Laying down the law

[annathepiper]

In which Anna rants, mostly to solidify this for her own benefit, about Certain Resolutions she must make about her weight.


Okay, so I'm closing in on June, and so far have not been able to lose any weight at all ever since stabilizing my Synthroid dosage. I've picked up ten pounds or so since my thyroid surgery round two, and despite regular exercise (upwards of three and a half and often four to four and a half miles a day during the week, plus walking and sometimes biking on the weekends), I have not been able to drop away from where I was as of January, when I went on my current dosage.

This is exceedingly vexing to me. My endoc has already told me to back off the snackies and have more fruit for lunch, advice which I have been erratic about implementing up till now, but now my vexation has gotten to the point that I have to deal with this. So I've got to lay down the law.

To wit,

* Do what my endoc has actually been telling me. This means back off the goddamned snacks, no matter how tempting a frappucino might be. I am hoping that perhaps I can motivate myself by hardcore Good Snack Avoidance Behavior during the week and allowing myself a treat of some sort on the weekends. So far I have allowed myself the exception of some rice crackers when I get home from work.

* Eat more fruit. As of last week I've started trying to break the habit of "sandwich and chips" or "sandwich and cookie" for lunch and make it be "sandwich and fruit" instead. This is fairly easy to do at work, though as I am about to be between contracts again, some extra effort will be required on days I'm eating lunch at home.

* Enforce the soda quota. This means one soda in the morning, one just after lunch during work days and no soda in the evenings. A similar quota must be enforced on weekends, and again, on days when I'm between contracts at home.

* Maintain the exercise. If I get a contract at Borg, pick one day a week to be Biking Day and see if I can start off at that level of biking frequency. Build up as necessary. Otherwise, if I wind up between contracts for a while, resume the treadmill and throw in outside walking as well to see if I can continue to keep up a daily mileage similar to what I've been doing on this contract's commute.

* Drink water. Especially during the long stretches of afternoon where I start getting peckish (or have the last couple of days, at any rate), and temptation to raid the vending machine is exceedingly high.

I've been trying to keep up the Good Snack Avoidance Behavior as well as the consumption of fruit with lunch for about a week now, with the exception of allowing myself snacks at the Street Fair on the grounds that I was biking that day and could damn well stand a snack. So far nothing interesting has happened to my weight, but I am getting hungrier at the right times, so that's a start.

(It occurs to me that this probably means I should eschew the tasty free popcorn and soda at the movie tomorrow, especially given that I will be eating sushi immediately after. Guh!)

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

...if it's not too nosy to ask, why is your weight actually of concern...? does it affect your synthroid dosage or something?

[annathepiper]

My weight will in fact affect my Synthroid dosage... somebody of a lower weight will require a lesser dosage than someone of a higher one, as I understand it. But that isn't the source of concern for me here. The vexation is that I can feel the extra weight dragging at my body, causing me lower back pain and making me slower and sluggish.

And on top of that, I was making a hardcore effort to lose two pounds a month before my thyroid went batshit. I started off around 172 and made it down to the mid-160's, only to shoot up to 175, 176 or so as we tried to figure out what Synthroid dosage I should be taking. Which completely erased all the progress I'd made before, which is vexing to me on general principles.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

*nod* that does sound vexing. for lower back pain, there's a five-minute yoga routine for the back in miriam austein's "yoga for wimps" which has completely saved my ass (or, well, my lower back :) -- if you need a copy let me know and i'll send you one. (i'm quite the evangelist for this; i think i've sent out four so far :)

[annathepiper]

I may take you up on that! Meanwhile, there's some stretching exercises that Dara showed me that I try to do any time the back gets really annoyed--and my chiropractor made me start sleeping with a pillow between my legs. Usually that helps. And if I can get the weight down that'll help more.

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

The 2200 calorie diet that I was on was a very good meal plan that had me losing weight while pregnant; about 10 pounds. Would you like a copy? I plan to use it as a guideline, once I can get back to the grocery store to buy fruit; I love my hubby dearly, but he's not a fruits-and-veggies person. :)

My "eat more fruit" attempts at work, incidentally, were to keep a mini fridge ($30 or less at Target!) at my desk and stock it with potted fruit (applesauce, peaches, pears, mandarin oranges) and fruit juice boxes (Apple & Eve or Juicy Juice are good and low in added sugar), and not carry any change. I hate borrowing money, so hitting the vending machine was not an option. :) It kinda worked for me.

[annathepiper]

Re: the diet.... um! Sure. I don't know if I'll use it--I want to see if these Rules I have laid down for myself will help me out, and I need to give that time to work. But other possibilities to explore would be very helpful. :)

Keeping a fridge at work is unfortunately not an option for me--especially not if I go back to contracting on my last team at Microsoft, where I didn't even have my own desk or a cube to put it in. On the other hand, Microsoft cafeterias are good about stocking fresh fruit and fruit juices, so I can build myself a lunch that won't suck too much should I wind up back there.

Really, lately, it's the damned tasty drinkables and snackies at Starbucks and at Seattle's Best Coffee that have been absolutely killing me.

[cafiorello.livejournal.com]

If possible, rather than just denying yourself those tasty treats with pure willpower, substitute something. I need to have something that tastes good in my mouth, so usually I buy sugarless gum...and make sure I'm chewing some when I pass a Starbucks!

[annathepiper]

So far, oddly enough, I have found that if I'm distracting myself with a book while I'm walking, that helps a lot. Then I get caught up in what I'm reading and less likely to go "ooooo frappucino" and divert into the Starbucks as I go by. :)

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain, my munchies-resistance is low. :)

I had the misfortune of being Pond Scum at my previous job, so wasn't willing to brave the refrigerators. There was free stuff in there, but it should probably have been named and given three feedings a day. (Yuck.)

I'll dig up the meal plan and fire you off a copy! It's a really interesting resource, at the very least, which is why I offer. It taught me more about nutrition than I ever anticipated!

[jessicac.livejournal.com]

Cut high fructose corn syrup as much as possible:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/02/18/FDGS24VKMH1.DTL

:)

[annathepiper]

Yeah, Dara's been talking about avoiding the high fructose corn syrup lately; I've taken to using the tasty ginger-flavored dressing she's been having with her salads. I figure some of the things I'm trying to establish here as lunch practices, not to mention good snack behavior, will help me out with this. :) Thanks!

[rmd.livejournal.com]

if web support groups and tools on the INTARWEB help you, check out sparkpeople.com. kind of twee in spots, but generally good site for tracking food (and it does the nutritional info breakdown for you if it knows) and goals, like "drink 8 glasses of water today" and stuff.

i find their food database and ui better than fitday.com's.

[annathepiper]

Cool, thank you. :) I don't know if I'll use those, but it's nice to know that they're there!

[grian-ruadh.livejournal.com]

Also being one of those people tied to synthetic thyroid hormone, I can affirm to all and sundry that this sort of disorder combined with excess weight is majorly tied to blood sugar imbalances (in both directions) and eventually to nastiness like diabetes and heart disease. So getting the weight down is really important for reasons other than looking good in new jeans. :)

Personally, I made huge progress by just cutting out sugared soda all together and replacing it with flavored water. Forty pounds just fell off. After that, I started doing some research and ended up cutting all sugar out of my diet resulting in another ninety pounds vacating the premises over a period of about nine months. It might not be the route everyone wants to go, but it worked gangbusters for me (still is) and I'm healthier now than I have been in years. If you can't bear life without soda, Diet Rite is really good and it doesn't contain aspartame (something to avoid like the plague).

Hope this helps!

[annathepiper]

I've been drinking diet soda for years, long before I knew I had any thyroid issues, so it's not the sugar in the soda that's an issue for me, I think. I had noted before that cutting down to two sodas a day was doing me good, though--not only because it had me losing a couple pounds a month at a nice easy pace, but also just because of having less caffeine in my system.

I had been trying to enforce that soda quota again lately, but that hasn't been doing the trick--hence the effort to enforce some other Rules. I'll have to see how these things go. That flavored wather concept, though, that might be something I could look into if this version of the Plan doesn't help me long term.

Thanks very much for your input, it's appreciated. :)

[syn.livejournal.com]

Try a serving of yogurt or a small glass of milk with each meal as well, if you are lactose tolerant. Believe it or not, studies have shown that women, especially those over 30, who partiake of a lowfat dairy product with each meal tend to shed weight faster. It seems to have been working for me since I just had a baby and that along with my next suggestion are pretty much the only things I've been doing that could remotely resemble a 'diet' plan. I haven't been exercising or completely avoiding fattening foods.. and I've still been losing weight while I've been off work. Another thing, if you find yourself just dying for something sweet during the week, try some sherbert. It's non-fattening and it helps assuage the sweetooth. Other than that, the only other things I could suggest is to try to find a diet soda that you can tolerate and drink one of those a day instead of one of those other two times. Also, drink some orange or grapefruit juice. There's something about citrus fruits that help to burn fats off of the body.

Also, I'm glad to hear that the second surgery went well and that you've finally found the correct dosage. That'll help. The main thing is not to lose heart. Keep your chin up, girl. :)

[annathepiper]

I have milk every night with dinner, though I suppose I could stand to have more milk than I actually do. I'm also taking a lot of calcium, though, so I think that kind of balances out the milk intake, at least a bit. Yogurt might be doable, though. I've had some occasionally and not disliked it; I'll have to see how that works out. Especially with my current job schedule about to rearrange itself in a few more weeks.

So far though the new Rules seem to be helping. Just doing the hardcore snack avoidance and having fruit with lunch instead of a cookie or chips, plus my usual exercise, has already dropped me a half a pound every day for the last four days. The tricky part is going to be seeing whether I can keep up that trend.

As I've mentioned elsewhere on the thread, I've been drinking diet soda for years already--I just don't like most regular sodas. My current soda quota in conjunction with the other Rules seems to be working pretty well so far, but if I need to do any more tweaking of the Rules, dropping my afternoon soda might happen. We'll have to see.

Indeed, the second surgery went much more smoothly than the first, and being on the right Synthroid dosage for a while now has helped immensely!

Thanks for chiming in on this as well as the good wishes, they are much appreciated. :)

[syn.livejournal.com]

It's not just the calcium that helps from what I understand. There's some other factor that has to do with it. Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly what it is about milk that, in conjunction with the calcium, helps women to lose weight. Don't forget the citrus.. that is a natural fat burner and vitamin C is always good for the body. :)