7th Weekiversary of Day One

All piggies are in the pen, and we can now publish our results for this week. In order to keep things trucking, I'll plan on posting each Tuesday morning. Strange things may happen to your data if you don't weigh in...

This week could be characterized as plateauish, which is the bit where the scenery may get boring. Loss leader for this week is Ginamonster, down 3!

As a group, we've gained a pound. Still, we're 62 lbs lighter than we were in January, which is good.

The numbers follow. The chart is busted and I have to go to work, it'll reappear next week!

Shrinklet	Change this week		Total Change		% of Goal
Chickie	-1		-11		27.5%
db grin	0		-8		26.7%
Deborah	3		-5		12.5%
eb	1		-10		25.0%
Ginamonster	-3		-6		30.0%
LJS	0		-1		10.0%
NCP	-1		-4		100.0%
Renn	0		-10		52.6%
Tiff	1		-3		12.0%
Utenzi	1		-4		30.8%
Group Totals	1		-62		25.7%

Burst of Motivation

Recent conversation with MoM:

Mom: Are your fingers swollen?

Me: No

Mom: You sure? They look swollen.

Me: No, I mean yes, I'm sure. My fingers are not swollen.

Mom: they sure look swollen.

Me: My fingers are not swollen.

Mom: It's hard to believe they're not swollen, they look swollen.

Me: Ok, they might be swollen.

Mom: You should probably get that checked out.

The conversation takes the trip down the doctors/meds/healthcare system road.

Thanks to mom and my non-swollen, chunky fingers I experienced a motivational burst, or boost if you will.

Problems I never thought I'd have

So... now that I have managed to rein in my brain and decide that this weight range I am in right now (138ish on Friday to 141 ish on Monday) is a good place to be and the one where I want to stay... I have something of an issue.

Having lost, since 2001, roughly 50% of my body weight, I am left with rather more room in my skin that I require.

Imagine, if you will (or maybe you would prefer not), a frosting bag chock full of frosting. The bag may be big, but the surface is taut. Now, imagine squeezing out half the frosting. Now what does the bag look like? It's not pretty.

But I can't really think of any options for resolving this other than the fairly unappealing one of paying someone to take a knife to me and slice away the parts I no longer need for containing flesh.

This is only slightly unappealing because of the fact that it's major surgery and therefore a life-risking proposition. More unappealing is the idea of having to pay, what? $10,000? $20,000? Lord knows... how much does elective surgery cost?

I know the insurance company would probably have paid for gastric bypass surgery. Do you think if I called them up and told them how much money I saved by doing it without that surgery, they might be willing to float the cost of a tuck here and there? Anyone here in the insurance game?

Six Weeks

We shrinkers are plowing ahead like a road crew of doom, steamrolling over goals like so many jelly donuts. The interesting things about this week: You can find an image of just about anything online, and NOBODY GAINED! That's pretty cool.

As a group, we're down 63 pounds.

Here be the (New and Improved) numbers:

Shrinklet	Change this week		Total Change		% of Goal
Chickie	-1		-10		25.0%
db grin	-1		-8		26.7%
Deborah	0		-8		20.0%
eb	0		-11		27.5%
Ginamonster	0		-3		15.0%
LJS	-1		-1		10.0%
NCP	-2		-3		75.0%
Renn	-1		-10		52.6%
Tiff	-2		-4		16.0%
Utenzi	0		-5		38.5%
Group Totals	-8		-63		26.1%

Someday I'll be posting the correct data on the first try... sheesh (sorry Tiff!).

And by the overwhelming demand of NCP, here's the updated chart:

Don't lose interest

We're 5 weeks into this whole stupid valuable exercise, and I must say I'm feeling rather...out of it.

Where'd JANUARY go? How can it be almost the middle of February? And, as a corollary - why aren't I about 10 pounds lighter than I was at the beginning of the year? I should be 10 pounds lighter, really I should, and I could have been.

Except....

I hereby publicly admit I've done NOTHING to get there except maybe eat a little less and a little better than I did a few weeks ago. I have not been working out at all really, I've fallen prey to stress and a workload that can only be described as 'evil,' and I'm not moderating my 'mama juice' intake (that'd be liquor, to all y'all not familiar).

Why am I not? One reason, I think: I've been overweight now for about 10 years, and have gotten used to it. I've forgotten what it's like to be thinner, and instead have made a habit of not thinking about it. Not thinking about how much better it would feel to NOT have a jiggly belly, about how much nicer it would look to NOT have a dimply ass, how much better it would be to NOT have jiggly upper arms. I've gotten used to disliking the way my body feels, what it's like to be over 200 pounds (there. I said it), the adjustments I've made to accommodate this bigger body.

I have not kept my desire to be thinner in the front of my mind. I have begun to believe that it might be possible to THINK away 25 pounds of fat. I have not faced myself down HARD and given myself a stern talking-to, as I need to.

Anyone else in that same boat, or are all y'all just busting out with self-determination and goal-oriented lifechanges???

Cinco de Weeko

We're here live at Week Five, and the buzz is deafening. There are piggies sailing up and down the roller coaster of life, and it's a wild ride indeed for some. Others are in the golf-cart of life, meandering gracefully toward their goals.

Renn is wearing the yellow shirt today, leading both the weekly loss results AND percentage of goal. Wootus maximus!

eb is winning at overall loss - way to go!

Although we've only shed 2 pounds for the week, we're at 55 pounds of lost fat since we started. No matter how you slice, dice, shred, or melt it, that's a respectable result.

This humble reporter is proud to present the results of our little smackdown in 2 (TWO!) formats:

Shrinklet	Change this week		Total Change		% of Goal
Chickie	3		-9		22.5%
db grin	-1		-7		23.3%
Deborah	-2		-8		20.0%
eb	-1		-11		27.5%
Ginamonster	0		-3		15.0%
LJS	0		0		0.0%
NCP	4		-1		25.0%
Renn	-4		-9		47.4%
Tiff	1		-2		8.0%
Utenzi	-2		-5		38.5%
Group Totals	-2		-55		22.8%

Off the Rails

I completely lost it this weekend.

The trip to NYC had been relatively behaved until Thursday... when a week of not greeting the morning with stepping on the scale caused me to go all delusional and forget to control the food intake. I think it started with that.

On Friday, when I came home... I am not really sure what happened. But I was tired. Tired of obsessing over my weight. Tired of feeling bad about myself and my body. Tired of the constant mental conversation about whether I can eat something, if I should feel guilty about it, if I am too fat to put that in my mouth.

So, yeah, I got a little overwhelmed with the whole diet thing and totally ran off the rails.

There was Chinese food involved. And Pizza. and Cake. Friday, Saturday, Sunday... all "bad".

So now I am 4 pounds heavier than I was when I weighed in last Sunday, and back to being above the "Goal".

But I don't think I can go back to what I was doing before. I was getting weird and crazy and obsessive... Emotionally, it was bad for me. I was starting to think about losing more than the goal... targeting ridiculous pants sizes... I was unable to appreciate just how far I have come (not overnight) and was totally focusing on this tiny number, these little few lines on the scale. Sometimes, I just go insane... it's part of being me.

So - redefining my shrinking journey is in order, I think. I mean... I was doing quite well losing just a couple of pounds a month over the past year or so. It was real weight loss, not the temporary swings kind of loss based on water and how much food weight is in process in the digestive tract and other silly tricks one can play on a scale. And I was happy with it. I think I got over-ambitious just trying to rush through the last few pounds of this journey and instead of focusing on slow and steady wins the race, I got all jack-rabbity and tried to force it off through restriction and exertion.

To continue this ridiculous tortoise and hare metaphor, I guess this weekend was my "the hare takes a nap" interlude.

So I am announcing a new and redefined Shrinking Piggies goal. The "target" weight is still 140. But I am not trying to get there in February. Or maybe not even March. I am going to accept that sometimes on Monday I might weigh more or less. And I think that as long as my weight on any given day of the week does not go over 145 or under 138, then I will call that "success". I will continue to exercise and eat healthy foods, as I was doing previously, with the much slower weight loss. And I am going to be serious about that lower limit too. I do not want to get in a situation where I find myself trying to inch things down, down, down. That's a slope that never ends or leads to serious problems.

Sometimes I guess I just have to go off the rails to find myself in a place where I can get back on a better track.

Ahoy!

I really liked EB's post. The scale is both my best friend and worse enemy, but I still hop on every morning. This week is all about the "it swells" part. I am having a bad week. And I was VERY good in California-lots of fish and fresh veggies, only one trip to Bijan bakery.

And this is how my water-retaining, sweet-toothing, corpuscular vesicle treats me?

I will beat this beast back into submission. Fiber will be involved. And more miles on the treadmill of boredom. Each day is closer to running outside without worrying about hypothermia. I want to be prepared to explore the parks on my feet and just watch the world go by along with my thoughts.

Thanks everyone for such inspiring reading while I was in California. I'm happy to be home, freezing my buns off. Because hanging out in that -15F weather really does improve metabolism. Right?
:) LJS

Scale power

Weight loss is all about mind over matter. There are all kinds of plans you can have but in the end it's a mental game. You have to train your mind to not eat the bad stuff. Your body can handle it just fine. There are lots of good, whole foods you can eat that will keep you feeling full. It's not your body that's the problem. It's your mind.

Using the scale is part of the mental game. It is the one empirical measure we use when it comes to weight loss. The problem with that is the human body is complex. It's like an ocean. It ebbs, it flows, it swells, it wanes. This is why giving the scale too much power can be a very bad thing for your mental health. Yet, it is not easy to distribute that power because the scale is the Grand Poobah of weight loss tools. But, it is not the only tool. Just as you need a hammer to hammer a nail you don't use a hammer to float grout. I suppose you could try. It would be way hard.

Another, more important (imho), tool is your clothing. How do your clothes fit? How is your body changing and how does that relate to your clothes. Are your jeans a little bit easier to put on after they've just come from the dryer? Do your shirts hang a little bit more? And then there's real biggie, do you need to buy new clothes because your old clothes are simply getting too big?

The scale is important. It is a very good measure, but it's not the only measure and the power it has over our emotions should be knocked down a peg or two. You're not on a diet. You're on a mission to change the way you think. Approaching every day with the mental attitude that you will eat right and get some exercise is akin to teaching the man to fish. This may be hard to sustain when you do all the right things but see the scale move up. Don't be dismayed, how do you even know that's a pound of fat? It could be a pound of water.

Taking off the weight is actually the easy part. Keeping the weight off is the hard part and when you get to that point, you'll be glad you've trained yourself to eat right and exercise because that's what you'll need to stay at healthy weight for the rest of your life.

Plus One...

I wish that I could blame it on the Super Bowl. I wish that a sudden addiction to high calorie chocolate, potato chips or other 'unmentionables' came into play. I wish I could reference that nightmare known as water retention. Unfortunately, none of it would be true.

For the past few weeks, I have experienced a steady decline in my weight. A pound or two a week, which is average. Until this week, that is. This week, I gained a pound.

I'll be the first to admit that, for a minute, I was rather emotional about it. Dramatic, even. I'll be fat forever! I thought. Then I remembered something really important: It's just a frigging pound.

I have been on a diet - off and on - since I was ten years old. I have always been the Sturdy One. The Solid One. The fat one. I have lived on tuna fish (mayo free), dry toast, skim milk. I have eaten food so foul and revolting that entire sections of the food pyramid have been removed from my life. You know, just in case.

I finally pulled the plug on that way of thinking last year. Now, one year later, I am over 20 pounds lighter than I have been in years. I look better - and I feel better. I would have never imagined this to be possible.

So, am I thrilled with this gain? No. I am also not devastated. I will regroup. I will reset. I will re-lose. Today is another day, and so is tomorrow. It will all work out as it should.

And you know what? It won't be eating any tuna fish. With or without mayo.

New resolution

I must make exercise a habit.

I must habitually exercise.

I must stop making excuses, running out of time, being lazy, being uninspired.

I must move.

I must, or y'all are going to beat me at this weight loss game, and I cannot have that. It is unacceptable.

Now, where can I buy some inspiration? I seem to be fresh out.

Pigs On Parade V4.0

By the way, that's not my belly in the reflection

Another week has left our behinds 20 lbs lighter! Woot! We've punted 53 pounds altogether, which is a feat for feet stronger than mine. Fifty-freakin'-three! That's a border collie we've been smuggling under our shirts.

Chickie has blown all our doors off, apparently giving birth, so congratulations (unless it's a really ugly baby, in which case we offer our sympathy and a stack of paper bags).

We're on a good pace to make our goals, if slacking is not allowed to creep in as it did for me this week (dinner with friends: Apple pie. Superbowl: Beer. Because they're so good: Chocolate chip cookies. And so on).

As they say, let's do the numbers:

Shrinklet	Change this week		Total Change		% of Goal
Chickie	-9		-12		30.0%
db grin	-3		-6		20.0%
Deborah	-1		-6		15.0%
eb	-5		-10		25.0%
Ginamonster	-4		-3		15.0%
LJS	0		0		0.0%
NCP	0		-5		125.0%
Renn	1		-5		26.3%
Tiff	-1		-3		12.0%
Utenzi	2		-3		23.1%
Group Totals	-20		-53		22.0%

I lost 5

But did I really lose 5? No, not very likely.

More likely, I didn't really weigh my original starting weight. Why? Ladies, you know the answer. Because that "special visitor" we have every month is a trickster. She is the evil doer of uneven weigh-ins. I must say, when I first stepped on the scale it did seem a bit higher than the usual high, but I thought, "Ok, I can deal with this."

Then, this past week, my real body was returned to me. I could tell by the way my clothes were fitting - a little on the looser-ish side. So now, for two weeks, I get to have my regular body back and then I'll probably gain 2 or 3 pounds, just because it's fun (!), when it's 'that time' again.

I have decided it's time to kick it up a notch (I hate quoting Emeril cause I can't stand the guy, but there it is). I may as well take advantage of the momentum.

Onward and downward!