Emily Brewer Central

LAST DAY!

So I made it. Today is my last day on this very low calorie diet before I move into a maintenance phase that allows for a bit more normalcy in my life.  My total drop was 19 pounds total, 15.5 net although in the last 3 days I gained 1.5.  But I am going with the lowest number, I did achieve it! It just might have been a little too low and too quick for my body right now.  So phase 1 complete, I am at a lesser weight than I was when the tibia snapped like a twig and I am feeling pretty good about myself.

So….what next?  That is the million dollar question. As a lifelong dieter and weight yo-yoer it is the coming off the diet that is the hard part.  Don’t get me wrong I am damn excited to be off this diet.  It was brutally tough and required me to commit anew every dang morning.  But there is something to be said for a pre-determined diet menu that is spelled out for you that you are not allowed to deviate from.  It takes the guess work out, you definitely KNOW if you are cheating and it makes it brainless.  When you come off that restrictive phase, which of course you can’t do forever, it adds a level of choice that can sometimes be scary.

So, this week I already have two restaurant outings planned and two dinners scheduled for next week.  That will be the true test.  Can you control yourself and make appropriate choices when the world (or the menu) is your oyster?  And if some weight comes back on can you handle the issue right away versus letting a 2 lb problem turn into a 10 lb problem. I think once I master that, it will feel like a real milestone and turn this short term accomplishment into something that I can make a habit.

So, Day 1 of the maintenance phase (and my ability to have the occasional glass of wine again!) starts tomorrow.  Here’s to healthy and sane choices that keep me on the road to a smaller ass!

Day 9

Day 9 is an ok day. Body feeling a bit better, down 7 lbs net and feeling motivated. All in all, positive forward momentum. But day 7? Yeah, Day 7. Day 7 was the type of accomplishment you look back on and think: holy crap! I did that?! Day 7 was Sunday, July 4th. Debaucherous food and booze extravaganza. Also day 7 of the very low calorie diet and a major test of will. The day started with a pancake and mimosa (and bloody mary and bacon and sausage and muffin) breakfast at a friend’s house.  I went.  I lingered around the buffet. Smelling, perusing the offerings.  Even poured some friends a mimosa, then myself a glass of water. And then, I abstained. No joke.  We spent hours there in food kryptonite hell and I didn’t cheat a bit.  Not one bite, not one sip.

On to BBQ #2, at MY HOUSE.  Enter burgers, hot dogs, wings, beer and the ultimate snack kryptonite: lays potato chips and Hidden Valley Ranch dip. When I was pouring the chips into a bowl to serve them to everyone else, one little guy escaped.  Fell right on to the counter.  He was just laying there.  Separated from his group.  Crying out to be picked up and popped into someone’s mouth for a quick taste. No harm, right? Not my mouth. Not that day! I actually did it.  I made it through. I abstained from any diet diversion of any kind including alcohol.

Then, part 3. The fireworks and block party. That too did not deter me. It did not break me. I held my resolve and came home to a hot cup of ginger tea and my bed.  I looked back on the day and said to myself: YOU FRICKEN RULE!!! Because what I did that day, ALL day that day was something I have never done before.  I realized that you don’t HAVE to use a holiday as an excuse to consume 5,000 calories.  Sure it is an awesome time to do so, but you don’t die if you don’t.  And I still had fun. Mission accomplished.  And the scale was down 1 lb the next AM!

Day 8 presented continued challenges with an additional BBQ (again at my house) and beers in abundance. But my resolve and will power was also in abundance and I made it through.  This resulted in an additional .5 lb loss this AM.

Looking forward to the losses I will accomplish this week and the great feeling of seeing results.  Especially when it gets hard.

Day 6

I am starting day 6 of my low calorie diet today. Days 4/5 were a test of my will for sure.  As my body is having to get used to the absence of the abundance of calories and look to the limited amounts coming in a burn the excess from the past 6 months it is fighting back a bit. I can’t say I blame it, I just wish it was fighting so hard.  No more sleep disruption after the horrid ‘refried bean dream’ night. So that is definitely a step up.  Yesterday I was still hungry but I seemed to have it under tighter control.

The dreams are funny though.  Last night I dreamt I ate something, I can’t remember what it was but I remember it was pretty small and insignificant – but it was OFF my diet protocol! The horror! I kept thinking after I dream-ate that small bite WHY did you do that?!? It was so small! Not even worth it!  So it looks like the dieting food dreams are likely here to stay for a while.  That’s ok, as long as I am only eating in my dreams I am pretty sure it can’t hurt me. I went to sleep around 8:30 PM on Day 4, no joke. I was just so tired and exhausted from battling food all day I was just tired.  Last night I made it until almost 1 AM.  It was Friday after all. No wild partying or anything, just ginger tea (thanks Olivia!) and finishing my trashy crotch novel.

As I start day 6 two things are top of mind. First and foremost only 20 days to go before I can ditch this low calorie restriction to something a little more manageable.  A diet where I don’t have to recommit in a serious way every morning will be a little easier to manage psychologically.  Secondly, I am down 5.5 lbs net since I started this diet (subtracting the ups and downs) which feels pretty awesome! I know you don’t sustain the rate of initial losses but it is a nice way to start. The results make it a bit more motivating but nothing makes this easy.  The support of family and friends has been the driving factor here. Unless you have someone telling you that you can do this, every day and not to quit, it can be rough.  So I am in debt to them for that because it is work for them too! Thanks to the office mates for not eating burgers and fries in front of me and thanks to the BF for eating his amazing looking and smelling steak salad on the patio last night.  You are all such a help and support!

On to week 2 and wish me luck tomorrow – 4th of July!

Day 4

Like, seriously long! I have had 3 full days on the diet but yesterday I was STARVING! More than the other two days for sure. I think my stomach is starting to get pissed.  I can’t tell you the last time a hunger pain woke me up in the middle of the night and I dreamed about eating a whole pot of refried beans but yeah, that was last night. I also can’t help but wonder why everyone else I read about or talk to who have done this diet say things like “I wasn’t even hungry!” and other infuriating comments like that.  Maybe they forgot about week 1?  The week where it is so hard and you are so hungry that you are willing to say screw it and go buy a taco platter and weigh 300 pounds?

I am not going to do that though. I am going to stick with this thing.  I want to see if I can get through the first week and if the stomach and my body’s expectation of an abundance of calories can settle down.  I have lost 2.5 lbs total (6.5 lbs including the pre-diet pig out they make you do) so I am definitely seeing results. Which is good, because if I wasn’t I would be outta here!I think if this is still going on after 7 days we will investigate the issue but the body is probably just throwing a temper tantrum right now.

Major hurdles coming up this weekend: visit to friend’s house where I will have to bring a lunch box (like I am 7 years old) and 4th of July pancake breakfast and BBQ the following day. There is never a good time to start a diet and I made a conscious decision not to wait the extra week between my birthday and the 4th of July. I don’t want to become anti-social although I can totally see why people who are dieting do.  I did go see a friend perform at a bar last night and was able to resist all the sexy libations floating around me.  Held on to my bottled water and then high-tailed it out of there the second she finished. But hey, at least I showed!

Day 2

I feel like I must have eaten 12 pounds of spinach for lunch on day 2. No joke.  I had to choke the last bit of it down but when you are hungry, you are hungry.  BUT I had a great present on the scale the morning of day 2, a loss of 3 lbs from the day before.  Before you start saying “that’s only water weight!” yes, yes, I know this – but it sure helped me stay motivated when I wanted to eat the neighbor’s cat for a snack this morning.  I was able to keep it under control, keeping focused on the 3 pound loss and greedy to keep the numbers dropping.  I have heard you drop significantly in the first of week HCG due to the calorie restriction so I want to get it down before I hit the inevitable plateau.

Last night was definitely rough as I was hyper fixated on my hunger and food in general.  I have a normal habit of watching cooking shows incessantly on the Food Network.  That had to go, STAT.  Then I started watching mindless drivel like Holly’s World and the Kardashians on E! and all I noticed was what they were eating.  Ugh.  This must pass eventually and this diet won’t last forever, but the first day felt like 12 days!  Hoping it starts to normalize for me a little bit so I stop feeling like a deprived starving maniac.

I would also like to move the focus away from the food and the hunger a bit to what kind of intrigues and excites me about this diet.  It is so limiting, so restricting that you absolutely have no room for error or mistake.  Any bit of cheating will likely be done with full knowledge that this race is mine to win or lose.  In researching on the web someone commented on an article and said this about the diet: “And the longer I go, the less pull food and emotional eating have on me. So I am making changes that will last a lifetime.”  If eating a gallon of ice cream isn’t a possibility after a hard day and it continues to not be a possibility for an extended period of time, eventually maybe you handle it differently all together.  That is the exciting part for me.

On to Day 3!!!

Day 1 on the miserable part of this diet (the first 2 days of eating whatever I wanted were cool but caused me to gain 4 pounds – so it BETTER work!) and I am on my first meal.  I think the biggest change will be learning to retrain my taste buds to handle bland and sometimes harsh tastes. Oh how I miss the luxury of oils and dressings to snaz things up. I keep repeating to myself that food is fuel and should be regarded as such.  But red velvet cake is fuel too and it tastes so good!

I made it through my lunch. All the way through and I am still hungry.  I have an apple too, but saving that for the afternoon in case I want to gnaw my office mate’s arm off and I find myself in a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ situation.  I know I can do this. It will just take commitment and attention.  Is it bad that day 1 is causing me to much trouble? or is that normal? I am going to go with normal.

Did my starting weight an measurements and very much looking forward to the results of the extreme limitations I am going to be putting myself through. I am hoping I start feeling the difference in my clothes sooner rather than later.  Tired of squeezing in. Can’t wait to share so stay tuned!

Broken leg syndrome: inability to exercise to the extent I did prior to the break and trouble staving off weight gain due to inactivity.  As someone who has been a miserable failure dieting my entire life, unfortunately the diet begins tomorrow.  I had a lovely birthday weekend celebration with wine and rich foods and tomorrow the pain commences.  I am going to pour everytihng I have into sticking to this diet and seeing the results since it is my only option right now.

Wish me luck!

Let’s go!!!

If you would have told me when I was suffering from debilitating shin splints in December that I wouldn’t run one day in 2010 to date, I would have scoffed.  But here I am, 3.5 weeks out of my cast, it is almost June and I couldn’t even tell you when running will make it back into the regimen. Looking back on the past 5 months and looking forward to the next 5 months, I think it is looking like all of 2010 might be a running wash.

The countdown to my ortho appointment was an exciting stretch.  The last seven days of my castedness featured Facebook and Twitter numbered declarations daily that got my friends and family involved in the stir of excitement about the May 5th V day.  The buzz in the air was palpable (for me at least) and the day could not come fast enough!  That morning I got ready for my appointment and packed a bag with my left shoe anticipating I would walk out of the office after my appointment as a 2 legged wonder!  I was also spending the countdown week researching military style bootcamp exercise classes, the idea being since I hadn’t been moving around at all for months, I could jolt my metabolism with an aggressive exercise regimen and the 15 lbs I had gained would just melt off. Immediately! I was psyched! I had my shoe and my plan and I couldn’t wait to see the doctor!

Enter the villainous orthopaedic physician.  Laughing at my cute little left shoe, sending me to x-ray, telling me he could feel my ‘reactive tissue’ and then….telling me I would be in the boot for an additional two weeks. THE HORROR! I was so dejected and depressed.  My get out of jail card had been revoked.  I was on boot parole though, as I was told I would be able to decrease my time in my immobilizer boot over the next two weeks to wean my withered leg off of it, but for someone who was expecting to be out and doing military style exercise drills, it was a rough blow.  To top the depression sundae with a crushing cherry, I was also informed that the only exercise I would be permitted to do was the recumbent bike on ZERO resistance for 4 weeks, then the elliptical machine on ZERO resistance for 4 weeks after that, then – we could talk.  TWO MONTHS of what basically equates to NO exercise.  OUCH!  WTF!?  What about my military style bootcamp I had planned to melt the pounds away?!? Ok, ok.  In hindsight that may have been a bit naive. I can admit that.

So here I am in my 4 week period of recumbent biking and the kicker? The leg is so withered and fragile that even doing that is painful.  I was hoping to be at the gym every day biking my little legs off, and it turns out that is impossible. After 30-45 minutes of biking I rush home to ice my leg all night long.  If I ride my bike a mile on the beach I rush home to ice my leg all night long.  If I stand up too long, I rush home to ice my leg all night long.  I thought waiting for my cast to be removed was going to be the end of the ordeal but it turns out the road is going to be a lot longer that I had anticipated.  And I am going to have to flex my patience muscles in a serious way. Because I sure as heck won’t be flexing my leg muscles!

Lesson learned.  Broken legs are a marathon, not a sprint. Pun intended.

An update on the new year and its commitments.  I was committed to stick with my running and stay consistent if I recall. But I have been sidelined with the terribleness that is shin splints.  I finally got in to see my ortho and he has me off all activities that would stress the legs, including things as simple as using stairs! There was some good news in this, there was no stress fracture so recovery should be doable. The bad news, zero impact activity for a month, then a follow up visit to decide if my leg is healed enough to start physical therapy.  Then PT for who knows how long.  This means no running for quite some time.  Which was a very hard pill to swallow.

Enter Yoga.  I received the gift of Yoga for Christmas and it has turned out to be a great thing.  It is something new, so learning its ways keeps me engaged and occupied and I have heard from the running community that the core strengthening elements will keep me conditioned and when I do return to running, might help me get right back out there with ease.  That sounds good to me since once I can run, I want to do what I can to avoid another injury!

Even though I was a beginner on the running scene, I was definitely a lover of the running scene. I appreciate the activity, but more importantly I appreciate the community. So welcoming and helpful, but most of all supportive.  I stay active in that community and even though I am not running, they are still cheering me on.  That feels good!

So I am still very committed.  Omit running, add Yoga and I can stay on track with my eye on the ultimate prize, even though that will take patience.  A friend shared a quote from Lance Armstrong who is a bit of an athlete himself: ‘Pain is temporary, quitting is forever.’

Amen.