Saturday:  273.2 lbs., burned 4746, consumed 1494.
Today:  274.8 lbs., Activities:  3.14 miles on the real bike.

Riding around on my bike, I’m out there in the public, on display for all to see.

Given that my job requires a good amount of public speaking and that I love getting up in front of a group of people to teach a class, you’d think that I would not be shy about riding down the side of a street on my bicycle — but I am.  Okay, maybe “shy” isn’t the right word.  Cautious is closer.  I  love riding out there in the breeze, experiencing the scents and scenes that you miss from inside a car - but I’m cautiously intimidated by who I might meet up with out there.

Not thieves or robbers.  No, meeting up with your typical mugger-type never even occurred to me.  No, it’s a different kind of bad guy I’m cautious about. 

There are a few people out there in the general public (very few, thank God) that feel it necessary to somehow comment on the outward appearance of anyone who weighs more than they deem acceptable.  A while back it was a man - a full grown man - who called me “Hippo!”  Last week it was a guy in a pickup truck who pointed and laughed at me, right to my face.  And then this week it was a teenager who pointed and shouted, “Hoooooooly CRAP!”

I have been overweight since I was nine years old.  You’d think I’d be immune to this type of attention by now.  But I’m not.  And I never will be.

I am going to lose this weight.  It might take me a year, it might take me two, but I definitely WILL be healthy and fit.  But I’m not doing it for the jerks of the world that would humiliate me for daring to appear in public in my big ugly fat suit.  I’m doing it because I want to feel good, to feel healthy, to feel fit, to feel comfortable in my own skin, not because of how people look at me, but because of how I FEEL.

It’s just kind of sad that this type of discrimination against a whole class of people is still so prevalent.  No, the “overweight people class” is not a protected one, but in my opinion it should be.  It’s not okay to shout out your car window at a group of people who are part of a minority ethnic group.  It’s not okay to pay someone less or pass someone up for a promotion because they have a disability.  And it’s not okay to not consider hiring someone – just because they are fat.  “Oh if she’s fat, she must be lazy.”  Makes about as much sense as judging someone’s intelligence by their skin color.  Fat does NOT equal lazy.

*Sigh*   *Stepping off soap box.*

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Yesterday:  274.4 lbs., burned 2300, consumed 1529.
Today:  273.2 lbs., Activities:  14.4 miles on the real bike.

Yesterday, fitbefore40 asked me a question in a comment to my blog, so today I’m gonna answer that question.

I have a question for you, have you asked a medical professional about the safety of continuously eating fewer calories than you are burning off? I’m just wondering how long you can do this without doing any harm to yourself…I’ve heard that undercutting your daily calorie requirements by 500 is reasonable (which would lead to a pound a week lost) but you seem to me going a lot more than that. Thanks for answering this for me and again I wish you much success 

Thanks for the encouragement, fb40, and for your concern.  :)  When I first read your question I actually read it wrong - but then I went back and read it again and saw the word “requirements,” aha!  I’m assuming that by “daily calorie requirements” you mean “the amount of calories a person needs to consume to maintain their current weight, at their current level of activity.”  If so, then yes, what you heard is correct.  If a person eats 500 calories less each day than the amount of calories their body needs to consume to maintain current weight at current level of activity - then after a week, their body will have utilized 3500 calories of stored fat, which is equal to one pound.

As to your question - yes, I did speak with my doctor.

Before I tell what she said, I just want to clarify a little something.  I have Graves Disease, an autoimmune disorder that affects my thyroid gland.  I have to take pills every single day or my thyroid will get all wacky and when that happens I get very sick.  The pills turn my metabolism WAY down.

I have my account at FitDay set at “sedentary/bed-bound” because that’s the lowest option they offer.  So when I post that I burned 2300 calories - that’s what FitDay says that I burn at my current weight — if I stayed in bed all day.  I don’t stay in bed all day, I work a full-time job - but even so, that figure is probably a bit overstated.  According to the spreadsheet I keep, it’s probably more like about 1900.

So — if I do nothing different — no exercise, just my daily grind at the office — I will maintain my current weight if I eat 1900 calories a day.  I generally stay right within the 1400-1600 calorie range.  I have had a few days when I “forgot” to eat and dropped below that range, and quite a few days when I went above. 

So here’s what I say:

- Don’t eat less than 1200 calories a day — as a habit.  If you habitually eat below that level, your body will assume that starvation is imminent and its metabolism will shut down to conserve stored fat.
- Eat more whole foods.
- Get moving.  Start slow if you need to.  Listen to your body.  If it hurts or if it’s swollen, let it heal.  Then do it again and push a little harder, farther, faster.
- Eat a little less than your body needs for maintaining your current weight and level of activity - then crank up the activities and burn off that stored energy faster. 

For me with my funky metabolism, it doesn’t exactly burn fast either way.  I’ve been doing this for 14 weeks and I’ve lost 12 lbs. so far.  Works out to LESS than a pound a week.  I didn’t really exercise, though, the first 4 weeks - and guess what - I didn’t really lose any weight either.

Okay, here it is, what my doctor said:

“Go for it, Eileen.”

She was very supportive.  She said as long as I didn’t starve myself, that I could exercise as much as I wanted.

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