Welcome to The Picky Pescatarian.
I am, but of course, a pescatarian. Meaning, the only meat I consume is fish. It’s a sometimes rough life, but I enjoy it. I’ve been a pescatarian since sometime around 2006 – the good old high school days.
My favorite fish is technically salmon, but I haven’t been in the mood to eat it for a while. These days I eat mostly vegetarian and sometimes vegan. The first time I joined forces with a nutritionist, I ended up eating so much fish, I became disgusted with it. That was sometime in 2016/17. The disgust is still pretty relevant today. This all means I don’t get quite enough protein, I lose a lot of hair, and I’m cold and shaky more often than I’d like. But I won’t change things anytime soon. The thought of consuming land meat turns my stomach.
The nutritionist battle.
In fall 2016, I weighed somewhere in the 190s, which was good considering that in fall 2015, I weighed about 205lbs. In 2016 I met my out of pocket maximum with insurance, which meant all my approved healthcare was free through the rest of the plan year. I went on the insurance website and searched for various doctors I could finally see and landed on nutritionists. I picked one at random, built a great relationship with her and ended up getting down to 161lbs about a year later. My lowest recorded weight post-college is 141, so I had a ways to go, but my body plateaued. I also started a new job, and the office always had free and unhealthy food to eat. I gained the weight back to the low 170s and stayed there for some time. It didn’t matter too much to me because:
- I looked skinny.
- My face was skinny.
- My belly was flat-ish.
- I got more compliments than average for such a high weight.
Then, in spring 2018, several things happened. First, my cousin and one of my all-time best friends moved home to Maine. I took this loss very hard. Second, my nutritionist went on maternity leave…for six months. Instead of seeing a different nutritionist temporarily, I tried to go it alone. It didn’t work. I got depressed. I started eating junk food again and hiding it from my parents. I quickly began to gain weight. Before I knew it, I was in the low to mid 180s and miserable.
- My face was fat.
- My belly was round.
- I no longer received compliments.
- Instead, I got awkward glances and mute mouths.
My weight as of this morning is 187.0lbs.
Despite having joined the YMCA for access to inexpensive exercise classes, and despite having joined a weight loss program through the VA (I’m a veteran, but that’s a story for another day), I have not lost any weight.
My VA program is very strict. Every morning I weigh myself after…you know…emptying things. I record the weight, and at 9 am on the dot, an automated system calls me. It asks me questions about how I’m doing and what I know about healthy choices and then gives me homework. At the end of the call, I enter in my weight for the day. On the other end of this program is someone called a Care Coordinator. Rebecca is super nice, and she monitors all my answers to the automated system as well as my entered weight. I can call her whenever I have questions, need help, or need motivation. I never meet with her in person, but it’s still a great program. I also see an unrelated nutritionist at the VA once a month. She goes over my food choices and helps me come up with game plans to do better.
On top of that, I have the option to join a weekly weight loss support group that meets at my local VA. It doesn’t start until September, but I think I’ll do it. By “local” I mean 40 minutes away, so it’s a bit of a commitment. But at this point, I need to do something a little more drastic.
I’m trying to remember to use a food diary app on my phone that counts calories, but I’m pretty bad at taking the time to do it. My goal is to stay in the 1,200 calorie range, but that is a lot harder than I expected. I usually end up closer to 1,500.
I feel like I’ve been rambling a bit in here, but I’m trying to give you a baseline for my new lifestyle journey.
Wondering more about me and less about my weight?
Well, I’m a 29-year-old freelance writer and social media manager. I work hard for my clients and rarely take the time to write for myself these days. But with this new weight loss kick I’m on, I figured I might get excited about writing a blog for that instead of intermittent blogs for my business – which can get tedious. It gets hard to come up with ideas.
I suppose this is a good starting point for now. I’m going to try and write as regularly as possible. I want to say every day, but we’ll see how well that goes on top of my actual work.
Stay tuned!
Daily check-in!
Weight: 187.0
Fitness goal for today: Yoga at 4:30. Burn at least 200 calories.
General goal for today: Eat only one snack after dinner.
After working out, I’m totally going to: Go to Harris Teeter and return the expired food they sold me. (Not a reward, but still something I need to do)
Today I feel thankful for: My continuous determination to do better, be better, and lose weight.
Photo of the Day!
The Picky Pescatarian 