I missed last week. Sorry.
Not a lot has been happening around here. My wheels have been spinning a lot.
For one thing the Winter Curse continues. We still haven't been fully paid. Sure, his bosses have been giving us a few hundred here and there but they haven't caught up. We've been managing groceries and bills but rent is still an issue. Saving every dime is our current mantra. Not a bad thing, a little frugality never hurt anyone, but it make it impossible to plan to work for a goal if you're not certain if the goal will be there when you get there.
To that end I have re-jiggered my project list to tap the stash more. That and I realized that we really need a lap blanket in the car. Skirts all the time (capris for the gym) + winter weather + arthritis = miserable knees. So I am making a stained glass lap blanket. Take all the scraps of mostly Red Heart Classic you have and knit small versions of Granny's Dishcloth.
Pick a needle size that makes a fabric you like.
CO 3
K 1 row
*K 1, K 1LRinc, K to end of row*
Repeat from * until you have 4 inches on a side
K 1 row
*K 1, K2tog, K to end of row*
Repeat from * until you have 3 sts on needle
K 1, K2tog, psso
Fasten off.
The end result looks like this
The plan is to do a row of single crochet all around in black, then fasten the squares together through the back, which makes a neat edge. Multiply by a lot for a lap blanket for the car, Red Heart wears like iron and is machine washable and is cheap, so the perfect project right now.
Also, LRinc:
Works really well with my wonky Arabian knitting style. Nearly invisible in garter stitch.
The other big distraction for these two weeks has been dieting.
I am a big woman, still. Somewhere on this blog I have progress pictures, I have lost 100 lbs in the past few years, so I know it can be done. I gained back 20, or so I thought, when I went in to have my knee looked at the first time. I did not, and do not, want to be one of those failed stories and I do need to get the weight off my knee somehow. So I cut back to 2000 calories, 200 under my BEE, and started weighing everything. A week later I had lost 10 lbs, because water is a thing. But it's also an encouraging thing, so for the past two weeks I've kept it up and returned to the gym.
End result?
Constant physical hunger, Not emotional eating, not I'm bored eating, I mean physical hunger so hard that eating raw onions was seriously tempting, and at one point happened. Physical pain that for 2-3 hours a day blotted out everything else. All I could do was sit and wait to eat again.
Utter distraction. I couldn't focus on anything else but this. I couldn't talk about anything else but this. This overwhelmed everything.
Going to the gym on my husband schedule sucked six hours out of my day. Six. He's baffled by that because "we're only at the gym for 3 hours", but then I have to wait for him to finish his more elaborate snack and drink his coffee and get in the shower, and then I need my shower, and by the time all that's done there's another 3 hours gone and then it's lunchtime. So my productive day is reduced from 11 hours to 6 hours, which is a huge cut.
Oh yeah, and between the constant pain, the lack of energy, and feeling powerless because I have no control over my house right now, I have not exactly been either dominant or horny for weeks. Not good for the marriage.
I will grant that my BG numbers have been excellent, so in theory my body has been getting what it needs. But I have been miserable.
End result: I gained 2 lbs.
Conventional wisdom would say that I should double and re-double down. Cut to 1800 calories. No 1200. No, 1000. No 800! Spend even more time at the gym. More cardio, more reps, more more more!
And it's true. They say that you should just eat a "healthy" diet and walk 30 min a day, but you read the forums where, let's face it, skinny people gather and they're all eating 800-1000 kcal/day. working out 2-3 hours and smoking either tobacco, pot or both. And they feel so stuffed. They have to force themselves to eat up to their total. Some days they don't eat because they're still full from yesterday.
Granted there are others out there who truly do stuff themselves on junk food, eat vast quantities of crap day in and day out, and their bodies just rot out from under them. I've seen them at the stores and it's terrible. And CICO does work, it's working quite well for the husband. He works out 3 hours a day, eats 1800 kcal, and is slowly but steadily losing. And he's not hungry, he has ample energy and is fine.
It's just not working for me. It might be because I have PCOS and that changes the cues your body receives to tell it when it's hungry or satisfied. It could be because I have a high ACE score and that changes how your body reacts to stress, and dieting is a stress. It could be lipodema. It could be a lot of things, I'll have to keep working with my doctor to find out what's going on.
All I know is that I have to live this life. I could make myself miserable to prove something to them, the great them out there, to be able to say that yes, I lived on 1200 kcal or less and I worked out 4 hours a day and I endured being sick and miserable and useless for days on end. Either it would work, in which case they would say I should keep doing it forever because it's worth it, or it wouldn't in which case they would call me a liar.
Or, you know, I could just live healthy and let the chips fall.
Granted there is the whole pain in my knees thing. That is something I am going to have to work out moving forward. I might end up going for a DEXA scan sooner so I know exactly what I'm dealing with.
But for now I plan to live a healthy diet. I've found that 350 kcal over my BEE tends to be the minimum that leaves me with ample energy and some, but minimal hunger pangs (you should be hungry 20 minutes before a meal, not 2 hours, and not 20 after you finished one). I plan to continue to eat a minimally processed diet of whole grains, fruits, vegetables and lean meats. I plan to continue to eat a low-carb, high protein diet because that tends to keep my hormones balanced without the need for medication. I plan to allow myself 2-3 cheat days a month. And I plan to walk 30 minutes a day, as my knees allow. And I will revisit in 3 months and see where I am.
I'm still done with being fat. But I'm even more done with being this miserable.
In the meantime, because of all of this, not a damn thing has been done. I've barely written anything, I haven't been reading. and projects are going insanely slowly. So I plan to take this week and catch up on the rest of my life.
Musical inspiration for the week:
Yes, it's Christmas music, but it's Windham Hill. Which is just the thing when you are either hung over from the taco you ate at the party last night (2 of those cheat days are play parties, just to make it easy), or you're coming down with something.
If I am on top of everything I am going to bed until the spring.
