It depends on what your definition of is is

Well, actually, it depends on what your definition of morbidly obese is.

The most common definition, and probably the fairest, is a BMI greater than 40. However, there is another, alternate definition "100+ pounds overweight." Yesterday, no matter which way you cut it, I was firmly in the morbid category. Today, not so much.

Weight: 244.8

Normal weight for someone my height tops out at 145. This means I am no longer 100+ pounds overweight! As of this morning, I am a mere 99.8 pounds over a normal weight. Ah, the things we can rejoice in when we're as far gone as I.

Seriously, even though I think the 40+ BMI definition of morbid is more valid, today marks a substantive milestone for me. My weight loss goal is no longer in the triple digits. And 11.8 pounds from now, I won't be morbid by any definition. Good stuff.

In other news, last night I decided that I was going to stop messing around and make sure I get to 1200 calories every day, even if I feel like I don't really need the last 250 or so.

Now, conventional wisdom in the dieting world is pretty definitive on the "You must eat 1200 calories a day or BADNESS." The badness they most typically threaten people with is that if you eat fewer than 1200 calories a day, your body won't lose as much weight as if you eat just at or slightly above this mark. There's also some shebang about how it's bad for your body and how you need nutrients and whatnot. (The last point is one I mostly agree with, although I'm not entirely convinced of it's importance. Losing weight is self starvation, an inherently unhealthy process. The result is healthy, the value of shedding excess pounds makes it healthy on balance, but the self starvation part still pretty trying on your body. I'm not, for example, 100% convinced that the value of getting things done more quickly--thus spending fewer days starving yourself--isn't worth more than the value of getting perfect nutrients along the way.)

But okay, my real objection is with the idea that if you go below the 1200 calorie low bound, your body will go into "starvation mode" and that you'll lose less weight than if you were above it. It strikes me as absolute nonsense that one would lose less weight at 1150 than 1250 a day, or less weight at 900 than 1200.

The first thing that bugged me about it was that it clearly broke basic rules of physics. Diet industry, meet Conservation of Energy. You see, my buddy conservation is a rule. A real science-y rule, not one of your made up diet ones. That said, I do understand that bodies are complex organisms, and that going below a certain point could trigger your body to do other things that conserve energy, but it's not going to be enough to make up the difference. I'd absolutely 100% buy that because of your body's response there are decreasing marginal returns as you cut more calories (for example, that going from 1800 to 1700 would be worth more than cutting from 800 to 700, even that the cut from 800 to 700 only produces as much bonus weight loss as going from, say, 1800 to 1760), but decreasing marginal returns does not mean the effectiveness stops all together.

Besides, there's absolutely no way that all those people who are out there in the world starving are really just doing so because they're hitting 1300 calories a day, and if they only ate 1100 they'd be unable to lose weight. Ridiculous.

And then there's the fact that when you get into more medical settings, they do use sub 1200 calorie diets with great success. The 1200 calorie rule isn't just nonsensical in theory, it's flat out wrong in practice. Gastric bypass patients, for example, will be on a 600 calorie diet for a few weeks post op. Physician supervised very low calorie diets do exist for rapid weight loss.

So, all that, but: I'm committing to myself to hit the 1200 calorie mark every day for the next two weeks. This is tough for me. I enjoy heterodoxy for its own sake and I hate doing things that I can't independently make sense of. But after seeing my bugg burn values for the past few days (3527 Wednesday and 3172 yesterday), it occurred to me that relative to burn, the extra 220 or so calories I save on sub 1200 days just aren't worth it. I'm better off spending my mental energy pushing myself to get off the couch again to go for a walk than questioning whether or not I really need miracle whip on my daily sandwich (30 calorie difference), and is picking turkey over ham or roast beef (15ish calorie difference) really worth the decreased enjoyment.

Don't get me wrong, I still think diet is more important than exercise in terms of weight loss. And the difference eating 2000 and 1200 calories a day is huge, but right now, for me, it makes sense to stay in the 1200-plus club. For these next two weeks, I'm going to hit 1200 even if it means stuffing down an extra cottage cheese before bed. After that, I'll see where things are, and decide where I want to go from there.

I'm still a little in shock from how much I poured out in yesterday post, so apologies for the overshare. I've now officially told you guys a whole heck of a lot more about me than I ever intended, and even shared a few secrets I don't tell people in real life. But that's blogging, right?

And the scale goes down again

Weight: 269.7
BMI: 46.43

First, I suppose, we ought to talk numbers. 269.7 is not up from 270.5. It is, in fact, down by .8 pounds. So, a small victory there. I still don't feel like I've really *earned* this weight loss yet, and I'm certain it will disappear shortly. There will be no "goodbye 270s!" victory dance just yet, mostly because I don't really accept that I've bid the 270s goodbye yet. They will, I'm certain, be back.

At a certain point I'm going to have to accept that at least some of this is not phantom weight loss. Yes, dropping from 275 to 271.9 in one day was shocking. Yes, when it happened it probably wasn't all a real loss. But, at this point I'm starting to think it's unlikely that my actual real weight is 275 and that these are only phantom pounds slipping away.

But unlikely doesn't mean impossible, and I do think I'm weighing in these days at less than I really weigh. It's just not conceivable that I've really lost this much considering that I haven't actually been working out much, just cutting calories. And while I'm probably unlikely to go all the way back up to 275 at this point, I think heading back up to the 270s is eminently likely. Maybe the .2 pound loss I had the day before was real, maybe the .5 pound losses the two days before that were even real, but .8 in a single day considering I did no exercise is just highly unrealistic. Maybe if I'd spent 4 hours or something hiking.

As far as other diet updates, I was planning on having to go to a policy forum today and was anticipating that I'd need to eat lunch there. At the last minute my boss asked me to cut the forum to finish up a quick project for him. In some ways this is good, because it means I didn't end up having to eat one of the god knows how many calories sandwiches that were going to be served. However, since I planned on going, I skipped breakfast, and only brought 13 baby carrots to work, figuring the sandwich from the event would be taking up most of my calories allowance for the morning and afternoon.

Instead, all the food I've got for the whole work day is those 13 baby carrots. I've already eaten them, and I'm famished. Even though it's quite a bit of fiber and volume considering they're a grand total of 50 calories, in an absolute sense, it's just not much food. So, I'm very, very hungry. And I'm going to be hungry all afternoon. But, what can you do?

I'm not sure how I'll work food for tonight. Since I finally finished that roast beef I've been slightly adrift in terms of what I should do for food. I had a piece of the frozen chicken last night, but there was sort of a stinky smell from the bag. So, even though I ate that piece and am not feeling sick or anything, I went ahead and tossed the rest. The jar of tikka masala sauce is now open�and has an expiration date of 7/22�so I should perhaps try to eat that, but I'll be honest and say it's pretty unappealing at the moment.

What I also have, that is also expiring soon, is barbecue chicken and 97% fat free hot dogs. Now, I don't have hot dog buns for the hot dogs, but I could just use a regular piece of (reduced calorie) bread. At just 45 calories a dog they're not at all expensive to eat. I could in fact eat two hot dogs, each on a piece of light style bread, and put 10 calories of ketchup on each, and only be at 200 calories.

I may, in fact, do just that, because that sounds like a really good amount of food for the number of calories it would cost. Of course, as that would put me at only 250 calories for the day, I should probably plan on having a bit more. As my possible addition, I'm going to allow myself a tuna melt or any variation thereof. 120 calories in the can of tuna, 80 calories in a slice of cheddar, 60 calories of miracle whip, and 90 calories in light style bread. That would be adding an additional 350 calories to the day, and ring me up to 600 for the whole day. Which is, you know, few, but still substantive.

I perhaps should eat more than that, and perhaps will, but I'm also not going to force myself to if I end up not being hungry after the tuna. After all the years of overeating, I'm not going to stuff down food just to meet a daily 1200 calorie goal. It might not be the healthiest thing in the world, but so long as I'm not doing it regularly, I'll be fine. It will just be an one-time bonus 600 calorie deficit.

Of brownies and weigh ins

Weight: 270.5
BMI: 46.43

I was pretty darn certain I was going to gain weight today. Not too many days ago, I dropped 3.1 pounds. I went from 275 to 271.9 in a single day. It was, I figured, unsustainable. My dieting experience is filled with fake drops. It would correct itself, I figured, the next day.

It didn't. Instead, I went down to 271.4, and continued waiting for the other shoe to drop. Next day (yesterday) I hit 270.7. Great, but unrealistic, since I knew my weight wasn't actually that low, and that I was in for a jump up.

Today, still no jump. I've got a much smaller loss than previous days, but a loss is a loss is a loss is a victory.

That wasn't the only reason I was expecting a gain. I didn't sleep much last night�I couldn't sleep so much I started a blog last night�and I ate, well, not more than I planned to, or more than I should've, but more than I needed.

Namely, I ate a brownie. A delicious fat witch brownie. A caramel witch, in fact. I'd ordered a whole bunch of brownies shortly before the 4th, with them getting shipped on the 6th. They arrived on the 8th, one day after I'd rather randomly decided I'd go on a diet because, what the heck.

I'd ordered, not a verifiable ton of brownies, but a lot. Six little ones, and six big ones: broken down as 4 baby brownies, 2 baby blondies, 3 caramel witches, 2 snow witches, and one big plain brownie. Now, this was a bit confusing: at this point, I wasn't really dedicated to the diet per se, it was still more of a lark. So sure, I ate a caramel witch that first night, but I decided to try and (mostly) do the right thing.

The next day, I gave three little ones away at work. I shipped a friend a care package with three little and two big. And, I kept 4 for myself. One I ate the first night. The other three I've had, one by one, over the course of the past 6 days. Last night was my last. It was delicious, but I'm glad they're gone.

Now, to be fair, I didn't eat much else yesterday. I had a 90 calorie chewy granola bar at work for breakfast, and an apple and packet of baby carrots for lunch. I'd been planning to bring slightly more, but I just forgot to put the stuff in my bag, so I just didn't eat more. For dinner, I had a roast beef sandwich comprised of two pieces of light style bread, two thin slices of roast beef that are about an ounce put together, and a dab (really, just a dab!) of miracle whip. Before the brownie (and accompanying large glass of milk), I was under 400 calories. With them, I was at 1088.

So, it wasn't, actually, a lot of food, but when I ate the brownie, I didn't need the brownie. I was a bit peckish, sure, but not the level of famished that I'm normally looking at when I start a meal. But I went for it, knowing I'd been obscenely good the rest of the day. It didn't turn out too poorly, so I guess that's just that.

There are no more brownies in the house, I lost .2 pounds yesterday, and I got a brand new blog out of the whole thing. Not too bad, eh?