Vacation dieting

I was on vacation the past two weeks and thus away from my routine. My plan for the trip was to:

1. avoid tracking my calories because it would drive me crazy, and
2. not gain any weight.

Instead, I was going to focus on eating normal-sized portions and limiting my alcohol intake to "special occasions". And by that I mean, not drinking heavily every day. I was on vacation after-all and vacation means boozing.

I got back Sunday night and the verdict is...I'm down 1 pound!

That's honestly shocking because I only exercised once last week, drank a BUNCH of margaritas, ate double portions of fish tacos, and spent the rest of the time sitting under a palapa on the beach. So I didn't move much and consumed a lot, which is not conducive to not gaining weight.

Granted, the first week of vacation was very exercise-heavy (2 hill runs and a 3-mile run in California, and then 12-miles of running during Tough Mudder in Vegas) so maybe that evened things out a bit. But I'm still kind of shocked by the loss.

The Roommie and I next to my second favorite palapa, a day after finishing Tough Mudder in Las Vegas

When I weighed myself out of curiosity on Sunday night after getting home, I was up to 201.0 lbs, which is 7 pounds more than my weight when I left. I was really bummed about that because that's an insane amount of poundage to gain in 14 days. And I didn't think I had strayed from my plan all that much. All the anxiety I've been having about not being able to maintain a normal calorie intake to stay at a lower weight came roaring back. It was disconcerting.

Monday morning had me at ~196 and today I weighed in at 193.5 lbs. I discounted Monday's weigh-in because I was only three days removed from drinking (my weight is all over the place within three days of alcohol) so the "official" post-vacation weight remains at 193.5 lbs.

We'll see if this downward trend continues once I weigh-in tomorrow but regardless of what the scale shows, I'm really proud of myself for eating normally enough while on vacation without feeling deprived at all. Actually, I could've had a few more beers on the beach but I stayed away because a) I was getting sick and didn't need to impede my immune system's work by consuming alcohol, and b) I get super dehydrated after even one drink these days (I'm getting old) and didn't want to spend my vacation hungover on top of already being sick.

In short, it appears that living a life without needing to calorie count all the time is totally doable for me. There are still things I need to tweak and learn about my body before I can go into legitimate maintenance mode (and lose about 50 more pounds) but it's reassuring to know that I can count on myself to know when to stop eating.

Frustrations with my weight-loss, or lack thereof

I've been getting frustrated with my progress lately since the scale hasn't moved all that much in the last week. And by "all that much", I mean, at all. I've lost a measly four pounds in March, which doesn't seem like enough for all the effort I've been putting into this.

So I decided to take the plunge and get another BodyMedia Fit, because my old one (previously called a GoWear Fit) broke. I don't plan on wearing it on my arm like it's technically recommended because I hate answering questions about what it is. So I'm going to put it in my bra instead, which is just about as accurate as the armband as I've concluded from my not-so-scientific experiments with my old GWF (now BMF).

The only real thing that's been holding me back from getting another one of these is that it's not accurate for bike riding, which is my main source of exercise. So all in all, it won't give me a good number for most of my exercise because I've been biking a lot lately.

But what it is good for is my daily calorie expenditure. So anything I burn on top of just living my life is bonus in my book even if it is a bit inaccurate.

Since my weight-loss has been relatively slow (1.0 - 1.5 lbs/week) I've been worrying that once I drop down even more weight I will stop losing because my metabolism will slow down with the lower weight. And I really can't go below the 1500 calories I'm currently eating without going insane. With this BMF, I won't have to guess all the time about how much I can eat to still lose weight because it will (hypothetically) tell me how many calories I've burned in any given day. And then I'll be able to adjust my food intake accordingly.

Also, I can't stay on a tight calorie budget all the time because I'm starting to feel deprived, which is something I've been trying to avoid with this weight-loss effort. For example, yesterday my roommate had a panini with salami and cheese and all I wanted was to have some as well. But my calorie budget didn't allow for it. I had had a few too many beers on Monday so in order to keep the week's calories under 1500 daily, I couldn't allow myself another cheat day.

But I had also refereed three games on Monday and in doing so I had sprinted/jogged/walked 4.5 miles. So some of those calories had been burned off, I just didn't know how many. Having a BMF would've given me that information and would've allowed me to see if I could hypothetically eat some of the calories I had burned and still be under my deficit totals.

I've been so strict lately with my calories because I haven't been losing any weight and it's incredibly frustrating. So I'm trying to stick with the allotted 1500 to see if that will make me lose the weight I expect and it's been really hard and restricting. I don't want that feeling and I also don't want to be guessing all the time about what I should be eating and how much I should be exercising. So this takes all the guesswork out and allows me to live my life pseudo-normally. At least that's the hope.

Balancing weight-loss through cycling with the need for run fitness

I've been getting overwhelmed with the amount of fitness I need to do for the various activities I participate in and I can't seem to find a good way to consolidate workouts. For example, for refereeing, I need to work on my run endurance and speed but I much prefer to ride my bike than to run. And I also lose a lot more weight when I bike than when I run.

I've noticed that when I referee, I run out of gas towards the end of the game so I definitely need to work on that. So far I've been sticking to one run hill workout a week and biking the rest of the days, with a game of reffing thrown in there somewhere. It seems to be working well enough because I am faster and have more endurance than when I first began refereeing this winter/spring. But I have a long ways to go before I'm "match fit" as they call it.

To develop that match fitness, I need to run more and I've been thinking about adding another hill day and/or a long run/interval day. But I can't work out hard for more than 5-6 days a week because my body needs the rest so these runs cut down my number of biking days, which would suck because I really love to bike.

With that in mind, my biggest question is if cycling will have any sort of benefit for running, whether it's an increase in endurance or speed. Either one works for me. I haven't been able to find a straight answer so I guess I'm just going to have to experiment and see what happens.

Here is someone's post on a biking forum about his running and cycling:

And depending upon whether your running speed is limited by muscle-strength/efficiency or aerobic-capacity, cycling will help you in different ways.

For me, my legs never get tired on runs less than 10-miles at TT speeds (I played soccer for 15-years). However, getting faster running speed requires working on my aerobic system. Doing hill climbs and tempo workouts on the bike definitely helped my running speeds. :)

Also, I find that I can lose weight faster by riding my bike than by running. About 6-8lbs/month with cycling vs. 4-5 lbs/month with running. Lower weight helps in both running and cycling.

And another person's opinion:

I credit cycling with vastly improving my baserunning ability in softball, I went from someone who had to hit the ball well into the outfield to get on base to someone who can out run a slightly misplayed 5-3 infield hit. Made all the difference in bringing my average up to something close to respectable.

I'm not saying that training for sprinting wouldn't have acomplished the same thing, but it sure wouldn't have been as much fun.

I guess all this comes down to the question of, do I want to get fit for refereeing at the expense of losing weight? With running, I do lose weight but at a much slower pace than if I was biking, as the above poster mentioned. So I guess I have to decide what I want to focus on right now.

I think currently my priority is weight-loss and to do that I need to bike more. It seems that biking a lot will improve my aerobic fitness and in a roundabout way also give me more running endurance because of less weight on my body. Maybe once I reach my goal weight I'll focus more on running? We'll see.

So I think the solution is to do one run hill workout a week and one long run/interval training a week as well. If I have a game to referee then that can count as the long run/interval training day. The other three to four days of exercise will be biking, with hopefully one hill workout on that as well. I've found that I can't do more than 6 days of exercise in a week because my body can't handle it so that's going to be the breakdown for now.

This schedule looks good for now and the weeks when I follow this plan tend to make me happiest. I end up pretty tired, but it's manageable and actually somewhat enjoyable. Other variations either leave me drained or unhappy, neither of which is sustainable in the long run. So I'll stick with this for now and amend as I need.

By the way, I hate how I have to amend everything about my workout and food plans. I wish I could just stick to one thing that works instead of having to change it up all the time with changes in my weight and fitness level.

That's another reason I can't wait to hit maintenance in 50+ pounds...I won't have to worry about balancing weight-loss with fitness and will instead be able to work on the latter exclusively. Then again, by that point I'll want to add some significant strength training and figuring out how to do that most effectively will be another can of worms to sift through!

Keeping on my run fitness

Since I didn't have a rugby game assigned this weekend, I didn't do any running during the week (no fire under my ass/fear of God incentive). Except someone has fallen ill and I asked for the game to be reassigned to me. So tomorrow I need to be fit. Oops.

This teaches me to put off running only for weeks during which I have game assignments. Turns out I should be working on my run fitness weekly because you never know if something will come up.

The good thing is that I got a bike ride in on Monday and yesterday, did TRX on Tuesday (from which I'm still feeling the soreness), and I may do another ride today. So I haven't been sitting on my ass entirely all week. Just a little bit.

I was going to do some hill work today but that may have to be postponed until Sunday so I don't have dead legs during tomorrow's game. I think the alternative will be a regular somewhat hilly ride instead of the 3-mile hill repeats I had originally planned.

Sexism in rugby

I've been playing rugby for nearly 10 years now and I've always known that women weren't respected by the men as equals, but it never directly affected me until I began refereeing. And now that I blatantly see that the men are getting more assignments than me simply because I'm female, I'm getting really pissed off.

I love refereeing. I'm not that good at it and it stresses me out sometimes, but it's really fun. Part of me believes that the scheduler won't give me more assignments because I'm new and I suck. But the only way to get better is to do more games, which I can't do if I'm not assigned to them. It's kind of like the chicken or the egg scenario. Can't do one without the other. It really sucks.

Mostly, I'm mad because having game assignments has pushed me to go running more than I normally would. It put the fear of God into me with regards to my run fitness and not having any games for a couple of weeks makes me more likely to sit around and get fat. And I need that motivation to get moving otherwise my weight-loss will stall, and I don't want that.

I know that I need to lose weight for myself and not rely on being scared into it for refereeing. I think I'm also being discriminated against because of my weight and perceived lack of fitness so the thinner I get the better my chances of getting assignments. So that's some more incentive to work out.

In that respect, it's getting much warmer outside and, more importantly, drier (meaning no snowfall hopefully) so I'll get on my bike a lot more. Biking is usually how I lose the most weight so not having the need to run all the time gives me the time to get more rides in, which is good. And much more enjoyable since I like to bike much more than I like to run. Like, WAY more.

Considering that, I don't always want to go for a bike ride, but I should be exercising 5-6 times a week. So for those times when my bike seems unfun which doesn't happen often, I can go on a run instead. I stopped doing Couch to 10k after week 5 because it was getting boring and really awful mentally, but I've started running hills and intervals, which give me more bang for my buck. I get exhausted quickly but it only lasts for 30 minutes or so and supposedly those types of runs are the best way to increase speed, which is what I really need to work on, more so than endurance, for reffing.

Back to refereeing complaints, I've noticed that I get nearly all the girls' game assignments so hopefully when the high school girls season rolls around in the fall I'll get more stuff. And this scheduler is much better than the last one in that he has been giving me some games when the last guy didn't give me any. So I guess there's improvement.

And I have been getting a game a week, even though most of my mine have been snowed out (others' haven't because it's dependent on the fields and not the weather) so I haven't actually done all that many games. Most other people get 2-3 games a week, which I think might be too much for me and I'd get burned out. So I'm somewhat happy to be getting one a week but I also wish I was able to do them and they would stop getting canceled. Ay ay ay!

There's only one other girl/woman in the referee society and she's really good so she gets lots of assignments. I asked her how I can get more matches and she said just to be patient. There's nothing else I can do (I've already asked the scheduler for more matches) so I should just wait it out and do well with what I'm given. She said that she gets lots of games despite the scheduler being sexist because other people notice her talent and recognize her skill level. I've gotten really good reviews from both of my evaluators on the two games I've done (yeah, the season is almost over and I've only done TWO games...bullshit!). So I'm hoping that this gets noticed by someone else and they put pressure on the scheduler to give me more matches. That's my pipe dream.

My other main concern is that there's a developmental committee that identifies up-and-coming refs and gives them additional guidance. It's like a fast-track for awesomeness and I'd like to get on it. But if I can't get matches and I can't get respect from one of the main guys in the society then how the hell am I supposed to get noticed by these other old white dudes?! It's so incredibly frustrating.

I think the moral of this whiny post is to focus on my weight-loss and get to an acceptable/normal weight so the referee society has no reason to discriminate against me...except for my gender, but there's nothing I can do about that. At least that's what I'll keep telling myself so the anger subsides a little bit.

Lastly, here's a photo of me in action from my last game:

Making my loss visual

Since I can't see my weight-loss when I look in the mirror and other people have been commenting on my "slim" figure, I figured I should browse through the progress photos I've been taking throughout my journey.

And while it's not incredibly obvious even in the pictures that I've lost that much, if you look closely you can see that my butt and thighs are more toned and that the back fat is slowly receding.

Here is a montage of those photos (NSFW in that I'm only wearing underwear and a bra, but all important bits are covered):

"Single" digits, finally!

This graph says it all:

I hit the "single" digits, so to say, on March 16, 2013, which is nearly six years to the day after I last was in the 100s. And I'm still losing. Woohoo!

"Your face looks thinner. Have you lost weight?"

Comments such as the post title have been coming at me in the last week from people in entirely different social circles. So they clearly have all noticed it on their own and not discussed it with each other. It's really weird to hear because 1) they've all said something in the last week and not before, and 2) I haven't noticed any visual evidence of my weight-loss.

Some of my clothes fit better (read, they're no longer like spandex) but for the most part I think my t-shirts and jeans feel the exact same way now as they did a month ago. This is probably because both of those articles of clothing are made of stretchy material while my khakis and jackets are not, but I really don't feel any smaller in my clothes nor do I see myself as thinner when I look in the mirror.

I think part of the "denial" about my weight-loss is due to the fact that I never really saw myself as all that fat. I mean, I know I have fat but for some reason I believe that it's a somewhat thin layer covering a lean, tall, mass of muscle, none of which is true in real life. In fact, I'm obese, 5'4", and have nearly 50% body fat. But I seem to think otherwise, which is why I've let myself get to this weight in the first place. I'm really good at ignoring reality.

Because my perception of my size is so warped, every time I see a picture of myself I am surprised by my weight. Practically every time I see something posted on Facebook or look through pictures I have taken during a trip, I am taken aback by how obese I really am. Each picture is honestly a shock to me and since I'm not looking at them all the time and there aren't many mirrors in my life (at least not from the chest down) it is really easy to see myself as what I'd like to be instead of what I really am.

In that respect, I really only have two perceptions of people's body sizes: fat and thin. Since I've always thought of myself as fat for as long as I can remember (albeit, normal fat -- see two paragraphs below), I associate my current size with the "fat" I remember from high school, when I weighed a whopping 155 pounds. Yeah, I wasn't fat at all and I wish I was that weight now, but in high school for a 5'4" girl, 155 is way bigger than "normal". And since I haven't gotten skinny since that time, in my mind I'm still in the same fat category of my youth, which is big but not all that big. So you see where my current disconnect with reality comes from.

To go even farther back with my issues of fatness, in third grade there were three kids in my class who were constantly teased for being fat. I wasn't one of those three and I never understood why not. I felt lucky for escaping the ridicule and sometimes even joined in on the taunts (not my brightest moment) but I just couldn't comprehend why they were getting flak for their weight while I was considered normal. Where was the line drawn? Because in my mind, anyone thicker than a bean pole was fat. And I sure wasn't a bean pole. Not even close.

It's taken a long time for me to realize that people can have fat on them and not be "fat". And I still catch myself thinking that being a bean pole is the only way to go. It's a distinction that I continue to struggle with and I don't think it's going to be fixed any time soon. I still notice thicker normal-sized people and don't think of them as "normal" per se, even though they're a size 10-12. For some reason I focus on their large hips or non-sculpted arms and see "fat" instead of their natural, perfectly fine body.

Part of this is due to being bombarded by society's unrealistic perception of beauty, part is due to living in a ridiculously thin town where The Roommie (a size 10) feels fat, and part is due to constantly being told to lose weight by my family from an early age. Regardless of the reasons behind my thinking, I just can't get past the thought that anyone who isn't lean, isn't normal-sized.

It's this mindset that makes me worry that I'll never be content with my weight no matter how thin I eventually become. I will always have fat on me because those are the genes I have been dealt and I do actually love having hips. I also don't strive to be athletically thin because I don't have the will-power or desire to commit to that eating and training plan.

So unless I change my way of thinking, I will always be unhappy about my body. And after all the work I will have hypothetically put into losing 85+ pounds, I want to have a body I am at least somewhat satisfied with. It's probably not going to be conventionally beautiful, but I'm hoping it'll be normal.

To go back to what started this post and to end on a positive note, I guess I kind of knew that I was losing weight because the number on my scale has been going down for some time (it's stubbornly stuck between 201.0 and 200.5 lb right now...so frustrating!). But I didn't see the loss on my body and thus I didn't believe it. After-all, I still have a lot of fat on my arms, my thighs, and my stomach, and taking a few pounds off doesn't really move me to the "thin" category, which is where the true distinction lies. Right now, I don't believe the loss makes that much of a difference in my appearance. That is, until my friends and colleagues spoke up.

One comment from The Roommie wasn't even enough to budge my way of thinking. It had to come from several different directions and had to be off-hand, not me soliciting comments but them initiating the discussion. Only after I had heard this several times did I even consider that going down one belt hole was an option for keeping my pants situated on my hips. I then realized that I can actually go down two or even three more and still be comfortable.

When cleaning my room, I started trying on the clothes I had bought "for when I lose weight"...and I started fitting into some of them! I'm currently consistently wearing size 16 pants and shorts, which a huge surprise because I was a solid 18 when I started this, sometimes even needing a 20.

So although I may not notice any weight-loss when I look in the mirror or glance through pictures, other people are noticing and my clothes don't lie. I'm using that outside input as a way to retrain my brain to a more normal way of thinking so hopefully somewhere down the line I will be able to see these changes on my own.

I may have a long way to go, but at least I'm getting somewhere right now.

Pushing myself to run faster

On Saturday I brought The Roommie on a run with me and she kicked my butt! I've been somewhat faithfully following Couch to 10k and I'm on Week Four now, which is a recovery week. The running interval was only two minutes with a two minute walking rest afterwards and I only had to repeat it five times. So it didn't look too hard on paper. In reality, though, I was exhausted.

The Roommie weighs 30 pounds less than I do and is three inches taller. She's generally in better shape and doesn't mind suffering while running, but hates to push herself when biking. So when we ride our bikes I smoke her, but during a run I struggle to keep up.

Saturday was no different. She was always several steps in front of me and probably could've gone even faster but didn't want to lose me. While I usually hate following people when I exercise, this was actually really good because it pushed me to run faster. I was definitely uncomfortable during every single one of the running intervals, but that's how it should be. I need to push myself so I can eventually get faster and I haven't been able to do that on my own for several weeks now. It's much easier to settle into a slow trot.

We ended the run with a 10:17 min/mile average which is significantly faster than I've been able to run by myself. This also showed me that I can run at a quicker pace than I think I can and more importantly, that I can hold it for more than 30 seconds.

This translated to the strategy for today's run as well because I ran to the same point of exhaustion as Saturday (not a full sprint but I could definitely feel it in my lungs) and was able to hold it for the whole two minute interval. It also helped to have three minutes to recover after each running interval because I could go a lot harder and maintain the pace throughout the whole workout.

The next run is going to be a beast: Three minutes running, one minute walking, nine times, which translates to 27 minutes of actual running. I haven't gone that long since November 2010 so I'm not going to be using the pushing myself strategy of the past few days. Instead, I will focus on maintaining a decent pace (11 min/mile) and holding it for the whole run interval. This way I won't hate myself by the time run number five rolls around, which is what happened several weeks ago and nearly caused me to quit running altogether.

The second day of each week is generally an easier day so I'll work on increasing speed during those runs by pushing myself, while focusing on simply getting through the hard first day of the week runs.

I can now warm up in my warm-up pants

I finally cleaned out and organized all the clothes in my closets and wardrobes because it was getting out of hand. I had stuff stashed in drawers and hanging up in the closet, most of it too small and unwearable. So I devised a new system for storage, grouped my shirts by size, and got everything put away very nicely.

After three days of doing this and trying on a bunch of shirts to see if they fit, I decided to give a pair of warm-up pants a try to see if I could actually get them over my butt. When I received them as part of a team kit a couple of years ago I was ~15 pounds heavier than I am right now and although I could get them on, they weren't comfortable at all. You could tell they were stretched tight across my thighs and I could barely move without feeling like they would rip at the seams (they aren't made of stretchy fabric), which defeated their purpose of being for warming up prior to practice or a game.

But today, they fit almost perfectly! They're not exactly the loosest pants I own, but I feel like I can run around and not bust out of them, which is progress.

I honestly can't notice a difference in my body size even though the scale is moving so it was nice to see that I am in fact getting smaller even if it's not yet obvious to my eye. At the same time, after looking at all the awesome shirts I recently bought that I love, I'm kind of bummed I'm getting smaller because these clothes I have now won't fit for very long.

Since I will continue to get thinner (remaining at this weight is NOT an option) I'm just going to have to give them as much love as I can now, which means ratty shirts are out and awesome shirts are in. This is yet another reason to start caring about how I dress instead of wearing baggy pajama-y clothes all the time, so I've been wearing my nice sweaters practically every day. The shirts are one thing, but sweaters from my mom are something I will miss.

The bright side is I will soon get to wear all the shirts from several years ago that I also love but can't fit into anymore. And I'm sure when I revamp my wardrobe to accommodate my smaller size there will be just as many awesome shirts that I will fall in love with. And hopefully my mom will be so ecstatic about my weight-loss that she will buy me more soft sweaters.