Throwaway because frankly I'm a bit embarrassed.
At 5'7" and 222lbs, I decided I was starting to venture into unhealthy territory. Though my insuline levels and blood pressure are still great right now, I really wanted to grab the bull by the horns and get into better shape.
I do have an undiagnosed auto-immune disease (It's been 13 years and at least as many specialists. Right now I've heard chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, leaky gut, and that awkward cricket sound most often). Either way, this leaves me feeling lethargic and in a lot of pain (joints/muscles/head/intestines) most days, so I have not been as active and healthy (cooking is tough for me sometimes) as I should have been.
I figured I would start adding in a few healthy habits and then adding in more and starting to count calories in a few weeks. I am doing this gradually because I want my habits to be effective and sustainable.
I also realize I have to change my relationship with food and that is not going to work overnight. I know food is too much of a delicious indulgence and a coping mechanism to me right now, so that's going to take some time.
Healthy habits I already had:
I pretty much only drink water. I don't drink alcohol so when I go out dancing/"drinking" (which I do maybe once every two weeks) I'll go for a diet Coke but that's about it.
I work out with a personal trainer for 30 minutes every week. Twice when I can. I know half an hour is not much but after being bed-ridden for a long time (being sick did come with a couple of surgeries), it has felt like a good start and most sessions I feel a bit too sick to power through much longer.
I go ice-skating for an hour once to twice a week.
I try to get in and out of bed every day at roughly the same time.
Last week I started adding some new habits that I had hoped would slowly ease me into a better lifestyle and gently kickstart my weight loss.
I started intermittent fasting, so no food before noon. I've set this to a minimum of 5 days a week. This week I managed to do all 7.
A minimum of 3 healthy, low-cal, low-carb dinners a week. I wouldn't say my usual cooking is extremely unhealthy. I try to start from a lean protein (usually chicken breast or beans) and then add a good amount of veggies (I am big on bell pepper, mushrooms, carrots, corn, beans, tomato, zucchini, beets, cauliflower, broccoli, peas, onion, Brussels sprouts, ... not a picky eater I'd say) and other carbs. I think that I'm a bit too reliant on condiments, oils, cheese, and carbs (specifically pasta, rice, potatoes, tortillas) right now, which make many of my meals too calorie dense. That's why I would like to start experimenting with "cleaner dishes" with a better balance of all these add-ons. The hardest thing for me right now is that when I don't absolutely love the flavor of a meal, I struggle to eat it and then resort to snacking (fruit, nuts, air-popped popcorn) later. I know that this is purely psychological and a major working point, but it's something I really struggle with. I have enough mental strength to eat clean for lunch, but then often cave for dinner. Hence the 3 clean dinners a week.
Ten minutes of exercise every day. Again, I know it's not much and it doesn't burn many calories but I want to get my body moving and my heart racing. I'm hoping to gradually increase the number of minutes I exercise every day.
No sugary snacks at least four days out of the week. I don't binge but I will usually sneak a piece of chocolate or a cookie from somewhere pretty much every day. I want these to become more of a treat than a daily occurrence and it's an easy (well, in theory because I do love sweets) way to cut out 150 calories.
Limiting eating out to a maximum of once a week. I cook a lot, but we still end up eating out 2-3 times a week. Our outside meals are almost always unhealthy and you have no idea what they put in there. I want to limit this to once a week max. I want to substitute this by trying to meal prep for days where I'm too sick to cook.
When I see all these measures written out like this... I guess it makes sense that I'm not losing weight. I had hoped to maybe start losing about a pound per week and then ramp it up as time went on.
However, I actually ended up gaining 2-3 pounds this week and it hacked into the little courage I had to get out of the dumps.
The tricky thing is that I would want to focus on how it makes me feel rather than on the number on the scale but the truth is... I feel pretty sick and weak and terrible most of the time so honestly, that's not a good metric to go on. It feels to me like the scale is all I really have right now, so seeing it go in the opposite direction of what I wanted is a bit of a sting to be honest.
I know I can't be expecting any miracles and I'm not expecting to lose 20 pounds just like that, but just a tiny nudge in the right direction would have really fed my confidence and my motivation.
Are there any techniques you use to keep yourself psyched and motivated when things aren't exactly going the way you were hoping? Should I just go for a more unsustainable diet at first so I see some results and then scale back?
Anyway, my apologies for the pity party. I guess I just needed a bit of a vent.
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