I'm another Leighite. I plan to start OPT for Fatloss on June 8th. This will be a second start. I tried it seven weeks ago but quit after one week when ghosts of amenorrhea past started to wail and moan and shake their unearthly chains, freaking me out and making me think maybe I needed her Metabolic Repair program instead. But things in Ain't It Grand to Be a Woman Land mostly straightened themselves out, so I ended up incorporating a lot of the MRM principles but not following it exactly. This week I'm eating calories over maintenance to hopefully get my metabolism revved up for OPT.
Overall history as brief as I can make it
I haven't been truly thin since about age seven, I think. Maybe eight. I do know that by nine I was definitely putting on more weight than a kid should. I'm now at 152 and weigh less than I did in seventh grade, when I think I was around 200-210 (I'm 5'8.5"). I lost around 30 lbs in the year before and then during college, then another 20 in 2005 when I lived in Chicago and had no car. Moved back to my homeland of CO in Jan 2006, lost another 10, putting me around 150. Then some sort of deficit got me to 140 this time last year, which clearly I've regained, plus a little.
More recent history as brief as I can make it
I became a chronic undereater when I moved back to CO in 2006. Honestly since I was losing weight in Chicago and therefore had to be in a deficit, I'd probably been undereating since then. I don't think it was a bona fide, DSM-IV certified ED; it was just Ignorance getting together with its good pal Stupidity and throwing a party. Thankfully I was just working out at Curves the entire time, so there wasn't any real danger of overtraining.
I started to suspect I was undereating in Jan of last year, when a "diet" program through Curves had me eating 1200 calories and I realized it was more food than I'd been ingesting. (Incidentally, that diet also put me on lower fat, and it was around this time I developed amenorrhea. I think the decrease in dietary fat, as my fats were already quality ones, contributed to the amenorrhea.) But the Curves staff, while kind and supportive in general, had no clue about this sort of thing. Even when I told them I suspected I'd been undereating, they kinda brushed it off and never mentioned that in that case, maybe I shouldn't be following their diet plan.
Anyway.
I think last year I got up to around 1600 calories, but never pushed beyond that because I thought I had a "slow metabolism." No thyroid tests or anything to back it up; I just figured that since I wasn't losing weight anymore, I burned 1600 and that was it. Like I said, Ignorance and Stupidity.
Early this year I bought and read Tom Venuto's Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. Became reconvinced that I was still undereating; got up to 2200 cals and stalled out even though his calculator put me at 2400. I like a lot of his principles and definitely thought it was time to ditch Curves, but he leaves a lot of the actual work of building a training program up to the reader and I didn't think I was up to that yet.
Enter Leigh Peele. I won her
Fat Loss Troubleshoot package just in time, since I was starting to explore the world of HIIT and had joined a new gym that's open 24 hours, which meant I had the opportunity to wake up at 4:15 to work out before starting work at 7:15. Since I don't sleep well to begin with and am evidently susceptible to amenorrhea, probably not the best idea.
Goals
I actually considered calling my log "Clothing OPTional" since I'd like to look good naked. Though I decided against that name, the goal still stands.
Goal body fat is, I think, around 20%. Since I've never been thin as an adult, it's hard to know for sure. I like the Jessica Biel look, but unfortunately at 20% I may look more like Gwyneth Paltrow or Kate Hudson or someone else with little muscle tone, since I'm very small-framed and have toothpick-like arms and legs in comparison to my middle. So at some point I'll be looking more at body recomp rather than fat loss, but one step at a time. I'll probably have to do a second round of OPT to get to where I'd like to be.
Head stuff
Even though my weight loss in Chicago was steady at 2 lbs/week, I have this fear of failing at fat loss now. I trust Leigh's program; I'm not as sure I trust my body. I have read logs of people who got into vastly worse situations than I did, but since I chronically don't sleep well (and I've tried melatonin, L-Trytophan, calcium, and am starting a sleep mask now) I do worry that that I may have excess cortisol. But I'm telling myself not to worry about that unless I don't see results, and that if I think I'm going to fail, then I will fail. I need to be positive.
I'd also like to be successful so as to present a positive example to my mom. She's also trying to lose weight (haven't quite converted her to the fat loss vs. weight loss way of thinking yet) but she doesn't weigh food--I'm not sure if she even measures it. I just see her doing a lot of things or not doing a lot of things that seem so simple to me after reading Leigh's books, but I don't think she's "ready" for it yet. If I have success, then I'd have a better platform for helping her do what she needs to do.
Okay, what's with the log title?
As I said, I like a lot of Tom Venuto's principles. One of them is his present-tense goal setting/affirmations, point being that if you set goals in future tense rather than present (which I think I'm guilty of in this post; oops) then it's something that always happens "tomorrow" rather than today. A few weeks back he also had a blog post about "
fat bloggers" who, even though they are trying to lose weight, are essentially defining themselves as what they DON'T want to be. In that post he challenged readers to definte themselves, in the present tense, as what they want to be. So IAASM stands for "I am a slim miss." Yes, it's a little cheesy, but I'm 27 and chronically get called "ma'am." I don't like being a "ma'am." I'm too young for "ma'am." So I'm a miss, and a slim one at that.
Tom says you should repeat your affirmations/goals each day. I figure each time I come to my log, I'll see that reminder and say it to myself.
Since this post is already far too long, and I haven't taken them yet, measurements and other semi-voyeuristic stats will come this weekend.
IAASM
Linear Mode
