7 Pounds?

I lost 7 pounds Friday night.  Yes, in one night.  Thank goodness, too, because I was up a whopping 9 pounds from last Saturday morning.  It was apparently all retained water.  At least 7 pounds of it, maybe 8.  I was just a bit freaked out by it.  I really was.  I'm still not happy about the other two, but given my size, two pounds at the margin is probably not much to worry about.

I have noticed a slight increase in my total calories.  Nothing crazy, but nowhere near the 14,000 calories that four pounds (for example) would require.  Not even the 7000 calories that two pounds would require.  Not if the 2700 calories that Livestrong says I should be eating to lose weight is the right number.  So, why the plateau?  And what the hell is up with the water retention?

I recall having read somewhere that if you drastically cut calories to lose weight, you cut your metabolism by 10%, even if you regain the weight.  I don't know if I have that right, but I have done that twice in my life, and I was eating very little.  Up to 1500 calories each time, but no more.  The first time, my doctor gave me that number.  The second time I was really eating 1000 calories until I turned 21 and could drink beer legally.  So it's possible I damaged my metabolism.  I don't know if it comes back.

It's also possible that I didn't damage anything, but that my body just doesn't need 2700 calories.  So I cut back to 2600.  We'll see how that goes.  The danger in eating too little is that you will waste muscle instead of losing fat.  With less muscle, you compromise your metabolism, since muscle is the best furnace you have.

A little less might help.  We'll see.  I've been within three pounds of my current weight since August.  Great, I'm in maintenance.  (It's not a bad thing.)  But I want to drop 100 pounds.  For real.  It's about more than the clothes, suddenly, too.  Twenty to start with would be great.  And then 80 more.  And then, maybe another 20.  We'll see.  But I'm tired of the plateau.  It's hard to keep in mind the fact that I have dropped just about 40 pounds this year.  That's a lot.  I've said it before--it doesn't feel like a lot, because I have so far to go.  But it's plenty.

Today was in the 80s here in SoCal.  Hard to believe.  I took the opportunity to take a long bike ride down the Santa Ana River (which is all concrete).  I went about 13 miles in an hour.  The first 40 minutes were pretty easy.  But I have to say, it wiped me out for the rest of the day.  I liked doing it.  I want to do more.  I want to be able to do physical things.

When I was making the transition from junior high school to high school, I decided not to try out for the marching band.  Make any jokes you wish, but I imagined the band would be fun.  I didn't do it because I honestly didn't think there would be a uniform in my size.  I couldn't deal with that.  So I bagged the instrument.  That history came into my head today.  Don't know why.  I guess I don't want to live my life that way--being unable to do things because I ate too much.  I don't need to be fat now.  I need to have options.

Schadenfreude

My high school reunion was a couple of weeks ago. I didn't go. I didn't even consider it. The last one I went to was the ten year, and that was enough. I realized then--and the point reiterates itself every time I start following links on Facebook--that I really didn't like most of the people I went to high school with. I am a little embarrassed to admit the degree of schadenfreude I experience when looking at pictures from the reunion. Most of the people I know are pretty fat. When they were kids, most of them wrote me off because I was fat. I fantasize about asking them about it. "Is it weird for you being fat?" "Remember when I was fat and you were thin?" That second question would have worked at the ten year. I was thin. People didn't know who I was.

I grew up a fat kid. By the time I was in first grade, I was a porker. I don't know why I started eating. At some point, my weight and eating habits have all the markings of a power struggle in the family. Kids teased me, of course, and I sometimes struck back. I remember hitting a bully named Todd so hard on the back that he cried. This was when I was in seventh grade. He was an eighth-grader. I was shocked that he cried. And glad.

I didn't really date. A little. I was a (bad) shotputter, so not a jock. But mostly I was the funny fat kid. A cliche, and you can read about the funny fat kid in countless blogs about weigh loss. I tried to please people so they would stay off my ass. But if you do that long enough, you find it hard to figure out what it is you want. At least, that's my story.

A lot of blogs talk about the health problems of being fat. I have had some problems, but nothing as dramatic as some people talk about. The guy at 344pounds.com seems to have had serious trouble. I have been on high blood pressure pills since I was 27. But I got into a bad marriage at 26, and when I got divorced, the doctor cut the dosage in half, even though I was up 90 pounds from when I married. (You'd think that would have been an issue in the marriage, but I don't think it was. My ex never said a word, though that was common, so I'll probably never know.) I had some back spasm problems when I was up around 400 pounds, but those mostly resolved when I started working out and lost some weight. I have a problem with my ankle that is due to my flat feet which I think are inherited. No doubt the weight exacerbated the problem, but I don't know if it caused it.

People lose weight for lots of reasons. To get laid (done that), for heath (that too), because they're sick of being fat (Drew Carey). I'm in it for the clothes.