Saturday, September 18, 2010

Bloggest Loser Day 14 and Weekly Check In

So much to report.......

First of all,


Pam won the weigh in with a loss of 2.3%!


Congrats, Pam! Glad your foot is finally feeling better!!


So let's get down to business.


This week was a major lesson learned. MAJOR. I ended up losing a mere 1.01% of my weight. Better than last week, and over 1%, so hooray. But after the week I had, I'm just happy I lost anything at all.



Yes, it was my birthday and I had a lot of good food. Hopefully I'll get the details about that on my other blog soon.



But beyond that, it was the trip to the ER that rattled me. Long story short, after a few days of breathing problems (every 4th breath was a conscientious deep inhale and I often felt like I couldn't get enough oxygen, like a yawn that isn't satisfying), I had Josh take me to the doctor on Wednesday afternoon because I had shortness of breath. I was worried that I had some sort of respiratory problem. I ended up with an IV of fluids, chest x-ray, CAT scan, EKG, blood work, and oxygen. Luckily, there were no clots or growths in my lungs. Everything looked healthy, except for my sodium bicarbonate level. It was very low. The doc thought I might be dehydrated since I was experiencing a metabolic acidosis, but I had no other symptoms.



It took a while, but we finally figured out (Josh figured it out, have I ever mentioned how amazing he is?) that I probably had ketoacidosis. What are these words I'm using? I had no idea.



Basically, I was keeping to my recommended online food journal, but the website doesn't take into account the person's activity level. I was eating 1200 to 1550 calories/day. My body wasn't getting enough fuel to run off of. Now, you want a deficit in your calories in order to burn fat, but when you don't get enough fuel you burn fat, muscle, and you begin to keep too much acid within your body.



In my case, the way my body dealt with trying to expel the extra acid was by breathing in more O2 and breathing out more CO2 (carbon dioxide is acidic, oxygen is the alkalotic buffer). The plan to fix it: eat more calories. It's taken me two days of eating anything I want (Italian food, cake, etc) and I'm finally breathing normally again.



I want to tell you about this for one main reason:



ARE YOU EATING ENOUGH????



You want to keep your food in control, but are you getting enough? I did a lot of research after getting home from the ER Wednesday night. It seems pretty agreed that with my rigorous exercising, I should have been eating at least 1700 to 1800 calories a day. Do you know your magic number?



As far as my goal to drink more water than Crystal Light (and then trying to cut out diet drinks altogether), I did pretty well.



Now that my eating is back in order and my breathing is almost completely back to normal, I have a lot of the same goals: eat enough, keep up my exercise, and drink LOTS of water. Oh, and watch The Biggest Loser this Tuesday. Hooray for season premiere week!



So, that was my lesson this week. Did you learn anything new this week? Did you accomplish your goals? What new goals do you have for this week. How'd your weight loss go? (Go HERE for the calculator.) Trials? Successes? Tell me all about your week!

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow! Tough week! I'm glad things are getting better for you...just don't be too depressed that you have to eat more! :p And although I'm excited I won...I'm depressed because I know it's a pharmaceutical fluke. But I'm not going to let it get me too down. My foot feel like new and I'm able to resume my exercise! Here's to a fun exercise filled week!

P.S. I'll post my weight loss/gain Sunday afternoon!

Carina said...

Shelly, that is SO SCARY! Thank heavens Josh could figure it out. I am so glad that you are feeling better. Have you run since that happened yet? I hope there aren't any lasting side effects.

OK, this is going to be fun. I can't wait to hit the button to calculate. Drumroll please.... 0.1% weight loss. Yes, that is Awesome!!! That seems even more depressing than saying I lost .2 lbs. Ha! Oh well, at least it was a loss.

I had a rough week. Fibromyalgia is back with a vengeance. So my small loss might be chalked up to swelling in my connective tissues. I wasn't able to reach my goal of losing 50 lbs by the Summer Solstice (well there are still a few days, so I might) I am 1.4 lbs away. Can I really cry about that? Heck no!!! I have almost lost 50 lbs since Feb.

This week try to focus again on water, eating regularly and be active even when my body screams I should be laying down. And hope this week is tons less stressful than the last few have been.

Unknown said...

ok...I don't know what I'm doing right other than cutting back my portions and increasing my water intake. I'm still going around like a crazy stay at home mom and doing housework. Foot is better so hopefully I can attribute my loss next week to actual exercise.

Here's this weeks total: 1.68% loss (2.5 pounds) and I weighed 3 times in different spots in the house and got the same number...guess it must be right.

Good luck to everyone else!

Mrs. Bennett said...

I gained weight. My scale is horrible and old school so I'd like to blame it on that, but in truth I know I didn't push myself and only ran 3 times this week. So I'm disappointed.

This week I will run 4 times, drink lots of water, cut down on soda, and lift weights 3 times at least as well. We'll see how it goes!

Crisanne said...

I'm still at my wonderful plateau. I exercised 4 days this week, watched much more carefully what I was eating, avoided a ton of sweets. Haven't moved anywhere on the scale or in inches. Any other secrets besides upping exercise and lowering caloric intake... 'cause it really doesn't seem to be working. New goals: up the exercise levels.

colds1 said...

.5% Down another pound. Slow and steady wins the race, right?