The Weekly Check-In: Progress!

Today's weekly check-in is the second installment of getting the blog caught up to life here in the real world. On the weight loss/getting back to speed front, there's mostly good news and a little wrist slapping going on.

The good news is that I'm down another 2lb! This puts me exactly halfway between Fit and Baby and only 1lb over my intermediate goal of reaching my Christmas 2010 weight. Woohoo! I think I can mostly chalk this up to being insanely busy these past two weeks and being constantly on the go. Oh, and I'm back to running. :)

The wrist slapping is that right after I started journaling my food the circus came to town for The Kiddo's birthday party (which was great fun!) and I promptly fell off the journaling wagon. Time to get back on my horse.

I've been thinking lately about the challenges I have to weight loss and the opportunities I have. The biggest among my challenges are simply time and energy. Baby Brother is still a little small for a jogging stroller, so I need to run when Mr. Joanna is home and can watch him. Early morning hours are unlikely because I am so completely sleep deprived (although I did an early AM run today!!). Evening hours haven't worked out yet, but I'm thinking with a little concerted effort, I might be able to make this an opportunity. Sometimes.

Time constraints have been a huge challenge here these past two weeks. The utter insanity around here lately is from a few things. First, remember how we sold our house and moved two years ago? Well, to make a long story short, the sale didn't go through. We've been scrambling to get it cleaned up so new people will love it and buy it. For real this time. On this front, I think the crazy part is over--whew!

Also, I've been back to work part-time while being home with the baby full-time. I've had some regular work projects going on, but by far the craziest part of work is that one colleague and I are moving to another department and are consequently moving our offices...tomorrow. This is highly unusual in higher education, and is usually the result of fairly dramatic circumstances, as was the case here. This is the end product of the madness that I mentioned had been going on at work some time ago. I'm so, SO thankful it's over, and will be happy to return to a calmer work life. The move is a really positive change for us.

I don't have pictures for this post so you get a gratuitous pic of Baby Brother with my Dad. <3

The Weekly Check-in: Running the Numbers

Welcome to the second edition of The Weekly Check-in, where you can catch all things related to my journey to weight loss and getting back on the road post-partum. I learned a lot this week.

To get started, I logged into sparkpeople.com, which I hadn't done in a very long time, and reset my current weight, goal weight (-18lb), current exercise level (walking 5mi/week), and a target date for my slimmer physique. For anyone trying to lose weight, I highly recommend sparkpeople. It's free and gives you all the tools you need for the task at hand. Right away, the site told me how many calories per day I should be eating to lose 1 lb per week. And immediately I learned lesson #1 of 3 about why I lost zero pounds in the past week.

Lesson #1: It is really difficult to lose weight while I am both breastfeeding and not yet cleared for exercise. 

This came as something of a surprise because I've always heard that bf'ing helps melt the pounds away. The problem? BF'ing women are advised to eat a minimum of 1800 calories per day. However, according to sparkpeople, I should be eating 1440-1690 calories per day in order to lose about 1 lb per week. When I increase the number by 300 calories (what you burn by BF'ing), that brings me to 1740-1990. Adjust the lower number to a minimum of 1800, and I have a range of 1800-1990 calories per day that I can consume. In short, I'm trying to hit a smaller than usual target (a 190 calorie range rather than a 250 range), and I'm right at the minimum number of calories I should be eating to bf, but at the maximum to lose weight. 

Lesson #2: I eat too many carbs

Ok, so this isn't really a surprise. While I've cut way back on the ice cream consumption since giving birth, I still eat too many sweets and carbs. However, it was fairly easy to modify, which brings me to lesson #3,

Lesson #3: The Hawthorne Effect

Hawthorne Effect: "a form of reactivity whereby subjects improve or modify an aspect of their behavior being experimentally measured simply in response to the fact that they know they are being studied..." (Yes, I'm an academic who just cited Wikipedia. Shameful!)

Even on Day 1, I changed what I was eating because I knew I was keeping track of it. Also, I could see immediately, just from entering what I ate for breakfast, that there wouldn't be room for many indulgences. I swear by keeping a food journal for exactly this reason!

I am embarking on Week 2 better armed with a knowledge of what I need to be doing and a reality check that it will simply be slow until I can increase my activity level (t-8 days, hopefully!). Here's hoping for even modest results in the coming week!