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What’s Your Strategy? And a Weekly Update

By on October 12, 2010 in hcg, plan, planning, R2P2, weight

Morning, friends!  I hope you’re all enjoying this fine Tuesday – how was your weekend?  Mine was good – a mix of busy and relaxing without much formal planned, which is something I need more often!  I cooked, read, watched a bit of TV, played a game with my husband, and worked.

Have you entered yesterday’s contest yet?  Please help Betsy and I think of an awesome name for her regular guest feature on the blog!  If your suggestion is the name we pick, you’ll win a $20 gift certificate to REI!  If that’s not enough awesomesauce for you to check out yesterday’s post, it also includes an introduction to Betsy, so head on over there and check it out.  Scoot!

This last week has been a tough one for me weigh-loss wise!  I hit a 6-day stall, which is the longest I’ve ever experienced while on HCG.  With some help from Betsy and Mother Nature (TMI details to follow), I finally broke that stall yesterday and weighed in today at 195.8.  And do you know what I just realized (after I drafted this post & had to come back and revise it to say this)?!?  This means that since I was at my highest weight, I have now lost just over 100 pounds.  Holy crapballs!

However, prior to today’s weigh-in, I was stuck at 199ish for 6 days, and here’s the story:

Last round I did the HCG Protocol, I ate ground beef without experiencing any stalls in my weight loss.  I’ve read that many people have difficulty losing while eating ground beef (leanest, BTW, in case you’re wondering), but I didn’t.  As I am learning with other things, Round 2 is not the same as Round 1 for me.  My body has changed, and so my approach to the Protocol needs to adjust accordingly!  I eliminated ground beef and immediately saw a small drop the next day.  Thanks to Betsy, who suggested I look closely at what I was eating as the possible source of my stall, I realized that this time around, my body doesn’t love ground beef + losing weight on HCG.  Go figure.

Mother Nature also played a part in my stall, as my period (here’s the TMI part) arrived earlier than expected, too.  Again, I saw a drop after that happened.  During Round 1 my cycle wasn’t affected at all, really, by the HCG.  This time around, it is – it started 1.5 weeks early after my first injection, and it showed up close to a week early this time, too.  Not a big deal, but differences in my body from Round 1 to Round 2.

The lesson I’m learning is that as we lose weight, age, and/or just change over time, so our weight loss and fitness strategies need to change, too!  You hear over and over again that it gets harder to lose weight as you age.  Well I’m hear to tell you that weight loss and healthy living have to look different based on a large number of factors, of which age is only one!  Are you mostly sedentary at work?  Do you chase kids around all day long and haul them around half the day?  Are you hungrier the day after a long run?  Do you struggle to get your workouts in during the darker, colder winter months?  All of these factors and many more can affect what your healthy living strategy should look like at any given time.

So my advice to you today is this: how long have you been working the same plan?  Is it still working for you?  If not, consider changing up the plan after a close evaluation of what your life looks like and how your fitness/health needs might have changed.

Then come back here and tell me about it.  I wanna know!

Finally, some numbers for you:

Round One Lowest Injection Weight: 217
Round Two Starting Weight: 220.4
Round Two Post-Loading Weight: 223.6
R2P2D27 (today) Weight: 197

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I Don’t Wannas (Guest Post)

By on September 6, 2010 in emotional stuff, goals, guest post, hope/inspiration, planning, weight

I am super excited to share this guest post with you.  Kim writes at The Road to Beautiful, and she epitomizes what I think of when I think of perseverance.   This road that we travel isn’t always easy; far from it, in fact.  We all get discouraged sometimes.  Kim talks about the hard stuff and doesn’t shy away from saying so when she is discouraged, annoyed, or pissed off.  Even though I’ve never met her “IRL,” Kim‘s story has helped me stay focused and keep moving forward even through those really tough moments.  She makes me want to cheer for her.  And I want you to, too! So, without further ado…

Hello.  My name is Kim and I am honored to have been asked by SRG to write a guest post for her blog.  Normally, I just write my thoughts on my blog over on The Road to Beautiful, and for the most part I don’t think about who is reading until I suddenly see 90 hits in one day, on a day I write something particularly vulnerable. My blog is a space for me to process, so to speak, as I walk out a tough journey towards weight loss and overall physical, emotional, and spiritual wholeness and health. So, to have been asked to write a guest post, well shoot, I suddenly had nothing to say!  I mean, I write my thoughts for myself and now I am writing them for someone else and well frankly that is quite intimidating!  Performance anxiety to the highest level going on over here in Michigan!  So, forgive the following ramble.  I am going to try to stick to a single topic, but SRG asked me to write because she likes my honesty on my blog…so it will be what it will be…

I have been on this particular road of this journey for 2 solid years now (this month actually).  Prior to that I have stopped and started again my whole life long it seems. Weight was always an issue for me and it seemed for others around me too as they always encouraged me to lose weight but didn’t seem to know how to support me in it.  Nor did I know how to ask for or receive support.

These days it seems that one of my biggest struggles to keep going is what I call the “I don’t wanna’s”.  You know.  That lazy and whiny side that we all have within us (don’t even pretend you don’t have one living in you!), that rises up to moan and groan every time it is time to go do something difficult or challenging or whatever.  It screams out “I DON’T WANNA!”

How do I overcome them?  First, let me say, I am not perfect.  I don’t always shove those thoughts aside and claim victory for myself and my life.  In fact, far too often I listen and stay in bed a little too long, so I no longer have time for that early morning workout, promising that I will make it up after work…knowing full well I won’t, because after work I will be too tired!  Far too often I allow the fact that it is too hot, or too cold or too “something” get in the way of going for that run or whatever is on the plan.  And, if my only option for the day, due to weather, is the treadmill (aka dread mill), the “I don’t wanna’s” win.  Every time.

These nasty self-sabotaging thoughts come in with food too.  It sounds like this.  I don’t wanna eat chicken and broccoli and rice.  Again.  I want that ribeye steak and potatoes loaded with butter and that corn on the cob!  Or I don’t wanna do my meal planning tonight!  I wanna watch a movie and then go to bed or perhaps spend more time trolling through facebook!  See how it can weasel its way in and totally kill my health journey mojo?

I am sure you all know how the “I don’t wanna’s” can creep in and totally take you out of the game.  I am certain I don’t need to go on and on about how I have been taken out.  Just know that I have.  And do.  And will.  It is part of the journey of an imperfect person (which, I am quite certain there is only one perfect person to have ever lived…and it is not YOU…or me.)  So perhaps I should be about telling you how I get around these pesky “I don’t wanna’s” and how I have found some measure of success, so far!

First of all, when I find myself feeling particularly unmotivated and tormented by these thoughts, I SPEAK THEM OUT to someone I trust and who loves me and will hold me to my planned workout or to my meal plan.  Not in a punishing way, but in a way that says they care enough about me to help me stick to what it is I say I want.  So, basically I ask for help.  It is amazing how much help is to be found when the tiniest peep(cry for help) escapes my lips or my fingertips in a text or a status update.  Friends rally around.  They show up to run with me.  They text to ask how it went.  They ask me what I had for dinner and what is planned for breakfast!  This life is not meant to be lived alone, but others need to know they are welcome, wanted and needed in this journey.

Second, if I have a specific plan, I am more likely to follow it than not.  It is tedious.  It is time consuming.  It is the most boring thing ever to sit down and plan out meals for an entire week, especially for a spontaneous person like myself.  But, I have discovered that WHEN I do that, I am most successful.  When I leave the planning to day by day or not at all, I eat poorly and end up feeling like crap later for it.

The third big thing I do, is I remind myself what this journey is about for me.  Why am I doing this?  What is that thing that I want more than I don’t wanna run or eat well?  How will I feel physically or emotionally if I cave?  If necessary, I re-read random blog posts as a reminder of where I came from and what I am about.  It helps like you wouldn’t believe!

The last big thing I do is try to set short term physical goals for myself.  I am in the midst of re-vamping those for myself as I write this.  Up until now I have used big scary races to be a motivator for me.  My trainer has asked me to lay off of races for a bit (you can read that long story on my blog) so I can no longer use those.  So we are now trying to figure out what is a short term goal to combat the “I don’t wanna’s”.  As I write this, I don’t wanna go do my planned run for today. Why bother?  It’s not like I have a race coming up?  I can always do it later.  Besides, I have already worked out 4 times this week!  See. It is sooo easy to fall into that mindset.  But now that I have written it…I am gonna have to do it, because otherwise SRG will be all over me like white on rice…unless of course I don’t send this to her until later…hmmm….just kidding. I am running, as soon as I send this to her…promise.  Goals, yes I was talking about goals…gotta come up with some.  FAST!

So, what do your “I don’t wanna’s” look like for you?  How often do you cave to them?   How do you feel about yourself when you cave?  But more than all that, why are you in this journey in the first place?

This journey is a transformative one.  By that I mean that our bodies are literally being transformed into a new creation; and in that process, who we are as people is changing as well.  It encompasses far more than the physical realm as we have to look at all the things tied to how we got to this place of obesity or un-health in the first place.   It is a painful journey my friends.  Painful indeed.  Our natural tendency is to shy away from pain.  To retreat.  To hide and to seek out comfort. So why are you deliberately engaging that sort of pain for your life and is that reason big enough to pull you through the pain of transformation?

If not, then re-think your reasons…because as awful as the “I don’t wanna’s” are…the transformative process is far harder to endure in the long run if you don’t have something big enough to keep you going…right into the midst of it.

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