Kestrel Grey

I'm down 0.9 lbs this week, for 1.7 lbs so far. The change this past week was avoiding sugar (cutting out most snacking and upgrading my breakfast from granola with yogurt to fruit/oatmeal with yogurt). I'm surprised and pleased that it made a difference because I'm not specifically calorie restricting. We'll see how next week goes. I had to add my afternoon snack back in to keep my mood from tanking, but keeping it healthy. You know, just between the granola and the Clif bars, that might be most of my weight gain over the past year.

Salty foods like pizza cause me to gain water weight for a day or two. Oddly, so do anti inflammatories. If I take an advil or Tylenol I'll be up by a pound the following day. As @Rurik Harrgathsaid, don't put too much stock in one day's weight.

Starting a no-sugar plan today and probably for the remainder of this challenge, at least. It does seem reasonable that cutting out sugar will help with the depressive episodes... I think... actually I had better not think that through or I will end up convincing myself of the opposite. Either way it is good for me and should help with hitting the weight loss goals. Party pooper.

Down 0.8 lbs this week after losing nothing the first week. I still need to figure out that mid-afternoon crash, but otherwise I'm happy with some progress. And without resorting to calorie counting just yet.

Of it helps, weight loss around the bust is often back fat that you are losing.

Sexy knees are an awesome accomplishment!

Hmmm I am pretty sure that I don't have any diabetes type issues. It definitely is tied to skipping my midday snacks though. Today I had a big pancake brunch and have had no anxiety attacks. What @Rurik Harrgath said about dopamine might be the real issue. (My winter s.a.d. medication is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor.) Getting that midday dopamine hit seems important. I didn't realize sugar affected dopamine?

I'm stumped. This week I started losing weight a little (0.4 kg) and also started having depressive and anxiety episodes. To make them stop I have to eat a ton of calories. Advice on keeping my blood sugar up while eating less?

My weight hasn't budged this week. One more week seeing if I can make habit changes alone work, then I'll have to contemplate going back to mfp.

What are your thoughts on MFP? Going the calorie counting route is contentious for me. I'm really hoping to manage my weight sustainably this time and counting has led to rebound weight when I stop. But not counting hasn't led to any weight loss at all... ah the dilemma!

With my before pic. Oddly, I feel okay about how I look (just wish my clothes fit better). But my bf% is in the obese range so I know that some fat needs to come off.

Thanks, I wouldn't have thought of that!

I can't manage a decent full body selfie on my phone, how are you all taking your progress pictures?

Gah this is going to be harder than I expected. My bad habits have set more than I realized. And unfortunately when you share your space with someone who isn't changing their eating habits, it's not like you can just remove all the junk food. Midnight snacking may be my downfall here.

Hands up if you repeatedly go to drink out of a water bottle with your mask on.

Decided to up the difficulty level because, why not? So I baked pies and scones today. Maybe my husband will eat them all before I do. (Actually I had planned on baking for a while. A tv show had me craving those french apple pie things, apple tarte tatin. They turned out almost right.) I'm just getting my weight up for Monday's starting weigh in.

Considering you spent part of your December traveling and or quarantining, you did well this month. You said you are eating a little better, you got lots of great biking in, and you are continuing to work on the exhaustion. For the PT, maybe you just don't feel it is that urgent? Like sure, if you are rehabbing then you feel the difference. When you are not injured, you just hope it makes a difference because statistics say so. Do you have trouble getting yourself to floss too?

I'm in! I was planning on lurking again but this sounds more fun. For those that I don't know very well, let me introduce myself. I am a Ranger (OCR addict) who went over to the Scouts about a year ago with the intent of running an ultramarathon in 2020. With the covid cancellations, that didn't happen and my training mojo fizzled. I put on 15 lbs after being moved to a desk job temporarily. The job is finished and I am back to more active work but the weight hasn't come off. Recently there has been a complication with training. My eyes developed a slight, temporary risk of retinal detachment and so I can't strength train or run for a few months. That happened in November, and I have put on another 5 lbs since then. Normally I do not care too much about weight except as a factor in how much fun I can have at races. This 20 lb increase has become problematic in its own right though. So I am happy to join in here and focus on dropping half of it over the next 10 weeks. Maybe I can even see the inside of a gym again by then.

If you have the time, let us know how your December was!

More promising news: my hair has stopped falling out. I'm still getting anxiety attacks but we're pretty sure it's just a medication side effect.

Which I haven't been great at. 😄 There's a chance my time off training will be shortened to three months, in which case there is only 2 more months as of today. I'm hoping so. My mountain ultra was defered to next September and I'd like to go so every week counts. My return to run program is slow because of my previous knee issues. I figure about 2 months to get up to 2 to 3 hours of running per week, all easy. Is going from 3 hours of easy running per week, to an 11 hour race in one day, doable in 5 months? Without dying? Probably not but I am still hiking and that will help with the race.

I am afraid that I don't have any advice. I want to like it, but the video setup drove me bonkers and I have yet to finish more than a couple weeks of Elements. I also have Focused Flexibility but that is just a list of stretches and instructions to pick 4 (2 for each area) and reassess occasionally. Have you tried it on Praxis yet? They claim it is all better on that platform but I haven't tried it yet.

Hey, welcome back! We've missed you! 1. It's good to see you've overcome your fear of sketching people, because that is an amazing sketch. 2. The rim to rim hike is one of those dream, once-in-a-lifetime adventures and I'm excited for you getting to go!

I've got a pair, mostly to help me wind down since I work late at night. They are lovely for that. If your concern is only computer eye strain then I agree with @fitnessgurl. The "night" display setting on most computers does a good job without you needing to buy special glasses. The other part of computer eye strain is having a fixed focus. If you can remember to look up and away every 5 minutes and focus on something far away, that helps too. Have fun with the new job!

That's my favorite hug scene. I probably will lurk occasionally, just enough to let people know I'm not dead.