Now that I'm at the dividing line BMI between average weight and overweight, I need to clarify why my torso still looks so heavy. The answer is because I am an apple shape and due to the composition of my body fat versus muscle percentages.
So here are a couple of Body Fat % charts to help figure out what's going on.
I have finally reached the undeniable time when I need to nourish myself with only healthy foods; and more than ever need to detox through supplements, stretching and massage, steaming, sweating cardio and weight resistance exercise, etc in order to tone muscle, while I continue to lose fat.
As of yesterday I have 41% body fat which is obese! Body fat is starting to hang on me in shredded-looking excess skin and so I just really need to do as much as I can to improve the texture of my skin and tone muscles.
There is something I need to explain about those many months of plateauing around ~174 pounds too. Something that was percolating up into consciousness at the time but that I came to consciously recognize only this week. I gained over 60 pounds one month in 1998. I've been carrying all that weight and more since then.
I had been dating my husband, since 1996 when I weighed about 130 lbs. When I met him I really wanted to have a baby and a family. And my husband gave me the impression he wanted the same thing. But then in 1998 one harrowing weekend saw a string of synchronized tragedies and difficulties all struck at one time. That is when I discovered my husband didn't want the same things I wanted. After we'd already gone through so much together in the past 2 years, I had been named as the reason for his divorce, the story of our relationship had been posted for the scrutiny of everyone in the newspaper, his divorce was acrimonious, so I didn't turn away from him, instead I continued moving forward with wedding plans.
When I started shopping for a wedding dress that's when I gained 60+ in one month. I weighed 120-130 lbs at the beginning of the month and weighed over 190 pounds by the end of the month. It was as if I was trying to tell myself something. I was trying to tell myself that I no longer trusted my then fiance, now husband.
From August 2011 through April 2012, for nine months, I plateaued over that 171 lbs goal weight that would mark a 50 pound weight loss, half of my total goal. All the different things I tried to lose weight didn't work. But I was starting to talk with people from that harrowing weekend and was slowly piecing together the splinters of scattered and blacked out memories. Finally I had to face the truth. Then I found Weight Watchers and was able to start to lose weight again.
It was only after someone asked me this week how I maintain my motivation to lose weight, when I explained that story in detail, that I realized why I had been plateauing so long. To lose the weight I needed to bring those memories into a light to see the story coherently. To figure out why I gained all this weight in the first place.
Losing weight is a deeply transforming process.
Happy problem 1: as my body becomes leaner its becoming more uncomfortable to sleep and sit on my less padded bones, the skin feels a little bit raw and almost aches where my lower rib, hips and tailbone stick out. When I reach 149 lbs I'll be the same weight the first time I joined Weight Watchers in the 1980s.
Happy problem 2: as I'm becoming slimmer and continue to dress in clothes that are form-fitting, men are paying more and more appreciative attention to me. This unnerves me a bit, especially when it's men I work with who always ignored me. But I just have to become braver and friendlier. Fortune cookie says "Love is being offered to you; be affectionate in return!" --good advice.
Genuinely sad problem with happy outcome: my true love started dating someone else, and un-friended me on facebook so I can't follow what is going on in his life. Result is that it continues to be hard to eat, or sleep. The lack of sleep is a bother, but eating less is nice.
So here are a couple of Body Fat % charts to help figure out what's going on.
I have finally reached the undeniable time when I need to nourish myself with only healthy foods; and more than ever need to detox through supplements, stretching and massage, steaming, sweating cardio and weight resistance exercise, etc in order to tone muscle, while I continue to lose fat.
As of yesterday I have 41% body fat which is obese! Body fat is starting to hang on me in shredded-looking excess skin and so I just really need to do as much as I can to improve the texture of my skin and tone muscles.
There is something I need to explain about those many months of plateauing around ~174 pounds too. Something that was percolating up into consciousness at the time but that I came to consciously recognize only this week. I gained over 60 pounds one month in 1998. I've been carrying all that weight and more since then.
I had been dating my husband, since 1996 when I weighed about 130 lbs. When I met him I really wanted to have a baby and a family. And my husband gave me the impression he wanted the same thing. But then in 1998 one harrowing weekend saw a string of synchronized tragedies and difficulties all struck at one time. That is when I discovered my husband didn't want the same things I wanted. After we'd already gone through so much together in the past 2 years, I had been named as the reason for his divorce, the story of our relationship had been posted for the scrutiny of everyone in the newspaper, his divorce was acrimonious, so I didn't turn away from him, instead I continued moving forward with wedding plans.
When I started shopping for a wedding dress that's when I gained 60+ in one month. I weighed 120-130 lbs at the beginning of the month and weighed over 190 pounds by the end of the month. It was as if I was trying to tell myself something. I was trying to tell myself that I no longer trusted my then fiance, now husband.
From August 2011 through April 2012, for nine months, I plateaued over that 171 lbs goal weight that would mark a 50 pound weight loss, half of my total goal. All the different things I tried to lose weight didn't work. But I was starting to talk with people from that harrowing weekend and was slowly piecing together the splinters of scattered and blacked out memories. Finally I had to face the truth. Then I found Weight Watchers and was able to start to lose weight again.
It was only after someone asked me this week how I maintain my motivation to lose weight, when I explained that story in detail, that I realized why I had been plateauing so long. To lose the weight I needed to bring those memories into a light to see the story coherently. To figure out why I gained all this weight in the first place.
Losing weight is a deeply transforming process.
Happy problem 1: as my body becomes leaner its becoming more uncomfortable to sleep and sit on my less padded bones, the skin feels a little bit raw and almost aches where my lower rib, hips and tailbone stick out. When I reach 149 lbs I'll be the same weight the first time I joined Weight Watchers in the 1980s.
Happy problem 2: as I'm becoming slimmer and continue to dress in clothes that are form-fitting, men are paying more and more appreciative attention to me. This unnerves me a bit, especially when it's men I work with who always ignored me. But I just have to become braver and friendlier. Fortune cookie says "Love is being offered to you; be affectionate in return!" --good advice.
Genuinely sad problem with happy outcome: my true love started dating someone else, and un-friended me on facebook so I can't follow what is going on in his life. Result is that it continues to be hard to eat, or sleep. The lack of sleep is a bother, but eating less is nice.
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