Christmastime has come and gone, and surprisingly, after all the revelry, I still managed to lose two pounds this past week. It's amazing that I can make this pronouncement. My confidence in this diet only grows each day, and I can only relate my experience as overwhelmingly positive.
I indulged myself today, and took some time to review one of my old journals I used in a forum back in 2004/2005. It outlined my struggle for continued weight loss once I hit the upper 180s. The scale had slowed to a snail's pace, and over the final 8 month period filled with clean eating and weightlifting, I had only been able to lose 8 pounds. It was excruciatingly slow, and even with increased physical effort and experimenting with different food restrictions, I was losing the logic-battle of effort-relative-to-reward. I was becoming more and more desperate.
Page by page, I relived my posts outlining my macronutrient tracking, the workout routines used, and sadly, the birth of my delusion. Somewhere along the way, I had come to the conclusion that there had to be a reason I couldn't make the scale budge. I hungered for an outside source to blame, and it came as an imaginary* thyroid condition, to be diagnosed and successfully treated. This of course, led to disappointment once I realized there was no doctor willing to treat my hypothyroidism, and therefore, no way to ever lose the final thirty pounds.
This enormous disappointment pulled me up short and effectively killed my dieting and workout efforts. Continuation of a "weight loss journey" is only logically feasible when you know how to get to your destination, or what the next step is, or even to have a clue as to what the next step could be. I had none. I had been beaten, and was well aware of the fact there was no "next step". Weight regain came quickly on the heels of this revelation.
During the next five to six years my weight fluctuated, and I hit my personal weight ceiling several times. It was only then I would put the brakes on and diet until discouragement set in, usually two to three weeks after weight loss slowed, then stopped. (See the graph for the pattern... it tells the story well).
In mid-2010, the next great idea was in calorie tracking hardware, and since I had always guessed at daily caloric burn, I decided to go higher-tech to see where it took me. So I got a pricey bodybugg, set it up and put it on my arm every day and kept it on for the entire summer. It has the ability to track calories burned, and you then enter the calories eaten and compare the two on their fee-based web site.
Seems like a basic, unbeatable approach, right? Calories in versus calories out. What everyone says is all you need to lose weight. Not rocket science. Stop stuffing Twinkies in my face and this will work, guaranteed.
I guess my body doesn't respond to logic or basic science, because of the end results were that this approach was a disappointment also. It is more than calories in versus calories out, and always has been.
Nonetheless, tracking with the bodybgugg took me to a total loss of 6 pounds, from July thru October 19... roughly 1 pound a month. Blech. In my opinion, the results were mildly positive, but not encouraging. The arm band also gave me a goofy tan line.
So, on October 20, I put down the bodybugg, reluctantly cranked the old Atkins wind-up key on my back, and went full-tilt into Induction, this time also limiting calories from Day 1 to keep calories below the burn level. During the next ten days, I lost the obligatory 9.5 pounds of water weight… and then stalled. For the next two weeks and change, the scale would simply not budge from 213.5.
I was determined however, to dig in and press on, stiff upper lip and all that. But I also wanted to see if there was any new buzz about any untried approaches I hadn't heard of. I was still looking for something that would work for me, long term. There had to be a way. Weight loss simply couldn't be this hard forever.
So, I started reading the forums again, and stumbled across JUDDD. I initially dismissed it as another weird low carb trick born from desperation, (not unlike using oregano to rid the body of candida overgrowth and drinking coconut oil to help burn more fat), but there was a difference with the numbers. People had hit goal. Lots of 'em.
This intrigued me, even as I had to look past the sea of jumping, cheering emoticons and sparkling congratulatory graphics. But statistics do not lie. Facts do not lie.
So I decided to start this experiment, outlined in the first entry here, since low carb was taking me nowhere, and I was in no mood to continue on the Atkins train when it had started showing signs of breaking down again. So, on November 14, weighing 213 pounds, I started modified fasting, and kept the lower carbs/higher protein in place to keep hunger and cravings at bay.
It took over a month to see any real progress and up until last week I was still convinced this was no different than any other diet that started off strong but ultimately let me down.
To recap, I lost two pounds the first week. Hardly earth-shattering, I reasoned. Then 2.5 more the next week. No loss the following week, and barely anything the fourth week. Even though I had not weighed on Monday (my weigh-in day), it was not a noticeable loss.
The fifth week shocked me, and the previous entry tells the story. The scale read 3.5 pounds lower, and I weighed in at 205. This past week was even better. I went below my year-end goal of 204, hitting 201.5 on December 23, a number I will likely surpass before the new year is rung in.
Today, after Christmas Eve and Christmas Day gluttony, I weigh 203. This is a Christmas present I will always cherish, because it is the first Christmas in years where I can realistically envision myself at goal in 12 more months.
Merry Christmas to me!
*The realization that the hypothyroidism was entirely in my head did not occur to me for years. At the time, I was angry at the doctors for not realizing how sick I was, and were just withholding treatment because they were using outdated testing methods. In my defense, I never would have come up with any of this by myself, hypochondria is not one of my faults. I took what I believed to be sage advice from real hypothyroid women who struggled with the disease and "diagnosed" me through the forum posts.
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