Progress

Week Nine and Onwards

June 14 - August 24

Mid-June I got down to 119 lbs and then moved back home before the big move to Florida. For the month that I was back home, I ended up gaining and got up to 125 lbs - though I mostly hovered at around 123 lbs. We moved mid-July and I remained at 123 lbs until the beginning of August. Two weeks into August and I had somehow gotten down to 117 lbs. Lately I've been binging more, so I've gone up and down - from 117 back to 120 down to 117 and then stuck at around 118 - 119. Ridiculousness. Time to hit the gym and finally drop below 117 lbs!

Week Eight

June 7 - June 13

I've been trying really hard lately to get out of this rut and stop plateau-ing and START losing weight again. Today I weighed in at 120.5 lbs - a loss of 2.5 lbs in one week! I only tracked calories for 5 out of the 7 days this week, but that's pretty good. One day in particular, was a binge-fest, so I don't even want to know how many calories I had that day.

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I averaged a daily calorie deficit of 1069.2 calories per day. For the 5 days recorded, I had a total calorie deficit of 5346 calories. I ranged from calorie deficits of 507 calories for 06/08 to 1665 calories for 06/11.

Week Seven

May 31 - June 6

After the trip to Chicago, I was at 123.5 lbs. A gain of half a pound. At the end of Week Seven, I successfully got back down to 123 lbs. As of Thursday, June 9th, I currently have 5 weeks left until the move to Miami. 8 lbs in 5 weeks - 1.6 lbs per week of weight loss. Should be doable if I can get back to going to the gym regularly and continue with dieting. I only need a deficit of 5600 per week in order to reach my goal. Here's hoping!

Week Six

May 24 - May 30

Vacation all I ever wanted, vacation time to get awayyyyy. From dieting. I'm not sure at all what my weight was during this week. I was in Chicago, gorging on Chinatown Chinese, amazing Greek food, delivery Indian, and lots and lots of alcohol with the Russians - the boyfriend and his father. I did manage to hit the gym at the condo once. And there was an insane amount of walking involved. So there's that.

Week Five

May 17 - May 23

It was exactly as I was dreading. Binge drinking two days straight and devouring food like an animal for three days did nothing to help with my weight loss. Thankfully, I just maintained at 123 lbs and didn't gain. But still, a happy camper I am not.

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The sad thing is that with all the exercise I've been doing, I should have been able to lose up to 1.84 lbs this week. Alas, apparently my body grasps onto every bit of alcohol and fattening food and refuses to let go.

I had a calorie deficit of 6439 for the whole week, leaving me with an average calorie deficit of 920 per day. If only my good dieting days had been at the end of the week and my binging mistakes had been at the beginning - I would have had more time to get over that hump in the chart before weigh-in day. :/ Sighh.

Here's lookin' to next week being better!

Week Four

May 10 - May 16

Well, my graph is more existent this week than it was last week. 5 out of 7 days is not too shabby, especially since I'm jumping the gun and posting this on the last day of the week - so there's no way for me to have graphed the 16th. Here it is, my intake for Week Four:

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Because I've been losing weight, my BMR went down from 1,700-something calories to 1,684. I had a deficit of 6,210 calories for the five days tracked - leaving me with an average daily deficit of 1,242 calories and an estimated weekly deficit of 8,694 calories. 8,694 calories, by the way, is the equivalent to 2.48 lbs. 

So... drumroll, please. How much did I lose during Week Four?

I ended Week Three at 126.5 lbs and I ended Week Four at 124 lbs. A loss of 2.5 lbs exactly.

My predicted weight loss, from the calorie differential chart, was 2.48 lbs and I lost just over that with 2.5 lbs. Ahhh, science, how you make weight loss a calculated mess of mathematics and predictability always makes me smile...

This chart shows my weight loss starting on April 19th, when I started this blog, to today, May 16th.
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There you have it - I've lost 16 lbs total so far. I'm starting to think this BMR, calorie counting, calorie differential thing really works. ;)

Week Three

May 3 - May 9

No fancy graphs this week, primarily because I had graduation party after graduation party, Mother's day Mexican food extravaganza, and the beginning of grilling season - which the boyfriend has been quite enthusiastic about. As such, I've been terrified of logging my intake on SparkPeople, so I've no idea how much I was consuming last week. Yikes. While I view the majority of last week as one giant binge-fest, I did manage to lose weight. I ended Week Two at 128 lbs and I ended Week Three at 126.5 lbs - a loss of 1.5 lbs, which is right on track. As long as I'm losing weight, even if it's minor, I'm happy. And if I have a week where I feel like I'm just constantly binging and I'm at least maintaining, then that's good, too. Just as long as I'm not gaining any weight, haha.

Week Two

April 26 - May 2

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This week I burned 12,296 calories total from my BMR and walking/jogging 6 miles on Saturday. Because of a family dinner on Wednesday and binging on Sunday, I consumed a total of 7,165 calories this week - leaving my weekly calorie deficit at 5,131. Though I was wanting to keep my calorie deficit at 5,845 per week, I think that the extreme weight loss from week one and the much higher than expected calorie deficit from week one kind of make up for any mishaps this week.

I still found myself losing weight and went from 130 at the end of week one to 128 at the end of week two.

Week One
April 19 - April 25

Despite all the bullshit and stress I've had to put up with lately - moving, roommate drama, financial aid stress for the summer session, putting in my two weeks' notice at work, general family craziness - I've actually stuck with the diet and haven't been binge eating for comfort, which is what I normally turn to.

I had initially planned on consuming around 1300 calories and burning 400 calories to reach a weekly deficit of 5845 calories - hopefully spurring my body to stop grasping onto every gram of fat and lose 1.67 lbs per week. You know, that whole "goal" thing or whatever...

Well, with my insane work schedule last week - constantly working doubles, often times being awake for over 24 hours at a time in order to have enough time for my 16 hour shifts and still be able to get other errands done - it was fairly impossible to find time to work out. Instead of creating that deficit by working out and slightly restricting my caloric intake, I ended up just restricting my caloric intake to make up for the lack of exercise. It worked, it just also made me too weak to even think about working out, not to mention irritable and generally intolerable.

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This was my calorie differential for the first week of my diet. The orange bars represent my Basal Metabolic Rate, which is the number of calories your body burns on a daily basis to perform its basic tasks like... living. The tiny bit of green on the 23rd is from walking half a mile at work, but other exercise would appear as additional green on top of the orange bars, representing your total amount of calories burned for the day. As long as your intake - the blue - stays below the bars, then you're creating a calorie deficit, which, over the course of a week, equals weight loss.

For the week from 4/19 to 4/25, I burned 12063 calories just from living and slowly walking half a mile - once. I ended up consuming approximately 5258 calories for the entire week, leaving me with a deficit of 6805 calories - higher than my desired caloric deficit! I went from 135 lbs to 130 lbs in just a week. Though I did briefly reach 129.4 lbs, I think I'll wait until I've stayed at that for longer than 30 minutes before I celebrate being out of the 130s.

I'm now 5 lbs closer to my goal and have 11 weeks left to lose 15 lbs.

Because I lost weight so dramatically in the first week, I should probably slow down a bit... but... it's really hard to quit once you've started seeing results. This is the first time ever since I've started dieting that I've actually seen real results. And I don't feel the urge to binge all the time. I honestly think I had a food addiction. It was obsessive. Constantly checking the fridge for food, constantly craving fast food and soda, never feeling hungry and continually overeating until I felt guilty. Now that I've created a sort of routine, it's much easier for me to feel in control. Especially because I've started seeing results. It's really easy to put weight loss and dieting in perspective now that I've started losing weight. I can look at food and see it as something that can sabotage my hard work, whereas before I could never make that association.

The bad news, however, is that I've switched from the pill to the depo shot so that I can be on birth control for 3 months at a time and not have to worry about missing a dose. This would be awesome, if the insane amounts of progestin didn't turn me into a total raving, emotional bitch and didn't also have the possible side effect of excessive weight gain. :/