This week marked the 8 month point in my Operation Melt journey and I am seeing strange results that make me think my body is confused. Some of the strange results may be related to how my daily routine has changed and is slightly inconsistent right now because this is also my second full week between jobs.
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
With a little extra time on my hands, I have been able to ramp up my workouts a little bit. The result has been a week of new personal records in a number of my exercises. Over the last 4 weeks, the number of calories I have burnt through focused exercise has steadily ramped up.
It is important that I have more workouts because my normal weekly activity outside of workouts is a bit lower. I am not walking between meetings, between buildings and around the office. I am more stationary than before because I am spending a lot of time writing, emailing, researching, etc. This is a fact that had not occurred to me until just now!
On Thursday morning, the weather was fairly nice, so I decided to do an outdoors run instead of the treadmill. When I first started running late this summer, I had a goal of being able to run a full lap around Schiller Park in German Village – 0.8 miles. Unfortunately, I started with only being able to run around about an eighth of the park. On Thursday, I ran two and a half full laps around the park for a total of 2 miles without stopping to walk even once. These were great personal bests for me and a sign that my endurance is ramping up.
After setting my personal record run, I still went to the gym to get some weight training in and I ramped up the weight on nearly every exercise. More personal records set all in the same day!
Unfortunately, with all of the extra workouts and the new personal records, I have also needed more rest days. Sundays are becoming common non-gym days for me and I usually end up not achieving my step or calorie burn targets. This week, I also had a very restful Friday and that was another day without meeting my goals.
Calorie Madness
As I have mentioned before, as I get smaller, my daily calorie budget continues to decrease as well. I am getting very close to falling below the 1900 daily calories mark as my budget. While this is a positive sign of the progress I am making, it also sucks! That few calories is barely enough for 3 satisfying meals, much less meals that have even a hint of junk food in them. If I want to add a drink or two, the problem gets even bigger.
Some of my calorie madness is a bit self-inflicted. The way my calorie tracker works is that it accounts for both consumption and exercise. Daily calorie budget minus calories consumed minus exercise calories burned equals net calories for the day. So, if my daily calorie budget is 1900 and I had a workout that burned 1100 calories, I can technically consume 3000 calories.
Based on this approach for calorie tracking more exercise should give me more flexibility for consumption. Well, this is where I am creating my own problem. I am so focused on meeting my goal, that I compulsively stick to the calorie budget without considering the exercise calories. So far, this has worked very well for me and it has produced the weight loss results that I have wanted to see.
I am starting to think that, as my workouts get more intense and my calorie budget decreases, my need for calories has likely ramped up. It is possible that sticking to 1900 calories in a day when I have a workout that burns 1100 calories may be a mistake. Amplifying my belief that I may be going overboard is the fact that my BMR or base metabolic rate – the number of calories my body burns each day at rest – is over 2000. Maybe I am starving my body of the energy needed to properly recover and build muscles and to lose weight.
Smaller Me is More Sensitive to Changes
When I was bigger, my body could pretty much handle anything that I threw at it. High calories, poor nutrients, no exercise… anything. Fast forward to my 92 pounds lost body and that is no longer the case. I am more sensitive to things that didn’t matter before.
Over the past 2 weeks, the number of daily weight fluctuations has increased significantly. I have generally been unable to predict what I will see when I step on the scale each morning. There are days where I think I did everything right and expect to see a decrease in weight and I am up a full pound from the prior day. Then, I expect to hold flat or increase and I see myself drop 2 pounds. But, they are back the next day.
Most of the daily fluctuation is related to cells retaining water and to the overall digestive process. While I know that my body has become very sensitive to high levels of sodium intake, I don’t think that is all of it. I know my body is sensitive to higher alcohol intake, but that isn’t all of it either. I guess some of it is just that my body is complicated and metabolism can be impacted by many things.
One of the things that appears to impact my metabolism is unpredictability in my daily routine. It appears that my body is simply confused.
Fashion Emergency
As I start looking towards job interviews, my ongoing challenges with clothing during my journey has become problematic. In the 2-3 times I have replaced my wardrobe, I have bought enough new clothes that I don’t have to go naked every day. But, I haven’t bought anything that I consider formal enough for interviews. I do have a suit, but it was a bit big on me 92 pounds ago and would be embarrassing to wear now. So, I need clothes.
While I could just go out and buy a nice suit, I have a problem on the other side of the equation. I am still planning to lost more that 10 pounds (maybe 20+) in the next few months. So, the last thing I want to do is to spend $500 on a suit that is completely unwearable in 3 months.
Fortunately, my friends at JC Penny had my back. I took advantage of their Valentine’s Day 50% off sale. I got an ok suit that fits the bill for a reasonable amount of money. Plus, I am all set for interviews and won’t be upset when it doesn’t fit in a couple of months!
Operation Melt is Part of my Professional Story
Over the last 2 weeks, I have had lots of meetings with people in my network, recruiters and others. Most of the discussions at these meetings are the things you would expect related to companies, jobs, skills, interests and such. But, there has been one surprising topic that keeps coming up, my Operation Melt journey. In almost all of my meetings so far, the topic of my weight loss journey has come up and people want to hear about it. I am actually very happy about this and love to talk about my journey.
My journey is more than just a thing I have done over the past couple of months. This journey has become a big part of who I am, my goals and my passions. As such, it isn’t just something that I look at as a personal hobby. It is important to me and I think it says a lot about who I am. This is why I don’t just share on personal social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, I share on LinkedIn too.
In addition, the planning, focus, discipline and analytical approach I have brought to this journey speaks volumes about what I can bring to other aspects of my professional life. So, as my LinkedIn headline says: I am a project & operational leader, I am a writer and I am a fitness evangelist. You can’t separate those and compartmentalize based on context because it is just who I am. And, I am pretty excited to be that person!
Check back next week for more!
Last week’s stats (2/5 – 2/11):
Distance walked/run: 34.17 miles
Total calories burnt: 26,257
Total calories consumed: 11,660
Weight change: 1.6 pounds lost
