So much for planning - I had planned to post something here yesterday, but things happened. More specifically: a root canal happened.

I had woken up with some dull kind of a toothache on Monday, which was solidly in the "it's not too bad to ignore, but annoying" category. Since that had not gotten better until Tuesday morning, I did decide to do the grown-up thing and call my dentist. To my sort-of-delight, I did get an appointment right that morning, and it was quickly resolved that the tooth must have died a quiet death a while ago, as there was no nerve action in it anymore. (That, for those of you lucky enough to never have had such an experience, is done with a super-cold stick that is touched to the tooth. A living one will complain quickly, which is not pleasant. A dead one will not complain at all, which is even less pleasant on a different level and in an entirely different way.)

So the dead tooth was duly opened, the pus was drained, it was cleaned of most of the decayed nerve tissues, X-rays were taken, and I was sent home again with a provisional filling and a new appointment for the proper cleaning. All in all, I'm obviously not happy with pain and having to have dental treatment, but even though there is no good time to have something like this (apart from, obviously, "never" due to not needing it), my timing is impeccable. There's so much action going on these weeks that I could have done far, far worse in finally feeling that pain - at least this week, I'm at home, and though it is sort of mangling my schedule a bit, things are far from really bad. Which brings me to the final two fun facts.

Fun fact number one: After this procedure, which is basically taking away some of the issue that causes the pain (as it drains the infected site), there was much more pain than before. Though the tooth is well and truly dead and thus incapable of causing pain, the surrounding tissue is very much alive, and it seems to have woken up by the preliminary treatment... resulting in a very definitive signal that it was not content with the situation.

Fun fact number two: I spent Thursday to Monday at the Dannenberg Convent - a Living History camp close to a castle ruin (now partly restored). "Tannenberg" was one of my first yearly events, and I was there many times. I'd skipped it the past few years, due to a number of reasons, but this year was their 25th anniversary and, at the same time, the last time the event would take place in its old form. So I spent four days with friends in the rain, and we broke camp and packed up on Monday. That dull ache in the tooth, and some accompanying light pounding that came with exertion, was with me all through my treks up and down the meadow, as I was carrying my stuff back to the car. It really, really heightened my appreciation of being able to get up out of a comfy warm bed on Tuesday, grab the phone, place one call, hop on my bike for a short trip across town, and then get 21st century state-of-the-art dental care, followed by some rather safe and fairly quickly acting 21st century painkiller pill. Yes, there was medical knowledge and medical care in the Middle Ages, too, and it was sometimes a lot more sophisticated than people expect, but it was still a very far cry from dental X-rays, modern drills and modern painkillers. Which reminded me of one of the things that Living History does to its participants: It does remind us both that not all modern things and modern ways are good (or better than old methods), and not to take all good modern things for granted.

As promised yesterday, here are a few more weighty (hah!) or so thoughts, and a bit of background.

As I child, I was normal-weight, and fairly active. All during school, I stayed at normal weight, with fluctuations between summer and winter; but I started getting heavier and heavier with the reduced activity and different eating habits that came with moving away from home and studying.

Over the years that followed, my weight went up, and up, and up - and due to a lot of diet myths that I had bought into, taking them as facts, I never believed that I could do anything against this.

I lost a good bit of weight when I went on a three week trip during my PhD study time, looking at textiles in Scandinavia and Finland; I also lost some weight when I had to deal with food intolerances and was trying to find out what I could eat, and what did not sit well. However, after these stints, I inevitably returned to my old eating habits, and the consequence was, of course, that I gained back the weight I had lost.

The turning point came in January 2016, when a friend pointed me to the book "Fettlogik überwinden" (which, by the way, has come out in English recently; it is called "Conquering Fat Logic" and published by Scribe). You can read more about this in the post from January 2016, if it interests you. It took me from January to June to get down from a BMI of almost 39 to the upper edge of normal, BMI 25, and another few months to lose the remaining few kilos and reach my goal weight - that happened in September.

So... you already know that I still have to keep an eye on what I eat, and how much. This can be irksome, and I'd prefer to live in a rainbow-coloured wonderland where I can just have all the chocolate that I want and eat whatever and not pay attention and still be slim, and strong, and healthy. Who wouldn't? However, I've come to the conclusion that this will never happen for me, and it is probably not going to happen with most people. (I have a friend who has to watch what he eats closely, because otherwise he'll eat too little, which is no better than eating too much.)

For a good while, I was sort of annoyed about this need to pay attention, but fairly recently, I realised that this is kind of a nutty thing to be. I have to pay attention to spend my time wisely, too, after all - every single day. There's only so many hours in a day, and if I get sidetracked too much and dawdle on random internet sites, I am going to get into trouble with the rest of my plans. I've never seen this as an annoying unfair thing, though. Budgeting my time wisely, or my money wisely, or my calories wisely - they are very similar to each other, and while I may have dreams about having inexhaustible amounts of time and money, I have never seen not having them as unfair, much in contrast to not having inexhaustible eating capabilities. Weird, right?

Realising that weirdness has helped me to mostly come to terms with that - I might still grumble quietly about not having enough calorie budget, but more in a way of how I grumble about not having enough money to spend on fancy things that I don't really need.

Another thing that I recently realised is that, in one way of looking at it, I am actually... a diet failure.

You probably have read, and heard, about this "95% of diets fail, because people gain back weight afterwards", right? Well. Technically, I am also falling in that category... because I am, today, about 2 kg above the weight from the end of my diet. Which makes me someone who re-gained weight after finishing... if you do a survey that only asks about gain, and not about how much. (There were a few occasions during the last three years when I had re-gained a little bit more, by the way, but I was able to cut back for a while again, returning to tracking calories, and got it under control once more.)

If you ask me, though, I'll tell you that I would consider gaining back a little bit of what I have lost is not making me a failure at all. And even if I would have re-gained some more - how many people manage to stop smoking on their very first try? How often do you fall off a bicycle when you are learning how to ride? How many knitters never have to rip back a bit, or a lot, because things did not turn out to be the correct gauge, or the correct fit after all?

Is that a reason to just give up before you even start? Of course not. Learning something is rarely easy all the way through - but it's always worth the effort, and finding out how to eat the right amount for what you are, and do, and want to be, is a kind of learning, too. It gets easier over time. It is easier if you have support. There will be days when it seems like nothing budges, but there will also be days when things suddenly feel in the flow. Whatever you do - don't give up on your goals. Go for it. If you fail - try again. Sometimes it just takes a lot of small steps, but every little step in the right direction brings you closer - and at least you won't have to wonder about what could have happened if you hadn't given up.

Here you go. Ramble over - now this blog will go back to its more usual topics!

It's a personal one, and it's a health-related one, and I am very happy about this, so you are going to get a long and rambling post. Or two.

Exactly three years ago today, I stepped on the scales in the morning, and for the first time in I don't know how long, I was in the "normal weight" range. And now it's three years later... and I feel like writing a bit more about all this. Which means you're getting a post about weight and health stuff today and on Monday - in hopes that it might be interesting to you, or maybe even helpful.

First things first, though: Pictures.

This is me, a little less than three years ago, in September - that is shortly after reaching goal weight:

And this is me, last week. I tried to get a similar body position, and, of course, I mostly failed. So there's a blurry pic that is sort of similar:

and a not so blurry pic that is even less similar:

As you can see, there's not much obvious change. I am about 2 kg above the goal weight that I had set, which doesn't make me tremendously happy, but I'm also not motivated enough at the moment to do a serious calorie reduction stint (which, for me, means I have to measure and weigh the things I eat to closely track calories, because I'm still not good at estimating stuff to eat under maintenance).

The not so obvious things are these: Both being overweight and then obese and finally seriously obese for years, and doing the hardcore weight-reduction diet for nine months have left their traces, physical as well as mental. I have stretch marks on some spots of my body (I actually got a few stretch marks from growths spurts when I was a teenager, my connective tissue is not top of the pops, it seems). I still have some excess tissue and skin in the places where I carried most of the fat, though my impression is that this is still improving, albeit very, very slowly. I don't mind it too much; I look decent when dressed and decent enough when not, and with 40 years I am not going to have the body of a 20-year-old, even without the overweight years. My food intolerances have gone away with the excess weight, the asthma and hay fever has improved a lot, and my general fitness is much better as well (though I still don't have enough raw strength for many of the bouldering things, and I will complain about that muchly).

The mental things are a little harder to pin down, and they will also fluctuate more. First thing to mention: If the excess weight comes from eating as a coping mechanism, there's a definite need for a different coping strategy to keep the weight off. I had a mild case of using food as a reward, or as consolation when things did not go well, but it wasn't too hard to put a stop to this for me. Food was not connected to a lot, or to very bad, underlying different issues for me, which made - and makes - things a lot easier. Losing weight will not miraculously cure all problems. It will cure the stress of the excess weight on the body, it will alleviate hormonal issues coming from the extra fat (which is a hormonally active tissue), it will lessen joint and respiratory problems and generally improve health and fitness. It may alleviate depression or depressive moods, but it will not cure problems of self-esteem that come from different, deeper places, or any other mental issues. These might come up harder, in fact, if eating more was the coping strategy that used to hold them at bay.

So these days I try not to slide back into having food as a reward for something, or as a consolation. Most of the time, I manage. Sometimes that emergency chocolate does come in, though. I'm usually not very happy about that, but well, that's life, and I try to do better the next time something like this comes around.

One of the things I struggle with a lot more is irrational fears of suddenly balloning up again to my highest weight. When thinking about it with a level head, it's really absurd - you just physically cannot add on several dozens of kilograms in the space of a few days, even if you eat all the time. But tell that to the little part of my brain that insists on being stupid! I tend to retain water when I get stressed, when I don't have enough sleep, when I travel, when I have an illness or tweaked a muscle, when I have done more or different sports than usual, for hormonal reasons, and when I have changes in diet. So... basically for anything not in the very relaxed and normal plan. This means that my weight can shoot up a few kilos if several of these things come together - and even though I do know it's just water weight, at times I will get into some kind of irrational panic that I'm going to re-gain all the weight I lost now, no matter what I do or how much or little I eat. (This is not helping, as it adds more stress. It also takes a long while for some of these water retentions to ebb off, sometimes several weeks, which adds to the stress from these irrational things... which doesn't help. You get the picture.)

Sometimes I can handle the weight fluctuations pretty well, and sometimes I get really panicky, which totally sucks. Same with estimating how much I eat - sometimes I do well, and everything feels under control and relaxed and stable; at some stages, though, I feel perpetually hungry and could eat five elephants in a day, which is not a good thing. Occasionally, something in the other direction happens, and I eat too little for a while, which has its own not-so-nice repercussions. So I am trying to keep things in balance and not overeat even if I have the desire to just stuff my face all freaking day long, and not eat nothing or next to nothing even if I am not feeling really hungry. It works, mostly. Sometimes I just fail. Then there's nothing to do but pick myself up, take a deep breath, and move on, aiming to do better next time.

Losing the weight was simple in the sense of "just eat less, and maybe move a bit more". Sometimes that felt easy, and sometimes it felt like the hardest thing in the world. There were days when I was super motivated, and days when the only thing keeping me at it was sheer stubbornness, and the knowledge that there would be an end to this at one point, and the more I veered off track the longer it would take.

Maintaining the lower weight is just as simple in the sense of "track your weight, keep an eye on how much you eat, and make sure you don't eat too much or too little for extended periods of time". It's not always easy either, and there is no end to maintenance mode, so replacing a lack of motivation by stubbornness can be even harder now. In both cases, however, sticking to it has proven to be totally worth the time and effort I put into it.

Today, I'm off to Bielefeld, to set up the shop there, give a workshop on spinning and have a fair amount of fun.

Today, by the way, is also my one year anniversary of reaching my goal weight, and I'm happy to say that I am still in the goal weight range (with fluctuations, depending on water retention levels, which are closely connected to stress levels), and still very, very happy about it.

While most of the time I manage quite well, there are times when it's not as easy for me to keep the right balance between eating enough and eating not too much. Especially in these times, I can really feel that both the years of being overweight and the wild ride I took as the weightloss phase certainly left their traces, and I get really odd trains of thought. These things usually happen when I have a good bit of water retention that is hard to explain and stays for more than a few days, making me rather... anxious. Yes, even if I can be pretty sure it's water, and will go away, and even though I know that in some cases it will take at least two weeks before it starts flowing out. In these times, I sometimes also have problems estimating how much food I'll need (with not-so-nice side effects if I underestimate too much)

Overall, though? Everything is fine and dandy. And I am happy.

Remember, back in January, when I wrote about my weight issues in a long, rambling post? When I started losing weight back then, I set a goal weight number as the finishing line.

It took a good while to reach that number. I was planning to be finished in summer, and though I broke through the border to normal weight according to BMI charts in mid July, the last few kilos to the goal weight I'd set took much, much longer than expected, due to a number of things (among them two weeks of vacation, where I did not eat at a deficit). Basically, I've been more or less finished, as in "weight and body fat percentage are in a healthy area now", for... a good two months? So I've started to gradually eat more again, to prepare for maintenance mode and figure out how much I actually need now to stay where I am... still very slowly going down, waiting for the magical number to appear.

This morning, I have seen that number. I am now officially done with the weight loss, and entering maintenance mode, so to say. This little fact has not made it to my brain just yet - I've been juuust slightly above the goal number for four weeks now (water retention is nasty!), and it still has to sink in that it is now there.

And now, I guess, it is time for the obligatory before-and-after-pics. So on the left, you see how I looked last winter, before I got going. On the right, you see how I look now, and what I did on Tuesday evening - a friend has infected us with the Boulder Virus a while ago, and we're now going up the walls about once a week. (Yes, I know, they are not proper before-and-after pics, where you have the same posture and the same clothes and stuff. But I guess you will get the gist.)


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
So. I did it. It was really simple: count all calories (including every little bit of food and every drink), eat less than you burn, get enough protein, do a bit of sports to keep as much of the muscle mass as possible, and that's it.  Simple doesn't mean easy, though, and it was hard sometimes - but it was worth every little bit of effort! Life is much, much better now that I have lost the excess weight. Also... I have a wardrobe full of new clothes (the old ones didn't fit anymore, apart from a few very old ones that were always tight before).  I have a new hobby (climbing or bouldering are just not as much fun with too much weight to hoist up)... and I even made a new friend in connection with the book that helped me so much - Fettlogik überwinden.

And I'm very, very happy about all this!

 

It's World Baking Day today (thank goodness for Twitter, which is letting me know about such incredibly important things) so I'll share a recipe with you. It's not a classical cake, but can be eaten as a dessert: Quarkauflauf (curd cheese casserole). Basically, this is rather close to a crustless cheesecake.

[caption id="attachment_2417" align="alignnone" width="452"] There you go: Curd Cheese Casserole, fresh out of the oven, with cherries on top.


I remember this being an occasional sweet lunch when I was small. It was only occasional partly because sweet lunches were just not the rule, and partly because my dad is no fan of curd cheese, and didn't much like this as a meal. All of us had some meals we weren't too fond of, and these would thus be only very occasional - so that nobody had to suffer too much under the taste preferences of the rest of the family.After I moved out from home, I more or less forgot about this dish - until I rediscovered it a while ago, when I was looking for something to do with a leftover pack of curd cheese. This time around, I completely fell in love with the stuff, as it can be eaten hot or cold, it freezes well, goes with a lot of different kinds of fruit, and is quick and easy to make.

• 2 eggs
• 250 g curd cheese
• one tablespoon starch or about 30 g protein powder (neutral)
• about 50 g sugar (or less, if you prefer it less sweet - I use about 20 g of unrefined sugar, as the fruit delivers enough sweetness for my taste buds, and I like the taste the unrefined stuff brings into the mix)
• one teaspoon baking powder
• 200-300 g of fruit (tangerine, apple, cherry or plum all work beautifully for this)

Put everything except the fruit into a bowl and mix to a creamy consistency. Place into a suitable casserole or several smaller forms; I split this mix into 3 small oven-safe glass forms. Add the fruit of your choice either on top of the mix, or layer it between two layers of the curd mixture.

Bake for about 15-30 min at c. 170°C (fan oven) depending on your oven and the form(s) you filled it into; it should still be moist on the inside, but golden on the outside.

(If you are wondering about the protein powder substitution - I'm still getting rid of excess weight, and this is a relatively easy way for me to get enough protein per day.)

Happy World Baking Day!

... apart from some knitting, that is:

I went for a little walk with the most patient of all husbands, entered a building, handed a card over to an elderly lady, and received a sheet of paper with lots of boxes to tick in return.

Boxes were ticked. Then I brought the sheet into another room and handed it over to a guy in a white coat, who stuck something into my ear, asked me a few questions, scribbled some notes on the paper and signed it.

I carried it into yet another room, where yet another guy pricked my ear and did some stamping on the paper and the card, and a third one handed me an aluminum box with a few plastic items in it. And the sheet of paper, joined by a second and third one.

In yet another room (I carried the box there), I lay down on a comfy recliner, told some lady my name and date of birth (while she was looking at the papers), got handed one of the three sheets, and then she stuck a needle into my arm.

About ten minutes later, my right arm looked like this:

[caption id="attachment_2213" align="alignnone" width="677"] The barcode in the wrap matches the barcode on my paperwork and the bag plus the test tubes that my blood went in. It's more or less just decorative on the arm, though!


 
And you've probably figured it out by now - we went to donate blood. I've been doing this since I turned eighteen, with a few years of hiatus inbetween, and it's a really nice thing to do. We usually team up with a friend or two, which makes this a nice and social evening for us. It's a good feeling to be able to help somebody else (plus you get your blood checked, and will be informed in case there's anything really amiss with you), there's lots of nice and friendly people there, and after the donation you get coffee and a bite to eat. Donating blood also has some health benefits for the donor, so it's an allround win-win situation. Yay!