When I went to see my dietitian, Ann, yesterday one of the topics was whether or not to continue to keep losing weight down to 135. I have been on this journey for a long time and have already met all of my medical goals now as well as gotten down to a pretty decent weight now. By all accounts everyone tells me that I have the right to be satisfied with the weight I am now and I look good enough to stop now if I want to. I have seriously considered that, but I still have some tummy fat that is effecting my back that I would like to take off if possible. So, I asked Ann how hard would it be on me to do this and if I would have a really restricted diet to maintain after I finished losing weight. She got out her calculator and we discussed maintenance calories along with the formula for exercise calories. CK does this all for you so I thought it was neat when she showed me how it was figured out. By the way, this really helped me to talk about this because one of the reasons I have had such a hard time in motivating myself to go back on my diet was I didn't want to go back down in calories when I reached a lower weight. By figuring out how many calories it would REALLY take to maintain 135-140 with my physical handicap and exercise intensity, I could now make a more informed decision on whether I wanted to continue my diet and be happy living with the caloric intake I would have at a 135-140 weight. When all was figured out, I could be happy. The way it figured out was like this:
You take your weight and multiply it by your activity level to get your maintenance level. 10 is a complete sedentary person and 15 is a marathon person. Someone like me is a exercise three to four times a week and burns around 200 calories at a time so I am around a 12. You can kind of figure out were you are in the scale of 10-15 from there. So at 135 X 12 = 1620 to maintain that weight. I could live with that. If I didn't exercise I could only eat 1350 calories, not much more than my weight loss diet is now. This let me know that this would be the lowest weight I would want to go to for sure just in the fact I would never want to eat below 1350 calories at my age and energy level. It all is coming together now. There is mo way I am going to get down lower with my inability to exercise at a higher level. Now since I figured out that I could go down to 135 -140 and feel comfortable with the calories at the maintenance level, I decided I would go ahead and try to lose a few more pounds. If for all other purposes to get my discipline back in order to prepare for a proper transition to maintenance. Which by the way Ann said you should do 50 calories every two weeks till you reach your maintenance level. Weight Watchers has you do the same thing if I remember correctly. This is so your metabolism will get used to the extra calories and not start gaining with them, but maintaining with them. Of course, you have to coordinate all this with your exercise level as I discussed earlier.
Now that I established that I have to go back on the diet for two purposes: one, to lose some of the old belly fat; two, to prepare properly for transition to maintenance, I have my motivation. Ann gave me a little pep talk to help me here as I shared with her my stale mate feelings. I told her I felt like I was in limbo with my diet. Well, who wouldn't be tired she said after being on it for as long as I have been on it ! The body and mind sometimes needs to take a break after being on a diet for a while. This is a natural thing and I earned a little rest or " Lapse " time as she put it. She called it a pause in the diet to rest up the diet, but where you continue to eat correctly and maintain your weight and have good feelings about yourself and your weight loss while you rest up and prepare for the next stage. What she said is you don't want to go int a " Relapse or Collapse " stage. A relapse is where you go back to your old ways and your old way of thinking and eating habits. ( I have felt myself slipping here a few times and thus felt the need to go visit Ann ). A collapse is a complete denial and where you can't deal with it and you give up. You stop trying and walk away. I went through a lapse time in my diet but I never gave up or changed my eating habits. Oh, I gained 1-2 pounds from a little over eating, but I also worked that off too. I did feel myself beginning to relapse and caught myself in time and went for help as well as put a stop to it. That's the difference between being successful and being defeated. This goes for anyone no matter how much they have or haven't lost. Even Ann who is on a diet and has a thyroid problem and has trouble losing weight says you have this stick with it attitude during the lapse stages. OK, I think I understand. I know it may take a while to get rested and feel back into my groove and ready to diet again. What I won't do though is go into a relapse in the meantime.
I have more to say but this blog is getting too long. I will write more tomorrow. I hope some of my discussion has helped some of you. It helped motivate me and helped me understand why I am where I am where I am. It also helped me to understand that I am getting close to the end of the weight loss part of my journey and to be more satisfied to listening to my body telling me where it wants to end this journey. Now, one last word, come Friday, we are suppose to be getting some nasty weather from Ike. I may not be on line since I will probably turn off my computer. You may not hear from me if the weather gets nasty here. Thunderstorms play havoc with my subdivisions electricity. I have already lost several appliances due to them. We have learned to unplug our computer and TVs when they come through. I imagine we are going to get some storms from Ike even though now the model shows the eye is going to hit Corpus Christi. Did any of you all from Florida get Ike's rain ? How bad was it ?
Talk to you all latter.