Flirting with 299

I'm doing better at sticking to my "only weigh once a week" rule. It helps that I've been so insanely busy this week that I have not wanted to weigh. What I can tell you is that last weekend I was flirting with the going under 300 pounds. I saw 299 appear on the scale then 301 then 300 and when I kept hoping that 299 would just stick. It did not decide to do that but it does give me hope that very soon the 290s will be hanging out for a while at my house. 

The last time I was in the 290s was a rather unhappy period for me. It was about four years ago and I was quickly making my way back up the scale after what I thought had been a successful journey down the scale. I was regaining weight so quickly at this point in my life that I was bloated and angry and hurting and I seemed to just sneeze and I went up 20 lbs. on the scale. It was a cataclysmic and painful time for me. 

I'm still not sure I have all the answers to what happened to me then but I do know this: No matter what, I need good fats like olive oil and raw nuts in my diet to feel healthy and satiated and carbs such as wheat and sugar are like dynamite to my system--I blow up when I consume them. 

We will see if those theories continue to help me improve my health. 

Dinner Plate Photo: Spinach Turkey Burgers, Salad, Veggies, Fruit

Katy and I had dinner last night before heading off to hike Stewart Falls. Katy is another foodie friend who happens to have celiac disease and some other food sensitivities so our diets are very similar and we talk about food often. Katy has been doing this a lot longer than I have though so it inspires me to hear what she is making and we share favorite recipes with each other.

I love to cook for her because we have such fun talking and experimenting together. And it is thanks to Katy that we have a photo of dinner. She styled the plates and took photos. I likely would have forgotten until the meal was over and then I would have wished I had remembered to pull out the camera.

Menu:

Spinach turkey burgers with almond mozzarella cheese

Spring salad with chopped almonds and apples and Elana's awesome ranch dressing

Zucchini and yellow squash sauteed in olive oil

Strawberry and pineapple salad

Any of this look yummy to you?

I Got Glutenized or Allergerized or Whatever You Call It

I'm still learning about eating on this allergy-free diet. I've certainly gotten much better over the last few months figuring out what I can and can't eat. As I've done this and been more and more careful about what I'm ingesting, I've started to feel better and better. 

When I was on my trip a few weeks ago, we bought some chicken apple sausages at Costco that seemed like they might be okay, so I'm tried them out the next day when I made them for breakfast. Because there were five of us though I didn't get much of the sausages. I remember thinking that they tasted really good and that they seemed to make me immediately start craving more. 

I didn't remember that little piece of information clearly this week when I stopped by the grocery store and saw some chicken apple sausages. I just remembered that they had tasted good. So, I read the ingredients carefully and it looked like they were a whole, clean food so I bought two. Yesterday I cooked them both and ate one for breakfast and one for lunch. 

Bad idea. Very, very, very bad idea. 

My stomach felt rumbly and funny all day long. Immediately after eating the first one in the morning I started having some serious cravings. When the cravings hit me so quickly, my memory of eating this kind of sausage on my trip came back. Was an immediate and intense craving a sign that I might be allergic to a food? 

Well, I ate the other one for lunch because it was there and cooked and it wasn't going to hurt me, right? Yeah, wrong. I should have listened to my body earlier. I ate the one for lunch and my stomach continued rumbling the rest of the afternoon. I also suddenly started thinking "who cares what I eat?" and thinking I could blow off this way of eating and dive into a vat of M&Ms. 

Also, despite having a pretty good day on my drive home from work I was CRANKY. Cranky and grouchy and pessimistic. Was this a sign I was reacting to a food or was I just having a bad day? How am I supposed to separate the two? I can't attribute every bad day I have to eating something wrong. So, how am I supposed to tell the difference? 

All that came to mind was that nothing really wrong had happened that day and I would normally categorize it as a pleasant day except that I seemed to be irritated very easily and wanted to punch people in the face for simply existing. Yeah, that attitude seemed a little out of place for the circumstances. 

Then this morning my eyes have been itchy, I'm swollen from retaining water and I still haven't lost my nasty little attitude. So, I'm concluding from the various data presented to me that I am allergic to something from that chicken apple sausage. Would you agree? 

My reaction includes:

• Immediate cravings that are rather intense
• Stomach rumbly and achy
• Serious cranky attitude
• Eyes itchy, and plugged up nose

It seems I am becoming a bit more sensitive to how I react to food now that I am not eating food I am allergic to every day. And this reaction reminds me exactly why I don't like to feel this way. It STINKS. 

Nia Vardalos Loses 40 lbs. When She Stops Eating Cheese

I read this article the other day with Nia Vardalos where she talks about losing weight. She has recently lost 40 pounds and said that eliminating cheese from her diet changed her life. 

I wonder if Ms. Vardalos might possibly be allergic to said food item? 

She just might. She acknowledged that she did several other things as well to lose the weight but  that eliminating cheese was the thing that turned it all around for her. That's my kind of turn around. 

That's how I've felt about eliminating wheat, dairy and sugar from my food life. It seems like things are turning around as a result. Meaning my life feels and seems 180 degrees different than it did just a few months ago. I LOVE IT! I love it, I love it, I love it. Can this be my life forever? This place where I feel good most of the time instead of feeling terrible most of the time? I like feeling good. I really, really like it. 

And if staying away from those food substances is going to make me feel this much better this much of the time? Well, let's just say that seems like a small price to pay for joy. 

Cravings: Do They Really Go Away?

I was coming home last night late and I was hungry. I had not stayed up on my eating particularly well that day and I knew I really should eat something when I got home. I had eaten lunch late too--at 5:00PM. So, I was appropriately hungry now at 9:30PM at night. 

My 5PM lunch had been a spinach salad with ground turkey, tomatoes, sliced almonds and some dairy-free ranch dressing I had made a few days before. It was a yummy salad. So as I was headed home and hungry, I was wondering what I could eat. And nothing sounded good. It seemed like a lot of work to cook the food. I was tired. It was late. What if I just went to bed without eating? I could eat tomorrow.

Excuse me? I could eat tomorrow?

What alien was inhabiting my body? I've wished most of my life that I could switch bodies with someone, anyone really, who didn't have my issues and who looked good on the outside no matter how messed up she was on the inside. I was willing to trade all of my external and internal dysfunction for her infinitely greater internal dysfunction as long as I could look gooooood in the process. Mostly, I wondered what it could possibly be like to live in a body where you could decide casually one evening that despite being hungry you didn't want to eat so you would wait until tomorrow. 

That woman had heard my particular cry and she must be inhabiting my body now because eating has never been a take-or-leave-it business for me. I've always taken it. Food is good. Food is necessary. Food is life blood. Food must be eaten. 

Yet, here I was casually contemplating not eating that night because it was too much trouble? I really must be living in an alternate universe. That or living out a very vivid nocturnal dream. 

Pinch. Owwwww!

Nope. This is me. Very much awake and alive. Not dreaming, yet contemplating not eating as if it was possibly something I could do without for the next ten hours. Something is very, very wrong with this picture. 

Or possibly, I was for the first time in recent memory living in a body that could progress through one day without consuming every calorically viable food substance within a 30 meter range of my presence. A truly life-changing miracle. 

For one day. One day, folks, I have walked this earth and not felt that constant, never-ending presence of hunger and need and lack of satiation. For one day, I could join the ranks of those who are not mindlessly hunting food with each and every breath they take. For one day, I didn't have to beat back cravings with blood and sweat and tears. For one day. 

What a day it was. 

State of My Feelings and My Workout

I've been home a week now from my vacation to see Amy. I'm just starting to feel like I can get back in the swing of things now. I've been a bit overloaded contemplating all that needs to be done and how I'm going to accomplish the tasks that lay in front of me for the next few months. 

Two things are uppermost in my mind: my health and my admission to graduate school. Both of these items are going to take extreme focus. Both of them need planning and daily work. Both of them are going to require sacrifice out of me. 

My health must come first. I think the main reason for this is that I can't pursue my educational goals unless my health is balanced and I have energy. I've tried in the past to do school and move forward but without energy and with brain fog, I just sputter and fall apart in the midst of my work. 

I don't want to fall apart when it comes to reaching my educational goals and in order for that to occur for me, I need all of my energy at my disposal. It has been a really, really, really long time since I have had this much energy and felt this good. I believe I felt this way through part of my mission. I haven't felt this good since then and my mission was over 10 years ago now. Before my mission, I did not feel good either. And past my teen years, I can't identify well enough how I felt. 

In other words, I'm feeling better than I think I've felt in nearly twenty years except for my mission. I also must admit that in 2004-2005 when I was losing weight on Provida's 6WBMO plan I was feeling pretty good too. Yet, not this good and I think it is directly linked to fat and carb intake. I was intaking more carbs in the form of oats, brown rice and red potatoes than I do now and I wasn't taking in any of the good fats like olive oil, avocados or raw nuts. The good fats seem to keep me humming along happily. They keep me smiling. 

So, now that I'm feeling so much better, I feel like it is possible for me to get into graduate school and lose weight. The problem is that I want to lose a LOT of weight. Which means that I need to continue eating well, up the amount of veggies I'm consuming, and significantly improve my exercise routine. Does that mean the gym? Does that mean weight lifting? Does that mean body sculpting? I don't know. I just know that I've got to make a plan and work the plan because my haphazard approach so far is not getting me too far. 

Finally, I wanted to mention a few things that are changing around Edenland lately. I've talked about how the month of April was pretty stressful for me. Now that I'm back from vacation though I'm getting into a new groove. The other day after my monthly weigh-in I was feeling a bit down. I was happy that I had dropped some weight for the month but I was really, really hoping to drop more than just a few pounds and I was realizing that I needed to put more effort in especially when it comes to exercise if I want more results. 

Well, then a few things happened that reminded me that I am progressing in the weight loss area. First, I was sitting in class the other day and I was resting my jaw in my hands. I've always carried weight in my face and neck. My weight always shows up there. Well, as I rested my face in hands I realized that I could feel my jawline more than I have before--meaning my face and neck have lost weight. My jaw was poking through the skin more profoundly than before and I didn't have to hunt for it as carefully as I have before. I was so excited to realize this. It seems sometimes that I lose weight last in my face so to feel such a difference all of a sudden was thrilling. 

The second difference I've noticed just in the last few days is my new pants are loose. I bought two pair of pants last month for work because my other pants were falling off of me. For the first two weeks after I bought the new pants, they felt a bit snug. I would wear them all day and then near the end of the work day, I would have to unzip them and breathe deeply for a half an hour. Well, in the last week that has changed. My pants even feel a bit loose. They fit me perfectly just a week ago and now they don't. Isn't that funny how quickly our bodies can change? 

Finally the last change in Edenland recently: comments. I've written before about some of my issues with comments when it comes to my weight. My family has been very kind and has not said much of anything to me about my weight--for which I am very grateful. Unlike last time I lost weight, this time I do not want undue attention. Or at least I realize that I quickly turn into an attention hog and I start sucking up compliments like they are water. I don't want that kind of attention or focus again. 

Just because I'm not looking for it though doesn't mean I'm not grateful to hear it. I had been gone a week and had not seen my neighbor for a couple of weeks and when I ran into her yesterday she didn't say anything to me about how I had changed because we were in mixed company. But this morning she called me and went on and on about how thin I was getting and how great I looked. I told her I felt great and I hoped that was showing through. She seemed to think that it was. It was nice to hear. Nice to hear that someone notices. I notice changes but I can't tell you if I look any different. So, to hear that do is encouraging especially because I don't feel like I'm in a race and I don't feel deprived. 

I still have a long, long, long way to go. I suspect though that if I work hard at the exercise routine this summer and continue eating well that I may just have a chance to get about halfway through the number of pounds I would like to lose. Wouldn't that be a treasure? 

Beginning Month Five of the Allergy-Free Diet

The first two months on this eating plan, I didn't exercise a whole lot and I lost about 10 pounds each month. So, in March the goal was to up the exercise and really come out on top. And while the exercise improved, I still was not spectacular at the exercise. Too much else seemed to be going on in my life. But overall I was REALLY feeling better and I lost another ten pounds. So, I figured the month of April was really my chance. I was going to exercise like a demon and really push it this month and come out on top. Then finals happened and stress galore for me, then my trip to MA and little exercise and suddenly April is over and I'm not sure I've even lost a single pound this entire month. 

Yikes! 

So, what to do, what to do? 

Well, here is where I am at right now. I'm thinking I weigh about 305 pounds, which is status quo for the month. I have dropped another inch from my waist so I'm 47 inches--which is great. I feel like a lot of changes are happening in my body. My face looks different and my clothes fit me much differently. All of that is AWESOME. And no, I'm not going to hyperventilate about the pounds. Not going to do that at all. 

What I do want to work on are these things: 

• Eating more vegetables at each and every meal
• Exercising six days a week
• Planning fun, frolicy exercise for each Saturday of the next four months (like hiking or kayaking or rollerblading or biking)
• Set my goal to climb to the top of Timpanogos at the end of August

I think if I can do those things I will be helping my weight goal immensely. I want my body to be strong and powerful and I think it will if I remember some of these things. 

Amy and I had a great conversation about health and weight while I was out there and I loved some of her suggestions. She suggested

1. That I have an exercise goal for the end of the summer. Something that I can look forward to like run a 5K (or hike to the top of Timp) and I love that idea because it gives a focus and purpose to my exercise
2. She suggested that when September rolls around I enroll in some classes like dance classes or yoga classes or Pilate classes. Yet another idea I totally love because it had been rolling around in my head for a while too. 
3. Then she suggested that with my food I become really aware of increasing the amount of vegetables that I was eating each day and at each meal. Amy is really aware of balancing the amount of cooked food with fresh food and she is also really aware of color in each meal and it always looking for those dark greens and deep reds to include in each meal. I liked that too. 

I know that it is muy importante that I focus on more than just a weight goal. I've got a lot of improvements to make in the exercise arena of my life and I'm okay with that. The eating needs a few tweaks too like more vegetables, less reliance on my "special sauce" and making sure that I am eating regularly and not going more than 3 or 4 hours without food. What I'm hoping is that I can make great goals for exercise and eating well and the weight will just come off as a result. I don't want to overthink the pounds. I just want them to be part of this package of gaining better health and not the centerpiece of it. 

I am feeling happy about the eating for the most part though. Amy said something to me on my trip about my eating and how I seemed so okay with eating the way I am on this allergy-free diet. I realized that yes, for the moment, I'm not all tied in knots about what I'm eating and that is nice because embarking on this allergy-free diet, I was worried and concerned whether I could do it and what that would mean and how I would adjust. I still have a lot of adjusting and growing to do but I have found that I'm happier, calmer and full of more energy and right now those things matter more to me. Plus, I'm not suffering in the taste or the great food department so I don't really feel like I have much to complain about. I'm just really, really spectacularly thrilled to be feeling better. 

So, for month five and six and seven and eight, I have some pretty lofty goals. I'd like to tweak my eating as I mentioned and really up the quotient factor on my exercise and set some inspiring goals for my fitness. I'd like to move like CRAZY this summer and really build a strong, powerful, awesome body. And I would love to lose about 80-90 pounds in that process.

Is that crazy? Is it possible? Can I do it? 

My other very strong goal is to get ready to apply for the MFT program next winter. That means a big load of classes this summer and taking the GRE. So, my life is really health, school and work. Of course the other parts of my life include my writing, my friends, my family and church. All of those things take time too. 

The question is can I keep health as a priority and make my goals become a reality?