Women 200lb+, Let's Keep It Moving This March!!!

Friday weight in
Age: 30
Height 5'6"
SW 287lbs
3/20/20 279.8lbs
CW 281.8

So I had a bit of a gain, but it was expected... I just did not do well and snacked a lot of food I knew should not help. But it was not as bad as I thought it would be at least!
Things I learned...
Moderation is hard when it's something I like... Better to not even have it in the house.
It's okay if you less up and long as you get back on the wagon
Progress is a rollercoaster
You weigh less if you stand up straight 😂 I actually did this today. Lost 2lbs just by standing up straight!

Goal for next Friday weight in (end of March beginning of April):
Major: 275lbs
Realistic 😂:278lbs
Non scale goal: don't go crazy and find a new job!

Friday Weigh-In

SW (1/6): 201.4
Jan end: 199.2
Feb end: 198.6
3/6: 201.2
3/13: 200.6
3/20: Didn't weigh at all
3/27: 197.4
1st GW: 190
UGW: 140

It's been almost the whole month that I haven't been here in the group at all. March has not been my month emotionally AT. ALL. I was already feeling down since last month, I was trying so hard not to let my depression or anxiety get the best of me. The first week of March I tried Hasfit workouts with dumbbells, but I wasn't mentally ready for the weight gain I would experience because of water retention. So I stopped that. Truth be told, I stopped all exercise this month. Going back to square one with my weight really bummed me out.

The second week, I went grocery shopping with my husband, and I didn't think the stores would be empty because of all the panic buying people did!! My anxiety got the best of me, because what if I didn't get the NECESSARY things we needed?! It took us all weekend, a whole lotta stores, but we got most of the things we needed. But I did have my panic attacks in the car.

Then I realized this past few days that our health insurance is screwed up and it's been hard to fix it, especially since the offices are closed and they only attend people through phone calls, my worst enemy. It's all still up in the air... who knows when it will all get fixed. Still trying to work that out. But the first day I found out, I had a full blown panic attack... my husband found me crying, not being able to breathe... not even my meds were working for me that day.

That weight loss has been nothing more than me not eating because of my anxiety, my worries, my depression. I'm the type of person that doesn't eat, or barely eats when stress happens. It's not fun at all... good thing is, this whole "stay-at-home" thing we're doing is so normal to me, so I'm ok with that. If I think about it, I could totally do IF 16:8... although lately it's been something like 20:4. I haven't really logged my food. But I'm still here.

Great weigh in @Cupcake Crusoe. You made your goal! I am enjoying cooking too. Glad your getting outside time and kid time.

@nels5850 I think you know what to do and will do well. Thanks for the scale tip. I have to put my scale in just the same place or it won’t register the same. Hope the job search goes well.

@changeforeverlj sounds like a successful day.

@Lasmartchika Congratulations in making it to Onderland but sorry it has been a hard time.

@BrownSugar nice exercise schedule. My college senior needs to find a job or internship for the summer but it seems hard to do if you are in a shut down. She will only have her capstone project to do after spring quarter. Glad yours found one.

Well I checked my work email to see if there was news about future plans since we had only had news up until Tuesday next week about the closure. They had sent something out yesterday. We have the decision about our job future. The shutdown with pay was extended to the end of next week. Then we have a week of leave with no pay unless we want to use our annual leave. Then we will be on temporary furlough until it is safe to return. It turns out we can file for unemployment. We will have health care benefits. So I won't be entirely unemployed next month and beyond. We will come back to work after it is safe with our same anniversary dates, positions, etc. I have been working on putting together our budget before this happened so this weekend we will see how this pencils out. I love my job but I do not want to go back to work if it isn't safe for me and others. I think we can get through this but we have our work cut out for us to make sure. At least I have a couple more paychecks coming or 1 1/2 paychecks anyway. I am close to my goal for the month but not sure whether I will make it before next Tuesday or not.

I started to get onto MFP and then asked my husband to go for a walk. This news sort of took up the day.

@KeriA Does the university have an online career center program which would allow your student to search jobs, upload a resume and communicate with potential employers? GWU has an online career center program called HandShake which allows the students to apply for on campus jobs, internships and permanent jobs with what seems to be a thousand employers. Her major/minor is international affairs/political science. Between using HandShake and her networking she’s had internships in her field since her freshman year. She started this internship with a DC based political consulting firm in January. What is your child’s major?

SW: 272
2/29: 244
3/8: 249
3/13: 243
3/22: 242.5
3/28: 242
March GW: 240

Doesn’t look like I’m going to meet my March goal, but with everything that’s happened this past month, I’m happy to have a consistent loss at all. I’m ready to go into April focused on what I can control and doing what I need to do to protect myself and my loved ones. Life seems to be changing everyday and I’m trying to not let that get the best of me. I hope everyone has a nice weekend!

@changeforeverlj: I make my menus up five weeks at a time. It is not as awful or hard to do as it sounds. If anyone wants I can explain how I do it, and of course you can adapt it to you. I got in the habit of doing five weeks because we got paid monthly, and months are not always four weeks precisely; this made sure that I had the gap covered, so to speak. But at the same time I wanted things to repeat not too often, so it was, "Oh, great, Fettucini Alfredo!" instead of "Oh, Fettucini Alfredo again. (sigh)" Five to six weeks, I find, is about right for people to start saying, "Hey, we haven't had Fettucini Alfredo for a while. I'd like to have that again sometime!"

Love this quote.

Just a very quick, late update. I spent a good four hours on the phone with my Dad and my brother today.

I've been able to read, not always able to keep up with the responses.

@mmccloy12 - Sorry to hear about your job. If I recall, your company had recently laid off a lot of people, so if I had to guess the current situation may have put them in a bad financial position, if not on the verge of going out of business. So happy to hear you have an interview tomorrow! Best of luck, I hope some of the recent successes you've had with your weight and health carry over to give you confidence tomorrow!

@BrownSugar174 - I've seen other sources that state obesity is a factor in corona virus mortality. It's strange to me that it's not included in the media blast that I've seen with TV ads. It's also true that it's a general factor in morbidity and mortality for pneumonia as well, but generally it is said that's the case because abdominal obesity specifically reduces ventilation, and clearing the infection becomes more difficult. Interesting to see the overall issue of inflammation being mentioned here too. Thanks for posting!

@KeriA - I have not done Corinne's official program, I have been listening to her podcast. As you mentioned, it's not anything I didn't figure out some way on my own. A lot of what she says is reinforcement for me, but managing the mental and emotional perspective on weight loss has been a bit of an eye opener. (I wrote about that a bit more below.) I'm glad you are figuring things out in your household during this time, and have the time to go through her program in depth.

@jspeyer - I can understand not having the mental energy for minutia at times like these. I also can understand how others are comforted by having something they can feel in control of right now, like @AlexandraFindsHerself1971. I think I fall somewhere in between where it's the routine that suits me. I've always said that exercise regulates a lot of things for me: physiologically, mentally, and now with how work has been crazy, having that time to get out to walk or run makes it seem like something is still normal.

Height: 5' 6"
SW (09/08/2019): 239.2 lbs
March SW (3/1/20): 179.4 lbs
3/8/2020: 180.2 lbs
3/15/2020: 180.0
3/22/2020: 175.2
3/29/2020: 174.2
March GW: 173 lbs
GW: 150 lbs (then reconsider)

My goals for March are:

• Cardio for 45-60 min, 5-6 times a week, 2-3 of the sessions Couch-to-10K workouts, with a long run on the weekend. Check! I think I've also maybe got to the point where I can just do a long run on the weekend and skip the long endurance-building walk. I ran 8 solid miles this weekend, with an additional 0.5 slow-run cool down.
• Core exercises at least 3 times a week. Also need to add other weight training for legs, upper body. – Started back to this mid-week, and it might explain why my scale weight was up and down. I am definitely making a new plan for April and going forward.
• Continue to drink water – Check, though on the average it's definitely down since being at home.
• Take better care of my skin in hopes it will start to regain its shape. Hoping faithfulness here will be rewarded in the long run. This has been a hopeless pursuit this month.

My one comment about today's weight is that it is a very dry weight. I weighed at a little after noon, and I really had not had anything to eat or drink at that point. So I definitely expect some rebound tomorrow morning, and I don't believe I'll make goal in the next few days. I'm still happy that the trend is down and not up, and I believe my time will come.

What follows is a sort of journal or thought download. It is quite personal, and if you read I hope that it might be something insightful for you.

I commented above that sometimes there's some topic in Corinne's Phit-n-Phat podcast that makes me see something about my life a lot more clearly. This past week, I received official word that the Broad Street Run will be postponed until October. I'm happy it's being postponed and not cancelled. And I didn't think I'd be able to run the whole race in just a few weeks, so I'm happy that I've got the extra time to train.

But can I also say that I am disappointed? That this is a race I've been waiting five years to run and now this has happened? Without someone saying I'm not entitled to feel that way and I should be grateful I'm not one of the people in the hospital on a ventilator?

Can I say I'm disappointed that my gym is no longer open? For many reasons but also because of the "stupid" reason that there was some guy who seemed to have some sustained interest in me, for what feels like once in my life, then this happened? Don't I deserve to have someone in my life? Without someone saying I'll have other chances, or saying that I should be grateful I'm not one of the people in the hospital on a ventilator?

If you don't believe that my thinking I'm not entitled to have feelings could be at the core of why I overeat, I'll post a confession here: I could not even finish typing those paragraphs above without going into the kitchen and eating a couple of spoonfuls of almond butter straight from the jar.

And I can't remember what Corinne said that prompted it, but I finally, finally have gotten monumentally angry over the last week or so at every one finding a way to belittle or negate my feelings. For almost any time I can remember in my life.

Like how my mother, since the time I was 5 years old, told me I wasn't entitled to be a sad daughter who missed her father once her parents had separated. (For the record, my Dad took us for visitation every weekend, every holiday, and would attend our recitals and school plays. He was not a deadbeat.) I paid the price for my feelings many times over - from my mother's actual punishments, to me constantly swallowing my feelings because that was the only place there was ever any validation.

There's more, but that's probably the big one. Where it all started.

At least I have the belief that I had to get over my past and live in the present to lose weight. I would never have gotten this far without at least that. But clearly, I've got more emotional threads to untangle if I want to keep it off for good.

It's also good to come here and just vent...and have some people who will say, "I'm so sorry you feel that way."

Hope everyone is holding everything together. I know it's tough right now, but try to stay hopeful for the future. April is only two days away! When I was running yesterday, I saw something up ahead at the side of the trail and I thought it was a toad. It was a bunny! Spring is really on its way!

It wasn't until I got into relationships where my feelings could be visible and respected as valid that I could start to think about losing weight. Because now I was safe.