The scale is a fickle mistress

Many many years ago, I came across a media report of a study that a majority of people who were able to maintain weight loss were the ones who weighed themselves every day. I had never done that, but when I started this new lifestyle, I decided to try.

I kept track of my weights on an app on my iPod Touch. What an interesting graph they made! No straight line, this, but a jagged mountain-scape of gains and losses. I suppose I knew weight fluctuates hourly, and depends on so many things. Have you peed? Eaten? Spent time outside in the heat?

What surprised me the most were the odd results when I would "test" my scale. I came to not trust it very much at all. I mean, how could I trust a scale that tells me I gained a pound after going to the toilet?

This is just one of the ways that knowing or tracking ones weight is a useless endeavor.  I doubt any of us need a scale to know we are over or under weight. We can see it in the mirror, we can feel it in the fit of our clothes or the way our thighs rub together or how bony our hips or collarbones feel. If we must, we can track progress with weight loss or gain by using a tape measure. That is more accurate, but still doesn't tell the whole story.

I kind of knew this. I mean, I've been different sizes at the same weight before. 20 years ago, when I lived in Australia, there was even a terrific magazine article (which I have not been able to find) showing photos of 20+ "average" women - they were all 140 pounds and 5'4" tall. They all looked different. Some looked fat, some thin, some fit, some sadly out of shape. Yet, if we went solely by the scale, we would think they were all the same.

I was reminded of this in a spectacular way a week or so ago, when I came across this blog post by local trainer Jason Seib. Go on and check it out. Scroll down to that "before and after" photo and take a look at the weights listed. Now think if you are a person who might feel fat at that weight. Take a look at the right-hand photo. Think that woman is fat? Of course not. But the scale might tell her she is.

I can't promise to throw away my scale. But I can promise to see it, and love it, a little bit less.

Paleo day 97

OK, the secret is out: this blog has not been written in real time!  I had so much I wanted to say, and so much I wanted to share, and I wanted to do it in order, so I decided to do just that, even if the posts followed the activity by more than a month.

But that is getting harder for me to do. I am finding there are things I want to talk about NOW, posts I need to write NOW, things I need to process NOW.

So today is the day I play catch up with the blog.

Today is day 97 of eating a Paleo/Primal diet. This is the longest - by a month -  I've ever stuck with eating in a way that is different from "normal" - different from the way a majority of people in America eat. I haven't been super strict, and I have eaten "off plan" from time to time. But I don't like the way it makes me feel, and it has not once been worth it for more than the instant I am eating the food that isn't good for my body. It's the noticing how my body reacts to food that has made it easy to keep eating this way.

I haven't quite reached the goals I had set for myself. For example, my waist is still above 35 inches, my waist/hip ratio above 0.85, and I can't seem to manage a work out more than once a week for a variety of reasons. But I've gotten rid of 20 pounds and dropped a couple of sizes. My energy is better, my libido about the same, and my temper still needs a LOT of work.

But this is still early days. And things can only get better as I continue to write my own path.

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The numbers, day 90:
Weight: 159 pounds
Waist: 94 cm
Hips: 102 cm
W/H ratio: 0.92
BMI: 24.9 (in the "normal" range!)
Bodyfat: 25.9%

Baselines

I remember the first time I got pregnant, the doctor I saw (for a nanosecond) insisted I have blood work done as a baseline, a mark to measure things against as the pregnancy progressed. It seemed like a good idea then, and taking a series of measurements or baselines still seems like a good idea.

I've been thinking a bit about what made me desire change. What was it about my life that was making me unhappy and discontented? How would I know these changes were working for me? What baselines did I have with which to measure my progress?

On the day I told my husband, "Starting next week, I am no longer eating grains or sugars," I was a size 14, weighed 177 pounds and was around 32% body fat (according to my body fat monitor scale, which is perhaps not greatly accurate). Size, weight, body measurements - these are all good solid markers I can track with the tools at hand. But what about other, more subtle markers? How else was I feeling on that day?

I was sluggish. Everything seemed like such an effort! I would laze around all day, then rush to get the dishes done and dinner on the stove at the last minute. Or not, and ask my husband to get take out on the way home. If my son wanted to go out and play, I'd go out with him...and sit in a chair with a book, knitting, or iPod. Or all three. Pregnancy and a newborn were great excuses for a while, but even I was getting tired of hearing them.

I felt foggy. My mind was as sluggish as my body. I think I said, "Huh?" a dozen or more times a day. I would drift off in the middle of things; I think I preferred it, actually. I wasn't writing, I wasn't even reading much. I had no ideas for creative projects when my son wanted to craft. I wanted to do nothing more than sit and watch TV, or cruise FaceBook and play games on my iPod.

I had digestive issues. I've had IBS for 20+ years, thanks in part to a bout of amoebic dysentery when I was 18 or 19. I tried many things to cure it, and about a dozen years ago realized it came down to diet - increasing fiber while decreasing sugar made the "attacks" less frequent and less intense. But they'd never gone away entirely. I thought high-fructose corn syrup was the big culprit until I had ELISA testing 2 years ago, and discovered I reacted highly to cane sugar. So much for the "healthy" substitutes!

I sometimes got the shakes. This would happen a lot when I ate a "healthy" breakfast of steel-cuts oats with brown sugar, 1% milk, and walnuts. Ninety minutes to two hours later, I would start to feel hungry, then ravenous, then I would shake or feel nauseated. I felt that if I didn't eat, and eat NOW, I would surely faint. Or maybe throw-up. Especially during my last pregnancy, this all too often led me straight to the McDonald's drive-thru, and a repeat of the cycle two hours later.

I lied. I would tell people - and myself - that I ate a diet of healthy whole foods, eating only whole grain breads, lots of vegetables, leans meats, etc. In reality, I was eating fast food 3-5 times a week, some days ate no vegetables or only a few baby carrots, and sometimes ate a packet of ding-dongs while grocery shopping. Not that I would tell anyone that; I paid for them, and had the clerk throw away the package.

I didn't need blood work or a scale or even a mirror to tell me that I wasn't healthy. I could feel it each and every day, and I showed it each and every day with my actions and my inactions.

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The numbers, day 1:
Weight: 177 pounds
Waist: 104 cm
Hips: 106 cm
W/H ratio: 0.98
BMI: 27.72
Bodyfat: ~32%