Weight loss and health care, what a disappointment

I recently went to see my primary care doctor. In all honesty I don't like going to see him because every time I go I feel like I'm on some kind of conveyor belt at a factory. In, out, in ,out. The doctors there don't seem to take the time to listen to you and really help. They seem quick to just prescribe something and give advice but that's it. Here's a an example.

I sent to see the doc for a few things. One in particular was this crunching sound my knees starting to make a few months back. I started to notice it when climbing the stairs at the gym soon after I started working out. It's horribly scarey. I started taking supplements to help support my knees, I come from a family where both my parents have had knee surgery and I be damned if I'm going through that crap! So, I started taking MSM and glucosamine. Mind you, I do not have knee pain...well I do now but that's another story....but the crunching sound did not come with pain, it's just this grinding sound that totally freaked me out. I looked online and found that it's not something to worry about but in the long run it could lead to knee issues. Ok, good this is something I can work on and hopefully I won't put myself on the chopping block.

So, I tell the doc about this sound and he tells me that it's probably just the cartilage that is grinding together and the only thing to alleviate it is to lose weight :| He then proceeds to send me on my way home with a print out with weight loss advice. It lists the benefits of losing weight some faqs some suggestion on what to eat and how to get moving a bit more. That's it. I was disappointed. Why? Because it's obvious that I need to lose weight. Although I do not have any health issues now, thank goodness, if I don't lose weight statistics say as I get older I am putting myself at risk of having diabetes and all kinds of heart problems. Why then doesn't "health care" involve helping people lose weight? I mean more than giving them a print out with suggestions? I would love to talk to a professional team and have them look at what I'm doing and tell me where I can make improvements on my diet and my exercise.

Most people do not know what to do to lose weight, many more are even less motivated on losing weight. Why don't doctors or the health care systems and insurances try to tackle this from every angle aggressively? I would have loved it if he would have referred me to a nutritionist, a food psychologist, and some sort of trainer. A team of people who will talk to me and each other, let's say once a month and set up a plan for me to lose weight.

Granted I've lost some weight on my own. I have a long way to go and quite frankly I don't know if what I am doing is right much less right for me. There are a ton of people who are doing it on their own, thank goodness there is a ton of resources online and communities like MFP. The thing is not everyone has access to the world wide web, not everyone has a smart phone where they can add a weight loss app, not everyone can afford to join a gym or buy certain foods or even has time to cook. Each person has different life circumstances and each persons body is different. There are so many things involved with weight loss. It's not as easy as "stop eating" and get "moving more". You have to do those two things the right way AND there is a huge psychological part of it that no one seems to address.

I'm not making excuses for people who are over weight. There are tons of people who are able to do it on their own and are very successful. I just think we have doctors and professionals and health insurance for a reason. I personally have health insurance through my employer. Wouldn't it make sense and cheaper for my insurance to cover a weight loss program for me now, rather than shell out all kinds of money down the road for health issues that come up because of obesity?

Week 1 of lifting

I just finished one week of adding weights to my routine. I actually started a week ago today and since I had Monday off I did weights Tuesday and Thursday this week even though my routine for lifting is going to be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I've increased my squat weight to 75lbs. Lateral pulls are at 70 lbs. I'm also doing none weighted lower back extensions and abdominal lifts, which I really do not like and I think I'm swapping that out for bench pressing starting next week. I figure I feel my abs working when I squat and do lateral pulls. I was doing them because someone suggested them, I could care less now. Maybe I'll do them later. I just hate that I'm all sweaty and I keep slipping from the pads.

I weighed in today. Let me tell you I am not happy about it. I went up almost 4lbs!!! I felt so defeated. I know I didn't do the greatest with my eating this week. I went over my 1750 limit a few times but I don't think it was enough to gain 4lbs. This is what I really dislike about lifting 3 days a week. You can't really track how many calories you burn so I feel like I'm not doing any good for myself and plus I'm hungrier and go over my calorie intake! At least with doing the elliptical I knew I was burning something and ate some calories back so I wouldn't feel so damn hungry.

I did measure myself this morning though. That was a surprise. I lost inches all over, waist, hips, thighs and arms. I don't know how accurate that is since I measured this morning vs in the evening. Does that make a difference? I'll keep measuring in the mornings. I'm taking a picture tomorrow and comparing it to the first one I took 6 weeks ago. I'll continue doing lifts for three more weeks. If I don't see progress I might just kick it to the curb. It feels very defeating when you don't lose any weight. Maybe if I continue to lose inches I'll feel better.

The girls on MFP say it's normal and I should just focus on my measurements and not at the number on the scale. I've been weighing myself every day the last couple of weeks. I want to see how much my weight really does fluctuate especially around the time of the month. There was one day, I didn't log it in MFP where I had lost another pound, I was at my lowest ever in a long time on that day but now I'm up.

This is very frustrating.

Motivations

I've been working out for the past 4 weeks now. It's amazing to be able to say that. This is my fourth week of exercising 5 days a week. My workouts consist of three things:

1. 35 minutes on the elliptical
2. push ups
3. squats

So far there have been very few days where I've had to drag myself to the gym. Yesterday was one of those days. My normal routine is to hit the gym then work. Yesterday I had to work then hit the gym at 5pm. It sucked. I was tired by then and my co-workers were heading out to a bar for drinks. I knew I definitely did not want to go out for drinks but I was really wishy washy on wanting to hit the gym.  I forced myself to go. I was not happy going or while working out and I felt it. My workout on the elliptical was tiring and I just wanted to get it over with.

This morning on the other hand I hit the gym and did pretty good. I didn't get as tired as I did yesterday, I did break a sweat but I felt good. I have to say, I'm really proud of myself for coming this far. I really do like working out on my own. I set my own pace and I don't feel like I'm being held back. My driving motivation right now is the fact that I listen to audio books while working out. Only while working out. Which means if I want to find out what happens next I need to hit the gym or go for a walk home. So far I've been pretty good and doing that and it's kept me moving at least 5 days a week. I'll go for long morning walks on the weekends at home, just to hear the next juicy bit of audio book. Now that the weather is nice, I might hit the gym during the day and then go for a walk when I get home. We'll see how that goes.

I don't know how much I weigh right now. I dumped my scale almost two weeks ago. Then I found myself digging the damn thing out of the closet to weight myself. So I asked my husband to hide it from me. So now it's really dumped. I have no idea where it is and I have no intention of finding it. I have to weigh in soon, just to see where I'm at and to keep a decent estimate on calorie burn when I work out. I might ask him to bring it out for me this weekend. I'm looking forward to weighing in. I'm hoping to have some kind of loss. That will really help with my motivation.

We had a couple of friends come over for dinner on Friday and they noticed I had lost weight. Granted they haven't seen me in months so they would notice a difference even though I might not see it yet. I've been taking photos. Maybe I'll post them one day.

I broke down

I dug out the scale and weighed in. No change. I was secretly hopeing to see a change...a decrease...while at the same time pretending it would not bother me in the least bit if there wasn't.

Considering all the work I've put in to working out and the decrease in calorie intake I just thought maybe just maybe there would some decrease...even just a minor one.

On the upside I took another picture. I don't know if it's my hopefull eyes but I think I see a difference. I can't pin point it but there is something. My plan is to take a picture every week... to have a visual, I see myslef every day after all.

At some point I'll post those pictures. I don't think I'm ready to do that now.

I dumped my scale.

The last couple of weeks I've been feeling kinda up and down.

Up because I'm working out, I'm feeling good, I'm making progress with my endurance (going on 25 minutes on the elliptical on level 7), I've increased how many push ups, squats and crunches I do (thanks to a couple of apps).

Down because I weighed in, when I shouldn't have, and have not seen any decrease on the scale since last week. I realized, I was being ruled by the scale. It dictated what mood I would be in and if I would continue working out. How could it not? It sits on my bathroom floor. I see it every time I walk in, each time tempting me saying "Come on, get on...let's see if you're work has paid off.". It taunts me and when ever I give in, which could be every single day, I either feel good because I've lost some weight or I feel devastated because it has increased every so slightly or after days of hard work it has not budged at all. It's ridiculous but it's the truth, how some inanimate object and rule over you so easily.

Today I dumped my scale. I didn't throw it away or anything, I just moved it to the back of my bedroom closet. It now lays against the back wall behind shoes. It is unreachable. I will have to go digging for it if I really want to weigh myself and I don't want to go digging. If it's not in the bathroom I will not be tempted to weigh myself in every time I go in there.

I think I'll take pictures and if at some point I see a significant difference, then I might go digging but for now I'll let my eyes judge how I'm doing.

Been there, done that.

As I mentioned before, I've been overweight my entire life. Growing up I would ask my mom why I was "chubby" she would always tell me she was the same way until she hit her teens. So I just waited until I was a teenager amd guess what happened? I became a chubby teenager.

As a teen I expressed my concerns to my mom. I really hoped she could help me. What she did was expose me to the world of fad dieting. The first "diet" I was on was "La Dieta de la Luna", the moon diet. I don't remeber the details but you fast for a period of time then you can start eating again on some phase of the moon, full moon, new moon...some moon. Of course I was starving by the time came to eat and I ate everything in sight once the fast was lifted. I'm not sure how many times we did this but I didn't lose a pound.

As an older teen I discovered Herbal Life...oh dear lord. I had a shake for breakfast, food for lunch and a shake for dinner. Being the only one on a diet made this ubber hard with my moms cooking for the rest of the family. With the cost being high and all the great food around me and really no other support I eventually gave up.

While attending the community college a group of friends and I decided we would support each other in our weight loss goals. We got memberships at the local "Y" and after a week of 5am workouts before class..we gave up. There were just too many naked elderly women in the locker room, not enough privacy in the showers and the gym smelled horrible. At some point one of them got a few Tai-Bo DVDs and there you had us in my friends basement punching and kicking in rhythm. That didn't last very long either. Boyfriends and schedules got in the way.

In between somewhere I also tried the Atkins diet and the South Beach diet. Someone at some point must have raved about the results and I had to try them.

A few years later I attended a state University. There, I met new people with different lifestyles. Soon I was playing racket ball, learning to roller blade, and started weight lifting with the boys. It was fun, for a while. It lasted until finals or vacation hit then schedules got in the way once more and it was over.

After college and getting married, I decided to join Weight Watchers. I did the online only version for some time. I did well for a few months then having to track everything got to me and for at least a month I was paying for a service I was not using.

At some point my dad heard about some weight loss program that involved diet change and pressure points. By this time my mom had already taken me to do pressure points years ago but that didn't involve diet change so this must be different, and so he and I signed up. I lost weight but I couldn't handle eating just vegetables and protein. It was ok going to get checked in every week during the summer but then school started and it got "complicated".

Soon after that I was pregnant with my son. After his birth my sister-in-law and I signed up for WW, this time I attended weekly meetings. I figured maybe I needed the support system to help get going. I did lose weight but I think that was more attributed to the fact that I was nursing more than anything. I wish I had been more disciplined then, maybe things would be different now...maybe not. She and I lost motivation and we both quit.

Within the last 7 years I have gone back and forth to WW 5 times. As you can see I've just about it all. At some point I realized, it's not them...it's me. There is something about me that just does not want to follow through. It's not lack of desire or motivation. I'm motivated and I desire it. It's not lack of education. I know what I should and shouldn't eat and that I should exercise. As a matter of fact I think I eat pretty healthy, I don't eat junk food, I don't drink juice or soda pop. I stay away from most carbs, they don't seem to like me very much. I don't keep the house stocked with cookies and ice cream. I know there are things I can improve on but overall I think I'm in a better place than many people, yet I'm twice the weight I should be.

In any case, this time has to be different...it just has to be.

Right off the bat changes

I've made some small...or at least I think they are small changes to my.....what's a good word? Lifestyle. Although I have always kept a water bottle at my side, I've decided I'm not going to keep track of how many ounces I've drank or worry about not drinking enough water. If I'm thirsty, I drink. If I'm not, I don't. Keeping it simple. I figured I put too much stress on myself to keep track of how much water I'm drinking, I'm just going to go with the flow.

I've switched out coffee in the morning for green tea and cinnamon tea. I can find tea bags of both at my local super market so instead of drinking a cup of coffee in the morning I'm drinking a cup of green tea/cinnamon mix with a table spoon of honey. So far that hasn't been a very debilitating change. I had been drinking decaff coffee and had just recently switched to caffeinated. So I wasn't quite hooked yet. My coffee stuff was moved to the pantry and I moved to the kitchen counter the tea bags and honey.

I started taking B12 and MSM every morning. This hasn't been a huge change for me because I take a multi-vitamin every morning after break fast. For what ever reason I'm always feeling fatigued and I figured the B12 would help with that. My knees don't hurt right now but I am worried about them because both my parents have had knee surgery, this is something I want to avoid when I am older so that's why I'm taking the MSM. I got both for a decent price on Nutrition Express . After reading the labels on both bottles I realized that B12 helps support a health metabolism and MSM supports healthy joints, hair, skin and nails. All of which I don't mind any assistance with.

One other change, which isn't really small but hasn't been horrible so far is the working out every weekday. That is kind of a big change but I've been feeling motivated recently so I haven't felt too forced about it.

We'll see if these small changes work in some way.

The purpose of this blog.

I have been over weight my entire life. I mean there has not been a single time in my life as a child or adult that I can remember where I was at a healthy weight. I think it's about time I did something about it.I'm 34 years old, I am a wife and a mother and I it's time to get back on the band wagon and get it done. I'm hoping that by logging my experience I can find that switch in my mind that needs to be turned on (or off) to stay on track.

Good luck to me.