Breaking Laura

Well I lost 30lbs. My fat percentage dropped some. I felt better. However, in the end I felt I could have received the same results without paying so much for the MRP. I think the program would be run better if someone with background and training in nutrition, counseling, and medicine. All the Elevate staff were nothing but supportive.

The excuses I have for not losing more are that I cheated the last two weeks of Phase I, injured my knee to the point where I couldn't run and could only use the elliptical for short periods of time. Also, I felt burnout on the program.

My only other problem with the system was that it seemed like it was still in its infancy. At times I was unsure what I should be doing in the classes because they'd gotten so big as to make one-on-one help virtually impossible. I am agoraphobic, so as the group got bigger, and better, while I felt I was stagnating, I became more and more anxious. Some of the members didn't seem to like me, but that's just an inference from me. I think I came off as pessimistic.

Some truth for a minute: I felt pessimistic because I put a lot of hope into this program. I followed it so closely and still didn't see real results (by real results I mean weight loss equivalent to working out and eating healthy w/o an expensive program). I also hoped I'd find a community free of bullies (my experience with bullies is to be treated as if I don't exist and when I speak up to groan or laugh derisively) -- but the groups all had at least one member like that. At the classes I couldn't get over how unready I was for exercise and how poorly I did. I also felt that I wasn't improving anywhere near as quickly as the other group members. None of this has anything to do with the program itself. It has to do with my mental illness.

Holidays, sunburns, and more successes

Well I made it through the 4th of July without cheating. My mom was kind enough to make pasta salad and potato salad with zucchini instead of pasta and potato respectively. Yummy! I've been going through a spate of no-appetite and that was compounded by the horrible sunburn I got on Sunday. I virtually could not move for 36 hours because of the pain.

Due to the horrible sunburn I haven't been able to exercise since Saturday. I was also really worried that the lack of food (I could only eat pickled cucumbers and drink water for two days -- too much nausea) and the sunburn that my numbers would be horrible. I figured my body had settled into starvation mode and was eating my lean muscle. Not so. I put up some of the best numbers I've had.

I'll post those number once I can get into my WiO information.

Emotional week

This week has been a roller coaster. Work was great, work was horrible (turns out I get too emotional and think everything is a worst case scenario).

I felt a lot better today physically. I was really upset after leaving work, but I decided to go to the gym anyway (my weigh-in was today and I didn't go to the fitness class yesterday). I worked out quite a bit of my over-excited emotions.

Good news at the weigh-in. I lost five pounds. :)

Your Measurement Results: Neck Shoulders Arm Chest Thorax Belly Button Waist Hips Thigh Knee Calf Ankle First 14.500 49.000 15.000 48.000 43.000 54.000 53.000 53.000 27.000 0.000 17.000 0.000 Last 13.500 46.500 13.750 44.000 40.500 50.000 51.000 50.500 26.500 0.000 15.750 0.000 Diff. 1 2.5 1.25 4 2.5 4 2 2.5 0.5 0 1.25 0 Totals From First Visit Totals From Last Visit Total Lost Inches 373.5 352 21.5 Fat 50.7 47.9 2.8 Weight 251.80 232.00 19.8

My goal this week is to attempt to lose somewhere close to 4.8 pounds so I can meet my reach goal for the 8-week mark (24 pounds lost).  My end goal is to weigh 215.8 pounds (36 pound weight loss) when I go to Disney World. Why? It will be ridiculously hot and there will be TONS of walking. My realistic goal is to weight 221.80 pounds (30 pound weight loss). I'm trying one of the pizzas today -- I'm hoping it tastes wonderful.

Still hard...

The last couple days I've had moments of being lightheaded with sound distortion lasting about a half a second. I'm not sure if this is from the protocol or if I'm coming down with something.

To make matters worse, I injured my knee somehow a couple months ago. I started going to physical therapy a week and a half ago and PT has only seemed to make my knee worse. I did 4 weeks of the WiO fitness classes with no bad side effects, but simple PT for a week and a half seems to have led my knee to deteriorate. Oh yeah, according to the MRI and X-rays, there's nothing wrong with my knee, just some inflammation.

I feel like I'm still stalled at the same place I've been for the last three weeks. I still only like a few vegetables and I'm not super adept at cooking, so I'm quickly growing tired of the meal options available to me. I really hope this gets better.

Finally, a price list...

Well I finally got around to getting a price list from Elevate.  Here it is:

Item	Price
MRP – chocolate or vanilla (includes weekly coaching/testing and group fitness classes 3x/week)	$80
Udo’s Oil – Omega 3-6-9	$42 (32oz), $20 (8.5oz), $28 (180 capsules)
Smart Flour (regular or gluten free)	$26 (regular), $35 (gluten free)
Smart & Sweet	$38
Chocolate squares	$14
Smart pizza (6 pack) – chicken alfredo, pepperoni	$36
Smart chicken pot pie – 5” round	$10
Smart quiche – ham and cheese or spinach/mushroom/sun-dried tomato – 9” round	$25
Smart rolls (10 pack)	$8
Smart buns (8 pack)	$8
Smart muffins (6 pack) – mixed berry, chocolate, morning glory	$15
Smart cookies – chocolate chip, ginger snap	$9
WiO smart pie – apple, pumpkin	$25
Flavoring (1oz – double concentrated)	$9
Flavoring (1.7oz)	$7
Carb-X capsules	$1 each
Blender bottle	$10
Real salt	$3 (2oz), $6 (4.75oz)

I'll get more information about the weight of the flour and sweetener next time I am at Elevate.

Exercise details

I realized I hadn't dedicated a blog post detailing what the fitness classes had been like so far.  We've moved more to circuit exercises, each a minute long, with planks/push-ups/other horrible things in between. Here's a breakdown of what we did yesterday:

1. Come early enough, do a warm-up on the bike/treadmill/elliptical
2. Stretch with a 4ft long piece of PVC pipe (1" diameter). We hoist it up on our shoulders lengthwise and use it to stabilize our arms as we stretch
3. Use that same pipe for balance while doing 20 squats and 10 lunges on each leg
4. The circuit (I'll go in the order of where I started and with the weights I used)
1. Wall bounces with a 6lb medicine ball (basically the same as quick wall bounces with a basketball)
2. Woodchops with the same medicine ball
3. Balanced squats on a Bosu ball
4. Bent over rows with a 5lb weight
5. Lateral raises with a 3lb weight
6. Vertical raises with a 5lb weight
7. Battle ropes
8. Tricep pull downs
9. Mountain climbers (Jake runs)
10. Rope climb (you leaned back and lowered yourself as far as you could to the ground and then pulled yourself back up with the rope)
5. The in-betweens -- In between every second or third exercise we'd do one of the following - push-ups, planks, or side planks
6. Men vs. women races: We had a bench with 35lb weights on it for the women and almost 3x as much for the men. We had to pull the bench (running backwards) across the gym and then push the bench (running forwards) back to the starting position. The losing group had to do 20 push-ups. We did two rounds of this
7. Stretching

I did my first non-modified plank yesterday.  I also tried the WiO hamburger buns and they tasted good.

A better day

Today was much better than Tuesday or Wednesday. I think I've finally figured out a way to handle eating broccoli -- homemade cheese sauce. I used 3/4tbsp of EVOO, 1/2tbsp of butter, 2tbsp of sour cream, and .67oz of reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese. It has 1.2 grams of carbs...and tastes amazing.

The fitness class was much smaller tonight. Rich had these /horrible/ cards. Someone would draw one and then we'd have to do whatever was on the card. To make matters more complicated - there was a card that doubled the time/reps of the next exercise and a card that required us to repeat the last exercise.  Thankfully Rich let me run on the treadmill instead of running outside. In return I tried to push harder on the treadmill.

I have had a lot of fatigue lately, so I went to the doctor -- of course I then realized I needed to talk to the doctor about 7 or 8 different problems. I had some blood drawn to check my thyroid, vitamin D levels, and to check for diabetes. I really hope I don't have diabetes.

I'm trying to look on the bright side - my highest weight was 254lbs and now I'm 238lbs, so I weight 16lbs less than my highest weight. I'm not great at cognitive-behavioral techniques, especially the cognitive part, so this is going to be complicated.