I work at a bookstore and since January I have seen a bazillion diet books littering the bestseller tables to prey on the hopeful people whose New Year's Resolution is to lose weight and live healthier. I'm a terrible dieter and don't do fad diets very often. The few I have tried, I got bored or lazy in a week or two and never saw real results.
So why am I doing this one? A lady was buying the book today and told me about it. The title was intriguing to me because one of my major problems has always been a slow metabolism. To get a better idea of my situation, I'll give you some personal back story.
I've never been skinny. I am not a slim build. I am a sturdy, short, woman.
That being said, I wasn't always fat.
When I was a teenager, I was very active in sports and hip hop dancing. I was on the school swim team as well as a local city swim team and I swam every day. When I moved on to high school, I didn't have enough time to dedicate to swim team due to the rigorous academics and advanced classes I was taking. However, I did join several dance groups and had practice atleast 4 times a week. I remember for senior prom, I told myself I couldn't eat ice cream and curly fries (my two favorite junk foods) for two months prior to the dance to make sure I'd fit in my prom dress. I'm not sure if that actually made a difference but I did fit just fine into my prom dress.
My lowest teenage weight aka weight at prom:
108 lbs
My BMI at that point was 21.1 for a height of 5 feet.
This is a normal BMI and is acceptable. Yay! Go high school me!
At that time I didn't really think about "real dieting" and had no idea what a BMI was. I was at the stage where "don't eat a ton of junk food and you'll be fine" was a successful form of diet.
Sadly, it goes downhill from there. What happened? College happened.
As a freshman in college, those who decided to live on campus stayed in dorms that had no common rooms or common kitchens. Instead, we were required to purchase the meal plan to the cafeteria that provided three meals a day. This is all fine, except it was the gateway to my downfall! LOL.
I was raised never to waste food. Leftovers were eaten until completely gone or undeniably inedible. I know, I know, everyone says eat a big breakfast, it's good for you. But honestly, the way I ate prior to college was little, to no breakfast, (assuming I woke up early enough to eat breakfast) and a decent sized lunch, and a decent sized dinner. I never ate much on a regular basis, just whenever I was hungry. Now in college, my parents put a lot of money forward to help me pay for school. This included the very expensive meal plan. I say expensive, because I could have survived on a fraction of that cost if I only had a kitchen to make healthy meals on my own. I was never a ramen girl and my mom taught me how to cook my favorite meals before I left for college. So in order not to waste any of the money my parents spent on that meal plan, I ate a lot and often just for the sake of eating. For instance, I would wake up just to eat breakfast, even if I had no class, and regardless of if I was actually hungry. Then I'd go back to sleep and wake up when it was time to eat lunch. At lunch and dinner, I made sure to eat a full meal, no matter if I felt like eating or not. Looking back on this, my mom said I didn't have to eat like that but for some reason my thought process was that if I ate the meal plan's worth in food, I wouldn't be wasting my parent's hard earned money.
Of course, I gained the usual Freshman 15 that everyone talks about, but mine was probably more like Freshman 20. Since I was young, I have always had a pretty slow metabolism. Often when I ate, I was full for a very long time and only ate a little throughout the rest of the day. That eating pattern could be an argument for why I have a slow metabolism but its been this way since I can remember. I honestly don't know which came first: the slow metabolism or the bad eating habit. I have always had extremely low blood pressure (to the point where the doctor would joke if I'm actually alive). This is supposed to be related to why I'm always freezing and why I get dizzy very easily. Meanwhile, my skinny baby sister has always had a fast metabolism. Since she as a baby she would wake up in damp blankets from sweating all night. She actually wakes up in the middle of the night to get water because she gets dehydrated. She is like a walking heater even now and very perfect for snuggling with in the winter. She also eats like a horse and of course, eats A LOT of breakfast. I'm talking pizza, chicken sandwiches, etc. Related? I don't know. Probably. I did try that big breakfast thing before but I would just get sleepy after breakfast. I hate eating a lot for breakfast. I'm not a morning person and neither is my tummy. It wakes up around 10AM.
Anyways, back to the story. I should have tried losing that Freshman 20 over the summer but it was hard and I fluctuated between losing 5lbs and gaining it back. And the weight gain spiral continued...
I was a computer animation major and anyone in that field can tell you that it involves hours upon hours sitting on your bum in a dark room. The course was difficult and demanding and I often spent 20 hours a day doing homework on the computer or painting something in my dorm room. The demand for more time led to less sleep and missed meals.
By senior year I ended up staying awake 3 days at a time desperately trying to finish my complicated thesis in time. I often took an hour nap or so, and occasionally passed out for 3 hours. I lived on coffee (I couldn't stomach energy drinks). I've been told that only the first cup of coffee is supposed to have any effect and every one after that is useless but it somehow fueled me through those exhausting, semi-conscious days. Probably psychological effects LOL. With less and less time available, I was also unable to work very much so my income was almost non-existent. I could usually survive on healthy meals on about $30 a week if I cooked my meals but that income dwindled down to $15 to $20 a week and then sometimes $0 a week if I couldn't fit any work into my schedule. I also didn't have much time for shopping or cooking. I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous to say I had no time for this but anyone who went through the or similar program can vouch that it is really true. Working was only made possible because I worked on campus so I could just stumble into my desk job and the hours were very flexible.
So by senior year, my diet consisted mostly of coffee and salted rice. I would eat miscellaneous food if I had the money, usually sandwiches from a coffee shop across the street, but when without money, it was salted rice. I didn't want to ask my parents for more money. Occasionally my family would send me a $20 or so when they got worried about me and my boyfriend would come over and take me shopping at Walmart so that did help a lot. What can I say, I was a proud person. I didn't want to ask help from those who had already given so much.
During this time I also had painful and irregular bowl movements. I had cramps and wouldn't #2 for days. My mom actually made me get an X-Ray because she was concerned that I was pained every time I ate and the X-Ray showed that I was literally full of shit... like my entire intestinal track. All that rice and too little veggies.
Anyways, that poor diet combined with irregular eating times, and little to no sleep led to a graduation weight of... *belly drum roll please*
142 lbs aka 27.7 BMI and soundly overweight and halfway to obesity.
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/obesity/BMI/bmicalc.htm
After graduation, I was also sickly. I had insomnia as well. I'm the type of person who is the last person to get sick in a room full of sick people, and even then I'll probably only start to feel sick and not get the full cold. But at this point, I was instantly sick if someone coughed in my vicinity. This did not help that a lot of my new after-college friends were in the nursing program or registered nurses. They carried all kinds of cooties everywhere they went I bet. I managed to get strep throat at this time. You'd think the upside to that would mean that I'd lose weight but not really. I also would occasionally have chest pains that took my breath away. It would feel like someone punched me in the chest and ran away.
After a few months, I went to a doctor and got a health exam. They evaluated my health with blood tests and other doctory things and determined that I had borderline hypothroidism aka low thyroid hormone production. This is related to metabolism. You can read more about it here:
http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/hypothyroidism-topic-overview I asked if they could just give me a thyroid injection but the doctor said it might give me hyperthyroidism instead. So in short, she gave me a very strict diet plan and information for a nutritionist.
This diet was very specific and is very similar to the HCG diet. Everything is measured, you can only eat certain food, and no other liquids but water. I was also recommended to try taking those lipo shots to help jump start my whole system. So I tried a bit of the HCG and a bit of the lipo. The diet was very very hard to stick to. I never realized how most of the time I spent hanging out with friends involved eating! I had to bring my own little healthy snacks to eat when we went out so I wouldn't be tempted to eat whatever deliciousness they were eating. This made them feel guilty eating when I couldn't which in turn made me feel bad. I was desperate to feel better and followed this plan for the recommended 30 days. I dropped from 142 lbs to 130 lbs in the course of the month. Yippe skipee!
Afterwards, I continued on to eat normally with healthy choices and exercise and I dropped down to 124 lbs. over the course of a few months. OMG tis a miracle! I was getting close to my goal weight of 115 lbs to 120 lbs. Sadly this was not to last.
Shortly after my miracle road to health I went to Ukraine to a wedding. Their party hospitality was amazing and I ate way too much delicious and rich food. You couldn't walk into someone's house without being made to drink tea and at least eat sandwiches, if not a full lunch. It actually got to the point where I was afraid to pop in and say hi to anyone. LOL I thought I was going to gain it all back but it was not so. I only gained about 4 lbs. This was probably because of all the walking we did. We rarely rode anywhere. It was all walking and public transport. And the people don't casually stroll there. It is a brisk New York pace in stilletos on broken cobblestone roads. My sneakers barely survived the ordeal and my one pair of heels was demolished. If I can find the picture I will post it later.
Anyways, I returned to America weighing 128 lbs. For the longest time I was just stuck at 128 lbs no matter what I did. Since then, I fluctuate between 128 lbs to 138 lbs. This fluctuation is due to holiday eating and breast cancer marathon training. I also gave up meat for Lent. Thus my eating habits are still irregular. Eating healthy is expensive and hard work! It is also very frustrating because I feel like even though my mom and I eat the same meal, I carry those pounds for a week and hers are gone within a day or two. How can this be? We exercise relatively the same amount each week. She's even twice my age! If anything her metabolism should be slower than mine! What is this nonsense?! It's not like I eat fast food and junk food all the time. I actually eat pretty healthy meals and lots of tea. I love Teavana =) I still don't eat big breakfasts though... *pout*
So... after that very long winded story, you now know a little about me and my health. From this point, I am going to finish reading through the "Fast Metabolism Diet" book to see exactly what it is I'm supposed to do for this diet and share my notes with you. So far its not very demanding. It's mostly stuff I eat on a regular basis, just specific rotations of how often and when I eat it. There is also an app to help me plan out my meals. I have also begged a friend to do the diet with me to help me stay on track and receive encouragement and guilting if need be. It says you could lose up to 20 lbs in a month but I'll be a bit more realistic and set a goal of 10 lbs aka lose 5 lbs of water weight and 5 lbs of actual weight loss. The purpose of this blog, whether or not anyone actually reads it, is to not only document if this actually works and give me another reason to stay dedicated!
I plan to start on Monday.
Talk to you soon!
- C
