduced calorie diet.  My total number of allowed calories a day will be between 1200 and 1500, aiming more towards the 1200.  I am using FitnessPal on my iPhone to help me keep track.  The second aid in my weight loss arsenal is Zumba.  Currently I am taking just two classes a week, but soon when my own classes start I will be taking 3-4 a week.  Hopefully, that will make a difference as well.

Go see my Zumba instructor page! 
http://www.zumba.com/en-US/profiles/257081/darci-craver

Hopefully in the next couple of days I will post not only my initial weight but my initial measurements.  Then I will update it monthly.

With any luck in a few months I’ll want to change the title of my blog to

I Can Lose!

…but then I’d also lose all my blackjack buddies.

 

 

 
a