My entire life, I've been overweight. In October of 2009, at 31 years old, I had enough and decided to take control. Gastric Band is helping me, but it's up to me to make it work. This is my story.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

BAD BLOGGER

I need to get on the ball- I am a BAD, BAD, BAD blogger.  I am staying so busy.  We put our house on the market, so there's work to do there and I have been very good about going to jazzersize 3 nights a week  (until this week when I have extreme pain anytime I move my knee side to side- a result not of jazzercise but of cleaning and prepping the house to go on the market, go figure). 

I have been frustrated lately with the scale.  Despite going to jazzercise 3 nights a week and keeping busy it just wasn't moving- so I turned to my nutritionist and dailyplate.com.  I started to track my activity and my food.  I wanted to be sure I was accounting properly for activity, so I got one of those heart rate monitors where you enter in your height, weight, age and sex and you wear it when you work out and it calculates how many calories that you're burning and HOLY MOLY- in an hour of jazzercise, I am burning 1000-1200 calories.  That should be about a pound a week loss on exercise alone- but that's not happening.  So I look at the food.

Turns out most days, esp when  jazzersize I was only eating 1000-1200 calories- if I really splurged then maybe 1500-1600--- net calories here are SUPER low, that's good, right?

Not according to my nutritionist.  When you are netting fewer than 800-1000 calories a day your body can react in a very opposite way and try to avoid burning fat, it thinks that you are starving yourself and it can hold on.  At the same time with jazzersize I'm also building muscle - good, yes?  Well yes, but muscle had weight too- so I'm negating what little loss I am experiencing.

Her advise?  Eat more.  SERIOUSLY.  Never heard that before.  With the lapband that can be a challenge so she suggest ways to pack a punch in healthy foods that don't take up space.  I am adding in a glass or 2 of milk on days when I workout hard.  I'm making sure I eat before and after the workout- protein foods like dairy or nuts. 

I started to see some results last week when I started to add food back in and then this week I'm sidelined with this darn knee (seriously, it's getting better, but with knees you just have to give them time).  So I'm being extra careful with the food to make sure I get my protein, limit my carbs and keep in my target total calorie count since I can't work any of it off.

So far so good, the scale has moved down every morning this week!  Oh and I made my first ever purchase from Banana Republic- this may not sound like a big deal but I have NEVER been able to shop there- and to make it even better, it was on clearance and then marked down and I got this cute very light lilac sweater with a chiffon collar for $8.99!!!