Pump the Brakes!

[JamieLogical 8,708]

At my weekly weigh-in on Monday, I officially beat my goal weight by one pound and Tuesday was my 1 year surgiversary. Great news, right?

Well, the reason I was able to make/beat goal on Monday was that I had lost over 5 pounds in the past two weeks. My husband and I were scrambling to get our house ready to list for sale after we stumbled upon another house that we want to buy. We hadn't been planning to sell our house for another year or two at least, but then when we found this new house, it became this crazy whirlwind to get our house fixed/cleaned up and ready to list.

It's been an insane amount of work. From the time this all started back around the 15th of August until now, we have literally spent every single waking moment at work or working on the house. From the time we get home from work until about 1:00 am every night. And every minute of every weekend. It's been a massive amount of physical labor. Monday morning we put TWENTY SEVEN 35-gallon garbage bags full out with the trash, plus some smaller kitchen bags and a bunch of loose items. We've moved over half of our non-furniture possessions into storage. We've done a massive amount of DIY projects to fix up the house. It's been crazy and exhausting.

I will admit to forgetting to eat, especially on the weekends and days I've taken off work. I'll eat Breakfast before I get started at around 8:00 am and next thing I know, it's 3:30!

So between all the physical work and the reduced food intake, I lost over 5 pounds in two weeks, where I'd been lucky to lose half a pound a week lately with just eating on plan and exercising 4-5 times a week. And now I'm unofficially down another pound since my Monday weigh-in. That means I'm now two pounds below goal, which is no big deal. I had planned to have a 3-5 pound cushion anyway. But I'm worried that I won't be able to stop this train and I'll get way below my goal weight. I don't want to do that!

I know I need to make sure I am at least eating on a schedule and not let myself forget to eat. But any other suggestions about how to slow down my loss without resorting to eating really unhealthy stuff?

[IncredibleShrinkingMan 437]

So, I am 4 weeks out and I still have more pounds lost than days since surgery. I expect this won't be true much longer, and eventually I'll just settle into 3 lbs/wk mode. What I told myself at the beginning is that if (God willing) I ever reach my goal weight, I will not attempt to halt it there. I want to have some reserve weight loss for the very common slight regain that happens in the second year, so that when all is said and done, I am comfortably at my goal weight with no complaints from my body. I think you should view every pound lost, even after goal, as a gift, and not be scared of it. Your doctor will tell you what to do if you overshoot it by too much.

That said, if you really don't want to go lower, I would simply increase your lean, high-quality Protein intake so that you can continue to lose fat and simultaneously build some more healthy muscle. This will actually ensure that you don't start to creep back the other way by raising your metabolism. You will likely need to do this anyway since, inevitably, some of what all of us have lost is lean, desirable muscle, even if we followed everything to the T. Best wishes!

[IncredibleShrinkingMan 437]

@@JamieLogical it looks like I'm at your surgery weight today. I'm obviously a lot happier to be there than you were when you were there, and I'm not even half way to goal (though getting excited to possibly hit that milestone this weekend). Congratulations on your awesome job.

[JamieLogical 8,708]

@ I've actually worked really hard through all of this to retain as much muscle as possible. I get 100 grams of Protein per day at least, do cardio 4-6 days per week (mostly running, but some biking), and do strength training. I think that's why my loss was pretty "slow" compared to a lot of people. It took me a full year to lose the 71 pounds. According to my bathroom scale (which obviously isn't SUPER accurate) I went from 48.2% body fat to 23%. That means on my surgery date, I had almost 114 pounds of fat and now I have 37.5 pounds of fat. So theoretically I lost 76.5 pounds of fat, but only 73 pounds of weight. Which means I might have actually put ON a little muscle so far.

[IncredibleShrinkingMan 437]

@@JamieLogical that sounds awesome. How far out would you say you were when you were first able to get 100g Protein a day?

[JamieLogical 8,708]

@@JamieLogical that sounds awesome. How far out would you say you were when you were first able to get 100g Protein a day?

My nutritionist wanted me to aim for 100g a day right away, but I didn't realistically get there probably until I was on solid foods. It's pretty easy to get 100 grams if you do a couple bars or shakes a day and make sure you are doing Protein first with every snack or meal. I would say, once I was on solids, my day looked something like this:

Breakfast: Bar or shake (~20 grams)

Morning Snack: String cheese (8 grams)

Lunch: about 3 oz. of meat, usually leftover from a previous dinner (16-20 grams)

Afternoon Snack: Greek Yogurt (12 grams)

Dinner: about 3 oz. of meat (16-20 grams)

Evening Snack: Bar or shake (~20 grams)

Now I can usually get closer to 4-5 ounces of meat in at once and I can get some carbs in, like I put kashi Cereal or granola into my yogurt. I also haven't been doing the string cheese in the morning lately and just get another Protein Bar in somewhere during the day.