I have been gearing up for a big weight loss regimen now that spring has sprung and I am nearly five months postpartum. It just takes a whole lot of work, focus, and dedication. It is hard to carve out the space in my day and in my brain for the kind of time and attention it takes. Furthermore, there really are no secrets except that if you try a method that departs from reducing intake and burning up calories, you're likely to see the weight come back pretty darned quick.
A zero carb diet is a sure ticket to a size 8. It's such an exciting thing until you realize that ticket was for a round-trip and you have already given away your old clothes.
A high fat diet even with healthy carbs added is what I like to call "Perpetual Christmas Dinner" and, sorry, but you can't eat enough coconut oil with it to offset the reality that it is a whole lot of calories. The calories don't seem to count if the carbs are obsessively low. If you can't (or shouldn't) reach the necessary level of obsession, those calories count. There aren't enough hours in the day to exercise that stuff away. If a variant of this sort of diet works for you, all I've got to say is that God must love you more. I'd sure like it to work for me.
Then there is the non-fat diet where you can eat strange non-fat breads, cheeses, and the occasional chicken breast. Do not add olive oil. Do not add butter. Keep it under ten grams a day. I've been there and my big problem with a non-fat diet is that I value my brain too much. Frankly, I choose my brain over my hips and thighs. Deplete your brain of healthy fats and you could well find yourself writing on a blog very much like this one.
My Diet and Goal
So I'm on a diet as it turns out. It's quite possible that no one has noticed because I'm starting out by eating anything in my freezer or cupboards (you know, except things like the shelf paper). We keep pretty decent cupboards without terrible temptations. I'm not drinking anything in the cupboards; there is a temptation or two in that department.
I am exercising a good bit each day. I do lifts with the baby -- holding the baby out and doing bicep curls and chest presses, holding the baby to my chest for squats. I walk with the baby in the front carrier down a road with a 200-foot elevation change. I walk back up again too. I garden a lot. I am bending and moving around in a way that you just don't tend to do when you are planted in front of a computer. At some point I may count calories, but I'll focus on muscle-building for now.
My goal is fairly modest: I am going to lose ten pounds.
When I have met my goal, I am going to lose another ten pounds. Then I will lose another ten. At some point I will run out of extra poundage or decide it's all good (or good enough).
Inspiration
I spent Saturday with a couple of wise women, both in their sixties, one scheduled for knee replacement. They reflected on their decades of weight and the impact on their joints. My aunt who is having both knees replaced was poignant in her plea to the younger generation to keep their weight in check. She had a pretty serious weight problem but I realize that I could gain fifty pounds in the blink of an eye. Heck, a few months of a "Perpetual Christmas Dinner" could be my ticket to knee replacement in a couple of decades. It's interesting too that at 60-something, looking back on decades of weight, my aunt didn't discuss how she could have looked better or what size she always wanted to be. She walks with a cane now and just wants to be able to exercise. I was thinking about her as I read Lisa's blog on life after bypass surgery. She posted a picture of larger ladies dancing naked and says, "If I could dance around like that woman in the picture, I wouldn't care that I'm fat." I found Lisa's blog via the Natural Cures Carnival.
That's my long-game inspiration for losing my first ten pounds: it's real good to be able to walk.
Being able to walk should inspire me enough, but on Saturday these wise women appealed to my vanity just to make sure. Do you know how women end up with hanging skin under their arms? They tell me that they both lost weight too late in life and now they have a bunch of hanging skin. They did several demonstrations for me.
I asked, "Are you telling me that if I don't lose weight now and I lose it when my skin elasticity decreases, that I'll have hanging arm skin?"
"Yes you will!"
It was a running joke/not-at-all-a-joke all day Saturday.
Past Plans
Thinking about this diet made me realize I had plans about a year ago for equally modest weight loss. I planned to lose one dress size in 2008 then I got ambitious and decided to lose forty or fifty pounds, inspired that I would look more like 25 years old on my 40th birthday. I missed both goals. The 40th birthday passed two months ago but we celebrated a much better birthday with a new baby in December. The good news I don't think I gained five pounds in the pregnancy. The bad news is I got pregnant before losing the one dress size or looking like I was 25.
Over the years I have been working on a general attitude adjustment about all of this. Read "Fat" for instance. It's about my changing usage of the word. It also mentions my focus on muscle-building, the focus of the current "diet." I have always been able to build muscle even in my non-fat diet days, but nothing like I can now eating actual real protein like fish and eggs. I write in "Fat:"
"...I have put on muscle with a speed I have never witnessed. That's apparently why body builders eat all of those protein bars. The funny thing is that a steak works too."
It's a good thing for me that there is a steak or two in the freezer right now.
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