telophase | (no subject)

Congratulations! Also, you will be doing a lot of walking in Japan, so getting fit now will come in handy.

Do you mean that your cholesterol is low despite your weight, or that it remains high even though you lost weight? I hope the former!

Yeah, being fit enough to stand walking a lot is one of my goals. :D I have recently noted that I can't remember the last time I woke up with back pain, even when I wake up and am flat on my back (which used to be a guarantee that I'd be in pain all day), which bodes well for sleeping on floor-level things.

Low despite my weight. :) Mom and I hit the genetic lottery on this sort of thing. My HDL (the good kind) is 60, when you want it to be at least 40 or higher, and my LDL is 62, when you want it to be below 130. Triglycerides - basically fat in your blood - is a bit high, but not high enough to be considered "must treat this now", and after looking it up online, the recommendations for treating it are: cut down or out on alcohol and refined sugars, then exercise and lose weight. So I'm not going to do anything other than what I'm doing already, and see if there's a change when I get retested in 6 months. So between the low bad cholesterol, the high good cholesterol, and my perfectly normal blood pressure, if I'm going to drop dead of something, it's probably not going to be a heart attack. (Mom has high blood pressure, but that showed up only after she went on a course of prednisone.)

The thing they're testing me for - elevated liver enzymes, which signifies possible liver damage, is slightly higher than usual (most likely from the Strattera) but not enough to worry about now. Hence the retest in 6 months to see if there's a change there.

They did all sorts of tests on my blood. I can even tell you my red and white blood cell counts, my T-3 uptake, lots of things ending in -cytes and -phils, and several proteins and other initials. I feel thoroughly analyzed.

20 pounds is very cool (:

It feels good because it is a nice round number, and it's the most I've ever lost at once. I've done 15 before, usually due to going on vacation and walking a lot or due to being sick for a week or so, but never more. So, yay.

So you're basically counting calories + exercise, yes? :D That's a lot! Congrats :D

Yup. Nothing more complicated than that, nothing faddish. I'm not even watching my fat vs. carb vs. protein intake. Well, I'm watching it, but not doing anything about it. XD

The bit that's different than the times I tried to lose weight before (which weren't that many, really, so I haven't yo-yoed)is that I'm not restricting calories significantly - aiming for 1600 net (after exercise calories accounted for) per day, rather than 1200 before exercise - so my body shouldn't be going into hyper-efficient starvation mode, plus I don't feel restricted and overeat. And I'm doing at least 20 minutes a day on the bike. I've occasionally forgotten to bike until too late in the evening, and I think twice I said the hell with it, but I've only missed it about once every two or three weeks, I think.

What I enjoy is eating a nice, filling lunch at work and seeing coworkers eating meals that consist of things like cottage cheese and carrots every day, and realizing that I'm getting better results than they are. But I'm aiming for permanent eating habits change, and not a diet.

On a sidenote, I've found that if I eat a big, filling lunch, my needs for dinner are drastically reduced. The unfortunate thing is when dinner becomes a social thing and suddenly I've had two big meals in a day, but as long as I just keep away from that ~~friendship~~ social eating business, a decent lunch works wonders for me and my otherwise stupidly large appetite! :D

My mum was of the light cottage cheese n' carrots lunch variety and it worked perfectly for her so I assumed for a long time that was all that would work, but my mum grew up naturally thin and with a different shaped body and different food tastes entirely, so it's not too surprising that the opposite works better for me, the girl who takes after her (very unhealthy) dad.

The advantage of being so antisocial is that on the rare occasions when a social dinner is sprung upon me, I don't have to worry too much about having too many big meals at once. There's special occasions like cons, and I decided long ago not to worry about what I was eating (other than lactose) on holidays and at cons, so the four rum and cokes and four full meals (I need to eat when drinking, or I get sick) I had that Saturday are completely guilt-free.

I'm mentally constructing a small manifesto for myself that I may or may not get around to posting, but it involves things like "Occasionally overeating is not bad; it is normal eating." Because one of the things I refuse to do is to let what I eat make me guilty or depressed. I've got too many other things doing that. (One of my other things is to get myself into eating small amounts of very good foods - I'd rather have, say, a good dessert every once in a while than subsist on sugar-free Jello. Or use whole milk instead of fat-free, or eat small amounts of very good ice cream instead of a big bowl of ice milk. Life's too short to eat tasteless, dull food. And I won't feel guilty about calories or fat content from dairy, since I need more of that sort of thing.)

I grew up with the cottage-cheese-and-carrots mindset - which isn't that bad nutritionally when you think about it - but I can only eat one serving of cottage cheese every few days. Any more and it starts getting icky to me. XD Plus, it goes along with a whole mindset of tuna, a tinned peach half on a leaf of lettuce, and foods like that which are so solidly mid-century that I feel old just looking at them. XD

I'm totally with you on not watching what you eat on social occasions. I've found the best way to approach them is just to eat what I want and pay closer attention to when I'm full so that I don't end up eating for the sake of eating, although I'm totally prepared to continue if something new and tasty comes my way after that point! :D If you see food as something to be enjoyed, it just makes logical sense to eschew daily vanilla in favour of the occasional inevitable tiramisu.

The only problems come when you're living a very social lifestyle, like I was last year at uni. I eat very decently when I'm just taking responsibility for myself, lots of veg and wholewheat carbs with lean meats and all, but when I'm at a restaurant, I can't resist the richest dishes on the menu! That would be where my plan to buy free weights and an exercise bike for next year comes in. XD Hopefully that'll also get me in better condition to deal with the stress of my final year at uni.

I was actually brought up on semi-skimmed milk and Diet Coke and suchlike, so I don't notice the taste difference between fatty and low-fat foods or drinks most of the time (the only exceptions being things like chicken skin or bacon fat), but after reading articles that declare low-fat eating to be useless, I'm tempted to go the Japanese route of including small amounts of fatty meat on a semi-regular basis into stir-fries and such. Meat as a flavouring really works for me, especially considering how expensive it is (although it's still cheaper than vegetables here).

The cottage-cheese-and-carrots mindset is no bad thing at all; my mum really enjoys those foods, and has made me the most delicious meals based around her diet (the reason I adopted it as my own to lose weight, though it was the one that was ultimately too restrictive for me). One lunch I remember is two slices of toast, one spread with mackerel tinned in tomato sauce, and one spread with cottage cheese and grapes. Very healthy, very tasty, light but filling, a great lunch. Nowadays I'd say it's better as a dinner for me, but I have no quarrel with the actual foods themselves - I just wish I could access them here!

And now, all this talk of healthy eating and exercise has left me so invigorated I'm going to put lunch on and head out for a bike ride. :D This is why I like talking to other people about weight loss issues, sometimes for empathy or entertainment for sure, but very often for encouragement. Conversation is a great motivational kick up the backside, I find.

Actually, I bet the low cholesterol is linked to the lactose intolerance--cutting back on cheese means cutting way back on saturated fat.

At least, I'm hoping so--I'm trying cutting back on saturated fat (while still eating full meals) in hopes of getting my own high LDL down. (HDL and triglcerides are both good, though!)

I don't cut back as far as expected on cheese - I go through a lot of LactAid - and I pick up a lot of saturated fat elsewhere, as CalorieKing shrieks at me nearly every day. I think there's a growing awareness in the medical community that a lot of it is genetically determined - my mom has very low levels of LDL and high levels of HDL, and is overweight (although not as much as I am), and she's not lactose intolerant* and also eats a decent amount of dairy. She's got high blood pressure, as did her father, but it showed up when she took a course of prednisone. Hasn't showed up in me yet, and I hope that with establishing a pattern of daily exercise, it'll help with that.

* Although she carries the recessive gene for it, because, as has been recently discovered, it takes two recessive genes for someone to end up lactose intolerant, so I got whammied from both sides on that one.

That's cool :3 I'm actually trying to do that as well. I started with 1500 calories but eventually settled for 1600 as I found that I couldn't last as long in the gym as when I wasn't "dieting".

Now my problem is: I went on a trip and that ruined the dieting so now I've gotten used to eating a lot. ARGH. I'm trying to get back to the routine of things. Haha :D Bento's a good way of portioning though ^^

WOW!! O.o
That's a GREAT accomplishment! I hope you're proud of yourself, cause ya bloody should be! =)
Congrats!

Thank you! :D

Congrats!

I keep meaning to tell you that seeing your exercise update nearly every day has been really inspiring.

Life has gotten in the way of going out to shop for my own exercise machine of some kind (though I don't know if I have much chance to get something worth it given the constraints of my financial and space budgets), but as the weather has provided teasers of spring I have been walking the dog much further more often than just the minumum necessary for him to do his business.

I've been very proud of myself, which is a great energizer and mood-booster, too.

This week hasn't been as good as last week, but my partner Tav has been sick and usually I get whatever he gets so I've been conserving energy to fight it off, and then we got another bone-aching cold snap. Still, I did twenty minutes of (very basic, specifically for chronic back pain) yoga today as well as a short walk, and the motivation to do more when the weather warms up again is still with me.

So, thank you. It's overdue.

(And I really should start updating my own journal about this.)

Then, congratulations to you, too. XD Yeah, it was seeing other people on LJ posting about their progress in various health-related exploits that really spurred me to start this, and it's helped a lot, so I'm happy to be doing the same for others.

The Strattera's helped, too, but what it's done is provide the focus necessary for me to get on the bike every day, and to write down everything I eat. I'd never been able to keep doing that longer than a couple of weeks before. It's made it surprisingly easy, too: I can look at something and think that I'd really like to eat it, but resist it and eat something healthier more often, and I can just get on the bike and go instead of whinging about how much time it'll take out of my day. Plus finding the right sort of exercise for myself - I can't go to a gym every day because there will be other people there, so I need to make sure my hair isn't frightening, that my workout clothes have been washed sometime in the near past, etc. - and making sure that I don't *over* exercise, which tires me out and makes me less likely to do it again the next day.

And it has nothing to do with willpower or moral strength, and I know for sure that I'd never tell anyone that they just need more willpower and they'd be able to do something. Because it has nothing to do with willpower, and I don't think I've got more or that I'm a better person now for being able to bike daily; it's that my brain chemicals are closer to normal so the thing that was stopping me from committing to it before is gone.

I have no idea what it's like for others, especially because there are as many different reasons for behavior as there are people, but I'm happy to have proof to myself that it's not because I just don't have the strength of will or because I don't want it bad enough.

And now I'll stop with my stream-of-consciouness babble and post this. XD

Congratulations! \(^o^)/* That's really great, and must be the best motivation ever for continuing! Good luck with keeping it up from here!

*This emoticon bought to you by Japanese mobile phones, cute on the inside, bulky as hell on the outside

Thank you! I can't really see any difference in myself when I look in the mirror, partly because it's not that large a proportion of my total weight (and I am totally not admitting in public what my weight is until I've lost more XD), and partly because I see myself every day, so gradual changes aren't noticeable. But the scale's been going mostly down, and I noticed today that when I put my hand to my cheek, the hollow below my cheekbone is definitely deeper - it's not just wishful thinking like I was assuming it was earlier. And I can get into shirts that had started to get too tight to wear last summer. Which is good, since the weather is warming up now and I desperately need to wear these shirts and not blow money on more. XD The next goal is to get into the two shirts I own that I bought in England in 2003. I have no idea what weight I was when I was there, as I didn't own a scale, but I'll know when I fit into them that I'm definitely smaller.

Oh - and my two pairs of jeans that were too loose on me before are now practically falling off. XD I've got two pair of jeans that are too small for me sitting in the drawer waiting, so once I can no longer wear the two biggest pairs, I hope I'll be able to get into the two smaller ones.

Woo, congrats! That's quite a lot! :D

Thank you! :D

ah that inspires me to be less of a fatty ;o;.

:D If you're unhappy with something and want to change it, I hope I help. :)

hahah theres so much i wanna do man.

I NEED TO GET OUT AND DO IT. YEH.

and not get stuck in those marshes, haha.

The marshes are a slog. XD It's surprisingly tempting to just sit on the bike and go until I'm out of them.