Not Again.

I’ve talked about my current way of eating (low-carb/high fat), my exercise protocol (weights, not cardio), and my struggles with menopause.  How about I wrap them all together with an update?

I easily maintained my 2009 weight loss for five years. Then menopause hit. I struggled for over a year and a half to get rid of the 20 pounds that surged on when my hormones went away and that’s how I settled on low-carb/high fat. That set point seemed easy enough to maintain until…….. My doctor determined that I was fully in menopause and decided to remove the hormonally based birth control I had been using. That seemed like a reasonable thing to me. But I started gaining weight. It took a year of steadily gaining (a total of 12 lbs!) before it dawned on me – I was experiencing a SECOND menopause related weight gain. My eating habits hadn’t changed, my exercise hadn’t changed. But my hormones had (or at least ones I had access to even though my body wasn’t where they were coming from.) Fuck. So here I am again, figuring it out once more.

My history has taught me that nothing really budges my weight except changing my eating. Don’t get me wrong, I am not stopping my lifting. I really like the muscles that I can see; Jim does too. I know that exercise is really my only way out of my familial predisposition to diabetes too. So revamping my eating needed to happen in order to shed this hormone induced weight gain.

I am trying intermittent fasting. For a week now, I have been fasting for 18 hours and having a 6 hour eating window. The way I am getting through this is to drink A LOT of tea. I also happen to drink it with a lot of fat (coconut oil or heavy cream) because I am aiming for ketogenic. This is technically not fasting with the added fat, but it works for me. I am then making sure that I “break my fast” with protein and fat, usually scrambled eggs or a hamburger. When I eat my evening meal I make sure it meets the ketogenic criteria I have set for myself. So far, it’s working. I have lost 3.5 lbs. in the last week. Yes, of course I know it is “water weight”, but it is encouraging and to be expected when going back to keto. Fortunately, because I have been at least low carb for the entire last 2+ years, there was no “keto flu” like the first time.

As I mentioned, I am loving drinking tea all day. Right now I am avoiding my precious Choffy because it has carbs, and tea does not. To be able to drink it late into the day, I needed to try some herbal teas. But I always though I didn’t like them. Turns out, I just didn’t like the kinds of herbal tea I had had been exposed to, like Lemon Zinger and Raspberry Twist – yuck. So this is what I am drinking these days.

The additional plus of this is that increasing my fluid intake will help me avoid a repeat of the kidney stone I had last spring. Unlike so many, my stone didn’t cause me excruciating pain until it passed. No, instead it was SO BIG I had to have surgery. Yay. I definitely want to avoid that again – not because it was difficult surgery, but more because even with *really good insurance* it cost a fuckload of money! I also stopped a medication that is known to dehydrate and contribute to kidney stones. Damn, it all gets so complicated when you get older.

I am trying to ramp up my cardio, too. I have been inconsistent at best, but at least I wasn’t avoiding it any longer. Now I am trying to do it every day. Still don’t love it and truly find that when I work out harder, I am hungrier. The body *really* wants stasis. If you “move more”, the “eat less” is just that much harder to do. Again ~for me~ the high fat element makes me feel like I can handle it.

Because I have been lifting consistently, I am happy with my muscle mass. Now I just need to shed some of these pounds so it is visible! I may not have a beach body by the time I go to the Jersey shore with my extended family, but I will be on my way and I will be sure to don a bikini at least once.