Slow and Steady

Well, I had a bit of a down day Sunday. I got on the scale. It was the same as the day before. I entered the number into the Google 15. There was no change, positive or negative, in the moving average. And up comes this message, "Danger! (or maybe it was warning) You are heading away from your goal!"

Now, since my moving average had been going down every single day for over 3 weeks this was sort of depressing. It was odd how it made me feel. It wasn't rational. I know that because I haven't 'cheated' or been eating things I shouldn't eat. I know that plateaus happen, I just didn't expect one quite so soon!

The good news is that was Sunday and this is Tuesday and the moving average is on the downward trend again. My new mini-goal is 220 lbs. My moving average is at 228.5 right now. So, not too far to go to reach the next goal. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm losing more weight now that I was before. Even if it's not 6 lbs/week (like during the first couple of weeks), 1.7 lbs/week is nothing to whine about.

It's cheesy, but I keep reminding myself that slow and steady wins the race.

I'm sure folks who have lost a lot of weight, slowly, and then kept it off know this already, but I had sort of an epiphany. I was wondering why it was that losing weight slowly makes you more likely to keep it off. I'm sure I read this somewhere too, but it makes sense because if you're truly changing your lifestyle and eating habits, by the time you've lost 70+lbs you don't even WANT the food you used to want anymore.

For me I think that's the biggest hurdle to get over. Not wanting the food. South Beach has been good for me because I don't have any cravings. But I think there's a difference between a craving and a want. It's somewhat easier to say 'no' to a want!

Phase 2

I started phase 2 last week. It was really nice to have a piece of toast in the morning with my eggs! This morning I actually tried one of the new South Beach cereals that Kraft makes. I have to say it was pretty good. Now I just need to see if it keeps me full as long as the eggs and toast do. I kinda doubt it, but it was nice to have cereal again.

Progress So Far

Obviously I'm starting this blog a little late, so I won't be going over every little thing that happened in the first 3 weeks.

I will say this, for the first time ever I have been able to do exactly what the book says without deviating once. I even managed to make a cake for a wedding reception (which took me about 2 days) without licking the batter at all! For someone like me who loves to bake and lick batter and 'test' my creations, that was a real accomplishment. It also gave me the desire to keep going.

So, at the end of 3 weeks, my scale weight is down 19lbs. and my moving average is down 16.5lbs. Not too shabby either way! I suppose that's the only 'good' thing about having a lot of weight to lose is seeing a bunch come off in the beginning pretty quickly. It's a good motivator to keep it up.

Google 15

A very helpful tool that my husband told me about is the Google 15. It's a weight tracker where you enter your weight every single day. Now, most diets recommend that you only weigh in once a week, and that's fine too. But the premise of this tool is that you don't want to wait a week to find out you're not on the right track anymore!

So what they've done is create a program that calculates a moving average based on the scale weight you enter everyday. This is because you don't actually lose 3 pounds overnight, no matter what the scale says.

I have found this tool to be VERY beneficial for me. There have been a couple of times when my weight was the same 2 days in a row, but the moving average still went down. The same is true of the one day when my scaled weight was up slightly. It's very encouraging!

One thing I would advise is keeping a separate Excel spreadsheet of your numbers. Something bizarre happened last week and all my numbers were gone. It was crazy how deflated I felt seeing my progress disappear. So since then I've been keeping my own file of the numbers in case it ever happens again.

Heading in a new direction

Three weeks ago I started living the South Beach Lifestyle. I had gone to see my Ob/Gyn for my annual and I talked to him about my weight issues. I'm not going to go into all the details, but he prescribed me Phentermine and told me to get the South Beach Diet book and do exactly what it says.

So, I dropped off my prescription and ordered the new South Beach Diet Supercharged book. I have 'done' the SBD in the past. It was after my 2nd child, Sean, was born. I was pretty successful too. I think I lost between 30 and 40 pounds. But somewhere in there I decided that I had lost enough weight so now I could eat like I used to. Well, I was wrong. And somewhere between there and the 3rd child the weight just kept going up.

I managed to lose 11 pounds over the last year, but that's nothing to write home about when you have 90 more to go! I suppose at least I wasn't gaining anymore.

So, on July 3rd I started taking Phentermine and applying the principles of the South Beach Diet to my eating. I decided early on not to call it the South Beach Diet. For me, it HAS to be the South Beach Lifestyle. Otherwise I'll just fall into the same traps as before.

This blog is mostly for me. I don't know that anyone else will ever even read it, except maybe some close friends and family. I find the 'community' on the SBD website a little annoying to navigate and deal with. Besides, I don't care if strangers read about what I'm doing or not. I just want a place where I can keep track of what's important to me in this endeavor.

So I will dispense with the numbers. My scale weight, on July 3rd, 2008, was 247.