mizducky's migrations: a weight management blog with attitude

Splurging; recovering; mmm-yoso-ing; plateauing (weekly weigh-in)

Alert visitors to this site will hopefully have noticed--and followed--the link to the blog of my fellow food-blogger Kirk a.k.a. mmm-yoso. Kirk and his crew do an excellent job of covering all sorts of fascinating little mom 'n' pop hole-in-the-wall eateries, especially those specializing in ethnic cuisines, in the greater San Diego area and beyond. I've been a fan and frequent commenter on mmm-yoso for some time now, so it was probably only a matter of time that I became a contributing blogger over there. You can check out my maiden post on mmm-yoso here ... and there should be another one from me going live any day now.

You'll see that this next mmm-yoso post will feature a meal that, erm, doesn't conform all that well to my everyday food routine. It was, in fact, a planned splurge--although a rather bigger one than I think I had originally intended. Oopsie. But hey, these things happen, and it's actually quite simple to recover from them: all you do is just eat more lightly and deliberately for the next few days. That's it. No drama, no freakouts ... just takin' care o' bizness.

In the bad old diet-think days, such overly splurgy splurges would have been the source of much hand-wringing and self-recrimination, often leading in turn to a bad attitude and a what-the-hell might-as-well-really-blow-it-out binge. Nowadays, though, I have banned guilt and self-recrimination from my weight-management philosophy. It's amazing how easy it is to do a course-correction when you're not making yourself crazy over having wandered off course in the first place.

And as a matter of fact, when I did my weekly weigh-in today, I was back on (or still on) that same plateau I've been holding at for over a month now:

• Yesterday's weight: 192.0 lb
• Change since last weigh-in: 0 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 142.0 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -1.29

So there you go. Status quo maintained, senseless panic avoided. Much more pleasant--and productive--than the old way.

Weekly weigh-in: still plateauing

Today's numbers:

• Today's weight: 192.0 lb
• Change since last week: 0 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 142.0 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -1.3 lb

Still on that plateau ... steady as she goes ...

Weekly weigh-in: plateau? bottom? And whither this blog?

First, the numbers:

• Today's weight: 192.0 lb
• Change since last week: 0 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 142.0 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -1.32 lb

As regular readers of this blog may have noticed, I've been plateaued at 192 pounds for about a month now. You'll also remember that I had vowed I was going to let my weight find its own natural stopping point, without doing any extraordinary alterations to my routine to force my weight lower.

So I'm wondering now: is this it? Have I reached my body's natural preferred stopping point? Not that I'd be changing my current routine one whit, any more than I planned to change it if I weren't at bottom. In fact, this may well be a moot point from a practical standpoint--I've got a healthy routine, it's working for me, so if it ain't broke don't fix it.

It does, however, make me wonder what I should do with this blog from this point forward. After all, it's no more exciting for me to keep entering essentially the same data week after week than it must be for you folks out there to read it! And the truth be known, I pretty much laid out the bulk of my philosophy about healthy weigh management--and vented the bulk of my angst about the dieting industry--in these first two years of blogging.

So I'm considering expanding the focus of this blog, from a personal weight-management journal to a more wide-ranging blog about my interests in food. This would of course still include my weigh management routine--after all, I'm not going to stop any of my disciplines just because I'm changing the blog's focus. And if something should change about my weight management routine, of course you'll hear about it here right off. And I have occasionally mentioned my other food interests here from time to time. I'd just be bringing those other interests more into the foreground.

I'm not sure exactly how and when these changes will start showing up on this blog, but watch this space, and sooner or later all will be revealed.

Weekly weigh-in: back to the latest plateau

These are officially yesterday's numbers:

• Yesterday's weight: 192.0 lb
• Change since last week: 0 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 142 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -1.33 lb

Man, that stomach bug last week laid me pretty low--even after I was done with the main symptoms, I had low energy levels for days afterwards. All my little mitochondria and stuff must have been really pooped after fighting off whatever infection my gut picked up!

But now I'm back in the saddle again ... and back on this latest plateau. Somehow I suspect I might be on this one for a looooooong time ... and I'm okay about that. It feels pretty comfortable, like a good base from which to work on other aspects of my health--not least of which is increasing my stamina, not just in recovery from this recent bug, but in general.

Weekly weigh-in: laid low by the stomach bug

Oops, missed a week--but I have ample excuse. First, though, the numbers:

• Today's weight: 192.0 lb
• Change since last week: 0.0 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 142.0 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -1.34 lb

I dunno about other regions of the country, or even other regions of San Diego, but among my bunch of friends this really nasty stomach bug has been making its way, and last week was apparently my turn. Man, what a nasty bug. A week later, and I still feel low-energy, and my tummy still feels a wee bit off. I will spare you all the details, except to say it was a major victory when my stomach felt stable enough for me to eat some plain yogurt in an attempt to repopulate my gut with some friendlier bugs.

Interestingly, after all the past several days' worth of, erm, fluidity, my weight remains the same. I'm just as glad. Weight loss as a result of illness is not my idea of a healthy practice, let alone a good time.

Weekly weigh-in: recovery from oops, plus more busy-ness

Today's numbers:

• Today's weight: 192.0 lb
• Change since last week: -1.5 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 142.0
• Average weekly weight change: -1.37 lb

Okay, back to where I was before. And back to being up to my eyebrows in work. I have to say, it's a bit of a challenge keeping up the discipline of this blog while having a life! But then, keeping up the weight management discipline while having a full and  active life is the whole point of the exercise, isn't it?

I mean, some of my more aggravating past dieting misadventures involved doing excellently at the weight loss thing--but only by dint of spending seemingly all my free time at the gym, and any left-over time obsessing over my tiny unsatisfying meals. Maybe the doctors and nutritionists, solely focused on the number on the scale, thought that was a healthy lifestyle, but I sure as hell didn't--and in fact, after two years I found I simply couldn't maintain the sanity anymore.

Interestingly, sometime last week I passed my two-year mark on this current "weight management not diet" adventure. And not to second-guess the future, but as of today I feel totally capable of continuing this adventure indefinitely.

Weekly weigh-in: oops. Plus, losing the cane

Oops--life got hectic, and so did the scale:

• Today's weight: 193.5 lb
• Change since 2 weeks ago: +1.5 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 140.5 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -1.36 lb

Last week I got immersed in a major cooking project, a dinner for eight that I had originally auctioned off as part of a fundraiser for my church. (You can read all about it over here). It was a hell of a lot of fun, and as you can see many of the dishes were surprisingly healthy ... except for the high sodium content from all that fish sauce and soy sauce and other lovely salty condiments. The dinner was this past Saturday ... I enjoyed leftovers for the following three days ... and now my bod is bloat city. Not so bad in my feet and ankles as it used to be, but enough that I can feel it. And I definitely feel it in my hands too, in how my rings barely go onto my fingers instead of threatening to slide off like they usually do. And of course it's showing up on the scale.

Alas, there's nothing to be done except to drink lots of fluids to flush the excess sodium out of my system, and wait for the retained water to follow. I am trying to hasten the liquids release by various natural means. For instance, I just ate some canned beets and their juice as a snack--not only are beets one of the few vegetables that I think taste okay canned, but beets are a natural diuretic. (Plus they make your pee such a gorgeous shade of pink!)

Meanwhile, I have experienced an unexpected and accidental leap forward in my physical exercise progress: somewhere during all the shopping and running around in the past week, I managed to leave my walking cane somewhere. I have no idea where--I just got home and realized the cane was not in the car with me. Now the fact that my knee was so well that it did not remind me that I needed my cane is certainly something worth noting, but it gets better--while I've been sporadically using my backup cane, I've mainly been going without altogether, and while my left knee felt shaky and unstable at first, the muscles around it have strengthened up to match the new load with surprising quickness, and now I seem to only have trouble with stepping down on the left leg while descending stairs.

Mind you, I haven't tested myself walking long distances yet--and I think that, at least for the first experiments, I'd feel safer taking a cane as backup. But already this is a great leap forward. I'd long realized that the cane was causing as many problems as it was solving--allowing the muscles of my left leg to get lazy, throwing my whole body subtly off-balance and thereby spreading stress and pain to other joints in my body. And when you carry a cane, it's all too easy to find yourself leaning all your weight on it even at moments you don't really need all that much support. So I'm really excited at finally reaching the point where I can start doing without the cane again, so that I can quit twisting my bod into a pretzel and take the next step towards healing.

Weekly weigh-in: the plateau shattered

Hello! I'm back, with today's numbers:

• Today's weight: 192.0
• Changes since last week: -2.5 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 142.0 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -1.39 lb

Geez, I haven't dropped over two pounds in a week in a damn long time! But in a way I'm not surprised. For one thing, I had been noticing that my current favorite pair of jeans was starting to hang a good bit looser on me, so I knew that something must have shifted somewhere.

For another, there was my feeling of having gotten a little overly loose with my program during the months of November and December, and of seeing my past week of much more intensive foodblogging over on eGullet as a chance to give my whole weight-management program a beginning-of-year tuneup. The fact that I dropped this much weight after that week sure demonstrates how much that tuneup was needed!

Anyway, I now feel like I'm definitely back in the groove with my program--and not a moment too soon, because I'm now kicking into a week of insane busyness, culminating with a pan-Asian dinner for eight that I'll be cooking for friends over at their house. At least the fact that it's Asian cuisines means that it'll be pretty healthy stuff--I just need to watch that I don't stuff myself with it!

Onward and outward!

P.S. The finished eGullet blog can be viewed here.

Weekly weigh-in: a crack in the plateau?

Today's numbers:

• Today's weight: 194.5 lb
• Change since last week: -1.0 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 139.5 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -1.38 lb

Nothing like intensively blogging for an audience of thousands of foodgeeks worldwide to finally make some kind of break in the plateau. Although I'll wait till next week to see if this is just a random fluctuation, or a real nudge downwards.

Onward and outward ...

Weekly weigh-in: Happy New Year from the plateau

Back after an impromptu holiday hiatus:

• Today's weight: 195.5 lb
• Change since last weigh-in: 0 lb
• Cumulative weight loss: 138.5 lb
• Average weekly weight change: -1.39 lb

Considering all the various holiday weirdnesses, culinary and general, of the past couple of weeks, I'm overjoyed to still be on that plateau. Sure beats gaining some weight!

I mean, even if I had gained a couple of pounds, I would refrain from personal recriminations and simply set myself to working it off, the same as I always have. But I'm just as glad I don't have to go there.

I do have to note that this year the holiday foods have been calling to me a lot more than last Christmas/Hanukkah/Solstice/New Year's. And I had allowed myself to give in to that call a little more than last year. So, as I said in the last post, I'm definitely feeling a low-level sense of too-muchness. I can't tell if it's physical or psychological, but I'm really feeling a need to wean myself back off even the modest dose of richer foods I've indulged in.

And it is going to be a weaning-off process. I can now feel that weird, hyper, rushy feeling in my head when I think about food, that if left to run wild could become the seed of a crave/compulsion episode. I suspect only people who have done any sort of old-fashioned dieting would be familiar with this feeling--that somehow the food is "calling" to you, in a way that's as hard to dismiss as a song that gets stuck in your head.

I associate that rushy feeling with my old friend the Lizard Brain, trying to wake up, take control of my psyche, and snap at something--usually, though not always, food! As a matter of fact, now that I write that, I've been uncommonly bitchy over the past few weeks. Maybe coincidence, maybe more related to other stressors in my life than food ... but still something to mind. After all, friends can be very understanding, but even the most loyal friend can stand only so much bitchiness before they haul off and tell you to stuff it.

(For any friends reading this to whom I've been bitchy in recent days--once again I apologize profusely, and be assured that I'm working really hard to deal with my crap. And many thanks for your continued patience with these technical difficulties...)