Thursday, September 27, 2012

My body continues to fight me...

Week 16 of Maintenance...that's 4 MONTHS of maintaining!!! 6 months since joining Weight Watchers and eating according to PointsPlus every day. Wow, the time has gone by so quickly!!

Weighed 119.0 at home, 120.4 at the meeting

So...I'm happy to report that my body fat percentage has returned to normal...21-23%. I'd love for it to be consistently under 23% but as long as it's close, I'm good. I still have no idea what made it go up!

My problem now...my BIG problem now, is my left lower back...the "dimple" joint, to be specific. I strained it 2 weeks ago while moving furniture around for when I hosted Ladies Bible Study here. Then a number of different things (that I know now) exacerbated it and as of Tuesday...nasty, nasty, miserable pain  = (

I kept running because it seemed to make it feel better. And it definitely felt better while I was running and immediately after. But then several hours after and for the rest of the day, it was considerably worse. So I decided to rest from running and just walk.

I enjoyed the walks...mentally, emotionally, spiritually...but experienced the same worsening of the back pain later on during the day. Yesterday and today I've rested from all but essential activity.

I've been experimenting with what helps, what hurts and what doesn't seem to make a difference. I'm starting to think a doctor visit might be in my future but I'd like to give it a few more days of "being good"...meaning, not doing anything that makes it worse to give my back a chance to get better...such as sitting for almost 2 hours in prayer meeting last night!!!

Sitting is the WORST. Walking is good, until I get tired of being on my feet. Laying down on the heating pad feels pretty nice. I've got some good meds that I'm taking now...I didn't start taking anything for at least a week cause I just kept thinking that it was a bit of soreness that would go away on its own.

But something to be thankful for...with the rest from running has also come the rest from a ravenous appetite! That is SO nice...there's a teeny-tiny part of my brain that says "stop running and you can feel this way all the time!"  But then a bigger part of my brain gets sad and says "nooooooo!!! you would miss it SOOOO much!!"

2 more weeks and I get some spacer beads for my Pandora bracelet  = ))

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Where did my body go???!

Week 15 of Maintenance - 119.6 clothed weight at home, 120.6 at meeting (drank a 16 oz protein shake on the way)

I wish I had my own laboratory and needles and x-rays and such so I could do testing on myself. I would surely like to know WHAT is going on inside my body!!

I've had a good couple of weeks with my body fat percentage creeping lower and lower and my runs getting faster and faster. I felt so excited to see these changes because it was exactly what I was aiming for.

Then...this past week. I get on the scale at night, normal weight, body fat up about 1/2 a percent. Hmmmm...need to drink more water tomorrow. (the body fat reading is closely related to the body water percentage...if I'm dehydrated, the fat number will be higher).

So I drink plenty the next day, get on the scale at night, nice low number for the weight, my body fat number is 1% higher this night! And this continues for the rest of the week. My weight stays the same, even going down 1-2 lbs (hit my lowest night weight so far - 118.6 pounds!) but my body fat creeps up .5 - 1% every night - 20% at the beginning of the week, 25% at the end...WHAT???!!!

I didn't consciously change my eating at all...like eating less fat to try and stop the uprising. An interesting thing though...I was far less hungry than I usually am...I wasn't thinking about "what can I eat next" all the time like normal.

The other change was in my running...it was requiring more and more effort to run the same paces that I'd run the previous weeks. The worst day was using more effort to run 2.4 miles at a 9:58 pace than I needed to run 5 miles at a 9:02 pace the week before!

But the not being hungry all the time was SOOOOO nice! There were a number of times where I had to make myself eat because I'd had a very small lunch, no snack and it was past supper.

So after all that I discovered something interesting about my feelings towards those numbers: I would gladly trade a higher body fat and slower running paces for not being hungry all the time, having to resist eating, having to come up with so much will-power to "just say no" and have my weight almost effortlessly stay within the goal range.

For those of you that know me better, amazing, huh?? Even for myself I would have said the exact opposite was true...any amount of hard work is worth being able to run fast! 

I wish I could run tests on myself and discover why this happened...to learn from it and have that knowledge in my "battle of the bulge" arsenal. I'm going to start keeping track of my body water percentage also so I'll know what a normal hydration level is and will be able to recognize if I'm dehydrated.