“Bloody” good results

Every year in March I go to the doctor for a general checkup (a physical). This year was no exception.

This time and after some weight loss (20 pounds so far) I have two great achievements to report. The first one was when they did the ECG the doctor came in and saw my results and asked me if I was practicing sports. He is a man (hence not so attentive to that kind of detail) and I am notorious for my yo-yo dieting so he definitely did not notice it because of my weight loss. So I was curious just by how he noticed. Instead he said that my resting metabolic rate was so much lower than last year’s, just the way it happens with athletes. He by no means tried to compare me to an athlete, but he said that my values compared from one year to another were extremely different. This made me extremely happy because I never ever practice any sports except the 3+ months I’ve been walking. It works!

The second news came a week later after the blood results came back. I have to say that I’ve never had anything that’s not healthy like cholesterol, sugar or triglycerides on abnormal high levels, but even these went down a bit. But the best news came in the form of my iron levels going up. They were always below normal And without any supplements or vitamins I have normalized them after three years of suffering very extremely low iron levels just by eating healthily and why not?: Those spinach green smoothies are really working! In all seriousness this has a wonderful effect on all the side effects I was having from having a low iron level and I am happy as can be.

Funny side note: since my Fitbit was clipped to my bra the doctor asked me what it was. I explained it to him and he was sold. For a moment I thought I should contact the company asking them to give me some incentive for being such a proactive advertiser of their product, hey I’ve sold a couple for real! I love it.

Healthy habits paying off in many ways!

I absolutely HATE sharing my weight-loss journey.

I was thinking about why I absolutely HATE sharing my weight-loss story with people. But no,no,no, not you, please keep on reading my good anonymous friends. If I didn’t want anyone to know I wouldn’t write it. I am talking about people I know personally.

During my newest and hopefully last weight-loss journey I am taking a new approach: it’s called “Workout and Shut your mouth”, but not only shutting it not to shove unnecessary foods in it (that too) 🙊but to not say a word about it. I say new because all my previous efforts had involved a whole lot of calorie counting and limiting but never combined with physical activity, and I gave all information to my family and friends about every single ounce I dropped and all the hard work involved in my process. All to no avail.

Why don’t I like sharing my experience with anybody I know? (friend or family member). Not because I don’t think they don’t wish me well nor love me ( I know they do) but because this is for me and I do not enjoy sharing my biggest struggle and weakness with people who clearly have not understood before and seemingly won’t understand now. This is not my first time around and I have proven myself that whenever people get the information that I am “dieting” they immediately used their self-appointed right to give their opinion and/or start asking me if I’m allowed to eat something, if I have stuck to my exercise routine that day or when they see something in my mouth being chewed, that is the cue for them to ask wether or not it is conducive to my goal to eat this or that. Those things are rather discouraging for me and don’t help me further. On top of it all I seem to be surrounded by people who have never really struggled with this and naturally thin people trying to give me advice is not my idea of motivation and makes me eventually go back to square one.
(Please note I said naturally thin people and am not talking about people who have struggled with this experience and are now thin, as I believe those could understand)

This time I’ve kept my mouth shut and by all means have even resorted to “lying” to get out of some situations which otherwise would have meant that I am in some sort of weight-loss quest. When people know I just don’t seem to find the right balance between being open about it and successful at it.

This is the reason why I like my Fitbit friends so much, I don’t even know where they find themselves in this big world, still they are so motivating to me without even knowing it. Then there are my favorite: weight loss bloggers: these are the people who I really like to share my story with because these people understand what I’m going through, we are battling with the same.

Because let’s be honest if you’re anything like me and you’re struggling with weight loss how many times can you hear the words “it’s about what you put in your body versus what you burn” or “you have to be more active” “change what you’re doing” or “it is so easy, simple mathematics just eat less” and the worse “you must have a slow metabolism that is the way you are meant to look”. We all know that we are not here because we want to.

So for now I’ll continue writing about it and just look forward to the day the people who know me and love me approach me and (after skipping all the ugly middle part) tell me that I look great! I really can’t wait.

Who feels this way? Or do you find it better to share?

A Fitbit for Christmas

So I got a Fitbit for Christmas,

And I wanted to write about it because when I first got it, I took hours upon hours looking in the internet for somebody who has had experience with it. Of course what I secretly wanted to find was probably 200+ pound people that now were 120 using it for a couple of months, but we all know this won’t happen even though I feed myself off of these success stories and I never seem to be able to write my own.

I have been obsessed with my weight since I was a teenager, and it is not a nice obsession especially when you hit 40 and you realize that all of your efforts have always been in vain. I have tried so many diets and exercise efforts to try to lose weight but as my grandmother once told me: “don’t ever lose weight, whatever gets lost can be always found, try to get rid of it!” And that’s exactly what I haven’t been able to do. Of course I’ve lost weight and when I think about it, in my lifetime I’ve literally lost my “whole” self twice but every time I’ve gone back to the beginning with some extras too.

To add to my failed diet efforts, ever since I was a child I never liked sports or any type of physical exercise. I don’t know if I can say that is because I suffer asthma and it is really difficult for me to breath while exercising. It makes it so much harder for me to catch my breath and therefore I get tired very easily then I stop doing what I’m doing, the next day I don’t do it anymore and it just becomes a circle that I never get out of.

People tell me that maybe walking would be the perfect exercise for me but my nature has made me really lazy and every movement “costs”me so much. Besides, to be quite honest I just don’t picture myself going around a park 20-30 times looking at the same trees. I think I’d be bored to pieces. Now give me a Shopping Mall maybe that’ll do it! 😀

I just wish one day I will get that feeling to exercise and believe all the perky-permanent-smiled fitness instructors who say: “it was so awesome to sweat and run and feel my muscles hurt” to me is almost like saying ” I love feeling jet lagged, I love feeling tired or I love feeling sad” . I just don’t get it.

This is my first time writing about it so please don’t think I have a success story. I haven’t had one (well at least I haven’t had one like the ones I love, of people who have lost pounds upon pounds of weight)
But my very short success story to share is: (and I won’t say there’s nobody because I’m sure there are, but I belong to the top of the list of people who hate moving) ever since I got my gadget I have been compelled to quantify how much I move and therefore I MOVE!

I was shocked to read that an average American walks 5000 steps a day (of the 10000 recommended) and when I first read it I thought: “well 5000 is not that bad” But I didn’t realize that I am even more sedentary. And on a normal day I walked 2,500 steps!!!!!

So how can I ever accomplish 10,000? I have to say it is not easy, I really have to push myself. But looking at numbers at the end of the day really makes me look forward to it.

But if something has really motivated me it is my “friends”. No, I am not talking about the people I know and hang out with here, because for some odd, maybe subconscious reason, I am constantly surrounded by very skinny people that have never had a problem with their weight, go figure!) My “Fitbit friends” are the people that I randomly chose on the Fitbit website based on a starting date comparable to mine. It is a group of 19 people and granted they don’t even know it, but they are the ones that keep me going. I have set myself the goal to never to be under the top 10 of these 19 people and it is not easy because there’s a lot of power walkers among them. But those keep me motivated by waking up every morning and seeing what position I find myself from 19. It is very interesting because every day I’ll be in a different number since not everybody synchronizes so readily like I do, sometimes I am in a really high position and all of a sudden somebody who really walked a lot but had not synchronized in a couple of days, comes pushing me “down” and taunting my pride so that even my lazy self has to go back up.

Since I live somewhere where it almost rains 360 days of the year I don’t really go out and like aforementioned going around the same trees doesn’t really motivate me, so I’m doing my steps following “walk away the pounds by Leslie Sansone”
I turn the volume down and play music that makes me move a little more. It is still very difficult for me and this is the hour I dread every day but it is the only thing that gets almost 7000 steps in an hour which obviously combined with my normal daily I reach 10,000 and I even started moving a little more on my daily life so basically I am averaging 11 to 12,000 every day which is something I never thought possible. I still have asthma issues and I take my medication sometimes before, sometimes after the workout. But I have never and I am being honest: NEVER kept an exercise routine for 4 weeks and on top be happy and looking forward.

I guess this little gadget is not going to make me lose any weight just by existing but it’s making me move more and every time I move I think it is so much work that I really have to think about what I put in my mouth and then I try to be more rational and make cool comparisons like “OMG I need to workout 37 minutes to burn a snickers bar! Is it worth it?” because as my grandmother also told me (and it is not just saying she really told me these things since she fought my same battle) “sweets and cravings spend a second in your mouth and a lifetime in your thighs😁