Friday, August 08, 2008

Weight loss goal

A reasonable, healthy weight for my height and frame is 125 pounds. It's the weight I should be. Maintaining that weight, alas, has been a major struggle these past few years. I could make excuses, lots of them...but that would not keep the weight off.

So I'm challenging myself publicly: 5 pounds in 50 days. It's do-able.

Help keep me accountable, OK?

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12 comments:

  1. Yikes, I will nag you if you will nag me, but my goal is more long range and a little more of a challenge to get it done with, but I figure I should shoot for the moon and get off the ground at least.

    I was doing well until I fell down a set of steps in 2006, breaking one of the metatarsals in my right foot.

    50 lbs by the end of this year.

    That's 2 1/2 lbs per week, which is only doable if you combine exercise with diet.

    So far, I've lost 7.

    But that makes 50 to go (actually, a few less than that, but we'll say 50). Corrie is working out and is doing great, according to the little meter she has on her site -- have you seen that gadget?

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  2. OK, I just put up my weight loss ticker. You can just display it to show the number of lbs you want to lose, and there are other kinds of tickers they have available, and you can make it public or private information. Check out Corrie's or my blog to see them at the bottom of the page.

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  3. Foot injuries = not fun at all.

    I say this as someone who has lost count of how many times I've broken toes. You know what I discovered? Breaking your little toe can be surprisingly painful, but everyone just laughs at you if you mention it. Somehow saying, "My little toe is broken and it hurts" strikes people as hilariously wimpy beyond words and makes them sing "And this little piggy cried wee-wee-wee all the way home" to you.

    During my pregnancy with Child #3, I tore the toenail off my big toe while jerking opening a door. It made for a very dramatic entrance. It was also nightmarishly painful --- probably the closest I've ever been to going into shock. I understand why this is used as torture. I was ready to confess to anything and everything, if someone could have just made the pain stop.

    When I was pregnant with Child #6, I broke the second toe. Because, by then, I had broken toes several times, I tried to ignore it (after initially crumpling to the ground and crying near hysterically) and go on with cooking dinner, etc., until I could barely walk on my swollen, extremely bruised foot. My doctor thought the x-rays looked so horrible that he sent me to an orthopedic surgeon. He said, "That's what a bad break and dislocation looks like on a very pregnant woman." Oh, well...

    I had no idea it would be so hard to drive with my right foot throbbing. Exercise? Walk more than a few steps? Impossible.

    Days before my black belt test, I dropped a desk on my toe. Ouch. (The week before, I thought I'd broken my thumb, but it turned out to be "only" sprained. It certainly didn't make my test any easier!)

    Then there was the time that a rather hefty student was literally thrown onto my foot. I felt so silly and inept for not getting out of the way, so I pretended as if all was well. By the end of class, I was limping and the foot was quite swollen --- not only on top, but underneath. A sensible person would have gone to the doctor, but I thought I was somewhat of an expert at taking care of foot injuries by then. It sidelined me for more than six weeks. I could teach, but any sort of exercise was out of the question. I had to keep my foot wrapped and taped while I hobbled about, fearing anyone getting even close to my foot. Later on, a friend of mine fussed at me for being a complete doofus for not going to the doctor. But, by then, it was too late...

    Probably more than anyone wanted to know. But I can understand how debilitating foot injuries can be!

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  4. I didn't go to the doctor, either. Reason being is I know what happened, I knew right where the break was, I knew it was only going to be wrapped, and the major concern for an otherwise healthy person is blood clots, so I simply made sure during the first few days I took agents that act as blood thinners.

    But I do need to schedule some other exams, that reminds me . . .

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  5. Blood clots? I never thought about that...

    I've used the tickers before, but thanks for the reminder. There's one now on the bottom of my blog...

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  6. I just updated my Weight Loss Ticker.

    Wow! 125 lbs?! I have found that I have a lot more muscle than the average woman and even when I was very fit and had a body fat of under 20% (competitive body building), I couldn't get down to 125 pounds. 130 lbs was what I weighed when my body fat was 18% and I am 5' 5". The weight charts say that I should weigh about that for a small frame but I will be happy to reach my goal weight which is in the "large frame" category! :-)

    My goal is to be in the healthy range of the BMI charts. I am just about there. I have gone down over 7 points on the BMI chart since the beginning of February.

    Lynn, 50 pounds by December is a very noble goal! It has taken me 6 months to get off 41 pounds and I have exercised 6 days a week and eaten right all this time. No cheating at all. Remember exercise adds muscle, which weighs more than fat. So, inches and how your clothes are fitting are sometimes a better indication on how well you are doing.

    There are some weeks I have lost 2 or more pounds but most weeks, I lost 1. I thought it would come off quicker. It was discouraging at times because I was so faithful and I have been so diligent. But, I just keep on keeping on and I try not to step on the scale very often.

    Once I get to my goal, which is 14 more pounds, I will reevaluate how much more I would like to lose.

    Rebecca really encouraged me a while back with her blog posts on this subject.

    Thanks, Rebecca!

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  7. Corrie, I'm 5'4" and have a very tiny frame. In fact, one if the reasons exercise is so important to me is because I'm at such high risk for osteoporosis. Until babies, my weight tended to range from 103-108.

    When I'm exercising a lot,125 puts me at a healthy body fat percentage -- and I tend to prefer that as a more accurate indicator than BMI.

    The older I get, the harder it is to lose weight and keep it off. But my mother tells me that will change. She now looks like a slim teenager and is worried about losing too much weight!

    Corrie, I'm impressed with what great shape you're in and how hard you've been working!

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  8. Lynn, one of the healthiest programs I know for dramatic weight loss and increased fitness is "Body for Life". There's a book by that name by Bill Phillips.

    I didn't discover it until after I'd lost most of my initial weight, but it's very similar to the program my personal trainer put me on.

    Corrie is right that the pounds on the scale don't tell the whole story. When I started losing weight, it was right after my "fall to grace", so most of my wardrobe was still baggy/frumpy stuff. I was wearing size 12 for the most part but had just been aghast to discover that some of my aunt's size 14 clothes seemed to fit me very well. (You have to realize that, until having babies, I had to "take in" my size 4 clothes...and that when I tried to buy maternity clothes with Child #1, a rude saleswoman told me, "Usually people your size don't get pregnant!")

    After a weight loss that didn't seem like that many pounds, compared to what friends of mine have lost, I was down to a size 6. And, for the first time in my life, I had muscle definition.

    Around the time that I first dropped to 125 pounds (I've been regaining and losing 5-10 pounds for about two years now) I consulted some medical weight charts that claimed 125 was overweight for my size and frame! But that didn't take into account muscle, or body fat percentage.

    My personal trainer was a strong believer in body fat percentage being the most reliable indicator of healthy "weight". She rarely stepped on the scale. But, because i no longer work with a trainer, I really don't have an accurate way of measuring my body fat.

    Lynn, keep us posted --- literally --- on how you're doing!

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  9. I will keep you all posted, I think this already has been helpful. I go to my blog almost every day, so the reminder is staring me in the face.

    Corrie, I have been exercising already. Last night I biked a half hour in my quiet, well lighted neighborhood, and could have done a lot more. I don't intend to do, at this point, much more than aerobic conditioning. And that does do a little bit for the musculature, but not nearly the kind of work weight training would do. What it does we all know -- helps keep the "metabolism" (whatever that mechanism is) higher for longer, and helps convert food to energy more, instead of fat.

    I hope to do weight training as time goes on, so know the actual weight will be much more slow then, but keeping muscle mass high is a crucial factor in slowing down the effects of aging, and we all need to emphasize it more as we get older.

    What I do need to start is drinking more water. I'm a coffee addict, and know that is counter-productive if I'm trying to lose weight. Fat requires H20 in order to metabolize.

    Thanks for asking, I need the help, gals. Done well so far yesterday and today, except for the water. I have this quart jar in front of me, so here goes . . .

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  10. Lynn, I discovered that the key to my weight loss --- and the key to the highly successful "Body for Life" program --- was including weight training from the very beginning. Muscles actually burn more calories than do fat, so increasing muscle mass is one of the best ways to jump-start weight loss.

    Women tend to worry about becoming more "bulky" but it really isn't going to happen. Also, women worry that adding muscle will make them gain weight. Trust me; it takes a lot of work to build up a few pounds of muscle. By then you'll have lost so much fat, that you won't even notice any weight gain, or slowing of weight loss.

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  11. I agree, and that is why most men who want to lose weight can lose it faster than most women can. Their metabolisms are faster because they have more muscle mass to maintain. (grrrrrr!) What I think I'll do is work on upper body stuff when I do start, and allow the biking and jogging to slowly build up the lower extremeties until I feel like doing mild weight training with them.

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  12. Hi Rebecca,

    How do you measure body fat?

    I am down to a size 12, just now, from a size 18/20. So, I guess that it is all an individual thing?

    My goal is to be in a size 8 and I am guessing that will be in another 20 lbs.

    I agree that working out with weights is so vital to any weight loss program. I know that I am slimmer looking than most people who weigh as much as I do because I focus on building muscle as opposed to just dieting.

    As far as the pushup challenge? Just color me a wimp! :-)

    How do I find a dojo in my area?

    Lynn, I am proud of you and all that you are doing.

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