Well, since it seems like every other woman in my family (Mom, Erica, Amy, & Krista) are all writing about their plans to lose weight over the summer, I might as well write about how things are looking for me on that end. 🙂
Peer pressure: It works on adults, too.
OK, so earlier this month (May 9), I had a doctor appointment with a new doctor. I’d been getting frustrated with the doctor I had been seeing and the doctor who Justin’s been seeing is really nice, so I swapped over to her. She’s technically not actually a doctor but a physician’s assistant or whatever, but it doesn’t matter to us, we think she’s awesome. She’s a very curious-natured woman, so when she hears about things, she wants to get to the root of what’s going on instead of just treating symptoms. This is exactly what we want in a doctor.
The week before the appointment, I had some fasting labs, and on the 9th we went over the results. Everything looks pretty okay, except my weight is obviously high, my cholesterol numbers are a little outside where they should be, and my TSH numbers were a little over what they should be. None of those things really indicate anything on their own, but all put together, it could be that my thyroid isn’t functioning like it should be — basically, TSH tells the thyroid to work and high numbers of TSH mean that the thyroid isn’t listening as well as it should be.
She ran more lab work to test to see if there’s something else going on that could be effecting the TSH numbers, apparently there are some autoimmune problems that could be impacting things. Those all came back as not being a problem, so we’ re back to just seeing a test with high TSH numbers.
Now, since I don’t seem to be experiencing the symptoms of hypothyroidism, it might just be a weird day for my blood levels. On the other hand, it might be a sign of problems on the way. So I have an appointment set up for 6 months from now and we’ll check the levels again at that time.
Until then, my homework is to see how much weight I can lose before then. If I can’t get the weight off, then it’s possible something really is wrong with my endocrine system. If I can get the weight off, then my cholesterol levels should do better and it’ll be healthier for me all around.
So, it’s time for me to try to lose some weight.
I’m starting this out by mostly trying to be more active. I sit around a lot at work and then I come home and sit around a lot at home. So I talked with Mom and we figured out a short workout that I can do in the morning before I get ready for work. I only have a short amount of time, so it’s only a 15-minute workout, but I am usually sweating by the end of it. And it really helps me feel more awake in the mornings. I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I have been, honestly. But I feel really good about taking time to work up a sweat right away in the morning.
In addition to that, I make sure to find some sort of exercise to do after I get home from work. Mondays, I have a yoga class at work. Tuesdays, I do a video online by Jillian Michaels. Thanks to our Amazon Prime account, I get to watch it without buying it. Also, I’m starting to understand this love/hate thing people have for Ms Michaels. I’m *beat* by the end of that 40-minute video, but I feel really good about myself. The rest of the week, depending on how things are looking, Justin and I might go for a bike ride or swimming at the pool (he does laps, I run in place and do other things like jumping jacks and stuff). I tried going rollerblading last week and it didn’t last very long. I only fell down once, but it was HARD on the muscles in my low-back and outer-thighs. I’ll have to work on that one more, but I might wait until I’ve got more abs-strength.
Mostly, though, I’m making sure I do something almost every day to get my heart-rate up because I’ve found that more than any other muscle in my body, my heart is the one struggling the most. I have to keep close watch on my heart rate because it will ZOOM up there like crazy. I can’t do jumping burpees, for example, because it takes about 2 of those before my heart is ready to bust out of my chest.
Of course, my shoulders and my abs are right behind it, wanting to give up, but I’m working on those, too. And everything is starting to improve, in the 2 weeks that I’ve been doing this so far.
I have managed to lose a couple pounds, just with increasing my exercise activities, so I feel pretty good that my thyroid is working okay so far. I’m curious to see what the results say in 6 months, but I’m not terribly worried at this point.
And I know that exercise is only half of the weigh-loss coin; the other half being changing my diet. I haven’t gotten very far on that side of things, other than trying to be mindful about my eating habits. My biggest problem is portion sizes, more than snacking. While I do eat things that I know I shouldn’t, most of the time I can avoid snacks. But when I sit down to eat dinner, I put more on my plate than I should. So until I get to a point where I’m not losing weight just by exercising, I’m not doing any structured plans for my eating, but working to increase my fruit and vegetable intake and reduce . . . everything else, pretty much. Not REMOVE, just reduce. If half of my plate is covered in salad, there’s not much space for anything else. And that’s the way it should be, I figure.
And I know when I mess up on that, like with the cake at the bridal shower at work on Thursday, I’m going to have to pay for it later, like with a 10-mile bike ride and several hours of yard work.
Anyway, that’s how this whole thing  is going with me. I guess I’m on board for the 15-pound loss by the reunion. When is the beginning date for that, by the way? Maybe we can open up a thread for that on the forum on Erica’s site? We could also start planning for what we’re going to do that weekend, too!