Ugh...

This summer is my last summer at home. While most of you can relate when I say that I’m ecstatic (believe me, I am), it may not be for the reason everyone expects. Read: living with the parents breathing down my neck.

You see, when I go home, I gain weight. Not just 3 or 4 pounds, but this summer I put on 10. freakin. pounds. Yes, I know this is my own fault, so don’t get on my case for knowing better, but I know I’m not alone. There is something about the summer that just means extra poundage. So how about we take a closer look at what goes on during the summer months so we can stop the madness?!?!

1) The campus gym is no longer 5 min away - Ok, this one hit me pretty hard. I love having a free gym at my disposal! No way am I going to pay buckets of money to use an elliptical in my hometown.

2) When it’s fifty million degrees outside, you want to stay in – I’m one of those people that no matter how far away my class is, I’d rather walk than take the campus shuttle. Well, with no class to go to, I have nowhere to walk. Also, I live in west Texas where it’s been over 100 degrees every day for the past month. Going on a walk for exercise is out of the question; I don’t want to burst into flames!

3) Parent’s kitchen = food anytime - When I’m at school, I’m on a strict budget, so I only eat when I need to. At home, I eat all the time because I’m no longer the one footing the food bill. I now eat when I’m bored (which is all the time since I couldn’t find a job this summer), when I’m sad (which is always since I am away from my friends), and when I’m awake (which is a lot since my parents wake up early and scream to each other across the house). Let’s leave the grazing for livestock, OK?

4) No friends to keep me in check – My friends on campus and I have sort of a check and balance system going on. We go to the gym together, we eat together, etc. If we see one of our friends doing something unhealthy, one of us will chime in and say something. We’re also motivation for each other; we constantly push each other for 5 more minutes on the stair stepper, or we have a salad night for dinner. With them gone, I’m on my own, and my own wants cupcakes. And it just so happens that my mom just baked 3 dozen of ‘em.

5) Outdoor BBQs: Everyone has them in the summer and, being that I will take any opportunity to hang out with people under the age of 45, I go to them. A lot. And I eat lots of delicious dips and chips and margaritas. And none of those things are low in calories.

With all of these changes from campus life, there’s only so much weight I can keep off with my mom’s Wii Fit. I’m honestly surprised I didn’t gain more, but I’m sure there is some more coming in the next 3 weeks before I head back to campus. I just hope I can still squeeze into my jeans for Welcome Week.

So tell me, how is home life different for your body?

There are a multitude of factors, from water consumption to plain old hormones, that can artificially – and temporarily – affect that ever important number on the scale, anywhere from 1-5 pounds in a day.

#1. Water water water.

Water can affect your weight in a couple of ways: drinking too much, and not enough. As a substance, water is pretty heavy, so if you drink a couple big glasses, you’ll see an immediate impact on your weight. On the other hand, dehydration can also lead to a higher number, because it causes the body to retain what water it does have (it thinks there’s a draught or something?). Our bodies are made of 60% water, so any changes in that arena are going to have a noticeable impact overall.

#2 Food

This one seems so obvious, but people sometimes forget that food weighs as much in your stomach as it does on your plate, at least initially. Take that into account when you step on the scale, or better yet, wait ’til you’ve digested before you get anywhere near it.

#3 Aunt Flo

You know how you feel bloated and heavy right around your period? It’s because you are. Hormonal shifts and surges also make your body hold onto water, and we’ve already covered how much water can add up. Exercise, drink plenty of water, and your body will flush it out in due time.

#4 Salt

Going heavy on the salt makes your body hold onto water for dear life which, as we already know, makes us weigh more. This gets especially tricky to control, as most convenience foods, prepared foods, etc., already have a lot of sodium in them, and if you add salt on top of that…well, you may be in for a little surprise next time you step on the scale.

#5 Glycogen

Glycogen is energy stored in your body, in muscles and in your liver, and comes packed with 3-4 pounds of water. If you don’t eat enough carbs during the day, these stores get tapped and the supply will shrink, resulting in a small weight loss. This will increase your appetite, and your body will slowly right itself as you eat. Glycogen and the accompanying water can account for a shift of up to 2 pounds in weight every day.

So, there you have it, the top 5 reasons your weight can fluctuate on any given day. Remember, a pound of fat is 3500 calories. You would have to consume 3500 calories MORE than you burn off in a day, and you burn a good many just by, you know, living. Add in any activity at all and you up that furnace. It’s almost literally impossible to gain a pound overnight, let alone 5. Unless you regularly eat tubs of Crisco every day, chances are, your culprit is one of the above. For this reason, doctors and nutritionists often recommend markers other than a scale to monitor your weight, such as energy level, or a particularly stiff pair of jeans. These things will give you a much more honest answer than your fickle bathroom scale.

If you are going to weigh, try and be consistent with when and how you do it. If you stick to the same time of day, amount of clothing, etc., you’re more likely to get a weight that’s at least relatively accurate. So next time you get a nasty shock, take a breath, think it over, and consider that maybe you’re doing just fine.

Yup, they’ve thought of it. The toilet seat scale. In case you don’t have time to stand up and wait about three seconds for your weight to show up. You can kill two birds with one stone by checking your weight and peeing out your recommended eight daily glasses of water at the same time. And everyone knows, we Americans love to multi-task.

That was my initial reaction to the news of the toilet seat scale.

But then I got to reading about the inspirations for the TSS.  Poor, naive, non-toilet-humor sharing little me didn’t consider the fact that this was actually created for consumers who might want to see how much weight they lose each time they relieve themselves.  It makes sense, but I’m a bit uncomfortable with that.  Sure, there are times when I’m at a seedy bar and refuse to risk getting the clap from the bathroom stall, and wait to get home to piss out approximately three gallons of beer.  And there are times when I indulge in some Olive Garden or Taco Bell and some unladylike shizz goes down in the bathroom.  It doesn’t help that I tend to get bladder (and bowel)-shy around people I don’t know and have to hold it for long periods at times, and at the end of those excruciating intervals, yes, I feel like I’ve lost about five pounds.

But do I actually want to know?  I don’t think that’s necessary.  Besides, one of the criticisms of the TSS is that it’s an open invitation to struggling bulimics.  Can you imagine that locker room convo? “I just puked up three pounds of Sushi.  You?”  Gross.

So, if its a convenience factor, I say bring it on.  Build a scale into the tiles immediately in front of my bathroom sink so I can check my weight at a glance while I brush my teeth.  But I’m perfectly content to refrain from monitoring how much skinnier I become after taking a massive dump, and I certainly don’t want to find out that when I “drop the kids at the pool,” I’m talking about quintuplets.

My personal consumer’s conclusion? Thanks, but no thanks, Toilet Seat Scale.

Ew. Ew. Ew.

I always knew I was consuming extra calories when I had a bar night. But, if you ask me, if you can’t read the “Nutrition Facts” label, the calories don’t count. That’s why I refuse to buy full-fat Ben and Jerry’s, but don’t mind ordering dessert at Olive Garden. What you don’t know can’t hurt you, right?

If that’s your mantra, you may not want to click here.

This lovely little program lets you enter in how many drinks you consumed last night… and then tells you approximately how many calories you imbibed… and then proceeds to tell you how much food would be equivalent to that number.

Let me tell you, I wanted to cry after what was a reasonably low-key night, by my standards. Since I want to lose weight, I’ve been torturing myself with Smart Ones and steamed vegetables. Little did I know, I could have eaten three slices of pizza and a few donuts if I hadn’t downed a bottle and a half of wine last night.

It sucks, because you don’t always get full from drinking, and it’s hard to look at liquids as fatty foods. So many of us brush it off, gain the freshman fifteen, and have new beer guts for bikini season. Well, the new year is upon us, and it’s time for some resolutions. You want some motivation? Click the link.

Well, I knew when I started this diet that I would hit a slump. I just didn’t expect it to be so early.

The scale in my room is excessively kind and flattering, and tends to give me a weight that is about ten pounds off. Now, I knew this, but I was never very good at reading the little notches. I assume my consistent 227 was right; however, at a recent visit to Health Services, I decided to check my weight on their scale. The result was not encouraging.

230 is more than I ever wanted to weigh. 230 is something like a hundred pounds heavier than the “recommended” weight for women my age and height, and though I don’t really have any interest in being the recommended weight, I don’t want to be gaining weight. To say I was upset was an understatement. Of course, being upset, I decided to do what any hormonal, depressed college female would do: eat chocolate.

I fully intended to eat that Dove bar, too. But then I thought about it. I didn’t know if the extra three pounds was from muscle mass, or if I was retaining water the way I normally do (I have been drinking a lot of a water, so it was entirely plausible). It could have been anything that lead to that, and who was to say it was exactly three pounds? And the scale didn’t know me. The scale didn’t know how much I amended my diet, how much my body hates me after a half an hour on the elliptical, how hard it is to NOT eat those french fries. So, finally, I decided to suck it up and buy myself a scale that measures fat percentage and water retention.

Let me explain a little how these scales work. Once you stand on them (some of the really high-tech ones want you to plug in your age and height), they send a small electrical signal through one foot and wait for it to come out of the other. It doesn’t hurt, obviously. The amount of time it takes for the signal to go through one foot to the other is how the scale measures the amount of fat and water in your body. Some work better than others in terms of measuring fat versus water retention. Some aren’t even scales, but nifty hand-held devices.

Of course, I can’t entirely blame this on the scales, as much as I really want to. My metabolism has always been notoriously slow; I can detox for a week and gain a pound. Lucky for me, I stumbled on an article that told me various ways to raise my metabolism. Some I’m already doing, but others – specifically the workout tips – are easy enough that I can do them once a day.

Morning Yoga: I fell out of yoga a long time ago, and I’ve regretted it ever since. It energizes you and relaxes you at the same time, and talk about improved posture! I wandered over to ABC of Yoga for a few exercises, and I try to do one from each group every morning, varying it to keep my body guessing.

Afternoon Stretches: Goodness knows that I start slumping come two or three o’clock. Stretching boosts circulation and eases the upper body tension you get from sitting all day, whether it’s in class or at the computer. Now, I can’t really afford to LEAVE my chair, so I do the stretches right there. Erm, here. Really! Check these out. Again, I do one from each section and change it daily for variation.

Evening Strength: The one thing that’s been missing from my workout is strength exercising. I’ve heard from everyone that building up muscle not only raises your metabolism, but combined with cardio can make the fat melt. Well, I’ve seen no fat melt yet, but I have started snagging a pair of 5-pound dumbbells (change the weight according to how much you can do; don’t make it EASY, but don’t strain yourself).

The exercises the article mentions are nice, but I’ve never been good with doing things without seeing them done…and once again, I really can’t afford to leave my chair in the evening, especially when I have to read that 30 page article for class tomorrow. After a quickie search, I found this guy on Youtube. It’s not the full video, but by the end I felt like I had done a full work out. Ouch. If you’re into this kind of thing, you might want to invest in his video.

So, that’s the story so far. This is one hell of a struggle, but I’m determined to come out on the other side. On the bright side, though I don’t have too many major changes to report, I noticed something this morning while I was putting lotion on after a shower:

I have some damn nice calves.

Current Weight: 230.

Current Size: XXL, or 20/22.