LadyM's seduction continues (sur son propre velo)

[LadyM]

Thanks, y'all! I so appreciate your perspective. I feel like I have my own cheering squad!

Calee, I have a sneaking suspicion you're exactly right--that it is a gift that no weight loss means vigilance for longer.

Mo, then it's especially amazing that your transformation is so completely evident to me, even if it's not physical. Your tone, your approach, the way you seem to think about yourself in the world is miles away from where you started in the best possible way.

I still haven't stepped on the scale and am going by my clothes. The crazy thing is I was at my thinnest (like ever, in the history of my adulthood) in February when I was stressed out but loving being the leading lady in a theatre production. I kind of crashed after that and started blowing up though I was paleoish--certainly gluten free.

Point is: I don't have a skinny self to compare myself to except that woman. My thighs are rubbing together, and I hate that. My belly isn't fitting easily into my summer clothes, and I hate that. I am overweight--though not by a ton, 10-15 pounds--according to any BMI charts (I'm guessing at this point), and I feel overweight and would prefer not to. It's not just the external measurement. I know I'm a compact package--muscular and athletic by nature, not terribly tall, and well proportioned. I have a body suited for sprinting and jumping, not endurance.

I don't want to be something I'm not, and I don't need to fit the charts; I just want to be my best self, which is tighter and fitter than I am right now. Maybe I'm at that point (36 years old) where it requires more. Not just effort, but persistence and trust. Because a big part of this isn't easily measurable. It has to do with getting my mind right and the parts of me that are deep inside. That's the work that FMD is helping me with. It's so much easier to focus on my weight and shape as simple external measurements, but now I know it doesn't at all tell the full story about health. This is a revelation and also a huge learning curve after a lifetime of simply striving toward a goal weight (which I never still haven't reached).

Getting back to the gym is critical. I really am happier lifting weights. I haven't lost all my strength gains, but some. And it has to be balanced with appropriate cardio and yoga. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I just need to get my monkey mind out of the way.

A wonderful thing is that I teach for a living and therefore have a reprieve in the summer from the classroom. I almost always lose weight in the summer, as if my body can let go and release when it's not subjected on a daily basis to the stress and pressures of regular work.

Phew. Thanks for providing the impetus for me to get that out.

Nadia, I love the idea of a movement template! YES. I totally get it. Thank you!

[calee]

LadyM, Ias a outsider looking in, it's not that you can do this, it's that you ARE doing this. Please don't short change yourself regarding your accomplishments. One day at a time. Today is perfect.

[LadyM]

Yesterday wasn't terrible until it was. Blech. OK, terrible is an overstatement. I'm just feeling blah and I want to feel fabulous. I probably just have to ride it out, but I want control, dammit!

And therein lies the problem. This I know.

Anyway, Farmer's Market and yoga were lovely. Following yogs I hit the health food store and big chain grocer to load up on stuff, including a few pieces of fruit. I was famished by the time I got home and was determined to make the chicken salad with grapes and pecans I promised myself last weekend but never made. This required making mayo and I was in such a hurry I forgot about getting the eggs up to room temp. Epic fail. I know I could have repaired it with more egg yolks, but the whole point was to get rid of the eggs in prep for a return to AIP, so I didn't want to go out and buy more eggs. So I used the separated mayo to make my chicken salad in lettuce cups and scarfed them down. By that point I'd been awake for 6+ hours and had only had a cup of BP coffee.

I let myself get too hungry and the results were not good. Chicken doesn't seem to satisfy me all that well anyway, especially breast meat, so I should have known better. I finished off the little baggie of pecans and then had an apple and the two containers of raspberries I'd bought. They were so delicious. That seemed to do it.

But a few hours later I was hungry again--and getting nervous about the performance I had last night--so I ate a can of sardines with kraut and pickled carrots followed by the other apple I'd bought. Figured it was a fruity day and I would just let it go and keep the stuff out of my house.

An aside: it's almost amusing at this point how fruit has become the enemy after so many years of thinking of it as virtuous and "free."

I went and did the performance but skipped the afterparty and its slushy machine, popcorn maker, chocolate fountain and other terrible hors d'ouevres. Came home to a house that smelled divine from the little lamb roast I had in the crotch pot. Ate the whole thing. I can still taste it this morning.

At least there is no more fruit in the house.

Ugh. Again, none of it was exactly a binge, but I don't feel good about my eating behavior yesterday. A couple of lessons I can glean, however:

1. Fruit is food without brakes, period.

2. I am still very capable of sabotaging myself.

I'm feeling really twisted inside about what I'm doing and its results. I can't see any results except that my body is not shrinking. So why do I keep doing this? Why am I not going back to weighing and measuring myself and my food? Wouldn't that be the right thing to do at this point?

Ugh.

I don't like living in this body right now. There. I've said it.

I'm tired of the struggle, of not knowing, of not feeling and being what I signed up for. This has been a whole lot of effort without the outcome I expected and that's f$*#ing hard.

Wah.

I need to clean my house and meditate. Maybe go to the gym. I'm sick of myself.

[kb0426]

I know this might not be a popular opinion around here, but I am going to say it anyways.

You ate fruit. Big deal. You did not eat a bag of Doritos, a pint of Haagen Das, or a plate full of chocolate chip cookies. You ate fruit, which while containing natural sugars also contains lovely fiber that our body needs. Did it push some veggies off your plate? Perhaps, but look at it in a positive light and don't beat yourself up for it.

I am off the mindset that fruit really is not the enemy.

I wish I could take the struggle away for you. I wish I could give you the joy of the 6:30 am bike ride in your life at all times.

[Moluv]

Crotch pot- makes me laugh every time. I'm such a child. I also get a kick out of the "crotchshot" hash tag feed on Instagram. I am a professional bikini waxer though so maybe crotches are in my blood.

You're down today, you'll be up again soon. Thanks for sharing your struggle with us.

[Nadia B]

This sounds so familiar it hurts. I think it's the way of our body to tell us - stop this crazy pressure. Not only there is a destructive self hatered towards your body, but there is a pressure about real, good, nourishing food - is it good enought to eat it? Is my meal balanced enough so I can relax and move on? Is my piece of meat big/small enough? What if I will get hungry soon again? What if I get hungry later than I am supposed to? As I wrote somewhere earlier, my body is an infant. It lets me know - I don't like the way you treat me, go figure.

Sometimes kids (not that I know much about them other than babysitting my two cousins from the day they were born) are just tired. Tired. They don't want food, water or play. They just whine like crazy.

Big hug.

[calee]

I'd send a big hug but fear it might just be annoying. I've been where you are so dang many times that it's sad.

I hope the apples tasted great and I knw the raspberries did. I hope you allowed yourself to really savor them and enjoy the moment as much as you did the lamb.

Find something to appreciate about where you are today. Don't worry about tomorrow. Dive into this next 30 without expectations. You know you feel good on the template and you don't self sabotage. I am skilled in that as well. That's why I want another 30. I think that for some of us it takes a bit more work to choose self nurturing instead of self sabotage. Let's strengthen that nurturing muscle. I know that another round of 30 will really help me. So maybe that's a better goal than a scale or body size goal? Ok, that's going to be my goal!

[missmary]

Let's strengthen that nurturing muscle.

I love this.

You did nothing wrong: you ate some fruit and some lamb and gave your body the goodness in those things. Maybe next time you will eat something nourishing before you are so hungry and avoid that out of control feeling, or maybe this same scenario will happen again and you will learn it after the next time. Either way is ok. You are ok. Good, even. Nuturing yourself is the right thing.

[LadyM]

Thanks, y'all. This is such a rollercoaster, and I'm grateful for other passengers so I know I'm not entirely a freak and alone on this ride.

Nurturing, yes. I need some of that. It's not always clear how to give it to myself. And sometimes I just don't want to be the only one to have to give it to myself.

Yes, I'm a tired and worn-out baby. But not from playing too hard. From working too hard. I do need to give it a rest. But I can't escape the confines of my own body. If only I could go on retreat from this body and return refreshed.

In better news, I had a couple of interventions from some dear older and sicker women friends of mine. I've done some cleaning and cooking and template eating and am feeling more calm. Not great, but calm. I'll take what I can get today.

[LadyM]

BTW, God love you, Mo, for being a professional bikini waxer.

[LadyM]

I'm more leveled out now that I hit the gym. Lifting weights=happy LadyM. It's really good for me.

And I did a post-wo meal of plain tuna and half a baked sweet potato. Pre and post wo meals are only necessary for me with weightlifting, I've decided. Feed the machine.

Tomorrow I'm doing cardio first thing.

Staying away from fruit is critical. Getting smart about the template is critical. Loading up again on leafy greens is critical. I'm back to focusing on the abundance of this way of life rather than what I can't have and what I haven't achieved. It's a practice. I'm better at it some times more than others. But I'm getting there.

[Beets]

I'm back to focusing on the abundance of this way of life rather than what I can't have and what I haven't achieved. It's a practice. I'm better at it some times more than others. But I'm getting there.

Well said, as always. I need to get my brain in this frame of mind as well.

[percypat]

I love reading your log LadyM. You say all the things my naughty brain says to me, which I'm scared to repeat out loud. I don't want you to feel that way, but like you, it makes me feel a bit better that I'm not the only one.

You're doing awesome, and you're so good at taking lessons from your experiences. I'm need to try and do the same!

[LadyM]

Just got back from seeing FMD. When she asked me how I'm doing, I told her. Physically, not too bad; mentally, not so great. I told her about my meltdown yesterday and my concerns about not having lost weight at this point. She checked my nervous system in relation to the biopsy scar on my neck and it seems the scar is interrupting communication between my brain and my body. Or something like that.

 

She gave me a new supplement--an oil to rub on the scar twice a day--and asked me about my diet. I'm eating the way she likes, and now she wants me to count carbs and calories for a week. At first I was like, "Ahhhhh! No!" but really, I'm open to it. She wants me under 60 g of carbs a day. I have no idea what that means, but I guess I'm fixin' to find out. She also suggested possibly adding a protein shake as a meal replacement and for detox. We'll see.

[Moluv]

Marks daily apple has a post about what 50g of carb looks like in a day- basically it's what he eats and he says even eating fruit and ample veg you will stay in the range.

[pjena]

It does sound like we had the same day yesterday!  Your fruit was better than my allbutter fest! 

 

Interesting about the FMD and the scar interrupting communication.  We took my son for cranial sacral therapy for a while thinking that a miscommunication betwen the head and the gut could be causing his reflux.  Not sure if it helped or not, because we were also doing enzymes, probiotics, elimination diet, etc.  Still, it is an interesting idea. 

As much as we don't want to track food like that, information is good.  It doesn't hurt to do it for a week.

[Nadia B]

As a very qualified calorie counter I can tell that fruits are most likely to be out with this amount without pushing veggies off the plate. I didn't add it to my previous post, but keeping your carbs relatively low it's also one of the most common used paleo weight-loss tools. Will it feel like diet? Yes. Do you need to count everything all the time? God forbid, no. Ask her net carbs of effective carbs. Every veggie has fiber content and it's not really absorbed or anything, so clarify that too. 

[LadyM]

Thanks for the support and input as usual, gals.

 

Mo, I checked out Mark's Daily Apple and what I found is that he usually hits somewhere between 100 and 150 g of carbs a day, including his coffee with sugar. Thanks for the tip! I used the website he recommends to work out my nutritional stats today.

 

Very interesting, Jen. Yes, it's hard to figure out what's working when we hit a problem from so many angles at once. I'm glad to know FMD isn't the only one with this sort of theory. And yes, for one week it can't hurt. Might help me tweak with better accuracy.

 

OMG, Nadia, you're so right. 50 straight up carb grams a day sure ain't much. I think I'll shoot for it for this week anyway and see how it goes before getting all complicated.

 

Basically, just by logging what I was planning to eat anyway, I came in just under 60 grams of carbs. This was a day without starchy veg or fruit or nuts or nightshades or coconut flesh. It's a serious annoyance to log everything I eat, but now I have a sense of what's in my usual meals. Usual meals these days=a handful of raw ground beef or lamb thrown in a pan with some fat, herbs, salt, pepper and whatever chopped veggies I have on hand including about two cups of leafy greens. Topped with a squirt of citrus and/or sauerkraut. This is my template at its best. And right now I'm happy to not have a terrible amount of variety. I mean, within that meal there are just about infinite possibilities, though the plate generally looks the same.

 

I eat two of those a day plus BP coffee or tea in the morning. I will be patient this week and just see how this works out. Of course this is the week before my period (if it comes relatively on time), so I make no promises that I'll be sane or even-keeled in any way, but I can try.

 

This has been a good day. I had a dream last night that FMD said everything was fine with me and there was nothing more she could do. It was a nightmare of sorts. Doctors throughout my life have told me this when I've known something isn't right. They've treated me like I'm nuts, a hypochondriac, and an all-around pain in the ass. Unfortunately, I've believed them on all counts.

 

So, to have someone willing and able to keep digging with me is a Godsend. And I'll be OK not quite being where I ultimately hope to be as long as there's work I can do to see progress.

 

That is to say that though I have no intention of returning to the daily food measuring, weighing, and counting for the long haul, I feel positive about this week's experiment. And I really hope it's successful, because I'm utterly dubious of protein shakes. Why would I eat fake food with a fake sweetness when it's all about real food and slaying the sugar dragon?

 

Today was also good because I had a facial, something I also did about a month ago, and it reminded me of how bad things were a mere thirty days ago. I kept coughing through the facial; and today my aesthetician confirmed that my skin is much better now than it was a month ago.

 

Also good today was I wore clothes that make me feel fabulous. *faking it 'til I make it*

 

I did pranayama and meditation this morning and I'm about to set off on my bike. It's glorious out and I'm going to take it in while I can.

[calee]

I'm smiling as I read about how you dressed yourself, your morning practice,my our bike ride and your willingness to work with your healing practitioner. I did primal earlier this year eating under 50 carbs. It just takes a bit more mindfulness in planning.

Congrats on better skin. I've never had a facial. It sounds wonderful.

[LadyM]

Calee, I hope you treat yourself to a facial soon. I've been getting them since I was 16 to manage acne (still managing acne, what?). The pampering is nice, but the result is nicer.

 

Any tips on keeping it low carb? Kombucha was my biggest carb bomb yesterday at 16 g. Next was mushrooms (who knew?) and then cabbage. I think I'll have to cut the booch for a while, which is OK since my SCOBY doesn't seem to be growing at all.

 

I'm really hoping that I don't have to shift into counting and measuring for good. I'm looking at it as an experiment to help me, as you said, become more mindful again. I can see now how--especially at the beginning of my W30--I was simply overeating. But I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I think it was necessary to nourish myself. My body was hungry! Now that I've figured out the skillet meal and that my favorite pretty shallow bowl works out to be the right portion for my belly I think it'll go fine. Just fine tuning. I'm actually feeling more comfortable with these parameters. I don't feel so blind.

 

Also, for the record, the bike ride was glorious! It's such a treat to ride those trails and be with the river and woods at different times of the day. Early morning and twilight are my favorite. The light is complex and makes everything new again.

[Moluv]

50g carbs- is that a kerogen if diet territory?

For a lower carb probiotic than kombucha, I think beet kvass or coconut water kefir would be more attainable- and you can get by with just one shot instead of a whole glass.

[Moluv]

50g carbs- is that a ketogenic diet territory?

For a lower carb probiotic than kombucha, I think beet kvass or coconut water kefir would be more attainable- and you can get by with just one shot instead of a whole glass.

[Moluv]

^sorry about that, tapatalk is goofy today too.

I want to track my carbs and macros for a day or two. I don't think it's obsessive at all to use tools like that for reasonable attainment of goals. I want to lose some fat too. I may just copy you, I can't afford the FMD for myself, so I'm borrow yours. The FMD in my town calls himself Dr. Fitt and I follow him on FB- a patient of his raves about how his porcine thyroid cream cleared her KP, and now I'm wrestling with ordering it myself. $50! I'm hoping my w30 can support my hormones more so I don't need supplements. We'll see!

[Beets]

Nadia says hers is almost clear with AIP. I think I'd rather cook my porcines than spread them on my body. Of course, I might also be tempted if I thought it would clear my psoriasis.

Lady M, what is the rationale for SLC? Weight or ? I'm sure you mentioned but I'm not seeing the post. Just curious. I've toyed with the idea. I take a bit if this coconut water kefir a day. It's 1g carb per TB (serving size). I am thinking I need to curtail my kombucha drinking till I make my own. I'm also wondering if I should skip it. Paleo Mom wrote that the the yeast content had a negative impact on her psoriasis.

[LadyM]

Well, I stepped on the scale for the first time since my doctors' appointments. I'm 10 pounds up from where I thought I'd be--meaning I've gained 10 pounds. Yes, it's the week before my period and yes, I had a couple glasses of water and coffee before weighing, but still. Not having measurements has not been good for me.

 

I'm not going to go crazy about this, but I also know the way I've been doing this isn't working.