Plateaus: You don't always want them flat

The joys of weight plateaus! I'm apparently going to chronicle my weight loss... :P Mini-update at the end.

I've been steadily losing around 2 lbs a week since I started calorie counting. I knew it would get harder to lose weight as I started to lose weight because there's less, well, mass, to help fuel the effort. Luckily, I had lost 25 lbs without any plateaus or any problems. 25 lbs in 3 months isn't bad!

Now fast forward to the past 2 weeks. Two weeks of not losing weight does not always signify a plateau, but after one has been steadily losing weight, not losing any for a week is a little weird. Of course, then starts the constant weigh-ins and the semi-doubt that something is wrong. Unfortunately for me, it was even more baffling because I've been maintaining my calorie count (1,200 calories) and I was still exercising to get to that calorie count. I wasn't snacking and I was eating pretty well. WHY WASN'T I LOSING WEIGHT?! It's not like my calorie count could be any less!

For a while, Chris always scolds at me, "It's better to eat more and exercise than to eat less." I know the reasoning behind that because you don't want your body to go into starvation mode, which means your body won't lose weight well because it's trying to store it. It can also be harmful for you as your body will start to break down muscles and lower bodily functions to preserve energy. But I'm careful to not eat less than 1,150 calories. It's about 50 calories less than what I should be at, but if you're not hungry, why eat? I usually end up eating candy instead to make up calories and it was pretty rare I was below 1,200.

I will say, with my FitBit, it says I'm walking and moving several HUNDRED more calories than I'm even adding in when I exercise. Because I had been losing weight before the FitBit and I'm not sure how "accurate" the FitBit is, I've mostly ignored the extra exercise calories burned the FitBit gives me. It also varies depending on how active I've been in a day. So, it's not something I use reliably and it's not something I count into my daily calories intake or outtake.

So, anyway, I was eating less and I wasn't as hungry. I was actually doing that "on my own" and wasn't because of an eating pattern or anything. I had gotten to the point where it was hard to eat more than 1,300 calories because I wasn't used to it and it felt "hard" to eat! I was eating, but eating when your body is saying it's not hungry is seriously hard to do. I was also eating breakfast regularly, which makes a difference in how full I feel the rest of the day. I still can't eat right away, but I try to eat within an hour to an hour-and-a-half of waking up.

Where does this leave me with my plateau? Here are the possibilities of why I plateaued:

1) I had gone into starvation mode.
2) I was building muscle more than I was losing fat.
3) I was retaining water (high sodium foods (i.e., beef sticks...yummy...), that-time-of-month, not drinking enough fluids, etc)

What's my conclusion on why? Maybe a little of all 3? I will say, the best thing out of the plateau, that I broke the past few days (phew!), is my starvation mode possibility. I never took into account the FitBit calories and I'm still not, but to help myself, semi-account for the FitBit, and make my bodily functions feel more "secure" that it IS getting food, I've decided my minimum calorie intake is 1,400 calories. This does 2 things by making me eat and exercise more. I'm also trying to stop my calorie count between 1,200 and 1,250. This will try and make it so I don't go below 1,200 anymore. Past few days, it's been more like 1,200-1,230. I was also getting lazy exercising when I was eating so close to 1,200 calories. I was walking on the elliptical a lot and kind of half moving, which isn't helpful. So I'm back to actually jogging and trying to "put" myself into my exercise now. Plus, I'm pretty sure holding my cell phone in my hand while on the elliptical has caused poor posture and is why the spot between my shoulder blades is SERIOUSLY messed up (never good when your chiropractor thinks you really did mess it up and he has to adjust the same spot 3 times in one visit...).

So, I'm thinking it was a combination of things for my plateau, but I'm proud I didn't lose all hope. Losing weight isn't easy for me. I was really bummed and frustrated for a week. More exercise doesn't make me happy (it's such a pain!), but it'll be good for me. I have noticed with eating more that my stomach must have shrunk because it feels super "full" now than it did before by the time dinner comes around. 

There was another way I could get my body jump started again. I could do an alternating schedule of 2-3 days of the minimum calories (1,200) and one day of something high like 1,600 calories. It shocks your system and lets it know it's getting food so it'll start dropping the weight. In other words, every few days of a high count makes it so it doesn't get into a pattern that it'll always receive less. It's something I might consider if I plateau again, but the roller coaster is something that's harder for me to follow since this still doesn't come instinctively. Mostly, I'm learning that losing weight is about NOT getting into a pattern! You get lazy and your body starts to anticipate it. Who'd of thunk?

Anyway, personal update! Well, sort of. As I've posted before (several times), I've been cooking more. My biggest problem has been breakfasts. I function better with a breakfast I've found. Who'd of thought? The person who is STILL not a morning person and never ate breakfast, now almost depends on a breakfast in the morning? Yeah. Me neither. Starting the calorie counting, I did the flavored yogurt (I did plain fat free Greek with a tablespoon or 2 of jelly mixed in) and granola. It kept me full for a while, but I got tired of it pretty quickly. Round 2 was no breakfast at all. Round 3 was homemade breakfast casseroles that were not particularly healthy, but they were tasty! Round 4 were green smoothies (of all sorts of varieties: kale, spinach, pineapple, banana, strawberry, cucumber, zucchini, almond butter, almond milk, apple, etc). Now, Round 5 is oatmeal!

Not just any oatmeal. I did do a warm apple cinnamon oatmeal in the crockpot and would reheat it in the morning, but...I got into overnight oats! Seriously, I thought it would be gross because it looks like cold oat mush and everyone eats oatmeal warm, right? Well, I took a chance and made a banana peanut butter one and it was delicious! Now I want to eat it all the time. Figures. :) It's easy to make and tastes good. Best thing? I can make it the night before and throw it into my lunch bag for work. Actually, every breakfast thing I ate/made has always been something I can pack for work the night before (that hating mornings thing and all :P ). It also stores in the refrigerator for a couple of days so I make 2-3 servings (~1 cup) at once. Hopefully I can get a few weeks out of this regimen and then I think I'll go back to the smoothies again.

Here's the recipe I started with...

Peanut Butter and Banana Overnight Oats from Domesticate Me (link here)

Yield: 2 servings

Ingredients

• 1 large ripe banana, mashed (about ½ cup)
• ¼ cup creamy peanut butter
• 1 cup gluten-free rolled oats
• 1 cup unsweetened almond milk
• 1 tablespoon chia seeds (optional)
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon light agave or honey (You may use more if you like sweeter oatmeal. Duh.)
Optional Toppings:
• Sliced Bananas
• Drizzle of Agave, Maple Syrup or Honey
• Cinnamon
• Dark chocolate shavings or chips
• Coconut shavings

Instructions

1. In a medium bowl, mash your banana with a fork.
2. Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and mix until well combined.
3. Pour the mixture into two airtight containers and refrigerate for at least 3 hours or overnight.
4. When ready to eat, give the oats a good stir, add toppings of your choice, and dig in! 

I omit the chia seeds, use honey, and don't put any toppings on. I just mix it, leave it, stir it, eat it. So yummy! Making a new one that's almond butter, banana, diced apples, and QUICK cooking oats instead of rolled oats. Just want to see what the texture and taste difference between the quick cooking and rolled oats will be like. They're interchangeable (read all about the differences between steel, rolled, and quick cooking oats), but they will end up with a different texture. So, I'm going to experiment and see. I have a TON of quick cooking oats right now and ran out of rolled oats. Not that oats really go bad if stored properly, but it would be nice to use them. So, hoping it tastes fine or I'm going to start making a lot of oatmeal cookies and granola bars. :P

Now, a REAL personal update. The Breeders' Cup is in 1.5 months! Yes! It should be a really good one this year. It's unfortunate the Breeders' Cup Classic winner from last year isn't going to be there (he was injured), but there should be a lot of other great horses. Should be a great day! So, I'm excited. I got my dress from Goodwill that goes with my green and purple California Chrome hat and I've got shoes and a sweater that already go with it. So, I'm set on the outfit department. I just need to figure out my hair. I cut it and that hat is different than my last one so I need to look at hair styles. I might be lazy and just do a half-up and half-down look. It's quick, easy, will fit with the hat, etc.

Work has been okay. Some changes have been happening. I don't think I mentioned this, but we have a new boss for our area. So there has been that change and then we also have new trainees that work with us through a County program. So, it's been interesting, but nothing bad. On top of it all, Halloween! We've already set everything up for Halloween. It's been crazy, but the best Halloween set-up we've had since we've opened so that's been nice. The anxiety it induced the last 2 years is definitely not around this time so it's been more enjoyable.

Movies, I'm still watching them. At this rate, I might as well just do a massive recap at the end of the year that encompasses everything. :P I've been so bad this year! Then again, I feel like I have less time to actually blog too. Working, cooking dinner, prepping dinners, exercising, taking care of the pets, painting my nails...they all take up most of my evenings! I get my days off and they're planned solidly. Recent favorite...I surprisingly really liked Divergent. I was surprised. Perhaps it's because my expectations were low for it since I didn't like the book (never read past #1), but I liked the movie. I'd watch the 2nd one...on DVD... :P My resounding endorsement there! It's a solid movie, though. It's not as good as Hunger Games, but it pleasantly passed the time. Four is way too old compared to the book. The end is changed a bit too, but they always do that. So, it has its issues, but it wasn't terrible. Haven't seen a movie in theater in a while now. I think Guardians of the Galaxy was the last one I saw and I liked it. It was good. Not the best Marvel, but I'm really happy it's done as well as it has and I might buy it on DVD (it was that good). Plus...BABY GROOT! :P Noah is shaping up to be the worst movie of the year...

With that, I can't think of anything else going on so I think I'll leave it here and say hopefully I'll post again and it won't be about weight, exercise, or cooking. ;)

My "Healthy" Year, Thus Far

A little bit of a recap of a previous post, but some updates too on my home cooking and calorie counting.

Funny how I originally said I had no "goals" for this year, except maybe get my license. Yeah, it's August and nothing has progressed on the license front; however, I HAVE gotten myself "healthy" this year. Not sure what really spurred me on. For a month or so end of last year I had started to cook and I enjoyed it (mostly to somewhat), but then I injured my back trying to exercise (yay!) so then I stopped on all fronts.

Then my sis-in-law started to do Once a Month Meals earlier this year, which got the idea into my head that I could do something like that once a week. I have a spreadsheet that I use to get myself organized (I don't pay for OAMM) for menus and ingredients and 26 weeks later (started end of February), I am still doing the once-a-week meals thing!

Making meals once a week helps on three fronts: Space, eating out, and being healthy. I don't have a lot of space, so doing it once a week allows me to be able to freeze meals, but also not completely eliminate my entire freezer space. I do sometimes still struggle with space (if I start freezing more than 8 days worth of meals, space gets tight), but I can do 5 meals a week with no problems. It's also helped me cut down on eating out. Not only were we eating out for dinner, but I was also eating out for lunch. That's a lot of wasted money on fast food or restaurants. In addition, eating out that often isn't good for you and I don't control my portions well when I eat out. I hadn't gained a lot of weight eating out because I was walking to work and I'm fairly active at work, but it definitely wasn't helping me lose any either.

Not that cooking has really made me lose weight, but it has made me healthier and helped my digestive track. I don't make EVERYTHING from scratch (still use a lot of pre-made chicken stock, tomatoes, and cream-of soup), but it's definitely better than buying frozen meals (also a prior staple of dinners) or can processed foods (mm...Dinty Moore stews...so unhealthy, but so tasty). I enjoy the tastes of homemade meals more and I don't get TIRED of eating the same frozen meals or the same fast food. It has been a work in progress to make sure I don't overwhelm my cooking time. I basically spend half a day that I'm off to cook, which isn't always something I want to do, but it's a necessity like doing my laundry. Not fun, but I need to do it. So I've learned to try and balance my time off because I find making the home meals I have enough leftovers for the next day and I always take leftovers for lunch (I'll occasionally still eat a frozen thing for lunch if we've run out) and we're feeding 3 people nightly and still having leftovers. My digestive track is SO much happier with me and since I'm lactose intolerant, that's saying something. I take a supplement to help me when I eat dairy, but sometimes, if I was really off kilter, the pills wouldn't help as they should. Now, I can eat small amounts of dairy without the supplement and not have a problem at all because my digestive track is happy with me.

Not sure what spurred it on, but almost 3 months ago I decided to download MyFitness Pal (friend recommended it) and start calorie counting. The first week was a bit of a struggle, but I quickly adapted to it. It's been amazing for me. It got me to exercise regularly, cut down my sugar intake (a constant struggle of mine since I've got a sweet tooth) and snacking, and...*drum roll*...I've lost 22 lbs in 80 days! I can't say it's always easy calorie counting, but it hasn't been as hard as I thought either.

Cutting the sugar down was really hard in the beginning and I go up and down in my urges to eat it, but not eating a lot of sugar has helped my teeth and myself. I was noticing for a bit that my teeth were starting to hurt from eating all the sour stuff I was eating. Eating that much candy isn't good for you in general too. I would sit down and eat a packet of Skittles in one night. Now, I won't open a packet of Skittles unless I know I can eat a portion of it and save the rest. I'll eat it in quarters or halves. Rips, one of my favorite candy, I can now eat in small portions (those bags used to be gone in 2 days).

The other struggle I've been trying to iron out is the snacking. I used to eat a lot of candy, but the snacking was pretty bad too. I mean, I was making home made meals, which you think would have made me lose weight on my own, but it wasn't. It's because of the candy and I was snacking a lot on junk food. The calorie counting has helped me cut down on junk food a LOT. I now think if I REALLY want to eat those chips or not. Most times I don't bother buying chips now because I know it'll take me too long to eat them before they go stale. :P

Calorie counting has also made me drink more water. I have never been a big soda drinker, but I am a fruit juice drinker. There are a lot of calories in fruit drinks! For the most part, I treat them like empty calories. I'm thirsty? Go drink water. No calories. :) I still don't like the taste of water (ugh), but I almost don't drink anything else now (maybe once a week I'll drink a fruit juice now). I will say, I haven't gotten out of the habit of ordering a drink at restaurants. I'll still instinctively order a soda or fruit juice at a restaurant. It's really the only time I used to regularly get soda was at a restaurant. I'm still trying to break that habit and getting better, but I don't eat out a lot anymore so it's harder to break.

The nice thing about calorie counting is it's not "dieting." I'm not telling myself I can't eat something or I have to eat LESS of something, it's simply giving me a choice of "Do I really want to consume those calories so I have less left to eat something else?" A lot of dieting and weight loss is psychological and calorie counting has allowed me to keep my "freedom" in what I eat, but also lose weight. It's also allowed me to see how much exercising I need to do. I don't exercise the same amount each day. I try to always exercise enough to get me to or below my calorie goal, but some days I had a better calorie intake day so I don't need to exercise as much or I feel like exercising so I'll exercise more. My FitBit Flex has also helped me exercise. Chris has been a dear by supporting my exercising in the ways he can (buying me new workout clothes, the FitBit, a yoga mat, etc). I thought the FitBit was overpriced and we both do, but we're techie people and he wanted to get it for me to help me out. I don't always try to make the 10,000 step goal that's defaulted, but I will exercise more if I'm close. So it's helped with that too.

I will say, breakfast has been my biggest hurdle with calorie counting and going on my vacation and coming back was also extremely difficult. I'm not a breakfast morning person. When I initially started this, I was doing the Greek yogurt with jam and granola mixed in. It was working, but I eventually got tired of eating it and got to a point where I didn't need breakfast anymore. I was used to the lower calorie intake and could skip breakfast and go to a morning snack (okay, practically pre-lunch since my snack would be at 11:30pm and lunch would be at 2:30pm - let's not discuss that I take my lunch later than I'm legally supposed to).

Then I went on my trip, didn't go crazy on my eating, but wasn't watching it as closely as I normally do (I was calorie counting, but not overly concerned). I was also eating when I wanted to and got out of my rhythm. I gained less than a pound on my trip, which wasn't too bad. Coming back home, though, and trying to get back into a rhythm was HARD. I felt like I was nonstop hungry. It also didn't help that I came back to close twice in a row and worked 8 days in a row. It's been 3 weeks since I got back and I was gone for 6 days. It took me over 2 weeks to get back to a schedule of eating where I don't feel like I'm starving all day all the time. I also lost that pound and got back onto my losing 2 pounds a week schedule. It took time and effort, but I'm proud of myself I did it!

As for breakfast, coming back from my trip, I learned to start eating something for breakfast again. I just couldn't do it and it was making me want to snack badly at work. I started with eggs in the morning and then made a yummy breakfast casserole. The casserole wasn't necessarily healthy, but it was tasty! Recently, though, the past week, I decided to start making smoothies and turned them green. I'm still not into the whole extra-green smoothie thing so I only add spinach or kale to mine, but it helps. So the smoothie is what I'm drinking for breakfast. Mine comprise of a green (kale or spinach), a handful or less of pineapple chunks (helps with Vitamin C to counteract the oxalic acid in spinach and kale), tablespoon or two of almond butter, a banana, and vanilla almond milk. Seriously, 20oz or so of the stuff and it keeps me going almost all day. It's keeps me fuller much better than anything else I was eating for breakfast, which means anything else I eat all day satisfies me more. It's also nice because it's liquid and I'm more easily able to consume it in the morning. Sometimes trying to eat in the morning wasn't appetizing to me. I'm hoping to increase my greens in it, but it's something I'll have to build up to. I also need to figure out a better way to get the kale in. Kale doesn't shred as nicely as spinach does so it tends to stay a little "chunkier," which is kind of gross after you drink it because I feel like I get kale stuck in my teeth. I might start cooking it a little first, letting it cool, and then blending it. Cooked kale and spinach are much healthier for you than having it raw. One of the few vegetables that eating it cooked is better.

My next goal is to try and get back into my FitnessBlender workout. I used to do it every other day, but then I started to read more and now I read on my elliptical or watch a movie on the elliptical. I can't do either if I do the FitnessBlender workout! I do want to start again, though, because it gets me more flexible and gives me a better full body workout. The elliptical is mostly the legs and some arm. I also got out of the habit of regularly stretching. I used to do it and it helped my back out a lot, but then I got lazy when it got better. Now that I'm not doing it and went back in to the chiropractor, my back is hurting again and I'm not as flexible. So, those are my two immediate goals other than getting to my weight goal. 

At any rate, it's definitely the year of "healthy" for me. I need to lose another 38 lbs to reach my ideal weight. Once I hit it or get within 5 lbs, I'll switch to strength training and maintenance instead of all the cardio I've been doing. It also means I'll be able to increase my calorie in take. Should be interesting...I know for a fact I'll need to calorie count for a long, long while to make sure I don't slip into bad habits, but, at the rate I'm going, I should make my goal by the end of January next year! Not too bad. I do think I'll throw myself a "party" of sorts for when I break losing 30 pounds. :) I need to reward myself somehow, right?! Might be a nail polish buy instead of food...LoL

Anyway, I'll do a general update and movie update later. I know I've been saying I'll update on my movies, but with the cooking and exercising, my time hasn't been spent on the computer much lately. Also, I'm back to regularly reading so I'm definitely not on my computer much. I guess it's better for me!