More water in Florida in more ways than one!

So when you head to Florida for vacation and you're like my husband and I you figure out how to spend as much time as possible at the beach. We successfully spent 6 days out of our 7 at the beach. The water, sand, sun, dolphins, boogie boards, ocean side dining, tunes at our beach chairs, seaweed in our hair, etc all made it just what we wanted it to be. Relaxing and rejuvenating. We also happen to get nice tans and our hair turned a lighter shade of blonde from our normal. We had all the ocean water and experience we could need or want. 

Something else came with it as well. Plenty of water consumption. Every day we filled 4 Nalgene bottles (2 for each of us = 64oz of water each) That means outside of my beach water I needed 16 more ounces to meet my 80 oz a day. No problem a cup with my thyroid med in the am and a cup with my heart med at bedtime. Easy peasy!

Well it turns out that I still did t quite make 80oz a day but came much closer than I have the last few weeks at home. My husband feels that it is due to sweating more on the beach. I agree but I also think it just goes with the overall refreshing effect the beach has. So in general going to the beach help increase my water intake closer to my daily goals. 

My current water goal is 80oz a day. I use the plantnanny app (thanks to LindseyLosingIt from Instagram sharing her experience with it) to track my water consumption. It's like a modern day Tomagochi (remember those? I may have spelled it incorrectly). I plant a plant and I have to water it to make it grow. In my last few months I've grown plants and planted them in my garden and ice also killed plants. But anyhow. I'm now growing a Cactus that I named Spike. It all seems silly but it actually helps. 

When I tell plant nanny that Im active and 193 lbs it requires 134 ounces of water a day. I just don't feel that is necessary for me. So I manipulated the numbers down to 100oz because I recently read about dividing your weight in half and drinking that many ounces. That was when I was still 199ish. I found with 100 oz that I spent an excessive amount if time in the bathroom. So I dropped down to 80oz and it seems to work well for me. I plan to ask my doctor at my July appt what he suggests in this area. But for now I've lied to Plant nanny and told it I weigh 155lbs and Im sedentary to get it to require 80oz of water. 

So I've attached a few graphs along the way to show how inconsistent I have been at home and how much more successful I was at the beach. This week is the top graph. (The last Saturday is today and is only halfway complete as I have half a day left) Now my goal is to continue the good habits I formed this week once I return home. I'm wondering how these good habits along with lots of fresh local foods this week will affect my weigh in in the morning. I'm anxious about that. 

Downward trend... Who knew?

So I weigh in weekly as most people (especially us weightwatchers) do. Each week I have three outcome options: loss, gain, or stay the same. Each week I hope for a loss and settle for staying the same but despise gains. Normal right?

I often feel agitated by the ups and downs. Why can't it all be downs?. I told my husband the other day that if I had never gained back any pounds I've lost in my lifetime that I would have lost more weight than I actually weigh! I'm sure most people fit that description. 

So I recently noticed a trend and its easy to spot in my weight tracker graph. It's two low "peaks" where I had significant losses with a significant gain in the middle. Now this is pretty personal and I don't mind that just a warning. 

With PCOS and endometriosis both I must be on a hormonal birth control. No option. Well I went off the prescription for a week while I was on another medication that really didn't mix well with it. Well that week I lost 5-6 lbs. wow! So when I started back I maintained for one week and then gained 5 lbs. I was not happy. I felt that the prescription was maybe holding back my weightloss progress which I needed in order to control the PCOS. 

So I called and made an appointment with my doctor (OBGYN) and over the next week took a risk and stayed off the medication to see what happened. I lost 3.4 lbs. of course I did!

I went to the appointment yesterday and as always my dr was amazing and talked and listened and he said that the weight loss was likely water that the hormones make your body hold onto and the loss would likely stop/ level off if I stayed off the medicine. I cannot stay off the medicine for medical purposes so we had to chose something else. So we chose to change the type of medicine that Im on. I'm pleased with our decision and he said that a change could be beneficial. 

So next ...

He said. I do want you to notice something. He had written my weights down from the last four appointments including yesterday. They we're :

203 (Dec ish)

200 (Jan ish)

198 (March ish)

193 (June 21)

So he said you've actually lost 10 lbs (5% of my weight) since we first determined you have PCOS and began discussing your weightloss. I hadn't really noticed that downward trend. So I said look at my weight watchers graph with me. I did the landscape view where it goes back 24 weeks and ,by George, there was the downward trend. Now it did look like a mountain range but overall it's going down. I was excited. 

I guess I get so caught up in the weekly that I lose sight of where I'm going. He told me to keep it up and it would get easier as I lose to lose more (hormonal lay due to PCOS)

I felt encouraged when I walked away yesterday. 

I write this post or a few reasons:

1. To encourage others to advocate for themselves and talk openly with their doctors about how their medications affect them. 

2. To remind others, as my doctor reminded me, to look at the overall not just the right now. It's about losing in a healthy way. Not losing fast. In the long run losing slow will be more permanent. 

I know this post was personal and I hope you don't mind. I need some feedback though. As you may notice my weight watchers app lists 200 as my starting weight because it's what I weighed the day I started but from the time my doctor and I talked and I headed in the glutenfree/weightwatchers direction I was 203. So I'm thinking if changing my ww starting weight to match. I have 203 as my start weight on myfitnesspal and would kinda like to see it all match. Opinions?