5 years of Weight Maintenance- a day to celebrate!!!!

Feb 2012 and Feb 2017

Feb 2012 to Feb 2017

May 2011 to Feb 2017

May 2011 to Feb 2017

Starting weight 187.4 lbs

Goal Range 115-125  lbs

Current Weight 114.0 lbs

Keeping off       73.4   lbs

Time in weight maintenance 5 years

Age 50

Menopause 3+years

Height 5'1"

BMI 21.5

BMI ave this month 21.7

BMI ave last month 22.1

Ave glucose- new glucose meter, need to run controls, but Ave = mid to high 80's

Ave glucose (fasting & 2 hr post last month = 73 mg/dL)

Food Template:  Ketosis and/or LCHF, NSNG, Daily carbs 27-42 grams total 20-30 grams net carbs
Abstain from all grains, sugars*, dairy. Nut free, artificial sweetner free **
* 85% chocolate 1X per day
** Tiny bit of stevia in my Natural Calm

Food Timing or Time Restricted Eating Window or Intermittent Fasting 17:7 or 15:9

17 hours fasting (water only)
7 hours eating, 3 meals per day works best, early in the day.
6am to 1 pm daily for my eating window

Auto-Immune Hashimotos 1997, 100 ug Synthroid daily

Food Addict in Recovery: 5+ years

High Risk, but never diagnosed Type 2 diabetes

Walking 12,000 to 13,000 per day steps per day

Weight lifting 1-2 days per week, some weeks 1 day a week due to schedule change

Sprints on the rowing machine 1 days per week , took a break this week due to procedure

Stair Ave/day for the month 17 stairs (Apple Health Kit)

Pushups at home, modified 10+ per day, most days

Headspace Meditation 10 mins per day, most days

What can I say???  5 years is awesome. Seems like a few weeks ago I was taking my goal weight photos. 

Why? Why me? Why not me? I was a yo-yo dieter for 40 years. Next 40 years are mine!!!  

What's working now?

1. ABSTAINING for the WIN. Gretchen Rubin, abstaining in one short Youtube video.   I needed to be an abstainer in 1971, so 2011 was not too late for me. Thank you Higher Power for storing my extra glucose in my body and not wrecking my liver, kidneys, eye sight, and I have my toes and fingers. I'm lucky, so fortunate.

2.  Paleo/Low Carb/ Keto Taking what worked for other people, trying it on for size for myself.  Keeping whatever worked. Paleo, Low Carb High Natural Fat, Keto.   Intermittent fasting 17 hours, with a 7 hour eating window, 3 meals a day.

Truck loads of support groups compared to 2011. No excuses to not getting help with a transition if grain free living or cutting the sugar is needed for your health or your life. So many more connected, supportive communities these days.

And it if Paleo/Primal/Low Carb/Keto doesn't work, keep going to find what does. Or try again, with modifications.

3. Customizing  my food choices and my environment to keep obesity in remission

FTO obesity and Type 2 Diabetes genes, I have a very high genetic risk, but I'm in remission

I was at super high risk of both obesity and type 2 diabetes. I locked those two diseases up and put them away. Just because I have the geneotype for two very predominant, high rate diseases in the US, doesn't mean for me that I can't put them into remission for  long, long time.  Will it be life long? Time will tell.

But hey, genetic testing really helped me speed up my long term success.

Genetic testing, along with the Promethease SNPedia for the WIN.

In expensive now, relatively, knowing my full risk factors really help me pick and choose expensive screening, or when to screen less often.

4. Home glucose testing

Yeah, home testing is key to me knowing what foods are going to to get me diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic. I was a few months away at getting a diagnosis before I got wise and used my glucose meter to keep glucose spikes away. I still get higher glucose readings from time-to-time, but overall, I've removed the foods that keep my glucose high for hours on end.  Intermittent fasting helps with that, too.

5. Daily scale weigh-ins and recording at My Fitness Pal

My calorie intake along with my Low Carb/Paleo/Keto food choices are key. YES, for me both amount of food and the type of foods I choose - grain free, almost sugar free, dairy , free nut free,  and fruit free except for berries.

If I overeat on Paleo food, I get my fat pants back. My truth. Your milage may vary.

Also, my hungry and full signals do not work all the time the way they should. Rather than being a BAD PERSON with BAD HABITS, I have a crap "extra ghrelin gene" that still puts out extra hunger hormone. Tough, but not a barrier that keeps me overweight, obese, or morbidly obese.

Daily weighing and tracking at My Fitness Pal  help me to know what foods work for me, like a poor man's allergy test. Certain foods really spike up the scale. If I can repeat the spike 3-4 times, I usually know that food may be a food that I only have once and a while, like bacon. Maybe once a year or so now. Pork just isn't in my frequent foods.

Some people dislike the idea of daily weighing.  Hey now!  I'm the only person paying my health insurance and my medical bills. Glad I got the heck over people pleasing. It's the best adult thing I've done in a long while.

My health bills are staggering, and I'm well. If I can opt out of diseases and high medical bills using a simple tool, well, I owe it to my family finances to rock my weight data.

Here are 2 examples that are non-weight related.
 I wouldn't tape over a new teen  drivers gas gauge on her car and say, well just drive intuitively, you'll be able get gas when you FEEL like it. LOL!!!  Same thing with a teen and finances, don't look at your money inflow and out flow, you'll feel intuitively it when you need to earn money babysitting, like before you run out of gas.... LOL  All the nopes here. Tracking income and outflow for money is going to be a good habit for adulting.

 Weighing in and food tracking are inexpensive and personal finance tools. I understand that intuitive eating works for some. That's awesome, but it's not the right tool for me.

6. Modeling after other people who were and are successful and who use the same tools.

My bloggy friends and my MFP friends who rock weight maintenance. Thank you!!! I'll do a big shout out to you in a separate post. If I leave a comment on your blog, it's because I somehow found enough time and I can see the old me or the new me in you. Thank you.

Onward and staying away from what didn't work in the past.

1. Moderately eating all WW and low fat junk foods had me diabetic and sick and morbidly obese with high blood pressure and high hs-CRP. Oh, and the non-stop binge eating. Frozen diet dinners were the worst carby mess, along with most processed foods.

2-3  Eating low fat, grains, dairy, and canola oil really caused me a lot of joint pain and migraines. Sugar dependent and eating every 2-3 hours from 6am until 10 pm. That wasn't real hunger that was hormonal signals on WW 2 point bars.

4. Watching my glucose go higher and higher, and my HA1c go higher, too. Thinking that a low fat diet would fix it all and only testing glucose 1X per year.

5. Only weighing in 1X per 3 months or so, watching the scale go higher and higher. And not watching my total food intake, even while Paleo. I just didn't want to admit that I was going to have to find new habits and foods and amounts to make a permanent change.

6. I liked to model after the moderators and I kept myself stuck for decades. Me, I was in my own way for 40 freaking years. E-gads. Glad I got out of my own way.


Onward and here's to getting out of your own way. Never easy, always worth it. Thank you for all of your great comments over the 5 years.

GRAPHS, I've got them.