Day 24, August 12
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KarenZen
Posts: 1,430 Member
I'm having one of those WTF moments as my scale just told me I've GAINED 2 pounds this week. Seriously??? I know that's not right, that I'm puffed up and PMSing, but boy is it discouraging to work so hard for nothing. My first instinct is to radically up my exercise and starve myself this week, but that is crazy, eating-disordered talk. I'm going to have to let this moment go--I've done everything right this week, and eventually that loss will show up on the scale. Grrrrrrrrrrr!
So what does today hold in store for you? I'm going to challenge each of you to do one thing really good for YOU today, something indulgent and self-nurturing. I think I'm going to buy a new face moisturizer, a grown-up kind, instead of slathering on whatever is floating around the house. I may even get a haircut while I'm out. I have been not-rocking the unbrushed hair in a bun look for way too long.
Karen
So what does today hold in store for you? I'm going to challenge each of you to do one thing really good for YOU today, something indulgent and self-nurturing. I think I'm going to buy a new face moisturizer, a grown-up kind, instead of slathering on whatever is floating around the house. I may even get a haircut while I'm out. I have been not-rocking the unbrushed hair in a bun look for way too long.
Karen
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Replies
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Stay off that scale!! Get out the tape measure instead!
Is it horrible I have been avoiding the gym because when I hit it hard last week I gained 9lbs? I noticed whenever I workout hard, I put on weight. Crazy, but true. Even just doing the exercise bike at home, I gain weight. I don't know if it is permanent, I seriously doubt it, but I always gain weight when I first start exercising. The only time I don't is with swimming. That is like insta-weight loss since I tend to shrivel up like a prune. *Bonus*
I think some self pampering today will be to finish my mani/pedi I started last night. All I have left to do is the clear coat and if I get really crazy, I will put some nail art on. I always get to this stage and forget about the clear coat which totally defeats the purpose of doing the mani/pedi and end up chipping it by the end of the day. So.. YES, I shall take the extra 10 or 15 mins and complete it. Woo!0 -
Heather, I remember those 8 pounds! Isn't it crazy that our bodies can gain and hold that much water weight? You know it's not real weight... we're tracking calories!
Funny you said that about the tape measure. After I weighed, I was sitting on the edge of the bed and reached back to scratch my back and realized that my hands meet behind my back with plenty of room to spare. Shrinking! I'm shrinking! Maybe that two pounds is in my head because my brain is so big, LOL.
K.0 -
Naw Karen....I blame any weight gain on my feet....say that my shoe size goes up!! lol!! Not really, but better reason than blaming yourself!! You are doing great....don't get defeated....just keep on trucking!! And like Heather says...use the tape measure. I did last night and could not believe I have gone from a 1X and am now in an XL but could probably go for a L....(I was looking at clothes on the QVC link).
Kudos Heather...the weight is dropping off of you.
I am with Heather, will do a mani on myself tonight when I get the chance. AFter my paperwork from work is done! My polish is chipping....NOT good....does not set a good example to the staff either!!
I am heading for the treadmill for my steps now!!! Enjoy your day...some of your temperatures in your places are dropping!!! Nice!!!
Take care...cheers,
Nancy0 -
Karen, I don't know if this will work for you, but it is what works for me. I am a person that needs to get on the scale often. When I first started doing this I would worry about every up and down. I tried to figure out the exact cause of the fluctuation. The conclusion I came to is that there is no exact cause haha. It can seemingly go up or down at random. What I do now is still weigh every day, but I take an average of my weight for that week and compare it to the average from the week before. That way I don't get discouraged if I just happen to compare the weight from my lowest day of last week to my highest of this week. For me it works, but it also could be that the best for you would be to take Heather's advice and to just ignore the scale and pay attention solely to the inches that are flying off.
Tonight I am looking forward to playing racquetball with some friends. It isn't as awesome as tennis, but it is still pretty darn great and who doesn't like to mix it up every once in a while?0 -
Zac, that's actually a good idea. I usually stay off the scale because the fluctuations discourage me so much, especially being on prednisone and having pretty swollen legs. What I've found with the food journal is that recording everything has taken the power away from the food. If I eat something high calorie or" unhealthy," I just record it and make it fit into my plan and calorie count instead of beating myself up over it. Maybe getting on the scale every day and just recording the number will take away the power of that number and the fear and dread of the scale.0
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I am a "weigh every day " gal. BUT. I only record on Mondays. It can get discouraging to see the scale go up 2lbs in a day when I KNOW I didn't eat 2lbs worth of extra calories. But with that comes the times that it goes down and it keeps me motivated to not eat extra calories. My aim is to keep that loss. In my head. But come Monday, regardless of what the scale says, that is the one I track at home on my own chart.
Take last Friday for instance. I weighed that day for challenge purposes, and lost. But I had Chinese food over the weekend, twice I think, and by Monday the sodium had caught up to me and I had "gained" 3lbs. So on the chart it went as 3 pounds +.
Weighing every day keeps me honest. Good and bad. It has also helped me rationalize that I know why it may be up, and therefore doesn't send me into an eating frenzy because I gained.
It's not for everyone to weigh daily, but it works for me.
Diana0 -
Blah...the scale. Water retention is the worst because you can never really know how much you're retaining, which drives me batty. Sometimes I expect too much when I stop retaining and end up disappointed because I wasn't retaining as much as I had thought.
Heather, the same thing happens to me if I fall off the exercise wagon. I'll gain weight for at least 2 weeks, which is discouraging. I know it'll drop off once my body can better regulate itself, but there's a part of me that's always still convinced that it's not water weight, that it's me somehow not doing everything I should be. I was so depressed the last time it happened. I keep trying to remind myself of that as motivation for not stopping.
I don't know what I'll do to pamper myself tonight. I have therapy after work and then a workout. I should do something nice for myself though since tomorrow I have to fork over registration fees for my car, which always leaves me feeling a little down. I did buy myself a few new dresses, a pair of heels, and a purse last week just because....I think they're coming in tonight. So that sort of counts. I'll switch my stuff over from my old purse to the new so I can bring it to work tomorrow. Maybe I'll also clean out my car tonight so I can enjoy the top down for the last couple weeks of summer.0 -
Just ate my gloriously juicy and delicious cactus pear. 43 calories for the whole thing! Seriously????? Nom nom nom.
And swam for over an hour despite cool temps.
Good to see everyone doing some pampering!
K.0 -
I don't know if someone already said this but perhaps you need to adjust your thinking about the scale. The scales just a simple tool that calculates weight and your body is a complex system that fluctuates widely throughout the day. I might try for a couple of weeks simply weighing yourself each day at the same time. Write down the numbers but ignore them and don't log them, think to yourself that your measuring your fluctuations and not your set weight. Then at the end of the week you can look at the trend in your numbers, just because you end up slightly on Friday doesn't mean the whole week wasn't trending down. That's your real weight loss, not just a random number taken on a random day that may or may not reflect whats completely going on.
A bigger picture might help. Try that for a couple a weeks and maybe it will help get you into the right head space.
If people want we can probably turn this into a google spreadsheet with a graph (who doesn't love graphs!).0 -
If people want we can probably turn this into a google spreadsheet with a graph (who doesn't love graphs!).
hahahahaaa... how true!!!0 -
Well I decide today to do two things--conquer my fear of/obsession with the scale. So I'm taking your advice and will weigh every day at the same time for a few weeks. See how that sits. In eating disorder recovery, we're not allowed to weigh or see the numbers when weighed. We're just told that we're trending up or down. I think I'm far enough along, though, that I can use the scale for what it is--just another tool--and not have it be the ultimate measure of my failure or success as a human being!
Second thing is to be more fastidious in my food journal, to make sure I'm measuring accurately, etc. I think nothing of tossing an entire avocado onto my salad plate and just including it in my "mixed vegetables salad," but that salad is 60 calories and the avocado alone is 160. When I drink a large iced latte, I make it with skim milk but often will dump in a couple of tablespoons of half n half, and there's another 40 calories that I miss. I haven't really worried about them because I usually have so many extra calories from swimming, but maybe I should try to stay closer to that 1400 goal and stop eating exercise calories. I just wish I had a surgery date... when my stomach is the size of a thimble, it'll be so much easier to do my food journal. Breakfast: 1 chickpea Lunch: 1 grape Dinner: 1 raisin LMAO.
Tonight I'm stuffed full of salad in a pita (yum. threw in some avocado and sunflower seeds to jazz it up) and tired from a good swim. Jim's headed to bed early, so I'm going to stay up and quietly do some cleaning. I keep trying to organize the desk area in the living room so I have a good bill paying/letter writing/bigfoot erotica typing space on the first floor, but somehow the desk has become a catchall for shoes, candles, glasses, sock monkeys, a large plastic pirate sword, bug repellant, binoculars, and a head lamp. For my recipe challenge, I think I want to try making my own pita bread, but I'm not sure I have the stamina for that right now. I have a lovely eggplant that needs cooking, so maybe look up a new eggplant recipe. Plus I need to cook for a Thursday ladies' craft night, and I'm sure the ladies would like something eggplanty.
I hope everyone had a FABULOUS day. Very busy days right now for everyone, I think. No word from Zac yet on whether he got his dog. I hope so! And Dee, are the protests settling down at all where you are? Scary stuff. Be careful. Steph, so glad you posted!
Karen in rainy (again) Maine0 -
I will 'weigh' in on this subject!! lol...I do weigh every day, morning before I get into the shower. it does fluctuate...and that is a fact of life...sometimes we retain sodium (chinese food, very salty crackers etc) will do it for you. Sometimes we put on muscle weight...Heather you sure can expect this as your increase your exercising, but the weight will still come off. I am on a forum with a gal who has lost 128 pounds over several years, and i asked what are her tidbits...she says that planning her meal, logging in everything she eats as well as exercising 5-6 times a week were just a couple of common sense tidbits she gave.
Got to run and shower and get my rear in gear to go to work. I like the spread sheet idea Pat....you are so right...ya got to love them, and if you can graph them out...all the better. I gotta take a course in Excel !!!!
See you all tomoro (later in my day!!)
Nancy where it is only going to get up to 107 today!!!0 -
Nancy where it is only going to get up to 107 today!!!
Nancy, Wear your mittens and sweater so you don't catch a chill!
Oh, I almost forgot to post about my self-indulgent moment today! For all of my adult life, I've wanted tall, black boots but could never get them because my legs are too big. When I decided to get bariatric surgery, I put "black boots" on my list of WANTS for my skinny self. I know it sounds foolish... but I live in a state where cold comes early and stays late, and I want to be able to wear these awesome black knee high boots with tights and a skirt. And look fashionable. So I've been eyeballing some wide calf boots for a while, figuring they would go on full clearance at the end of summer before the new fall line comes in, and today they were marked down from $168 to $64.99, AND I had a 50% off coupon! SCORE. $32.49. So my self indulgent moment was to buy a pair of boots that I can't fit into yet... but that I WILL fit into someday soon, and they will have a special place in my closet for my skinny self.0 -
I look forward to hearing how it goes. If it is to much then maybe you can try to do blind readings. Have your husband record the numbers or perhaps take a picture of the scale numbers without looking and review them at the end of the each week. Who knows. I hope it helps. It is hard to remember the scale is just a tool that doesn't dictate anything about our weight loss.
I would defiantly buckle down on the calorie counting. Even if thats not the culprit it will allow for better informed choices. I'm not certain about the not eating some of your exercise calories back, especially if your doing a long swim and it doesn't magically come from nowhere. but you have doctors for that so you can speak to them. You might google to see how calorie burns for swimming are calculated so you can get a better sense of how off your logged exercise burns are. I recently switched which app was reporting my calorie burn to MFP because it had a slightly better calculation that lowered my burn (sometimes by a couple hundred calories).
Keep up the good work.0 -
Very readable blog about why the scale can go up after a workout.
http://www.sparkpeople.com/blog/blog.asp?post=why_the_scale_goes_up_when_you_start_a_new_workout_plan
Also important--make sure you eat enough protein so the muscles can rebuild.0 -
Yes indeed. I eat more carbs and fruit before I go on a ride and then have my protein when I am back.0
