mizducky's migrations: a weight management blog with attitude

Weekly weigh-in -- back on track; plus: water water everywhere

Well, I have busted out of the plateau that had assailed me at last week's weigh-in: 296.5 pounds, representing a loss of 3.5 pounds since last weigh-in.

In hindsight I do believe that plateau was all about a fluctuation in water retention, because the bloating I was noticing in my feet and ankles last week has eased off considerably since then. It probably helped no end that I got a lot more careful this week about remembering to drink my full 64 oz of water each day. Yes, it sounds counterintuitive, but it's a medically confirmed fact that drinking plentiful water actually helps relieve water retention, because it helps balance out the body's sodium levels, and sodium is one of the body's main tools for regulating water content.

And weirdly, I have had a real struggle keeping up with my water consumption. I dunno if I just have a mental block about it, or what. But I'd lose track of how much I'd consumed; I'd get buried in my work and only eventually look up and realize it was 10pm and I'd only drunk something like 3 glasses; and a million other little things would distract me from this simple task. It doesn't help any that I find water kind of boring. And San Diego's tap water is not the tastiest stuff in the world either. Yet something in me rebels against shelling out good money to buy bottled water when it's available free from the tap. I think it's the tightwad training instilled in me by parents who grew up in the Great Depression.

Whatever the reason, it became clear that I needed to get the hell over myself and quit letting these little mental games sidetrack my progress. So I have been trying various strategies. I tried some of those flavored sport waters--I found them too sweet, and kind of flat. I really like drinking those selzers flavored with no-calories fruit essences; alas I finally had to admit that the carbonation was making my tummy feel like an inflated balloon. So finally I was back to plain old water--but with some helpful tools.

Firstly, I found at the grocery a clever water bottle designed to contain exactly the 64-oz recommended daily allotment of water; I now fill that up at the beginning of each day. Next, I set a reminder to drink water in the calender/scheduler program on my computer--every hour, it bings at me with the message "DRINK WATER!" and I take a few more swigs from my day's allotment. By these two simple steps, I was able to assure myself that my innards were well-watered this entire week--and just look at the difference!

You want to be drinking plentiful water when on a weight-loss regimen anyway. When you're losing weight, your body is basically drawing on your fat stores and digesting it for any energy needs not met by your (diminished) food intake. The waste products of that digestion need to get out of your body, their exit route is your kidneys, and your kidneys need sufficient water to help flush this stuff out. Especially of concern is the fact that your body fat is more than likely storing a lot of environmental pollutants and other fat-soluble toxins--not unlike the way fatty ocean fishes such as tuna have a tendency to store mercury in their body fat. When those fat deposits start being burned off, those toxins are also released into the bloodstream, so you really want to flush that stuff the hell out too.

So now, properly watered and properly back on my weight-loss progress, it is time to contemplate dinner ... and getting ready to do it all over again tomorrow.

Rice cakes and low-fat cheese that don't suck!

A couple more items to add to the non-sucky diet food hall of fame:

• Laughing Cow Light cheese -- okay, I guess these are technically processed cheese spreads, but they taste amazingly good, the calorie count and fat content are impressively low, they spread really well, and they come in nice neat foil-wrapped wedges for easy packing into brown-bag lunches and the like. The garlic and herb flavor is my favorite, but the French onion and original Swiss-cheese flavors are quite nice too.
• Lundberg Farms rice cakes -- unlike your run-of-the-mill rice cakes that taste like very slightly flavored styrofoam, Lundberg rice cakes have some serious umph to them. In fact, a Lundberg rice cake weighs at least twice as much as a standard rice cake--probably because they manage to cram twice as much rice into them. Of course, that also means they have twice as many calories--but at least you feel like you've actually eaten something afterward. And their flavored cakes are excellent. I just picked up a package of a new flavor, not yet listed on their website: KoKu Seaweed, with what the package blurb describes as "a hint of wasabi flavor." I gotta tell ya, it's more than just a "hint"--these babies pack some serious wasabi thrill, and the little flecks of nori add some nice nuances too.

Weekly weigh in--the dreaded plateau!

Well, it had to happen sometime. I went to weigh in for my weekly weight-management group, and my weight was 300 pounds. Which was a moral victory last week, but ... not the number I was hoping to see this week. Alas, it appears I have hit that bane of all people intent on losing weight, the plateau.

A plateau is what happens when the body's metabolism notices that there's been a net deficit of calories over the past several weeks, and shifts into low gear to resist further weight loss so that the body's fat reserve lasts as long as possible. Now this is a brilliant mechanism for the body to have evolved in order to survive famines and such. However, when there is no famine but simply an attempt on your part to deliberately get rid of a major overage in the fat reserves, this brilliant mechanism turns into a royal pain in the butt.

Needless to say, this phenomenon has had a history of being vastly misunderstood by anyone who has never had to do any dieting themselves--including many doctors and nutritionists. But the phenomenon is annoyingly real, and knowing this can save one a great deal of angst and aggravation.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I've plateaued, given that my weight loss last week was a bit lower than I had been seeing up to that point. And then there were all those food cravings dogging me in recent days. I now suspect that these were both signs that my metabolism was beginning to do the shift, both digging in its heels to stop the downward momentum, and upping the demand for high-calorie foods so that the organism (me) would get busy and find some food already.

Never fear, though. As understanding of this plateua business has grown, so has the list of strategies for breaking a plateau. Interestingly, cutting food intake is not necessarily one of them. Yeah, it is prudent to do an audit of one's eating to see if there have been a few too many liberties taken, or if one has unconsciously been getting a little wacky with the portion control. But if one's food had been totally compliant, cutting the food level even further can be counterproductive--because then your metabolism will think the famine's getting even worse out there and will try to slow down even more.

No, what you've got to do is get the metabolism kicked into high gear again, and this is where exercise can be the great equalizer. Especially weight training exercise. I mean, cardiovascular exercise is fine too, but there is now documented proof that increased muscle work and muscle mass raises the metabolic rate, because muscles suck up a lot of nutrients when they're working. Soooo... it looks like it might be time for me to pick up a pair of those cute little handweights and pump a little iron. (In addition to some aerobic work, especially now that my knee seems to be recovered).

Changing up one's food is also a recommended plateau-busting strategy. I was just saying, in my previous post, that I had gotten into a bit of a food rut and needed to perk things up with new stuff. So I'm going to go with that idea. I also now realize I've been getting a little lackadaisical with the many-small-meals strategy -- i.e. the business about eating several small meals a day boosts one's metabolism and results in more weight loss than eating the same quantity of food in just two or three larger meals. So I'll give that a whack too.

There are other strategies as well, but I think I'll just try those for now, and see if it helps. Meanwhile, I have fixed myself a dinner that is a veritable umami extravaganza, full of glutamate-rich mushrooms seasoned with soy sauce. And I'm remembering that, regardless of what the number on the scale sez, I'm already ahead of the game because I haven't strayed from healthy eating one iota.

The gravity of the situation: some random thoughts

Earlier today I was standing at a counter in my kitchen chopping up some food, when it dawned on me: my body wasn't complaining. Not so very long ago, my back would have whined mightily over the very slight bend forward required to lean over a chopping board like that.

The mind-blower behind that little observation is that just the 34 pounds I have lost so far has made that much difference in my body already. Because the program I am participating in is focused on protecting knee joints, our instructor has been camping on the fact that each pound of weight lost results in a four-pound decrease in pressure on your knees. What goes unstated is that similar secondary effects are happening all over my bod. There's now that much less pressure on a lot of my weight-bearing joints, and on my frame in general. Moreover, my center of gravity has shifted--there's just the slightest bit less gut and ass pulling the spine out of alignment, and so I can now do things that I used to need work-arounds for--like whipping through my dinner mise en place standing up at a counter, rather than having to fetch a chair.

The cloud attached to that particular silver lining, though, is the realization of how much further I still have to go. I'm trying not to dwell on that, and rather to concentrate on getting really comfortable with just living the process on a daily basis.

It is beginning to get a little more challenging on the psychological level. On the food front, I fear I am no longer in the honeymoon phase, when I felt no cravings whatsoever and everything seemed to be coming with so little effort. Now, however, I do feel that ol' food jones waking up in the back of my brain. It's growing discontented with carrots, or even the occasional healthy mini-splurges I've been appeasing it with, and is starting to whine (the subtheme for this post, folks, is "no more whining") -- starting to whine, I say, for a couple of pounds worth of barbequed spareribs.

Not that I feel the least bit like giving into it--right now when I'm paying good attention. But it's at those moments when my guard drops (due to fatigue or crankiness or distraction or hormones or whatever) and there's food too conveniently at hand, that the jones seizes control of my consciousness, and next thing I know I've discovered I've eaten a bunch of crap without even meaning to.

That may sound like a cop-out (my subconscious held me down and forced that pound of cheddar down my throat). But I swear that the damn habit is that insideous. Ever start driving somewhere, get deep in conversation with your passenger, and realize all of a sudden your brain went on autopilot and you've pointed the car towards your workplace instead of the movie theater or whatever? It's like that. Only more aggravating. There's nothing quite so mortifying as heading towards the refrigerator fully intending to get an apple, and finding yourself with the freezer door open and your hand on the Ben & Jerry's instead.

Now obviously I'm not buying Ben & Jerry's at this point in the proceedings--not wasting precious food plan units on silly sugar calories. But hey, I do have some cheese in the fridge--after all, it's perfectly healthy in moderation, and moderate amounts of protein are what I'm supposed to be eating. Still, as I've already documented, protein is my binge food of choice, and yeah, those foods continue to have a certain psychological "hotness" for me.

Now a previous weight loss program I participated in was all "food is dangerous--get rid of those binge-trigger foods forthwith!" But one of my groundrules is that I refuse to treat food as if it were literally crack. Frankly, I think that's just engaging the inner Food Jones on its favorite territory, on which it really knows how to mess with one's mind. And in fact, that program's food-as-addiction model eventually did backfire on me. No, instead of doing negative reinforcement, this time I'm going for the positive approach.

I looked up and realized I had slipped into an overly predictable rut in my food. I need to fix that STAT. Hit the market and pick up some fresh veg to make something really nice. Including lots of ingredients that max out the natural glutamate content--it's time to go for all the veg-based umami I can pack into my meals--and just see what calls out to me at the market. Hell, it's been ages since I went to the food co-op, I should drive all the way out there, and see what interesting things they might have to kick up my routine.

I need a new recipe thrill. Last major thrill, the Chinese porridge known as congee or jook, has become a beloved regular in my repertoire. Total comfort food--but definitely a cool-weather dish, and even though this overlong rainy season has kept nights cool enough that I've been continuing to do congee way into April, I think the weather's about to turn and I'll need something lighter. Hmmm ... how about gazpacho? It's been a real long time since I made that. Or--hey, what about tabbouleh? With lots of veggies, and the bulghur, which is a great grain for me to be getting into my diet. And I have the terrific North Park Produce market nearby for all my Middle-Eastern ingredient needs. Yeah, time to go Mediterranean. I'll need some at least semi-decent tomatoes, but I think I can find those at North Park.

Oh yeah, and not to forget about the mushrooms. I am blessed with access to lots of cheap dried shiitakes, and there's so many interesting fresh ones in the Asian markets. This kind of strategizing not only helps me come up with cooking ideas, but the process of thinking about the foods themselves gets my foodie-brain engaged as an ally.

I need to get the exercise part of the program back underway too. Fortunately my knee finally stopped freaking out on me, so I'm now going to cautiously try some walking again. Has it really taken moving to car-crazy Southern California to reconnect with my old love of walking? Well, the pretty weather and scenery sure don't hurt. I still haven't tried the swimming pool in my apartment complex, but you know what I realized? My brain just finds the prospect of showing my bod in a bathing suit way too stressful. Just way too much bad history with people feeling free to be asholic at the fat girl, I'm afraid. (yeah, I could wear a teeshirt and shorts over my suit, but as any wet t-shirt contest participant can tell you, once you're wet those clothes provide no camoflage whatsoever.)

I know, one of the reasons I moved into this place was to use the pool, and I will--eventually. Right now, I'm working on keeping my regimen as pleasant and inviting as possible so I'll enjoy doing it, and stressing over whether there's a neighbor behind any of those several dozen living room windows overlooking the pool, looking at my bod and thinking hateful things--nope, does not sound pleasant or inviting. So I'll be a hero another day; right now I need to focus on taking care of myself.

But I've gained some useful experience from dealing with my knee's recent out-freakage. I was definitely carrying an additional burden of stress over the knee--the pain, the inconvenience, the crimp it was already putting in my plans ... and always the undertow of anxiety over whether it was going to get better this time. But at the same time, I could still feel that this pain was happening in a generally healthier bod than before, such that I felt like I had better physical resources with which to deal with the situation. And reminding myself of that really made the whole psychological level that much easier to deal with.

Well, this has turned into quite the stream-of-consciousness meander, hasn't it? But it did really help to think through where I'm at with this whole project. So I think I'll just leave it as-is. And I'll no doubt blather on like this again. Whatever works to keep me on the program.