flemmings | (no subject)

My one reason to regret that the owners didn't move next door is that He-NND regards me, I fancy, rather like his mother who just moved into an apartment of her own last spring. So eg if he saw me putting my garbage out he'd immediately offer to do it for me, and would put my bins back after the truck came through, and would hump my bike up the steps onto the verandah for me, for all of which my elbows were very grateful. Thus it's a certainty that he'd shovel my walk once the snow starts, and I know from last week that his tenants definitely won't. South NND might, or even south of south who used to do me and Mama Pisani's back in the days, but I can't count on it. So I've applied for city clearing aid, which means they'll come around and pour several inches of road salt on the sidewalk in front of my house. What they won't do is shovel the walkway and the steps, which strikes me as half-assed, because even if you're housebound, people like letter carriers and delivery guys still have to go up and down them. However, assuming I get approved, come those wintry dumps my work will be cut in half.

I'm bemused by the fact that I did all the prep for this (xeroxing my ID, DLing and printing the forms, putting them into an envelope and going out specially to mail it) without footdragging: because this is precisely the sort of thing I footdrag over. Can only think it's because I'm not working. My thinking, if it can be dignified with that word, was always 'since I have to work I shouldn't have to do anything else I don't want to' like dishes and vacuuming and writing Christmas cards (but not laundry or cooking, for some reason.) And now, though I may feel a ghost of the donwannas, there really is no reason not to. The one thing I want to do but can't make myself is start doing those chair Pilates exercises I bought last spring. Maybe I don't believe they'll have any effect, though I still do my strengthening exercises twice a day while believing they don't have any effect either.

What evidently does have an effect is my half hour of bicycling. I can't believe the fabulous number of calories the machine says I've burned but the fact remains that my weight continues to inch downward in spite of the 'oh whathehell' reintroduction into my diet of white rice, white flour, chocolate, and even the occasional bit of cheese. Mind, my sister once did Weight Watchers and said that you had to eat the prescribed number of calories a day because you wouldn't lose by eating less. Me, I never found my body going into starvation mode and holding on to weight if I ate fewer than 1200 calories a day, but I suppose it can happen.

However I also suspect that ratcheting the machine's resistance up to medium is what's made my knees complain so much this past week. So no machine today and shall go back to the light side tomorrow and hope that helps.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Eh, starvation mode happens when you are actually starving. When you get so little food that your body has used up literally all your fat and is starting to eat muscle to keep going. It ends in death, not weight gain.

What can happen is that if someone eats too little for the amount of exercise they do, they feel tired and listless and unwell, and don't exercise, thereby adjusting their activity level down to fit the calories they're ingesting, and therefore stop losing weight. Once they eat a bit more, they perk up, get more active, and can start losing again, but more slowly, without feeling bad. There's no set quantity of calories that everyone has to eat every day, it depends on your size, sex, and how active you are.

You're losing weight because whatever the content of your daily diet, the quantity (in calories) is less than your daily activity needs, so your body is making the deficit up out of your extra fat. Which is exactly what is supposed to happen, so congratulations on your progress!

And you're quite right, never believe the calorie count on those machines, they tend to be very optimistic. Trust your scale.

I never got the tired and listless thing during these last three months of no refined carbs and no sugar, and my moving is very much dictated by what the knees will bear (ha ha) which isn't much. I'm certainly not moving more than I did in October, say. I can only assume my very slow metabolism has finally registered a deficit, even with the rice and sugar added back. And I might as easily balloon a kilo or two one morning, as has happened before. So, well, on I plod.