Now I Really Feel Like A Failure
 

Hope I don't get flamed for this one.

As some of you may recall, I eat more than I would like to on workdays because I have a very physical job (spent five hours yesterday running a floor buffer on top of my regular work) and if I don't eat a sustaining breakfast and lunch I run out of energy and start feeling nauseous and headachey, and it's hard to keep going when I feel sick.

Now, though, I'm starting to wonder if those feelings are all in my head.

Why? Because of Laurie. Laurie is a woman who got called back to my department after being laid off from another department last winter. Under the union rules laid off employees have to be recalled to the first available job opening, which is how she ended up in custodial (formerly she worked in housekeeping). While she was out of work she lost over sixty pounds. That's sixty+ pounds since February.

And she's still losing weight. She told me she's doing it on a low carb plan, that she eats no grains, starches or sweets and limits her fruit to one serving a day. She doesn't eat lunch.

Every week she looks a little thinner. Right now she weighs in the mid 130s but she looks thinner than that. In spite of her low food intake she has no problem doing her job.

If she keeps it up in a month or so she will weigh less than me. She's only an inch taller than I am and right now in my eyes she looks like she's about the same size as me even though she says she's a size 10 which was my starting size.

I guess I want to say that I'm jealous because I've been permanently stuck at five pounds to goal and this girl is losing weight like there's no tomorrow. I can't use the excuse of needing the fuel to work because she's doing the same job on half the calories. If she can do it I should be able to as well.

I feel so confused and defeated right now.

:hug: first.
It must be really frustrating to be so close to where you want to be, and those of us who are short have to get lower than our taller sisters to look/be as slim.

I know it's hard but ignore your co-worker's progress. Yea, I know. Some people naturally lose faster; her diet doesn't sound very healthy to me; all manner of things that neither she nor you can help could be in play here.

As for you, because you're the only one you can control: How many calories Are you eating on work days? I understand about sustaining breakfasts and lunches while you're doing heavy work, is there anything you can shave off your evening meal on those days? (Not if it takes you unhealthily low, of course).
How many calories do you eat for lunch/breakfast on work days? (I didn't read the other thread). Could you experiment with shaving even 50 calories off each?

Not, not, not! to try and emulate her but because you say you've been stuck at this weight for a while. Just be careful not to muck around your body too much because another person has made you question yourself. :hug:

Every body is different.

Your weight is not your worth. How much you weigh (or are able to lose) has nothing to do with your worthiness as a human being. Nothing. At all.

What a great thing that your friend who was so overweight that she probably had health problems has been able to lose weight. What a great thing you have been able to, too.

What a great thing that you know how to take care of your body so you aren't getting sick.

If the worst thing in your life is 5 pounds, you are blessed beyond belief.

Why not move your goal line to where you are now so you can have a more fulfilling life not worried about 5 pounds. :smug:

Losing the weight is only half of the challenge. You have to keep it off, and so does she.

Comparing yourself to another is a slippery slope. It's always a losing battle because like seagirl said - every body is different. You might have 5 pounds more muscle mass. She might wear a padded bra that gives the illusion of body where there is none. (I know - I do this!) You have to give yourself credit for what you've accomplished and remember it's not a race. You will get there when your body is ready. Sometimes fixating on it, makes it that much harder, so try to focus on the positives. You are only 5 lbs from your goal! That's pretty admirable in and of itself!

I understand your feelings Magrat. I feel threatened by the fact that my boyfriend has started running and eating healthy. He'll never weigh less than I do but the way his weight just falls off effortlessly makes me sad and is somehow discouraging.

Ok well my first reacion is DUH!!!! Of course the girl is losing weight. Not eating lunch plus not eating carbs equals massive weight loss. Thats a no brainer. But the problem with that is if its sustainable or not. Carb diets are very popular because it works like a charm for losing weight. You lose the weight twice as fast and in places you never thought you could. However, if you can't stick with it for life the weight WILL come back (ive seen it happen to 2309482038 of my friends and me for that matter). Now, dont get me wrong, I am not bashing low carb diets. But I do think it is a personal thing. Some people live by them! Some peoples bodies do very well on them, others go crazy. As for energy, that too is individual. I have a coworker that did low carb and he said he has never felt better and his energy is the highest its ever been. When I did low carb, I had opposite effects. NO energy and felt horrible. Its all individual.

My point is, you are doing whats right for your body and you know you will be able to sustain your weight loss once you get to goal! Don't get discouraged by her or feel jealousy; use her as a tool of motivation anytime you feel like giving up! You CAN lose your last five pounds! :carrot:

Beautiful response, Seagirl. In this season of thanks, you cut right to it.

Be more at peace with this and do what's right for YOU and don't invite additional stress.

Be thankful it's five pounds and not a tumor you're trying to "remove". That being said, just do what you know your body needs. No comparing.

Originally Posted by Rosinante:
:hug: first.
It must be really frustrating to be so close to where you want to be, and those of us who are short have to get lower than our taller sisters to look/be as slim.

I know it's hard but ignore your co-worker's progress. Yea, I know. Some people naturally lose faster; her diet doesn't sound very healthy to me; all manner of things that neither she nor you can help could be in play here.

As for you, because you're the only one you can control: How many calories Are you eating on work days? I understand about sustaining breakfasts and lunches while you're doing heavy work, is there anything you can shave off your evening meal on those days? (Not if it takes you unhealthily low, of course).
How many calories do you eat for lunch/breakfast on work days? (I didn't read the other thread). Could you experiment with shaving even 50 calories off each?

Not, not, not! to try and emulate her but because you say you've been stuck at this weight for a while. Just be careful not to muck around your body too much because another person has made you question yourself. :hug:

I've been stuck at 115 pounds for going on two years now. My breakfasts average 350 to 400 calories. My lunches average 500 to 600 calories, and my dinners average 400 to 500 calories. I don't snack at work and my only treat is 2 or 3 squares of dark chocolate before bed. On workdays I eat between 1500 and 1700 calories, on weekends I eat about a third less.

I weigh and measure everything I eat and write everything down in a notebook. At the end of each week I add up the daily calorie totals and get a weekly average. I do the same thing at the end of each month.

Originally Posted by seagirl:
Every body is different.

Your weight is not your worth. How much you weigh (or are able to lose) has nothing to do with your worthiness as a human being. Nothing. At all.

What a great thing that your friend who was so overweight that she probably had health problems has been able to lose weight. What a great thing you have been able to, too.

What a great thing that you know how to take care of your body so you aren't getting sick.

If the worst thing in your life is 5 pounds, you are blessed beyond belief.

Why not move your goal line to where you are now so you can have a more fulfilling life not worried about 5 pounds. :smug:

I get what you are saying. But I know that I could drop the weight if I could keep my calories consistently at around 1200 a day. I can do that quite easily on weekends. But on workdays I get sick hungry on anything less than 1500. I'm not so much jealous of Laurie for her weight loss but because she can function on so much less food while doing the same heavy work.

And as far as just having five pounds to worry about being a blessing, remember that I'm short and five extra pounds on a short person shows like ten extra pounds on a average height person and like twenty extra pounds on a tall person.

Originally Posted by Dianne042425:
Ok well my first reacion is DUH!!!! Of course the girl is losing weight. Not eating lunch plus not eating carbs equals massive weight loss. Thats a no brainer. But the problem with that is if its sustainable or not. Carb diets are very popular because it works like a charm for losing weight. You lose the weight twice as fast and in places you never thought you could. However, if you can't stick with it for life the weight WILL come back (ive seen it happen to 2309482038 of my friends and me for that matter). Now, dont get me wrong, I am not bashing low carb diets. But I do think it is a personal thing. Some people live by them! Some peoples bodies do very well on them, others go crazy. As for energy, that too is individual. I have a coworker that did low carb and he said he has never felt better and his energy is the highest its ever been. When I did low carb, I had opposite effects. NO energy and felt horrible. Its all individual.

My point is, you are doing whats right for your body and you know you will be able to sustain your weight loss once you get to goal! Don't get discouraged by her or feel jealousy; use her as a tool of motivation anytime you feel like giving up! You CAN lose your last five pounds! :carrot:

I've tried doing low carb. Like you it made me feel horrible. I got headaches, was sick to my stomach constantly and had absolutely no energy.

Originally Posted by 4xcharm:
Losing the weight is only half of the challenge. You have to keep it off, and so does she.

Well I've kept off thirty pounds for nearly two years so I don't think I'll have any problems in that area.

Magrat, before I started working out first thing in the morning consistently (I am at the gym at 7:15 am), I was convinced I could never do that because the few times I'd tried it previously, I'd gotten lightheaded, dizzy and nearly fainted from just a few minutes on the stationary bike at that hour. When I realized 6 months ago that I literally had NO OTHER option for consistent exercise (and would never be able to keep my weight from yo-yo ing if I didn't exercise), I forced myself to start doing a bit more and a bit more in the morning; from walking 20 minutes, to yoga, to weights and now even cardio (and - ugh- HIIT). My point is, I went from feeling sick to feeling totally fine with like 100x the activity level that I previously had.

I'm pretty sure that if you adjust to it somewhat slowly, you COULD get down to 1200-1300 cal every day of the week. What if you made your breakfast and lunch 300 cal each, and packed 3 100-cal snacks (including lots of veggies with each one) to eat whenever you started to feel famished/lightheaded? A 400 cal dinner would then get you to 1300 cal for the day - a lot less than you're eating now, and you'd never be going more than 2-3 hours without food- never long enough to get hypoglycemic and faint.

I feel for you; I know what it's like to be "so near and yet so far" from goal (though certainly 2 years is longer than I've ever been at a plateau). It sucks and must be horrendously frustrating. But "if you keep doing what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got." You clearly need to find a way to lower your calories for a few months. Good luck!

Originally Posted by neurodoc:
Magrat, before I started working out first thing in the morning consistently (I am at the gym at 7:15 am), I was convinced I could never do that because the few times I'd tried it previously, I'd gotten lightheaded, dizzy and nearly fainted from just a few minutes on the stationary bike at that hour. When I realized 6 months ago that I literally had NO OTHER option for consistent exercise (and would never be able to keep my weight from yo-yo ing if I didn't exercise), I forced myself to start doing a bit more and a bit more in the morning; from walking 20 minutes, to yoga, to weights and now even cardio (and - ugh- HIIT). My point is, I went from feeling sick to feeling totally fine with like 100x the activity level that I previously had.

I'm pretty sure that if you adjust to it somewhat slowly, you COULD get down to 1200-1300 cal every day of the week. What if you made your breakfast and lunch 300 cal each, and packed 3 100-cal snacks (including lots of veggies with each one) to eat whenever you started to feel famished/lightheaded? A 400 cal dinner would then get you to 1300 cal for the day - a lot less than you're eating now, and you'd never be going more than 2-3 hours without food- never long enough to get hypoglycemic and faint.

I feel for you; I know what it's like to be "so near and yet so far" from goal (though certainly 2 years is longer than I've ever been at a plateau). It sucks and must be horrendously frustrating. But "if you keep doing what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got." You clearly need to find a way to lower your calories for a few months. Good luck!

Thank you for the reply. The suggestions in your middle paragraph sound great and would be quite doable were it for for the fact that the reason I don't snack at work is because I don't have time to. For reasons I won't go into here a while ago the breaks in my department were cut from twenty minutes twice a day to ten minutes twice a day. Ten minutes is barely enough time for me to rush down to the office, sign out for break, gulp down some water and hit the bathroom before I have to rush back to the office and sign back in for work. Before this happened I was eating smaller amounts at breakfast and lunch and packing two snacks. But now the only kind of snacks I have time for are the kinds of things that are ready to go and can be eaten in a couple of minutes, and I can't think of anything remotely healthy that fits that description, except possibly bananas and they're pretty high in calories. So my breakfast has to get me through until lunch and my lunch has to last me until dinner. I'm going seven and eight hours between meals, and believe me it's not by choice. By the way we have gone to the union about this reduction in break time (something which only happened in my department) but because the clause regarding breaks in the union handbook finishes with the words "at managements' discretion" they can't really do much to help the situation.

I have no problem whatsoever keeping my calories down on weekends, it's the workdays that get me. I'm jealous of Laurie because either she gets weak and hungry while dieting but is somehow able to ignore it better than I can, or she feels just fine eating very little. Also since she is doing low carb she probably has less appetite. I'd do low carb if my body would let me but as I posted before low carb makes me feel absolutely dreadful.

I'm beginning to think my only hope of ever losing the weight would be if I lost my job.

Magrat, I'm beginning to think that your feelings of weakness/dizziness (and need to comfort with food) are as much about the misery of your work situation as they are about a biological need.

That being said, if you pack your snacks carefully, you should be able to do it. For example, a low-fat string cheese is 60 calories, a ziplocked bag of baby carrots (1 oz) is 20 calories, and a whole-wheat cracker thin is 30 calories. It shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes (max) to eat that food. Snack #2 could be 1/2 oz peanut butter with 2 sticks of celery. Snack #3 could be a large apple and 6 almonds, or an unsweetened greek yoghurt sprinkled with Splenda. You get the idea- all of these are prepped at home, take just a few minutes to consume, and are filling and fiber-rich. Pack each snack individually, and if you must, put each in a separate lunch bag (complete with plastic spoon for the yogurt, or plastic knife for the peanut butter) labelled #1, #2 and #3.

Good luck.

Originally Posted by neurodoc:
Magrat, I'm beginning to think that your feelings of weakness/dizziness (and need to comfort with food) are as much about the misery of your work situation as they are about a biological need.

That being said, if you pack your snacks carefully, you should be able to do it. For example, a low-fat string cheese is 60 calories, a ziplocked bag of baby carrots (1 oz) is 20 calories, and a whole-wheat cracker thin is 30 calories. It shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes (max) to eat that food. Snack #2 could be 1/2 oz peanut butter with 2 sticks of celery. Snack #3 could be a large apple and 6 almonds, or an unsweetened greek yoghurt sprinkled with Splenda. You get the idea- all of these are prepped at home, take just a few minutes to consume, and are filling and fiber-rich. Pack each snack individually, and if you must, put each in a separate lunch bag (complete with plastic spoon for the yogurt, or plastic knife for the peanut butter) labelled #1, #2 and #3.

Good luck.

Thanks for the snack advice. I do want to emphatically emphasis however that I am not comforting myself with food because I don't like my job. I'm not comforting myself with food at all. My workday calories are higher than I would like them to be for the simple reason that I am doing hard physical labor for eight hours a day and I am experiencing honest to God gotta fuel the body or I won't be able to keep going hunger.

What I really need to do is figure out a way to lower my breakfast and lunch calories while still making the meals sustaining enough to get me through the workday.

Originally Posted by Magrat:
Thanks for the snack advice. I do want to emphatically emphasis however that I am not comforting myself with food because I don't like my job. I'm not comforting myself with food at all.

It's not that straightforward. I don't mean that you are drowning your sorrows in a pint of Haagen Dazs; I mean it's possible that the lightheaded/dizzy feeling you get if you don't eat x calories at lunch may be a psychological reaction to the stressors rather than a strictly biological reaction. Many people respond to stress and unpleasant situations with physical symptoms- frequent migraines, or chronic low back pain, or frequent bouts of abdominal cramps. These physical ailments often improve or disappear if the person's stressors are relieved.

The more important point is not what the feelings are from (psychological, hypoglycemia, inadequate calories) but what you can do about them. From everything I've read, frequent small meals ("snacks") are the most productive strategy; more effective than trying to fuel yourself for 4+ hours with a single ultra-filling but low calorie meal. If you're determined to try the latter anyway, obviously the more fiber and water you consume the more full you will feel, so a big bowl of diet fiber-1 cereal at breakfast, and a giant salad and bowl of vegetable soup at lunch would be very filling without adding significant calories.

Originally Posted by neurodoc:
It's not that straightforward. I don't mean that you are drowning your sorrows in a pint of Haagen Dazs; I mean it's possible that the lightheaded/dizzy feeling you get if you don't eat x calories at lunch may be a psychological reaction to the stressors rather than a strictly biological reaction. Many people respond to stress and unpleasant situations with physical symptoms- frequent migraines, or chronic low back pain, or frequent bouts of abdominal cramps. These physical ailments often improve or disappear if the person's stressors are relieved.

The more important point is not what the feelings are from (psychological, hypoglycemia, inadequate calories) but what you can do about them. From everything I've read, frequent small meals ("snacks") are the most productive strategy; more effective than trying to fuel yourself for 4+ hours with a single ultra-filling but low calorie meal. If you're determined to try the latter anyway, obviously the more fiber and water you consume the more full you will feel, so a big bowl of diet fiber-1 cereal at breakfast, and a giant salad and bowl of vegetable soup at lunch would be very filling without adding significant calories.

Neurodoc please please try to understand that I am not limiting myself to three meals a day on workdays by choice. I know that for weight loss purposes eating more frequently in the way to go. But that's simply not an option for me on workdays, much as I wish it was. As I've mentioned before I don't really have time to eat anything more than a quick bite during my breaks. And while I am actually working I am using strong chemicals, running equipment that requires two hands to operate and taking out laboratory trash which might contain toxic waste. I wear rubber gloves unless I am running a piece of equipment and then I wear work gloves.

As far as my meals go I'm not looking for fullness so much as satiety and staying power. Actually I hate the feeling of being overly full. The cereal does sound like a good alternative to oatmeal ( one of my go to breakfasts by the way) but salad and soup together is just too much volume for me.