Back to Routine equals New Goals

This week school starts and routine returns. I've already picked up a new habit suggested by my cardiologist. That habit is eating not a quick breakfast in the car but setting down for breakfast at home with lean protein each day before work. I began that habit during marching band camp. I pre cooked gluten free biscuits and pancakes to last a few weeks. I also pre cooked chicken/pork sausage links. So each morning it took 1 min to warm EITHER one biscuit OR two pancakes in the microwave with a sausage link and cook one egg at the same time in the skillet. Super easy. Some mornings I ate it on the back porch while the dogs ran. (Multitasking!)

Next goal : get my exercise routine in check! My fantastic dr gave me a target heart rate zone to try for three months in addition to removing gluten. Well I do better with one big goal at a time. So now that I'm successfully eating gluten free I'm ready to hit the exercise hard. I'm going to purchase my polar heart monitor soon. Sunday night I sat down and planned out an exercise schedule for the week. It is as follows: 

Wednesday - Zumba

Thursday - Spin Class (fairly new to me)

Friday - Zumba

I decided that each week I'll set my schedule on Sunday when I plan the rest of my tasks out for the week. My "big rocks" for any 7 Habits of Highly Effective People fans out there!

I'm starting with classes. While I'm working on those I'm going to check back into some of my old routines I did with trainers as well as try to find a trainer again to use up the rest of my trainer sessions and see if its something I want to do again. 

I know I said I'm best at one big goal at a time but I think this one goes hand in hand with my exercise routine. It's to clean up my eating. 

Tonight I was watching Extreme Weightloss with Chris Powell. He ate for a day as his client used to eat and he was completely ill from eating restaurant food. Now I am super careful about restaurant food with my gluten free diet these days. (But that doesn't make gluten free restaurant food ok!) However, his experiment really struck me.  He said he has a treat once a week and its usually tortilla chips or frozen yogurt. Seriously! Seriously! How many of us consider those treats and not just foods that aren't "too many points" or they fit into our calories etc. 

My treats usually consist of Hersey's chocolate or ice cream and truthfully happen 2-3 times a week. Not ok. 

I know some about clean eating but over the next few months I will be figuring it out even more. I've been gluten free for 3 months and I've lost about 10 lbs which my cardiologist was super excited about. Next I'm going to settle back into my exercise routine and clean up my diet and then in 3 more months make that appointment with my doctor to see how it's gone with both a gluten free AND clean diet as well as steady exercise. 

I need encouragement though. I'm going to be posting more often on here as we'll as my Instagram/twitter accts. mostly food / exercise pics there. If you don't follow me there... both places you can find me @findtheskinny go follow me! My blog readers and Instagram/twitter followers truly keep me accountable and motivated. Thank you!

Tomorrow is weigh in day. I think I will also attempt to take measurements in the morning if I can find my measure tape without making myself run late. 

So here's to new goals an being back in a routine!

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?

A bit of success

When I first began with gluten free I had just weighed in on April 10th at 200.4 lbs. blah!

I was nervous to begin but that is just what I did on April 13th. I went cold turkey because with gluten that's just what you do. My mantra for the time.... "Ill feel better than that food tastes"

I slowly thought of all the foods Ill never eat again (Krispy Kreme, and a few other I can't remember now thank goodness)

I never really crave anything. I almost immediately notice positive differences:
I slept better
Woke up better
Had level energy through the day
Ached less (from fibromyalgia)
I also lost around 4-5 lbs pretty fast. In about 2 weeks. Considering my 3-5 lb loss over the last two years I was pretty excited.

I leveled off for a bit though I kept going. No matter what zero gluten. No cheating at all.

I had a bad week a week ago when I couldn't get enough chocolate and ice cream. I was getting a DQ blizzard or Hershey bar like every day. All
Gluten free but not healthy. I believe it was due to stress at the end of the school year and maybe some girly reasons too. Even during that week I lost .4

This week I have fixed the chocolate issue. I have weighed in today at 192.8. So I've lost right at 8 lbs in about 6 weeks. I'm super excited. I feel as though the gluten is finally out if my system and I'm on a role.

I go back to the dr in about 6 more weeks. I would love to be at 179 when I go back

This week I have a goal to get back to my weight watchers point tracking. It's been hard for me to keep that up while learning to eat gluten free.

Next week when my girly reasons have gone away I will be settling in more on a summer workout routine.

I am not only still here but I have some success to share.

I haven't posted much this spring. I have yet to find a good balance in the spring as I prepare my choirs for state assessment. That balance is something that I plan to work on each year until I find it.

Anyhow. I've still been here, tweeting, instagraming, and working to findtheskinny. I just haven't been blogging.

I have had some success with the gluten free eating and I can't wait to share.

Tomorrow is my first day of summer break and I can't wait to find my summer workout routine and get to blogging.

Details on my recent weight loss tomorrow!

So I am a healthy "obese" person.

Yep. That's right. Interesting huh?

So here's how it all came to be....
I had a bloodwork panel along with glucose/insulin test a week ago for PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) Initially the dr who ordered it called with the results that were in.
*a few hormones were low (to be expected)
*glucose was elevated on last hour
*everything else was normal
*waiting on one more hormone and insulin but nurse warned me that insulin may show resistance since glucose was elevated on last test.
*referred me to regular physician to go further into the glucose/insulin etc
*pcos was officially diagnosed but we are already doing all we can for treatment.

The nurse suggested that my regular doctor might send me to a nutritionist to learn how to eat healthy. I could have gone through the phone. Bless her heart she had no idea that I've been trying to adjust my nutrition for years to lose weight.

So I made the appointment and saw my regular doctor on Thursday. I was excited for the appointment but nervous too. I trust my doctor a lot and know that he won't do anything crazy and he is super thorough.

We started by reviewing the panels. Remainder of hormones came back normal and insulin was normal. That was a surprise.
Me to Dr: I had mixed emotions about the insulin because had I been resistant it would have given him something to fix that would help me.
Dr to me: Fix is a strong word and he wouldn't use it in that case because the resistance would always be there. So he said I should be very happy that I'm not insulin resistant.

So happy I am!

So then he told me something that still makes me smile. My cholesterol panel couldn't be more perfect than it is. It's never been "bad" but it has been middle to bad end of average. Now all numbers are on the fantastic end of average. His point: I may not be seeing the results I'm looking for with my healthy lifestyle but I am most definitely benefiting from the healthy choices.
(It's better than my brother's who is way more "in shape" weight wise than I am. He's running his second marathon of the month in a few weeks. Nothing against him. I wish his cholesterol to be awesome too. Just an example)

My next question: so what about that one elevated glucose level?

Dr: sometimes with PCOS you can not be insulin resistant but your body doesn't exactly process sugars as efficiently as we would like.

We discussed how a person with a great BMI can be very unhealthy and a person with a BMI over 30 can be extremely healthy. My BMI is currently 35. So....

Me: So you would consider me healthy except my weight

Dr: I would consider you very healthy no expect.

So he made my day. My doctor who is awesome and isn't only a general physician but also has a sports medicine office told me I was very healthy. That is encouraging. What I do has results!

All of this hasn't been for nothing. Basically at this point losing weight is still a great idea but it is not a health necessity. It can possibly reduce symptoms of the PCOS but that is the extent of it. (Of course weight loss would make me happy).

I told my doctor that when I go to yoga I always get mad because I'm more flexible than my fat allows me to be. Lol.

One thing we discussed is how my husband and I, like most people, have a set of puzzle pieces to fall in place before children. One of my pieces is to be at a healthy weight for a pregnancy.

dr: it's not a matter of getting to "healthy" weight. He says my weight is not in the way of a great pregnancy. He says that my healthy life style has me at a perfectly healthy place for children. That losing weight before hand would only improve how I feel in reference to how I look.

I still want to lose before kids but its nice to know that we're not actually held back by my health. That I'm actually in a good place. There are still other pieces out of place so those of you who know me don't get too excited here.

So next ... Me: so what now? How can I lose weight better?

We discussed my current nutrition and weight watchers. He likes weightwatchers. We discussed my current exercise habits. He likes what I'm doing but wants to make sure that Im really focusing on my heart rate in cardio workouts. I told him that I would love to run a 13.1 again but have decided to wait until I weigh less for the sake of my knees. So I'm sticking to 5Ks and training for the sprint triathlon in town in August. He was super excited for me to do the Tri. He thinks the swimming is awesome and biking can be as long as I adjust my bike correctly to avoid back strain.

He's been to see the Tri in town before and I asked if there are big people who do it too. He assured me that people of all shapes and sizes participate and I can totally do it. He thinks ill be fine to use my mountain bike for this distance. So that's good.

Me: Do you think I can be at my healthy weight in a year?

Dr. : yes

So the plan:

Cardio 240 min a week properly monitoring my target heart rate.

Any resistance or weights are on top of this. (I told him I do NOT want to become jiggly. Lol)

Stick to weight watchers

Go gluten free (this is something that my cardiologist had mentioned and I had read up on)

See him in 3 months to see how I'm doing. At that time if I have been dedicated to the above and still don't lose he will try me on metformin. He wants a medication to be last option. He said that even though I'm not insulin resistance the medication would help my body be more efficient in processing sugar but he thinks I'm going to succeed without it.

He then sent me to try out a new anti gravity treadmill in his building the next day just for fun in reference to me holding back on long distance running to save my joints. (Separate post coming)

So all in all I felt so good and encourage when I left his office.

I do want to clarify some things.

I'm NOT and he is NOT saying weight doesn't matter or being at a BMI of 35 is always ok. Every person is individual. In my case I'm very healthy at BMI 35 and 200 lbs but also have a healthy desire to lose weight to be even better and my doctor supports that.

I'm not talking about just kind of trying for two and a half years and just deciding I'm ok this way. I'm talking about being a 200 lb person who leads a healthy life on a regular basis. Who does the work to meet my goals (13.1, 5Ks, sticking to nutrition plans, regular exercise)

I'm also not claiming to be perfect. I have unhealthy snacks or meals sometimes. But I avoid unhealthy days.

I've always said that I'm glad my body tells me how I treat it. I would much rather be a healthy "obese" person than to be someone who has an awesome BMI and can fit in any clothes they want but also eats what they want and they are very unhealthy on the inside. The two (inside and outside) don't always match but it does go both ways.


So today is gluten free day number 1! Ill have lots to say about this soon.

So I'm excited to just keep on keepin on!

Its been a while

It's been awhile since I blogged. Been super busy at work polishing the choirs for state assessment. I've been on Instagram and twitter just haven't blogged. I hate when I get behind blogging.

So here's what's been happening.

I got to try trader joes. Love it.

I'm still doing weight watchers online. It's going well. I'm not one of those people that drops multiple pounds a week but I am losing. Sometimes I gain but soon after I have a better loss. Overall since Jan 2 I've lost 3.4 lbs. some wouldn't be happy but I am. Considering that I've lost more in three months than I did the last two years. Pretty great.

My obgyn is working with my regular doctor and my cardiologist on what may be the final puzzle piece into why I can't seem to lose. Remember the endocrinologist that told me I was genetically predisposed to being overweight and gave me a weightloss pill? Yeah I took it for a few weeks and all my other doctors vetoed that idea. He seemed to miss a panel that my obgyn would have expected him to have done. The pcos panel for polycystic ovarian syndrome. My obgyn discussed this with me and I blogged previously but he waited until some symptoms calmed down to talk further. In the mean time my general physician brought it up and my cardiologist loved the idea. My obgyn and I chatted about a week ago.

So here I sit today doing a 2 hr glucose test to check for insulin resistance and the pcos panel to seal the deal.

I have mixed emotions here. I don't want to be insulin resistant but if I am they can treat it and it should help me lose weight much easier then in turn reversing the resistance and controlling the pcos. So there are pros and cons you see.

In the mean time. All three drs love weight watchers and my OBGYN described this to me: "your body doesn't want to change so its fighting against you. Keep fighting hard and eventually your body will give in and you'll lose better. " (all this in reference to pcos and weightwatchers) also the more I lose the more things balance out in my system and the easier losing becomes.

I just can't wait to be successful. !!!

I have attached pictures of data for these three months. Notice I have been below 200 for 6 weeks now! I'll try to blog consistently. I'll update about this insulin stuff.