My Year in Weight Loss

On December 16, 2021, my husband and I began calorie counting for weight loss. He had been losing weight without it to that point, but to get to the next level of his weight loss journey, more was required. I didn't necessarily need to lose weight, but I wanted to see if I could. And I wanted to see what my body might be like if I lost ten pounds. 

I've never been able to lose weight on any diet I've tried throughout the years. At 5 foot 4, I was around 150 pounds throughout high school and only ever got as low as 145 in college. With very little muscle mass, because my main hobbies were reading books, playing the flute and watching TV (sports were a thing to be avoided at all costs). In the years following college, I stopped weighing myself, but I continued to be sedentary and ate a typical American diet consisting largely of fast food. 

When I first started to run, in my late 20's, I did lose some weight. But that only lasted when I was running 6 days out of 7 most weeks. Once I got a new job, the running schedule changed and I started trying other forms of exercise at the gym I got access to via that job. My weight, once I started measuring it again, was once again fluctuating between 145 and 155. CrossFit likewise didn't have much impact on my weight - except the year that I was training for a Spartan Race - I bulked up to 160, but I didn't care because I kicked that Spartan Race's butt. 

I did get down close to 140 during a CrossFit nutrition challenge, but I don't really count that, because it was a month of low carb and the weight just came back. So, I didn't really expect calorie counting to work for me. I had a deeply ingrained belief that my body just didn't want to lose weight so it didn't. 

We used the internet to find sources that would estimate our calorie expenditure based on activity level, and each picked a target daily calorie total. I ended up with 1500 calories per day, which I expanded to 1800 to 2000 if I did CrossFit or ran. I got Ambrose signed up to take a resting metabolic rate test to determine scientifically how many calories he should be eating each day to go into a deficit for weight loss. He found the experience so enlightening that he insisted that I sign up as well. My results lined up well with the totals I'd chosen, so I stuck with that, but added more protein into my CrossFit routine on the advice of the test administrator. 

At first, there wasn't a lot of movement on the scale. I even gained weight, though I've learned over the years that I tend to gain about 5 pounds while I'm on my period, which then goes away with as little effort as it came. But slowly, slowly, the numbers trended down. I hit 145, and I kept expecting a plateau. Although there were runs of higher weights on occasion, again and again, the lows kept getting lower. And the highs kept getting lower! 

On December 16, 2021, I weighed in at 149.4 pounds. 

On December 16, 2022, I weighed in at 133.6 pounds. 

I lost 15.8 pounds in a year, and I'm ecstatic. It was slow, but I feel like that just makes it more likely that it will stay off. I'm not done yet. I'm curious where I'll end up staying with this calorie regime (definitely not planning on lowering it no matter what). I'm kind of looking forward to trying to add muscle at some point, regaining a bit of weight for more strength. 

My diet is now largely defined by trying to accommodate my IBS, but I think the exclusions I ended up making over the course of the year helped me with this weight loss. I tried to eat foods with pronounceable ingredients and to avoid "natural flavoring" in ingredients lists. Part way through the year, I stopped eating yeast, which meant no more bread (no more toast!). And then I stopped eating yogurt, because it can have yeast. I miss both bread and yogurt, but the yeast exclusion makes me feel better. 

In addition, Ambrose and I stopped eating fast food and drastically reduced our consumption of any restaurant food. We no longer drink alcohol, another big calorie source. We did have cheat days, here and there, and we also ate much more while backpacking. Pretty much all rules were off for backpacking, and the first full meal after the trip. That means an at home, eat as much as you want meal, not a snack in the car on the drive home (nor a restaurant, because we avoid those largely due to sodium concerns). 

I'm amazed that this worked. That I fit in a size 4 dress in September. It gives me confidence that I can get my first bar muscle up at the age of 40. Yesterday, I hung from a bar by my hands for 2 minutes, unbroken, and then did 2 sets of 4 pullups. CrossFit and running both played a role in my weight loss as well. I'll admit, I was also sometimes motivated to work out because I wanted to be able to eat more. I don't know that calorie counting would have worked at any other point in my life. This was the right time for me, and I'm so glad I tried. 

Book Progress

Ambrose is working his way through a second read of my draft. On the first read through, he focused on the low hanging fruit. Things that didn't make sense, misspellings, or wrong words. I expected some wrong words, because I typed some of the draft on my phone. I've gotten pretty proficient at swipe-typing on the phone, but I do miss the occasional incorrect word. 

For the second read through, he's trying to look at the flow of the narrative, trying to make sure that everything makes sense and flows from one story to another. I like that he's taking that approach, and I think it will enhance the final product quite nicely. 

While he's been working his way through that, I've been working my way through boxes of cold medicine and tissues. I got sick hard last week and I'm still fighting my way out of it. Probably not flu or Covid, but whatever it was, it was rough. And it was something that Ambrose apparently already had antibodies for, because he barely got ill. 

Despite that, I'm over halfway through my picture plates. I need to get my distances and elevations for the chapter headers, and then the drawings of both route and elevation. Then the cover and I'm almost done. It's going to be a close thing, whether I publish the book in 2022 or 2023, but it will get done - as long as I can keep healthy through the end of the year! Fingers crossed! 

Weight Update

Overall, I'm happy with where I'm at. 

I expected not to lose as much weight over the backpacking season, and possibly even gain some. Instead, I did keep losing, to an extent. I kept dipping into the 130's, even if I'd had a bump up to the 140's over a trip. I just needed to reassert my normal routines and in about a week, I'd be back under 140. 

Now, I just need to keep reminding myself of that, because my body is being all weird after the Chicago trip. I half expected to gain on that trip, because of the break in routine and unfamiliar foods. What happened was weirder. The day after we got back, Sunday, I weighed in at 136.6 pounds. Amazing! The next day, 140.6 - what?

I've also been very tired so it's hard to get back onto my routines. I ended up both going to CrossFit and running yesterday, and that led to me not going to CrossFit this morning, because I woke up so sore and tired. But that's what it's like for me. I can go to CrossFit every day, but it hurts until I get back into the routine of it. 

I'll still ride my bike to work today for exercise, and probably stop by the pull up bars that can be on my way. I am still getting pullups done at this weight, so that's pretty awesome. I'm not just losing weight, I'm building some muscle. And I carry my weight a lot differently than I used to. 

I am very pleased that I wore a well-fitted size 4 dress to my dad's wedding. I feel like I looked amazing in that dress, and I couldn't have fit in it if I were bigger. But it's not about being big or small right now. I want to be strong and fit more than I want to be small. 

Menstrual Torture

The latest period of mine is one of the more intense and unpleasant ones that I can remember having. Of course, the body does tend to forget pain. The memory of pain gets blurred edges, which is a boon I suppose or no one would go through childbirth more than once on purpose. But I don't usually have to walk around half bent over with the pain. 

I don't usually start leaking tears during working hours because the pain is so intense, even with a heating pad firmly tucked on my lap. 

I'm not usually quite so vocal about how much it hurts. 

I don't usually have trouble falling asleep because when I lie down the pain decides that position is just the worst like I did last Monday night. 

So I think it's fair to say that this is one of the worse periods I've had. I mean, I do take notes on my periods as well, and they aren't ALL "worst period ever!" - most of them just note that the period began. Not because I don't have painful cramps or other issues, but because they don't cross my personal threshold of bad pain. 

Sure, it's "just" cramps. And I can "deal" with it. 

But I really wish I didn't have to. That no one had to deal with this kind of pain. Though it might be helpful if men could. . .

Yeast Experiments

I've discovered that for my particular eating issues, eliminating the yeast in bread appears to be the most important part. Soy sauce has also been a culprit, but not hard cheese or grapes. I have been eating cheeses in my backpacking food without issue, and I ate some grapes when I took my niece camping. Neither of those affected me like eating some meatloaf with breadcrumbs did. 

I avoided eating the dinner roll that came with that meal, but the main course was meatloaf. And I knew that meatloaf would have breadcrumbs and that those breadcrumbs would be leavened with yeast. I ate it as a test, and the answer came back: nope. My body doesn't want to deal with yeast. 

The real question is why this was never brought up as a possibility. An uncommon food sensitivity, for sure, but when I continually expressed that I was not doing well, why would my doctors not suggest something less common? I've been considering what to tell my GP when I go in for an annual exam in the fall. Part of me wants to say nothing to her, just go and do the minimum, no complaints. I've been managing my symptoms without the use of laxatives for months - now that I have stopped eating yeast! 

It just feels so absurd that with all the foods they told me to avoid, they never brought this one up. 

But I'm figuring it out, and I'm doing better. I'm eating more foods than I was before, and I don't actually miss bread as much as I thought I would. I'm eating fruits and vegetables again, which makes me feel better overall. I really like fruits and, sure, even some veggies. I'm hoping that I'll be able to eat beans again - that experiment will definitely be coming soon! 

Body Work

I credit transitioning to barefoot shoes with calming down my iliotibial bands. I used to get intense pain from running and even backpacking if I didn't keep those IT bands stretched out with regular running. Rolling the IT bands on a foam roller was always incredibly painful. Now, I can miss a few days of running and now have the IT band pain come back. When I foam roll, it isn't excruciating. 

But in the last couple weeks, I was noticing a new pain cropping up on my right side. It was a weird combination of heel and ankle pain, and it only made itself felt when I was running. 

After one recent run, I did some self massage and figured out that the muscle running along the outside of my right calf was extremely tight. I massaged in some CBD balm and tried to decrease the tension on the muscle, but it didn't help very much. Enough that I could keep running, but the pain wasn't going away. 

I began to think about it even when it wasn't hurting, and I noticed that when I stood still, I had a tendency to roll my weight to the outside of my right foot. I noticed it once, and then again and again. It was definitely a habit. And it was a habit that clearly led to muscles tightening up on the outside of my right leg - exactly where I'd traced the heel pain to. 

I've been working on paying attention to where my weight is when I'm standing still, and I can feel how it's making a difference to the tight muscles in my right leg. My last few runs haven't been as painful in that area, though I still have a ways to go. 

And it occurred to me that this was a long formed habit in response to who knows what in my past. If I didn't pay attention and work on fixing it, it would probably lead to injury eventually. Or it would cause me to stop running. 

And if that can happen to my physical body without my noticing, then doesn't it also make sense that such habits could happen in my mind? What kinds of little habits have I picked up mentally that I don't notice until I try something "strenuous"? Something that stretches me beyond my comfortable routines. . .  

I'm going to be paying more attention to my habits, both physical and mental, going forward, that's for sure. 

Weight Loss Update

This month, for the first time in my adult life, my weight was under 140 pounds. And while I only had a few days in the 130's before my period started and I bumped back into the 140's, I'm still pretty excited at this proof that the calorie counting that I'm doing is working. The weight loss has been slow, and definitely not in a straight line, but I've got a downward trendline. 

It's kind of great that I'm "only" at 143 during my period. I mean, I'd rather not have seen the scale go back to the 140s, but 6 months ago, my period would put me around 155 instead. That's great! 

I've been incorporating more vegetables and fruits into my diet, and my digestive system has been tolerating them well. My main issue used to be constipation. It was bad enough that I was managing it with daily laxatives. And now I'm not on any laxatives, and my output is regular. I don't know that the calorie counting has anything to do with it, but I do think that watching what I eat very closely has been helping my digestion. 

I haven't yet tried another yeast-adjacent food after the yogurt. The next one up will definitely be soy sauce, because I would love to be able to eat sushi in the manner to which I am accustomed. But I probably won't try it until after the traditional Memorial Day backpacking trip this weekend! 

Tomato

I have been avoiding eating most vegetables and fruits in their whole, raw form for a while now. I believed that fiber would be bad for my digestion, because that was literally the only real answer I'd gotten from numerous gastroenterologists. But I decided to try getting my body and digestive system into better shape. I've been slowly adding more fiber, in gentle forms like Cheerios, and peeled apples. 

But Monday, I decided to really go for it with one of my favorites. I decided to eat a tomato, lovely and ripe. It was a generous size, a large handful for me, and I ate it like an apple. Skin and seeds and all. 

I chewed thoroughly and savored every bite. I half expected an immediate protest from my stomach, but none came. It went down fine, and I felt fine the rest of the day. I'm still kind of waiting for something to happen, for some rejection of that delicious treat, but it hasn't come yet. 

I'm still going to take it slow, but I'm feeling more confident now. Slowly, slowly, I'm going to get vegetables back. 

Goodbye Yogurt

I've been doing very well, digestively speaking, with the elimination of yeast from my diet. I was surprised at just how much food is excluded in a yeast exclusion diet. No soy sauce, nothing fermented, and no yogurt. I'm a big yogurt consumer, always have been. For a long time, I thought I was lactose intolerant, but I'd still eat yogurt, because the probiotics were supposed to be good for me. 

When I got the IBS diagnosis, yogurt was one food that I never considered eliminating. I was no longer eating a lot of yogurt in yogurt form, but for a long time I've been using Chobani yogurt drinks as my pre-workout fuel for 5 am CrossFit classes. I don't like working out in a fasted state, and I don't want to get up early enough to eat a full breakfast before working out, so the yogurt drinks were a perfect compromise. I got some calories, but not so much food that my body couldn't handle it before a hard workout. 

I went a bit over 30 days with complete yeast exclusion, and then I reintroduced the Chobani yogurt drinks for my pre workout and post workout. (I'd received some advice to do protein before and after working out, and I've been doing 2 yogurt drinks for a few months around my CrossFit classes.) 

Now, to be fair, a few days after I restarted the yogurt drinks, I also started my period. And I know that my period has an effect on my digestion. So I gave the yogurt drinks a full two weeks of testing to make sure not to judge them because of the period. But even from the first day that I started drinking them again, I just knew. 

I could feel how they were affecting my digestion from the increase in burbling noises and feelings, but I hoped that maybe that was just from the good probiotics. But further use caused my digestion to head back towards constipation, culminating in a no-fun-at-all episode of vomiting a little less than 2 weeks after I'd reintroduced yogurt. 

It's possible that the vomiting was unrelated to the yogurt. It's possible that my period's influence on my digestive processes impacted the yogurt's effects. But for now, I'm calling it. No more yogurt. 

I'm going to work at getting my digestion back in order, and then I'll try adding soy sauce back into my diet and see what that does. I'm crossing my fingers that I can tolerate soy sauce, because I love my husband's chicken adobo. 

Re-evaluating My IBS

I believe that one of the hardest things to tell people is that they are making themselves sick. 

It's an implication of responsibility where most of us want none. 

It's a condemnation that gets our monsters riled and defensive.

It feels like victim blaming. 

But sometimes, we are making ourselves sick. 

Consider my husband. He was told by several doctors and medical professionals that he would have to be on medication for high blood pressure for the rest of his life. That is only the reality if he didn't stop making himself sick. He has spent the last several years working on reducing his body weight, and he has succeeded in going from 4 medications to one half of one medication. He changed HIMSELF rather than continuing to make himself sick and be dependent on those drugs.

For years, I was told that I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and the doctors liked to do a little dance around the fact that I was making myself sick. They never outright said it, but there were lots of questions about my mental health, how much I was exercising, whether I was getting enough sunshine. Those don't seem super relevant to a digestive issue, do they? I always felt they were implying the whole thing was psychosomatic. 

Now, I'm not sure if I have IBS, but there is no definitive test for IBS. There is no way to prove that I have it or don't. So I'm going with a new theory, that the way I was eating was no longer sustainable for my body. 

My weight has been relatively steady, but my cholesterol has been on a steady march upward. What I didn't want to consider was that the food I was eating, the food I most enjoyed eating (because it's designed to be enjoyable), could be part of what was making me sick. And by choosing those foods, I would thus be making myself sick. 

There might also have been an undiscovered food intolerance in there, but I believe the main thing that's helping me regain some control over my digestion is cutting out the literal crap I used to eat. I love Cheetos. They are my favorite chip. And I miss their taste, and licking the damn cheese powder off my fingers. But I haven't eaten them in over a year. (Funnily enough, I might have discovered the food intolerance by trying to find a healthier substitute for Cheetos; I tried a vegan cheese puff and the reaction convinced me to try cutting out yeast.)

I've eaten fast food once in the last year, and even my restaurant trips have declined precipitously to no more than once a month. 

The Food/Industrial Complex is about profit. The only way to profit off of food for people is to make food that is so unsatiating that people don't ever really feel full eating it, and so delicious that people don't notice how much of it you eat. There's no profit in providing proper nutrition in proper quantities. No, they have to make bigger containers (larger people). They have to manipulate flavor and texture so that food becomes as close as possible to addictive. 

And it's all free choice, right? Americans just choose to eat the most aggressively advertised foods, which are chock full of sodium and fat. Freedom! To become a growing waste disposal unit. To end up on a dozen medications for high blood pressure and heart disease and diabetes. To be unable to move functionally. That's freedom. 

I don't always choose the right foods, but I'm making a conscious effort to make those better choices. To improve my eating with more fiber, including what fruits and vegetables I can tolerate. I've even started eating Cheerios, which, while highly processed, are my baby-step towards eating more whole grains. I'm hoping to switch to oatmeal at some point, but I'm still experimenting. 

I'm making a choice to actively try and change how my digestive system functions by eating better food, instead of trying to medicate my way out of a syndrome I might not even have. So far, I've made more progress in 30 days than I had in the last 6+ years since the original IBS diagnosis. I'm going to stay the course and see where these choices lead me. 

Perspective on Sleep Changes

Ever since the last fall time change, my husband has had issues sleeping through the night. I was pretty worried about it, because sleeping less than 5 hours a night just doesn't seem right to me. I'm the kind of person who can easily sleep 9 hours a night or more, so for him to be fine with 6 is totally foreign to me. But the issues weren't that he was sleeping 6, but less than that. 

I looked at home remedies for sleep, and tried lowering our temperature at night. That seemed to do the trick, to an extent. He was getting up to 7 hours, and most nights more than 6. I wondered what would happen when we got to the spring forward time change. I hoped it would take my husband back to normal sleep patterns. 

I'll admit that my interest in his sleep is partially selfish. I sleep much better when he's in bed with me. Just knowing that he's there helps me sleep more deeply. 

Unfortunately, the spring forward did not bring him back into sleeping longer. If anything, he's been sleeping a bit less since the spring time change. I was starting to get worried and thought about medical intervention until this very morning when we talked about it. 

He mentioned that his sister remembered him always having sleep issues when they were growing up and it just went off like a lightbulb in my head. For most of the years that I've been with Ambrose, he has been on blood pressure medication. He was, at one point, on 4 blood pressure medications. Now he's down to a half dose of 1 bp med. 

Of course he's sleeping differently! He no longer has all those medications swimming in his blood stream and interacting! 

We don't know what his natural sleep patterns are, because they've been mediated for so many years. So unless he feels tired, the short sleep is probably fine. And he'll probably find some kind of equilibrium as his body adjusts to the change in medication. See, I didn't consider that our annual exam, when he dropped a medication, is pretty close to the time change. And he went down from a whole pill to a half pretty close to the spring change. It all makes sense, timing-wise. 

I'll still miss him in the bed when I'm still asleep and he's awake, but I'm not going to be worried about it anymore. It's all part of finding his new normal. 

Cutting Caffeine

I enjoy coffee. I especially enjoy a nice, strong, black coffee. But I had to start using creamer so my tummy wouldn't complain about the acidity so much. 

And then, my husband noticed my hands were trembling one day. I told him it was likely due to caffeine, because that's the simplest explanation. But I also figured it might be time for a caffeine break, just to see if the trembling persisted.

It wasn't too difficult this time, because I haven't been drinking coffee every day, instead switching between green tea and coffee. So I did one week where I just drank the green tea and then stopped caffeine completely. 

That technique allowed me to avoid the caffeine withdrawal headaches that I typically go through when stopping caffeine. I'll be sure to use it in the future. 

I've now been without caffeine for about two weeks. I haven't noticed trembling continuing, but I'll have to defer to my husband since he pays a lot of attention to things I sometimes don't notice. 

It's always strange when I get off caffeine and realize I don't really need it to wake up. But then, once I start drinking it again, I have that need for my wake up coffee. I'll enjoy being off of it while I'm off, but I also enjoy that flavor. 

And, no, decaf just isn't the same for me. 

Hopeful Possibility

In the years since I first started trying to fix the intense gut pains that, in some way, have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, but that I only began to work on in 2015, I have cut a LOT of foods out of my diet. It started with a recommendation from my doctor to try the low FODMAP diet, because my symptoms matched Irritable Bowel Syndrome. That diet is supposed to be used briefly, in a way. One cuts out all foods with FODMAPs, which is an acronym for a certain type of fiber, and if one feels better, then one adds back in one food at a time to figure out which foods are triggering. 

I followed that diet. I did not experience relief. So I added some things back, and I tried to eat things that didn't make me feel worse. But it was hard to know what those things were. A few years later, I got diagnosed with mild delayed gastric emptying and they told me to cut out fiber. 

I didn't get much information other than, cut out fiber. 

Everything I read online indicated a diet low in fiber shouldn't be long term and should only be under supervision of a doctor. My doctors looked at me like I was crazy when I talked about reintroducing fiber. 

It was as if they were convinced simultaneously that 1) what I had wasn't going away and 2) they couldn't prove that I had IBS. But if they couldn't even prove that IBS was the problem, because IBS is, itself, not well understood, then how could they expect me to trust that I couldn't change anything? 

Last year, I started trying to eat more healthily and focused on the removal of foods with "natural flavors" or "artificial flavors" in the ingredients list. I figured that if something was irritating my gut, then I should know every ingredient that I ingest. Those two phrases can be substitutes for any number of compounds, any of which could cause me trouble. The less of those I ate, the better, I figured. 

And in December, my husband and I began calorie counting. We keep track of what we eat and how much of it we eat. Turns out it's hard to find foods that not only exclude unnamed flavor compounds, but also fit in with the kinds of food I currently allow myself - low fiber, trying to avoid most FODMAPs with the exception of apples because that's one food that I haven't had trouble with. I ended up trying a food that contained nutritional yeast. 

It messed me up. After that, my digestion went crazy, causing constipation and bloating. I felt my stomach gurgling that night and I kicked myself for not looking up if yeast can cause issues with IBS before I ate the damn things. But I didn't go checking until the next morning, where I found absolutely no counterindications regarding IBS and yeast. 

But I did find information about yeast intolerance, and I could check off just about every box for symptoms of a yeast intolerance. 

So now I'm trying 30 days without eating yeast. My husband has cooked up some roti for me to eat instead of sourdough bread. I've discovered the crackers that I relied on for snacks and meals also have yeast so they're out. I'm counting day 1 as March 17, since I did a liquid diet that day (no, not beer, that's got yeast). But I'm already showing signs of better digestion. 

I'm feeling both positive and angry. Excited and sad. Because if this turns out to be the thing, the big thing that has always been wrong with me, that is, maybe, the reason that I've always been a bit overweight, then that it will be amazing that I found it. But terribly frustrating that it took so long to figure it out. And infuriating that no doctor once suggested it as a possibility. 

Still, this might just be a wild hare that I'm chasing. I need to be prepared for the possibility that whatever is going on can't be fixed by a simple dietary exclusion. Or, at least, not this particular exclusion. 

Float On

I think it's important to consider one's body an ally. There's a lot of body positivity going around, but I don't want to just praise my body no matter its state. I want to work with my body to try and reach the goals that I want to achieve. I know that my body won't succeed if I punish it, and I know that what I need to do is stay the course with calorie counting. 

It is natural for the body to resist weight change, to resist reduction. I know that there are factors beyond my ability to measure that influence the number on the scale. And I've been sick for pretty much the entire month of February, so my exercise routine is completely thrown off. 

I weigh more at the beginning of March than I did at the end of February. But I still weigh less than I did at the beginning of the year. Even though I did bump up slightly over 150 pounds in February, I still believe that staying the course is the right thing to do. 

Change isn't fast. 

Change isn't automatic. 

Losing weight is not a simple thing. If it were simple, then EVERYONE would be doing it. There would be no diet industry, no millions of yo-yo dieters gaining and losing the same pounds, no women starving themselves into anorexia and puking themselves into bulimia. It is just NOT a simple thing. 

It's a difficult thing. It requires extreme long term planning. It requires discipline that I didn't use to have. It requires making the right choices even when they don't feel like they're making a difference. It absolutely requires separating one's emotional state from one's decision making process. Especially because a reduced calorie diet can make one more emotionally unstable. It's hard to be stable when you aren't eating enough; I've been on enough backpacking trips when I've been hangry to know that lack of food can affect my processing and my emotions. 

Trust the process is my mantra. Trust the process and work together. My body cannot function without food, and I cannot function without my body. 

I wish calorie counting were a magic bullet. I wish that I could absolutely predict tomorrow's weight based on what I eat today. But I know from experience that isn't true. The scale never follows a logical trajectory. That's part of what makes it hard. 

But I'm not in this to lose weight for a weekend or a day. I'm in this to change my body. To reshape it completely. Of course there's resistance. Of course it's difficult. I'm changing the foundations of my body, and that's no simple task. 

It may at times feel like two steps forward one step back, or even two steps forward four steps back, but the important part is keeping facing in the right direction and eating enough to sustain weight loss, and not eating enough to gain. A tricky balance, but I'm going to have plenty of time to figure it out. 

Because I'm going to stay the course, like the man in the river in the Taoist fable, relaxing into the currents to avoid being dashed upon the rocks. I'm going to finally get over this illness and get back onto my exercise routine. And I'm going to keep up my calorie counting. And I will change my body. 

Dieting Is Weird

On the one hand, I'm not happy that my body decided to retain nearly 4 pounds of weight, somehow, between Monday and Tuesday. Not only that, but my weight bumped up above 150 for the first time since January 2nd. In January, I thought I had this calorie counting thing worked out. I thought this was going to be a relatively smooth thing. 

But I also knew that my weight loss for January was more than I should have gotten in that time period. I was prepared for some backsliding. And I'm almost certain that this bump is a blip. 

And there is another hand here - at least I'm able to show Ambrose that he's not the only one that can perform that kind of awful magic trick. That is, making several pounds of weight appear overnight without any discernable effort or rhyme or reason. I have been feeling pretty ill, so it's possible that is related. Especially because I haven't been getting my exercise in. 

I also haven't been eating as well as I should. I'm finding it harder to eat lately. I think that's from being moody due to being on my period, and I hope it clears up as the period leaves. This past weekend I kept forgetting to eat and then I'd start feeling really bad and not want to eat at all. I do a lot better with a routine when it comes to my food. 

I do think that this weight bump will pass. I do believe that I will be able to make this work and that I can get down to 140 before backpacking season. It's just going to take a lot of work and a steady effort. It takes ignoring these bumps instead of leaning into the doom and gloom they invite me to wallow in. It takes focusing on what I'm doing right and staying healthy. I'm not going to focus on weight this week. Instead, I'm going to focus on staying healthy and getting my exercise on. 

Counting Calories

For most of my adult life, I've been within 5 pounds of weighing 150 pounds. At 5 foot 3, that's in the overweight section of a BMI chart. I've weighed more, especially during my first marriage, and when I bulked up to do a Spartan Race. I've weighed less very rarely; one time when I was running nearly every day I dropped weight, but I didn't own a scale at that time, so I'm not sure how much. Another time I managed to dip down a bit with a 30 day diet challenge, but those results didn't last. 

And now, I'm trying something that the old me would have called impossible. I'm doing calorie counting, and I'm not miserable. I'm not hungry all the time. I am, at times, struggling to eat enough to support running and CrossFit. I had no idea calorie counting could be like this. 

Not that it isn't a pain in the butt to record every damn thing that I eat. Oh and don't get me started on the annoyances of weighing out food to make sure my portions are correct. But I've been doing this for nearly two months now, and it's been doable and I'm losing weight. 

And while the pounds are taking their time to leave, I can see differences in my body composition, in addition to the small actual weight loss so far. I'm planning on trying to get my weight down to 140 and then re-evaluating. I might try to go lower at that point, or I might try and stay there. I mean, I've gotten there before and couldn't maintain it, so if I can get there, staying there might be challenge enough. 

I'm hoping that the weight loss will help me do better on body weight movements in CrossFit, specifically pull ups. I've got the strength for pull ups, but I figure if I can manage to lose some of my extra padding without losing that muscle, then I should "magically" be able to do more and better pull ups. And so far, I'm even seeing some improvement with those, but it's nothing to write home about, yet. 

I think one of the big reasons that I couldn't have done this before is that I used to eat crap. Not literally, but I now consider most fast food to be food that I don't want in my body. Along with junk food. I wouldn't have been able to just cut those out for the sake of weight loss, but I had already cut those foods mostly out of my diet for my digestive issues. So calorie counting at this point wasn't about restricting foods, because I'd already done that. It was just about counting what I was consuming. 

And it doesn't hurt that my husband and I are in this together. It's super hard to make a dietary change when you live with someone who is not making those changes. It has been hard, even with us calorie counting together, because there are some foods that are great for weight loss that I just can't eat. Like popcorn. Oh, do I get jealous when that air popper starts perfuming the air with that delightful scent. 

But the drawbacks are outweighed by the support that we're able to give each other. We're both learning more about the caloric content of various foods, and we also talk about how we react to various foods. It's not just about calories for us, but also watching sodium intake (minimizing) and protein intake (maximizing).

I don't know where this particular journey is going to lead me, but I'm glad that I'm on this path. And grateful that I'm not walking it alone.  

Health Update

I've reached a point where I feel like I have a handle on the IBS, or whatever. I have been able to poop fairly consistently, and it has been many weeks since I last had constipation. I credit this to several factors. 

One, I've been consciously trying to tell my body how I want it to function. I've been trying to be an ally with my body, rather than ignoring it or punishing it. I want my body to function well, and so I've asked my body to help with that project. 

Two, I've been on a diet. My husband had hit a plateau with weight loss, and my incessant suggestions of calorie counting as a solution finally got through - with one condition! I had to join him in the experiment and do calorie counting too. While I had already tried to simplify my diet, I now have to keep a consistent food diary in order to count my calories. We have also both eliminated a lot of junk food from our diets. No more fast food at all, and a big reduction in processed foods. I also try to avoid any food product that includes "natural flavors" or "artificial flavors" on the ingredients list, because how can I know what I'm reacting to if I don't even know the actual ingredients? 

Three, I've been drinking tea with mucilaginous ingredients daily. I really think that it's helping to keep my bowels flowing smoothly. The intestines are, after all, mucous membranes. And my constipation seemed to have a big component of dry-out down there, so instead of drinking a throat tea when my throat hurts, I drink them daily. 

Four, I've been practicing Chi-Running. Chi-Running recruits a lot more of my abdominal muscles than regular running does, at least for me. A twisting motion is encouraged, which seems to provide a bit of encouragement to my digestion. And as I've been working on Chi-Running, I can feel that I'm working stored tension out of my shoulders. Tension and stress are supposed to exacerbate IBS, so anything that reduces those things in my life should be helpful. 

I had a thought the other day during my long run that I have stored tension in my body. It's as if some stress or tension was too much for my mind to deal with, and so I shoved that stress, that tension, directly into my body, specifically my left shoulder. It got to be a habit, and led to incredibly painful headaches whenever those muscles got challenged in other ways, like an intense shoulder workout at CrossFit. With that awareness, I'm trying to both stop storing that tension and to release what I had stored before. 

I'm trying to be more analytical about the sensations my body gives me, rather than emotionally reacting to pain as if it were danger. I've been told over and over that the signal I'm getting doesn't mean danger so I'm going to treat it more like data. Analyze what may have caused it, record the what/when and possible whys and look back to see whether it repeats. Maybe I should have tried this approach long ago, but it's hard to get out of your head when you're in pain. 

Have Some Ducks

I've been under the weather for over a week now. I'm grinding away at the book production, but it's all fits and starts as this illness eases up and then gets worse again. So, here are some recent pictures of my porch ducks. I am enjoying the snow at least :) 

12/25/21

12/29/21

1/5/22

Health Update

My body is actually doing really well right now. I've gone several nights without using a sleep aid beyond melatonin. I even had a nice normal bowel movement on Tuesday morning. 

The trial run of Trulance, which gave me diarrhea for about 4 hours each day for 7 days straight in early October (except when I had to hold it for a haircut - then I got constipated), did not meet my criteria for success. And afterwards, I was just feeling worse and worse, not just in my abdomen, but overall. I caught some kind of cold, but it wasn't that bad. 

But I was pretty sunk in a malaise. I started thinking about how I've been diagnosed with a functional disorder, and what that really means. Something is wrong in the flow of my digestion. Something that makes me hold on to fecal matter until it gets hard and difficult to pass. 

Instead of asking myself what was wrong when I had signals from my belly, I asked my body to let things flow. I rephrased it from pain to sensation. That doesn't always work, but it can help. 

I guess I've made the turn from looking to medicine to "cure" me to looking to my mind to "heal" myself. I'm not trying to deny science here, or disrespect medical professionals. But they honestly do NOT know what is going on with my digestion. My symptoms fit a pattern, and all they can do is try to treat symptoms. There's no ferreting out a root cause. 

At my last appointment, the doctor asked me several times about getting exercise and being out in the sunshine. He was, to me, clearly conveying that my issues had a psychological or mental aspect. Though he also said, several times, that I am not crazy. Yeah, dude, I know that. I've known crazy, and it ain't me. 

But not being crazy doesn't mean that my mental state won't affect my physical state. Our bodies and minds are tightly interwoven. One cannot exist without the other (not yet, anyway, insists the scifi fan in me). I remember hearing at some keynote address at a conference an idea that has stuck with me.

When one is nervous, one might feel butterflies in the stomach. If one names that feeling anxiety, it feels awful. But if one were to name it excitement, then the feeling is transformed into a positive one. 

It's nearly the one year anniversary of my mother's death. In less than two weeks, I will be at her memorial, celebrating her life. I have some anxieties about the whole event, from seeing my extended family to actually mourning her with my family. I'm not going to bottle them up. I'm going to emotion my way through and allow myself to feel what I feel. 

No swallowing those emotions and letting them interfere with my body's function. Not while I'm finally starting to feel better. 

I rather think that the diarrhea from the Trulance might have been a positive. I certainly felt empty after it was over, and maybe that's what I needed to start again. 

I'm still getting some intermittent intense sensations in what seems like the regions of my ovaries, but that is likely painful, but harmless, cysts. I will trust that my body will tell me if I need to do something more about them. 

Maybe if I repeat that enough times to myself it will work. I figure it has as much of a chance as anything else I've tried. And it's cheaper. 

Health Update

Warning: frank talk about poop to follow. 

I've pretty much been in pain every day for the past couple years. Maybe not the whole time, and mostly at a level that I can bear, but still. So I decided to try and push the gastro doc to actually do something to treat me instead of, like the last one, brushing me off with vague instructions never to eat fiber again. 

The first such attempt turned out awful. The pill pretty much destroyed my weekend and my butt. Instead of a cessation of pain, I got diarrhea and vomiting on day one, which faded to diarrhea only the next few days. I stopped that one, but it still hasn't fully left my system. 

And now I have to decide whether I try the next one or just give up on Western medicine entirely and try something different. My husband and I recently watched a convincing video on the importance of the microbiome on gut health, but when I brought that up with the doc he said that there wasn't enough robust evidence for them to do that kind of testing at his practice. 

To which I wonder exactly what kind of rigorous studies the medication he did give me has gone through. And I really can't help but wonder how much money the pharmaceutical companies are paying to convince doctors that their drugs are good. Sure, the drugs need to pass FDA approval, but they are not infallible or proof against lobbyist dollars. 

Writing that makes me feel like a conspiracy theorist. But I am finding very little trust in the American health care system within myself. The systems seem to be run purely by financial interests, mostly focused on the insurance companies' abilities to avoid paying for services. Heck, the doc even mentioned that if he went with this one drug, the insurance company would tend to fight him on it, and without insurance it costs like $300 for a month's supply. 

And, because I know how much some drugs cost without insurance, $300 per month doesn't actually sound that horrible, though I certainly don't want to pay that. 

It was also interesting for me to consider that even though the microbiome doesn't have robust enough research, something that has been essentially proven only to help some people, avoiding FODMAPs, was something that the doc recommended, bringing it up when I mentioned making my own applesauce because apples are high in FODMAPs (FODMAPs are a type of carbohydrate that have a "strong link" to digestive issues). Of course, fruits that are low in FODMAPs are high in fiber, such as citrus and green bananas. And while I have some doubts about the IBS diagnosis, the delayed gastric emptying thing feels correct. I've felt how my body no longer likes dealing with eating things like pineapple. So fibrous. So delicious :(

I had been eating bananas as my fiber for a while, but I switched when I read that those can cause constipation. And I rarely ate green ones. But I did try the low FODMAP diet, way back when this whole rollercoaster started. It had absolutely no efficacy for me. Low fiber did help for a time, but I have not found what it is that will bring me back to pain free equilibrium in my gut. 

There's a part of me that really wants to find an answer without resorting to prescription drugs. But the larger part of me just wants an answer. 

So I'm still looking.