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Old 05-10-2007, 03:11 PM   #1  
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Hi all,

This is going to be a long, unfocused, meandering and self-indulgent post. I think I’m just looking for insights, suggestions or help processing what I need to do to make this work. Thanks to those of you who manage to read all the way through!

Firstly, let me tell you my weight history. When I started grad school 8 years ago, at age 23, I was at an all-time low weight of about 136. It didn’t last long. I started packing on the pounds in grad school and eventually reached 185 pounds, where I stayed for several years. At the beginning of 2005, I decided that enough was enough and I would lose weight instead of just talking about it. I did a very strict calorie-counting plan (1200-1300 cal/day) along with intensive exercise (60 mins of intensive cardio 6 days/week.) The weight came off very quickly and I was both pleased at what I had accomplished and annoyed with myself for having taken so long to actually do it. I didn’t have a goal weight at that time—I had started with the idea of 155 (about what I had been in college), but once I got there, there seemed no reason to stop when there was still so much weight to lose. My plan had been to lose weight and then increase my calories to 1800/day for a couple of months, and then up to 2200 or wherever I needed to be to maintain. I got waylaid though. I moved overseas to my native country for 2 months when I was about 145 and I found counting calories to be very difficult. I kept up my cardio routine while I was there, but I did start to eat more bread and other stuff that I probably shouldn’t, and I stopped logging my food. Nevertheless, I continued to lose and when I got back to the US, I was 142 and quite happy at that weight.

I managed to stay between 142 and 143 for the next year and a half. We moved across country in September of 2005 and I never got into the habit of working out once we got here. Still, I was waitressing quite a bit and eating relatively sensibly, although my wine consumption increased greatly. It all went bad this past winter. I gained about 12 pounds really quickly (I developed a cheese habit) and I was terrified that I was going to wake up one morning and find myself at 185 pounds, or higher. That is when I found 3FC. I took a much more moderate approach to re-losing those 12 pounds—45 mins cardio 5 days a week, with 1800-2000 calories a day. (I’m tall. I get lots of calories.)

So now I’m at 141 (on my scale, of course, which is where all this drama has played out since college. The scale at the Y with its accurate weight can be damned!) I think I look pretty good. I have some trouble figuring out exactly how thin I need to be. Sometimes I look at myself and my internal teenager tells me, ugh, you still have a little pudge on your tummy, your thighs are not skinny and you carry too much weight in your arms. At other times I think, ****, I’m an academic, not a swimsuit model, and a few extra pounds on my frame aren’t a big deal. I wear a size 6, I look decent in my clothes and I think, in the end, that I’m happier weighing between 140-145 and having some lee-way in my diet than weighing 135 and being incredibly strict. I don’t want to live life without cheese, chocolate and wine, and I think I’m making a realistic trade-off between a good and comfortable life and being fit and slim. I also feel that this is a comfortable weight for my body because I was able to maintain it for 18 months without exercising regularly or paying particularly careful attention to what I was eating.

So now I have to figure out what I need to do to maintain this weight. I don’t mind if I lose another pound or gain a pound, really, the important thing is to keep on being able to fit into my clothes and to feel comfortable and happy with my weight. My tentative plan is go on all the way up to 2200 calories a day and keep counting for a few months. I may gain or I may lose with those calories. My guess is that I might still lose. I don’t have a sense, really, of what 2200 calories a day really looks like. I do want to stick with the gym this time though. The gym is crucial. I have started lifting weights in addition to doing cardio, and part of the reason for that is that it will give me non-scale goals that keep interested and engaged with dragging myself to the gym each day. I’m not sure what to do about cardio. I have been doing 45 mins 5 days a week. I wonder if that will be overkill and whether I can safely cut down to 30 minutes? (The 2200 calories a day is calculated without taking exercise into account. I think I could eat that many and never go to the gym again. It makes me wonder how the **** I’m always gaining weight. 2200-2300 seems like so many!) I am also slightly concerned, and this might seem stupid, about how dramatically my body might change with lifting weights. Is it going to get smaller? Bigger? I have no idea. I like the idea, in theory, of turning fat into muscle and becoming a ‘furnace’ for calorie-burning. My major issue here is that my life is about to change dramatically. In September, I am about to go from being a full-time grad student (I spend my days, at home, working on my dissertation and basically ordering my time as I choose) to being a full-time professor, who is supposed to work in an office, during particular hours of the day. The weight-training seems important to me because it will keep me going to the gym even after I lose ownership of all my time. On the flip-side, and this is really concerning me, I need to buy, for the first time, an entire professional wardrobe. I need dress pants and shirts and jackets and a suit, and they need to be able to last for several years. I will need to be able to wear that suit while I’m searching for a permanent academic job, and going to conferences for the next few years. Since quite a large outlay of cash (and time—I live in the country and have to drive 5 hours to go clothes shopping) I am really concerned that I be at a weight, when I go shopping, that I can comfortably maintain for the next few years. I think, if it weren’t for this clothing business, I’d probably try and drop down to 135 and see what happened. But I am terribly afraid that if I do that, I won’t be able to keep at that low a weight and will gain thousands of pounds in reaction to it and then all my work clothes will be too small and I’ll have to spend $800 building a new, fat professional wardrobe, with knits and no shirts with buttons. (I carry extra weight in my chest.)

So, to those of you persevering types who have made it all the way to the end of this post, what do you think of the way I am thinking about all of this? Does my calorie-intake plan seem reasonable? What should I be doing with exercise? What will I do if I accidentally lose too much fat and fit into a size 4 and then can’t sustain it???

Thanks so much to all of you for all the support and information I’ve received while losing this re-gained weight. I feel much smarter about and more in control of my body and my nutrition than I did when I lost 40 pounds without 3FC.
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Old 05-10-2007, 04:45 PM   #2  
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Hi. It can be really confusing. I've only been at maintenance for a little over 10 months. Like you , I had considered going for 135 instead of 145, but I like how I look and feel now. Plus, this is hard enough for me and I think trying to maintain at 135 for my body would be extremely difficult. Plus, my whole new wardrobe now fits and I dont' want to have to go buy more, even smaller clothes or look frumpy in the clothes that I now have.

As for your calorie goals, I think it would be awesome to be able to maintain at 2200 cal's a day. That is a lot of food. I am maintaining at about 1600, anything more and I gain. I'd make the increase gradually about 100 cals. at a time and see how it goes while recording the amt. of daily cal's and daily exercise . I normally walk 30-60 min's about 5 days a week. I do some floor exercises for Ab's and legs. I use my elliptical sporadically. You can always adjust your cal's and exercise level to keep your weight in the "zone" that you want it in.

Good luck and I wish you the best with your maintenance success.
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Old 05-10-2007, 04:47 PM   #3  
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Whew, a lot to digest. I don't have a lot of answers for you, but lots of support, as many of us have been in your situation (at lease the weight loss part of it) with varying degrees of success.

Let me answer a small part, and think about some of the rest, and let others chime in, as I know they will.

In my opinion, you can certainly cut back the cardio to 30 min a day, esp now that you're also doing weight lifting. And don't forget, the WL will help you look smaller at the same weight.

As to the calorie level - as someone here at 3FC has said (Meg?) - we're all an experiment of one! All the calorie counters say I can maintain at a higher level than I know is true. So you'll just have to experiment.

And buying all new clothes - what fun!

Where in Washington are you? I've lived in Seattle twice. Once to go to graduate school, and again when my husband had a bone marrow transplant. I'd go back to Washington (not necessarily to living right in Seattle) in a heartbeat, but our feet are rooted in Alaska for now.
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