Totally got called out

I've been having knee problems for a while now, and they seem to be never-ending. I ended up having surgery on it in December, got a steroid shot last month, and am still having some grinding/diffuse pain issues even though the steroid helped immensely with the worst of the pain.

Anywhos, I went to my orthopedic doctor today and I felt like the office had become a bit too familiar. The front-desk lady pulled out my chart as soon as she saw me come in and the PA actually pronounced my nickname correctly (that's how I usually know people remember meeting me). I clearly have been coming in too much.

Why all this detail? Well, it's mostly because I like to ramble. But my main point is that the doc and his PA both said that I need to work more on strengthening the knee, by doing core, hip, and quad workouts. Yeah, I've been slacking on those like crazy and they totally called me out on it.

I mean, I'll go on really hard bike rides several times a week but I honestly can't remember the last time I did a side plank. And my left quad is still significantly smaller than my right one. (I have no idea how they can tell that just by poking around my kneecap, but I'll take it.)

So that is something I'm going to have to work on now to make this knee thing go away. But I'm really glad they don't think I'd torn my meniscus, again. I don't have time or energy to deal with all that that entails.

And on another positive front, I'm down to 213.5 lbs today, which is pretty awesome considering my 3 x per week of exercise max and eating out habits. Since I started this shindig at the end of February, I've somewhat consistently been losing 1 lb per week, which has been the plan. Awesome!

My clothes don't fit any better, so I've been worrying that my muscles have been atrophying due to my schedule of insane studying and not much else. But my fat % has also been creeping down so maybe that's an unfounded concern. The biggest challenge will be finding motivation to exercise during the next two months while I'm on a boat (in my flippy floppies).

Regardless, today has been a pretty good day.

Photos on Facebook

One of the main reasons I began to take weight-loss seriously this time around is due to my sudden aversion at looking in the mirror or at pictures of myself. My fat rolls are becoming a bit excessive and it shows. A lot.

With this new disgust of my body, I've started debating whether I should un-tag all the not-so-flattering photos of myself on Facebook. So far, the conclusion I've come to is that I should keep them because, 1) I would no longer have any pseudo-recent photos of myself, and 2) it's an accurate representation of how I look right now so I'm not really hiding anything by taking them off the interwebz. But at the same time, the people with whom I don't interact on a daily basis (90% of my FB friends) don't need to see how I've let myself go. So I still don't know.

Here is some of the evidence:

Last night at the bar. This one isn't too bad actually.

August 2011. I'm in the Wonder Woman bathing suit.

August 2011. I can't believe I walked around all week with my back fat hanging out like that.

New Years' 2011. Yeah, no bueno.

What do you think? Should I un-tag these, or keep them?

My version of calorie counting

I cannot calorie count. I've tried and failed multiple times, so eventually I just gave it up. It works for about three weeks and then I go nuts from the stress and end up going back to my diet of pizza and beer.

Since I gave up calorie counting, I've had trouble controlling my caloric intake to best maximize my weight-loss. As a result, I've largely given up on losing weight through managing my food and have focused on exercise as my main source of calorie deficits, which most people say is not the way to go. Usually, exercise has worked for me in weight-loss but lately the weather has not cooperated with bike riding and I've been fairly lazy. And with that, I thought my weight-loss would completely stall.

BUT, I've still been losing weight. I'm down to 214.5 today! How is that possible?

Well, in the past few weeks, I've stayed away from eating out and have cooked relatively nutrient-dense and low-calorie meals. My snacks no longer consist of candy and chips, but instead I've focused on eating all the fruit and veggies I have in my house.

So without consciously calorie counting, I've kind of been controlling my caloric intake by eating lower calorie meals and cutting down on the junk I ingest when I'm bored. I mean, I still eat too much ice cream and have a few beers a week, but it's definitely a lot less than I used to, which is why the scale is slowly but surely going down.

I generally know how many calories are in each of my meals/foods so I try to limit my meals to 500 calories and snacks to 100 calories. But if it doesn't work out, then it doesn't work out. I don't stress about being a couple hundred over or under. I'd rather lose slower than be wound up like a ball of stress all the time.

In short, I'm more aware of what I'm putting in my mouth without obsessing over it. And so far this "diet" has lasted longer than any other thing I've tried in the last 5 years. So I'm going to stick with it until it stops working. And then I'll amend.

Good Habits From Home Project

I just got back from a week at home with my parents in California, and as usual when I return from their house, I want to incorporate some of my mom's awesome food habits into my diet. She always sends me back with a suitcase full of home-cooked meals so I don't have to cook for myself for at least a week. But after that, I usually go back to my lazy ways of take-out and junk food.

This time, I've resolved that things will be different. I've had my nose stuck in a book for the past three months studying for the MCAT. And with that, I've been snacking on delicious yet totally not nutritious things. When I study at home in California, my mom is constantly bringing me platters of fruit and veggies, so I've decided that that is where I'm going to begin the Good Habits From Home Project (GHFH Project).

So today, I banned the Gummy Tummies from my desk and replaced them with a plate of sliced apples and bananas. I've noticed that I'm more likely to eat an apple or an orange or a carrot when it's sliced into bite-size pieces and I can reach for it whenever I get bored. So I'm taking a cue from my mom (that's how she eats her food, and I always find myself eating off her plate) and taking the 30 seconds to slice my snacks in order to increase the probability of eating healthier.

My two study snack choices, both equally delicious.
Actually, I think the fruit wins this battle.

Switching gears a bit to the exercise front, prior to my one-week vacation and isolation (I left the house two times the whole time I was home...awesome!), I was biking three to four times a week. Although the scale hasn't budged much and I may not actually be losing any inches either (my measurements are so inconsistent that I won't believe I've lost much until whole inches come off), I have most definitely gotten much much faster.

At first, I had started dreading going on the bike because it was so hard to keep a 15.5 mph average and I worried that even biking was going to become a weight-loss chore. But now that I've noticed a massive improvement in my speed, the discomfort on the bike is fun again and I look forward to every ride. Even the women in my weekly biking group say I'm really speedy and I'm pretty sure they mean it, which is awesome to hear mostly because I'm the biggest girl out of them all by far (by like, 50 pounds I estimate).

Anywhos, the only bad part about going home was that I would have to "quit" biking for the week, and at first I started to feel nervous about that. I didn't want to lose all the fitness I had spent the last month building and I had even gotten a bit addicted to being on the bike, as evidenced by my need to bike every other day. But the guilt of sitting on my butt evaporated and the lazy part of me returned by the third day of being home. And that's scary, because it took me a good three weeks to crave exercise and only two to three days to go back to my lazy ways. Yikes!

Now that I'm back in Colorado, it's 35 degrees and snowing, when it had been 75 and sunny for the past three weeks. In true Colorado style, though, Wednesday and thereafter promise to bring more sunshine and warmth. So my return to biking will have to wait til then. I'm still a fair weather biker, after-all.

It's the little things

I weighed myself this morning and I'm down to 220.0, which is 4 pounds lost since 10 days ago and 2 pounds since yesterday. I definitely did a little fist-pump this morning, because I'm pretty sure this is actual weight-loss and not just fluctuations. I've bounced between 223.0 and 221.0 for the past week, but this 220.0 is for real. I never thought I'd be so happy about a pound or two!

The proof that there's a downward trend. It's not just in my head after-all!

That loss may be due to me biking the last two days, and also giving up booze for Lent. I'm still rehabbing my knee from surgery in December and am only supposed to increase my time on the bike by 10% with each outing. So yesterday I did 30 minutes and today was supposed to be 33, which didn't exactly happen. 33 minutes turned into 40 because my math was wrong and I took a scenic detour at the turn-around point. But I don't think it's a big deal because I most definitely spent a good 3 - 4 minutes cruising on the downhills without using my legs at all.

The days have been so nice that it's really hard not to be outside, which makes getting on the bike not all that difficult. Actually, that's a lie. Today was (and still is) equally as gorgeous as yesterday but I was most definitely going to bail because I just didn't feel like going. Then I checked the weather and it's supposed to be cold and snowy the next couple of days, so that was enough to knock the "Oh, I'll just go tomorrow" thoughts out of my head. Luckily, it's supposed to return to mid- to high-60s by the weekend. I'm stoked!

Now I just need to get my eating in order and this weight-loss thing will be a piece of cake.

The sedentary life

We finally replaced the battery in our bathroom scale that measures body fat % as well as weight. I stepped on it today and the numbers were shocking. Here is a comparison over the years, since I like to have some perspective.

	2/12/10	2/28/11	2/28/12
Weight	212.8	204.2	220.0
%Fat	53.5	50.0	57.2
Pounds of Fat	113.8	102.1	127.0
Lean Mass	99.0	102.1	95.0

Wow, I've lost a lot of muscle and gained a lot of fat in the past year, most of it since last July. Yikes!

Finally biking outside

I recently got back into biking, first on the treadmill at the gym as part of rehab after my knee surgery and have now headed onto the roads. Today I did my favorite 10-mile loop to get back into the swing of things, and man, am I out of shape!

Usually it's my lungs that burn after a hard push, but today my legs gave out well before I got even close to being winded. And that means that I am tremendously out of shape. Oops. Good thing it's getting consistently warm enough to head outside, because I am so over sitting on the couch.

And a little inspiration:

Ramping up the metabolism

I read this article called "How to get your metabolism moving" on CNN about little health tips to speed up that darn metabolism. For the most part, it's pretty straight-forward and stuff I already knew, but here are some bullet points to help myself remember the important parts:

• A pound of muscle at rest burns three times as many calories as a pound of fat.
• 45 minutes of any sweat-inducing exercise increases your resting metabolic rate for 14 hours after the workout (190 calories for a group in a study on average).
• A sleepless night reduces your resting metabolic rate by about 5% several hours into the next day.
• The morning after skipping sleep, you burn 20% fewer calories from diet-induced thermogenesis.
• Low blood sugar levels cause the breakdown of tissue to turn it into glucose to feed the brain, which in essence leaves you with less muscle which slows down the metabolism.

And now onto the tips for eating differently:

• Eat smaller meals with 100- to 200-calorie snacks in between to keep blood sugar levels even.
• Have a small snack (peanut butter on a graham cracker) to get your metabolism working while you sleep.

Like I said, pretty straight-forward but worth putting into list form so it's easier to reference.

State of my weight

I've been trying to lose weight since I can remember, but I've only been writing down my weight since 2004, my freshman year of college. Some years, there aren't many entries (college and my time abroad), but more recently I've been keeping track semi-regularly. Of course, when I'm actively trying to lose weight, there's a weigh-in every day. So that data is skewed.

Here is the history of my attempts at weight-loss since freshman year of college:

Period	Minimum	Maximum
College	166.0 1/22/2005	198.5 4/3/2007
Post-College	202.0 11/4/2008	221.0 11/16/2009 1/3/2010 1/9/2010
Colorado	206.5 5/20/2011	221.0 11/16/2009 1/3/2010 1/9/2010

And by the years:

Year	Minimum	Maximum
2004	167.0 12/15/2004	172.5 11/28/2004
2005	166.0 1/22/2005	171.5 3/18/2005
2006	--	--
2007	196.0 2/14/2007	198.5 4/3/2007
2008	202.0 11/4/2008	202.0 11/4/2008
2009	209.0 5/17/2009	221.0 11/16/2009
2010	209.5 6/17/2010	221.0 1/3/2010 1/9/2010
2011	206.5 5/20/2011	219.5 9/19/2011

I can explain each one of those mins and maxes (especially 2010 and 2011). When I'm low, it's because I've upped my exercise (triathlon training in 2010 up until June, and swimming in early 2011, then rugby this spring) even if my eating and drinking habits stayed the same. The weight crept back up as soon as I began sitting on my butt for whatever reason (traumatized by June triathlon so nothing in late 2010, and wrist injury this summer thus no biking and too busy for rugby this fall).

Conclusion:
If I exercise but don't change anything else about my life, I will lose weight.

As a parting shot, here's my weight during all these years in graphical form:

What do you mean I don't look Eastern European?

My bio professor wanted to meet with me and since it's a large lecture class, he just knows my name and not my face. I walked into his office today as planned and he looked at me funny, as if he wasn't expecting me. Finally he said, "How do you pronounce your last name?" I did that for him, and he still looked at me funny. He said something about me not being what he expected, and when I inquired further, he remarked that I don't look Eastern European and upon further questioning said something about me not having a thick accent.

Normally, this is not a big deal. But I'm insecure about my weight and assume everything has to do with that. When someone says I can't do something, I think it's because I'm fat. When they look at me funny, it's because I'm one of the few obese people in this town. When someone dismisses me and seems disinterested in having a conversation with me, it's my fatness pushing them away. You get the point.

So that's where my mind went as soon as he said I don't look Eastern European. I mean, girls from there are tall, blonde, and skinny. I only fit one of those stereotypes, and usually only in the summer when my hair has been bleached by the sun. I do have the high cheekbones and light eyes, but that's about it. And part of me (actually a large chunk of me...no pun intended) really hates the fact that I should be skinny because of my heritage but am not because I choose to eat lots of food and live the slovenly American lifestyle.

I get embarrassed when I'm back in Europe and people find out I live in the States, because I assume they think that I'm the stereotypical American. The thing is, no female in my family (extended or close, in Europe or in the U.S.) is thin. We all have curves, and we've all struggled with our weight. We're the child-bearers of the world and we won't die in a famine. At one point, my mom was super skinny but she was also anorexic and ended up in the hospital, so clearly it wasn't a healthy or natural weight.

I would love to be the Eastern European bombshell that my country is made out to be. A lot of people I talk to remark on how the women in my country are beautiful over-all, and it hurts me so much inside to hear that and know I'm the exception. I probably could be one of those girls. I don't know, I've never really tried. Hearing it today brought back those feelings of cultural insecurity not only with regards to my weight but also to the feeling that I'm letting my Eastern Europeanness slip away.

It's becoming hard for me to find the words to communicate with my brother in our native tongue and I trip up all the time when I try to speak with my aunts and uncles. It really scares me because I know I won't be moving back there anytime soon and my language skills are only going to get worse. I need to make an active effort in immersing myself in the language one way or another otherwise it's going to be lost for good. It's just hard and most of the time I don't have the energy to even try. It's a vicious cycle that is very similar to my weight-loss journey.

As you can tell, there are a lot of issues that were brought up with that one silly comment from a professor whom I never liked in the first place.