Attitude Adjustments

Sorry for such a long post - I've been sorting through a lot of things the last few days and it felt good to write them down.

Calorie Counting
I've been counting calories for a couple of days now. I've been through every emotion that I'm sure anyone who has tried counting calories goes through - anger, frustration, astonishment. (I never thought I'd find myself in the kitchen at night, weighing an apple to find out if I can fit the calories in for a snack. I couldn't -man are apples high in calories!!)

And, of course, peeing 42 times a day because you're drinking so much water to feel full.

I hate the software's interface but upon experimentation have learned, to my very pleasant surprise, that the back end is seriously robust. It calculates things other calorie programs don't even consider. It has a serious food "dictionary" - several thousand items - and you can put in your own (I've been typing in the info from all the foods in my pantry). I was blown away when I tried to log one of my pantry items and it came back saying that the calories entered didn't match up with the actual calories it calculated based on all the other nutrition information (there's nearly 40 fields of data) and would I like to use theirs? Hell yeah! If I'm gonna do this, let's do it right . (This has happened several times now - apparently the food companies round the numbers down, sometimes by a LOT.)

Quite possibly my favorite feature is the Recipe Box - you can drag and drop individual items into a recipe and it will calculate the nutrition information for individual servings of that recipe. That's pretty much the holy grail of calorie counting for me, for whom the exercise inevitably dies when I make a nice casserole for my husband and realize I have no freakin' way to figure out what I just ate.

I found the company's website and learned the software and the bad interface has been upgraded. Several of the things that irritated the crap out of me have been fixed and several more functions have been added. It's so smart that, if you log weight lifting as an exercise, it will take the probability of increased muscle mass into account for the BMR calculations when adjusting your calorie recommendations (which it tweaks every day).

I got used to it, am impressed by the science behind it (it appears several PhDs had a hand in it) and am probably going to fork out the $50 to buy the upgraded version.

Weight Loss Expectations
The most I've ever lost in a single year since I started this 3 years ago was 25 pounds. So I set a private, inside my head goal of losing 25 pounds this year, for several reasons. 1) It will get me to the half-way point of 75 lost. 2) It will get me below the psychological barrier of 200 pounds. 3) It would do those things riiiight before my 35th birthday.

This program makes you put in a goal weight and a date, then it calculates the calories recommended to get you there. I tried to set it up with a goal of 25 a year for the next 4 years but it won't go more than 2 years out. So for kicks, I put in my goal weight for 2 years. It came up with a shockingly reasonable calorie recommendation and rated the potential effort as "manageable." (Yes, this shockingly reasonable calorie count and manageable effort is what's had me in tears the last couple days.)

My mind is reeling to think I could theoretically be near my goal weight by the end of 2008. I know me and I know I can't possibly stick with this every day for the next two years - I said from the very beginning this was not about "dieting" but about sustainable lifestyle changes. But if I even stick with it most of the time I'll be closer to my dream faster than I imagined possible.

Goal Weight
This morning my husband pointed out that I'd set my goal weight as my actual goal weight, when the reality is that I'm going to need a body lift when it's done. You just can't gain/lose 150 pounds and not take this ugly truth into consideration.

This basically means I'll probably be at my goal weight on the inside but until the surgery is done will have many pounds of extra skin (yuck, right?). My weight loss has been slow enough that my skin is rebounding relatively well, but there are a few spots where surgery is simply going to be required.

So in keeping with this reality, I reset the goal weight on the software to 15 pounds over my goal weight because that's the weight at which I need to consult a plastic surgeon.

(I was really kind of hoping for an extra 200-300 calories a day out of this adjustment, but I only got an extra 75 - not even a whole apple's worth!)

Success Does Not, In This Case, Beget Success
It finally hit me over the last few days why this is suddenly So. Damn. Hard. I have not been exaggerating all this time when I say I generally don't count calories, generally make good food choices and generally have a handle on portion control. I seriously lost this first 50 pounds simply by making incremental changes to my diet and exercise habits. (And taking my thyroid medication.)

I knew when I started that eventually it would get harder - i.e. when I weight less I will have to eat less and less calories to continue losing weight. I'd lost sight of that until now. I'm still so overweight that it's hard to logically accept the time has already come, but my body's going "helllooooo - you weigh 50 pounds LESS!! Of COURSE you need to eat less now."

That's why this last couple days has been such a kick in the head - I've never had to cut calories to the point I was hungry to get weight loss.

Injuries
I've been making the mental shift from "OMG this season is RUINED!!!" because of my shoulder to "those races will be there next year."

I still won't know for a couple of weeks what the future holds. I could be in for a season-ending shoulder surgery or I could be in for a few weeks of physical therapy and a gradual return to the pool.

Either way, I'd already planned on making this a year to focus on running and had only scheduled 2 triathlons. If I can't swim at all those races will still be there next year. Of course I'll be upset if my 'Marathon and HIM when I'm 35' goal is pushed back to this year's Half-marathon and Olympic but I have to remember that racing is a joy and a privilege - but not remotely worth risking permanent injury for. If I have to miss this season in order to continue racing in the future, so be it.

I just hope if that happens the other triathletes will let me have honorary status until I can get back to the starting line.