1/11/12 It's All How You Look At It

First I'm Replying to Krisz's question from yesterday (and if you're not following her yet, get thee over there and give my new friend some support!):

Can I have "stupid" question?
If you do exercise a lot while losing weight, is it certain that later on if you stop/slow down exercising it will affect your further loss/maintenance? I know it's a silly question, but being bang in the middle of my WL I'd like to establish some long term way of life, but also not want to sacrifice on the weight loss. Do I make any sense here? I hope...

Let me say my last post was NOT to encourage anyone to stop/not start exercising…it's SO very important for your health (and that's why I'm now doing it). We should all be exercising.

- It's only 'certain' that stopping/slowing down exercise will effect your weight if you keep everything else the same. It's still calories in/calories out for us and if there are less calories out, then it effects your weight. It's fairly easy to calculate approximate calories you're burning from exercise (lots of calculators online) and you can do that for a week and average it…that will give you an idea how many calories you'd have to eliminate from your diet or burn through another form of exercise (maybe you can't do spinning anymore, but you can walk).

Krisz, I'm going to email you my working copy of my chapter on exercise and you'll see that it mainly speaks to the benefits of exercise, but also focuses on (like all my other topics) awareness, choices and having an exercise plan that encompasses both exercising and what to do if you have to/want to slow down/stop (whether you're in WL mode or maintenance). If you've got the time/effort now to be a gym rat and lose weight faster with it, go for it (it works, I've done it!)! That doesn't mean that your plan can't easily include a change in the level of your exercise program in your future that won't include weight regain (that plan was the part that was always missing from my exercise/diet programs so I got derailed…oh and my LB was the other part)…it's all about being prepared and making sure you're looking at both the exercise AND the calories in/LB part. My main point was that we can't use exercise/lack of it as an excuse for why we're not losing weight…I've already proved that for you…so no more 'testers' needed…keep moving and get that plan together!
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Now, onto today…

I was updating my WL/Maintenance spreadsheet/chart and not for the first time noticed that it looks like the Himalayas…it might scare more than a few people about maintenance, not to mention unfills. I was thinking about how regular slow and steady beginners ski jump my WL phase chart looks compared to it (well, not the 6 mo. Pre-op, but the post-surgery). Then I got curious as to how many weeks both of these spanned? How many weeks has it been since the first time I reached goal (my Maintenance Chart starts there)? I was surprised to see that my WL Chart covered 81 weeks, and My Maintenance Chart covered 83...interesting! I wonder what the Maintenance Chart would look like if I gave it the same horizontal/vertical axis range as my WL Chart?




















So, to compare them equally, I chopped the last two weeks off my Maintenance Chart and both horizontal axis are now 81 weeks. I then expanded the Maintenance vertical axis to cover a 105 pounds range, with gridline intervals every 5 pounds (the same as my WL Chart). Wow…now Maintenance isn't anything to fear!

You can clearly see that I had a partial unfill just a few weeks after reaching goal…but after the long awaited refill and making my way back down…well, things are pretty darn steady! Maintenance is nothing to be afraid of!

Losing the Band…yep, we can all be afraid of that, because it means not having the help we all desperately need to finally get/keep the weight off (just look at my instant march upward and then white knuckling the wait)…but another thing this shows me is that unfills are nothing to be totally afraid of either. Yeah, gaining and losing it again isn't any fun, but as long as a refill is coming and I'll have the help of the Band again, I'll now know I'll be fine (remind me I said that at the next unfill)!

I wish that I'd expected to have unfills along the way…maybe it wouldn't have seemed so traumatic. I think the Doc's should actually tell us to expect them! Unfills are a result of our personal learning process with the Band/operator error (dry meat and not enough chewing in my case), the complicated process of getting to just the right level of restriction at the same time we're losing internal fat, our Doc's approach to fill levels, and let’s face it…a little luck, and a dose of 'fickle' factor thrown in.

Maintenance, unfills,…it's all how you look at it!