Yep, it's check-in time! How'd you do? What'd you learn?

Here's what I learned:

1. I'm way to pragmatic for this kind of challenge. I ended up going 4 days of completely abstaining from all dairy. It didn't help that the first week or so was pretty much "eat dairy or starve," because we hadn't gotten our meat order yet. Major work drama (to the tune of leaving and finding a new job) didn't help matters, either. However, I have been staying away from drinking milk, and now my dairy has been pretty much limited to cheese and sometimes sour cream. I'm thinking phasing out is going to be a better/more sustainable option for me.

2. Milk does appear to be a factor in my eczema. Like the wheat, once I stopped consuming it, the eczema symptoms that wouldn't heal immediately started clearing up. Interestingly, even on the same spot, it produces a different reaction than gluten/wheat. While wheat causes it to have little blisters, milk seems to be the one that makes it look like a dry patch of skin.

3. Straight milk (doesn't seem to matter the source, but I'm going to see how raw milk affects me the next time I visit my mom, who has access to raw milk) seems to be the worst for my eczema, followed by sour cream (:sad:). Cheese and butter don't seem to affect it much. I don't know about heavy cream, since I didn't have any this month.

4. I suspect it may also be affecting my ability to breathe/process oxygen when I'm working out. I'll need to test this hypothesis more, but it seems that I have a harder time doing the cardio warmups at my boxing classes on days that I consume dairy. This may also be an "any source" (or almost any source) thing, but I'll need to test this.

5. It may or may not be affecting the arthritis in my hips. I can't really tell, as I still have bad and good days pretty much regardless of what I eat or do. I suspect it might be helping, but as it takes time to both build up and repair, it's hard to know for sure. I'll be keeping an eye on it and see if it may be a contributing factor.

6. I learned that the part of my hip that has the arthritis is known as the "Iliac Crest." That's the top of the hip bone, that is exposed on some really thin/boney people.

7. I swear, all of the weight I've lost for the past ten pounds or so has been almost entirely in the spot in my thighs just below the hip joint, as that is where I'm noticing the most difference in clothing fit. It seems my body takes "working your *kitten* off" literally...

Here are my stat changes:

Officially, I lost about 2lbs (247 -> 245 as of recorded weigh-ins), though I still weighed periodically, and saw as low as 243. I suspect the extra two pounds is at least partially water weight, since I've upped my exercise recently.

It also seems I neglected to input any measurements at the beginning of the month (though I swear I did...), so the recorded measurements go back earlier (1/30, according to MFP).

Before:
Weight: 247.2
Waist: 40.5
Hips: 47
Chest: 39.5
Body Fat: 29.5% (Covert Bailey formula)

After:
Weight: 245.0
Waist: 40
Hips: 47
Chest: 38.5
Body Fat: 29.1% (Covert Bailey formula)

Progress is progress, though, so I'm not complaining (seriously, the above is exponentially better than what I was dealing with a year or so ago). I'm also making fitness and rehabilitation (from a compressed disc in my lumbar region of my spine, and from my hip) progress. In the past couple of months, I've gone from sometimes barely even able to move, to being able to work out, but requiring modification for most exercises that are from or go through a plank (to of push up) position and not being able to do most types of situps or anything going through a partial situp position, to being able to do some situps and some plank position stuff (for some reason, isometric stuff works better than repetition stuff) without being in pain. That's better than even 4-6 weeks ago.