I got a really nice comment last week from Carolynn, saying she’s lost a couple of pounds after reading about Calorie Counter online here, and she asked for a Plan B update. Then yesterday, a friend said she’d just called Dr Bishop to make an appointment for herself. Actual requests for topics and the need for daily blog fodder? Perfect!
For those of you just tuning in, after finding myself last August at 192 lbs and a good 20 lbs heavier than I was pre-pregnancy, I went to see local weight-loss specialist MD Douglas Bishop and following a no sugar, low refined carbs diet of 1400 calories per day, I lost 30 lbs (and went from a tight size 16 to a loose size 12) in about six months.
The good news is, I’m still down about 30 lbs overall. Impressive, isn’t it? I hit my goal weight just before I came back to work in February, and in the almost three months I’ve been here I’ve been up a pound or three, down a pound or three, but mostly keeping it off. I’m right around 161 lbs, and seem to be half way between a size 10 and a size 12 in jeans. (I swear to god, I am *cursed* to never, ever have a perfect-fitting pair of pants!)
This is my weight-loss chart from Calorie Count. It inspires me to look at that big drop!
(The blue line is the actual weight loss and the green line is the “trend”,
ostensibly to make you feel better over the peaks and valleys.)The bad-ish news is that I’m slipping on my eating habits, and while it doesn’t seem to be sabotaging all my hard work right now, I’m sure it might in the future! I eat a lot less quantity-wise than I ever did before, but I’m still not eating enough fruits and veggies (that should improve with the summer crops coming in) and am starting to slip and have daily “treats” instead of occassional ones. I’ve been really good, though, about not buying lunch downtown when I’m working — I’m too busy at lunch time out scoping photo opportunities for my 365 project!
I’m still going to the gym every Saturday, and hope to add in a trip on Wednesdays in the summer when Beloved is home from work. Chasing after three little boys does expend a lot of energy (who am I kidding, it’s only Lucas that I’m chasing, but I’m chasing him every waking minute!) and I seem to spend a lot of breakfasts and lunches at home eating bites of something at the counter while I pack schoolbags, unload the dishwasher and tend to the other minutiae that make up a mother’s job, so maybe that’s a good part of why I can cheat and not regain the weight too drastically.
Funny, though, how I was so enamoured with my new sleeker design at Christmas time, and now with bathing suit season coming up, I look in the mirror and think, “Hmmm, a little flabby here and a few too many bulges there.” Just as I seem doomed to be forever in ill-fitting pants, I think I’m stuck living with my inner critic no matter what I do!
Wow, it’s hard to believe that it’s been just over six months since I started my “Plan B” weight-loss plan. (And, for goodness sake, did none of you think to mention at the time that “Plan B” is a morning after pill as well? It took me months to figure out the google traffic!) Anyway, at the time of my last update back at the beginning of December, I’d just reached my goal weight of 170 lbs and hoped to be down to 160 lbs by the time I went back to work. Well, it took a little bit longer than that, but can you believe that for the first time since Beloved and I met back in 1995, I’m below 160 lbs?
In six months, I’ve lost almost 35 lbs (!!) and 6 inches off each of my waist, my hips and my bust, plus another inch or two off my thighs and even my arms. Woot! And to be totally honest with you, I’m not really even trying anymore but the weight keeps trickling off. Remember all those clothes I bought for back-to-work on Boxing Day? The pants and skirts are all too loose on me now! (Which begs the question: is it worthwhile to bring them in to be altered? Or do I have to re-buy in the next size down? And can you please just tolerate me bragging for one more second while I tell you that for the first time in my adult life I’m now wearing a size TEN in jeans?!? That’s down from a very snug 16 just six months ago!)
So because a few of you have asked me, here’s the six-month overview of how I lost 35 lbs without losing my mind!
- Sugar is evil. I think the number one most important thing I did in the active weight-loss part of this diet is cutting out as much sugar as possible. That means not only no cake and (whimper) cookies and chocolate bars, but really reading labels and trying not to eat anything that has fructose, glucose, maltose, honey, molasses or any other sugar derivative in the first five ingredients. In the first couple of months, I ate so little sugar that when I did eat a doughnut, my stomach actually ached. Now that I’m in maintenance mode, I’m a little more liberal with the sugar, but if my weight starts to creep back up, it’s going to be the first thing to go.
- Cut way, way down on refined carbohydrates and starches: bread, cereal, rice, pasta, crackers, pitas, oatmeal, tortillas, all that wonderful stuff. I tried to eliminate white flour products entirely and choose whole grains whever possible. (Whole grains are absorbed into your bloodstream much more slowly, leaving you feeling satisfied longer, and are altogether more healthy for you. And remember: multrigrain does NOT mean whole grain.) This was the hardest one for me. I’d eat one serving of organic heritage whole grain cereal for breakfast, and two other choices with dinner. Now it’s just routine, but a low-carb lunch was nearly impossible for a sandwich-lover like me at the beginning!
- Fat is not the enemy. (Sugar is the enemy.) I’ve kept a lot of full-fat foods in my diet, and I think they’re the reason I feel like I’m eating like a real person instead of eating rabbit food all day long. In the last six months I’ve eaten enough nuts, avocados and cheese to sink a ship. Seriously, not a day goes by that I don’t eat cheese of some sort. It’s so satisfying! And I’m not afraid to fry up some mushrooms in a little butter and oil for dinner, or drizzle a little oil on my veggies, or skimp on the salad dressing. Now, I’m not saying you should deep fry everything, but the official doctor-prescribed diet I was on called for five servings of fats per day, and I actually had to step up my fat consumption to meet it.
- Think whole: whole grains, and whole foods. Whole as in “not processed” or processed as little as possible. Real foods, as they come from nature, are better for your body than any chemically-altered pseudo-food advertised as low-cal or low-fat. Rather than eating a frozen entrée for lunch – which, by the way, is nearly impossible to find without some sort of pasta or rice or other enriched-grain product! – I’d cut a whole red pepper into slices, eat it with hummus (protien) and a couple of pieces of cheese (protien) and a glass of vegetable cocktail. My favourite lunch is either one of those mini-cans of spicy Thai chili tuna or a couple of ounces of sliced smoked salmon with a couple of ounces of cheese and a big handful of cherry tomatoes. In other words, the fewer ingredients the better.
- Don’t let yourself get hungry. In the beginning, I’d eat first thing in the morning (my 2/3 cup of cereal – and because it’s whole grain and full of fibre, there’s no sugar crash and I feel full for most of the morning), then around 10:30 (usually either a hard-boiled egg or a banana), then lunch, then another snack around 3:00 (often 10 almonds – surprisingly satisfying!), and dinner around 5:30.
- Dinner is for “normal” eating. Because I’d been careful most of the day, dinner did not really change much over what I used to eat. Hamburgers (home-made, of course!), fajitas or tacos, chicken parmasean with spaghetti, chili, pot-roast and veggies, hearty soup with crusty bread, even pizza… these are a few of the staples in our dinner rotation. Again, the key is moderation and portion control. And loading up on the veggies!
- Speaking of fruits and veggies, the last thing I’ll say is that it was a lot easier to load up on veggies when I started this back in August in the midst of harvest season than it is now in the dark heart of winter. I’m really trying to stick with organic produce wherever possible while also respecting a 100-mile rule, but there’s only so much you can do in Canada in February when you’re addicted to tomatoes and red peppers!
I really hope this doesn’t come across with the evangelical zeal of the recently converted reduced, but I am still rather shocked by my own success and am more than happy to share it. So far, even three weeks of sedentary cubicle life hasn’t had the detrimental effect I’d feared, and I’m the same weight today that I was back in 1995 when Beloved and I first met. Not bad, being on the cusp of 40 with the body I last saw at 25 — and three giant babies later, to boot! I guess I’ve earned the right to brag just a little bit. *grin*
I’m trying hard to bring my lunch to work AND to continue my healthy-eating kick. Must recommend PC Spicy Black Bean Blue Menu soup from Loblaws! Lots of beans for fibre and protein, and reasonable levels of calories and sodium for a prepared soup. Plus a spicy kick to warm you up on a cold February day. It’s a new fave in the lunchtime line-up!
Now, I know y’all are standing in line to disagree with that statement, but it’s true! According at least to this definition, I’m normal!! Some time in the last week or so, I’ve lost just enough weight to trip me down to a body mass index (BMI) of 24.9, which is no longer overweight but normal.
Look!
See? Normal! And if it says so on the interwebs, it has to be true!
Remember Plan B? The plan to lose 20 lbs in 20 weeks, to drop back down from 192 pounds to my pre-pregnancy weight before January of 2009?
I did it!! Yay me, I did it!! I lost 23.5 lbs in 15 weeks, and now I’m a couple of pounds under 170. From a tight size 16 to a comfortable 12. Not bad, eh? This is as small as I’ve been since June of 2005 — when, ironically, I joined weight watchers because I thought I was too heavy! My pre-pregnancy comfortable jeans are now too baggy and slidey-offy to wear, and I’m wearing my skinniest jeans comfortably.
So I wanted to be all clever and show you what 23 lbs of fat looks like. Unfortunately, the dairy manager of Sobey’s kept shooting me these really suspicious looks as I stacked pound after pound of butter into my cart, so I just snapped off a really quick shot instead of the artistic expressionism I had been imagining all these weeks as I crept ever closer to my goal:
Then, I realized that there was something else in the cart that ALSO makes a pretty decent illustration of exactly what 23.5 lbs looks like:
Well, you get the idea.
Anyway, I’m absolutely thrilled with myself. I’ve never achieved this sort of weight loss before, and so I have no idea if I’ll have trouble maintaining it. For now, though, I still look a bit too much like a “before” picture than an “after” picture for my own comfort. That, and going back to my extremely sedentary desk job is sure to add back at least five or so of those lost pounds. So, I’m readjusting my goal to include another 10 lbs of weight loss by the time I go back to work in two months. That will bring me back to my pre-fertility treatments and pre-FIRST-pregnancy weight. The cookie turkey snacking holiday season will make it a challenge, but I think I can do it!
I’m still plodding along on my Plan B diet lifestyle makeover, and I’m still doing well. The first month was great. The results (losing around 2 lbs a week) were rather intoxicating, and it was easy to more or less stay on plan. I hit a bit of a slump a couple of weeks ago, and found I was having a lot of cravings, mostly for chips and cookies. My exercise dropped down to once or twice a week, and I was just feeling blah about the whole thing. I either plateaued or was up a bit, depending on the scale, but I managed to stay more or less on track. (I actually thought it might have been a little PMS, but there’s still no sign of the return of that particular nuisance. Thank goodness!)
This past weekend was my first real off-the-wagon splurge. I had pumpkin pie on Saturday, about two dinners worth of turkey and stuffing on Sunday, and then totally blew it with a pogo and fries for lunch on the run yesterday. Yanno what? I don’t really feel bad about it. Heck, ya gotta live. Well, I don’t feel bad about it emotionally. But when you go for eight weeks eating mostly whole, fresh foods and then you eat a pogo and half-serving of (really, really delicious and so worth it) french fries soaked in ketchup and malt vinegar, your stomach is so. not. impressed. Lesson learned: indulgences not only bad for scale, but bad for tummy, too. Funny how quickly your body adapts; that kind of thing would have never upset my stomach just a couple of months ago.
Back in the middle of August I went to see my GP for a handful of small concerns, including extraordinary tiredness and frustration with my inability to lose weight despite exercising three to four times a week. Coupled with my problems in producing quality milk for Lucas, I really thought I had a thyroid problem. My GP was away for the month of September, and so we set a date of early October for her to discuss the results of my blood work. It just so happened that I went to see Dr Bishop for the first time that same week, and started on the whole Plan B thing.
When I went to see her last week, I realized another huge benefit of Plan B: my energy level is back up to normal, if not better. I don’t feel that draggy, lazy, can barely be bothered to do anything feeling that I felt most of the spring and summer. My blood work came back normal for thyroid and blood sugar, but low on iron stores, so I’ll have to remember to keep taking my post-natal vitamins. But it’s good to see everything else in balance. And my GP is very happy with the weight loss.
As of Saturday morning, I’m down almost 14 pounds overall. Yay me! (I might be up one or two after this weekend, but I’m confident I can shave them off again.) I can really see a difference now, and I can feel the difference in how my clothes fit. It’s been great reclaiming clothes from my closet that I haven’t seen for a year and a half!
I still want to talk about the Plan B eating and the links with Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, but I have to clean up the breakfast dishes before Lucas wakes up! Any tips for encouraging baby to turn four or five 30-minute naps a day into one honkin’ big three hour nap?
