truckin'

This morning's weight: 188.8

IF is magical.  For real.

I was down to 187.8 as of 9/27 which means I had lost roughly 6 pounds in  3 weeks while eating 1600+ calories a day and binging on cashews like they were going out of style.  For me, that is amazing as I tend to either gain or maintain eating 1600.

Anyway, I went out of town on 10/2 and ate more freely then I usually do (read: I actually ate some bread, and had an entire hamburger AND fries.  That is crazy of me...) .  I came home on 10/9 and my weight was back up at 192.  Here I am, 1 week later, and I am almost back where I started.  So excellent.

I had to remove nuts from my diet (here goes my all-or-nothing nonsense again) because I can't control myself.  I am also trying to hit 1200 calories and stay there during the week.  Weekends I am not even counting calories, just trying to maintain a level head.

I have to admit I have less energy and am more sleepy this week with the calories so reduced.  I really hope that it is temporary.  Time will tell!

IF Trial 1st weeks results

This morning's weight:189.4

I love this way of eating!  Love love love it!!!

This may sound counter-intuitive, but there is something freeing about being this restrictive.  When I leave from work in the afternoon, I don't have to think about food anymore for the whole evening.  It is such a pleasure coming from the last 3+ years of doing nothing but obsessing about food constantly.  And if I do start thinking about food (which as a food addict you know I do...) I get to shake myself and realize that I don't need to worry about it. 

I have been keeping to 1400-1600 cals during my feeding period (8am-4pm).  Since I pre-calculate my breakfsat and lunch calories on Sundays when I make my food for the week, all I need to add in are the snacks I have during the day.  I am a little loosey-goosey with the calories, but that hasn't seemed to matter in this first week as I have lost 2.6 pounds.  Is it all water weight?  Quite probably - but I don't care!  To see downwards movement on the scale is so amazing after 2 years of seeing it slowly creep up.

I took brief notes in my handwritten journal each morning this week to track how I was feeling.  Here is how it went:

Day 1  - was weird not to eat at night, but didn't actually get hungry.  I went for a run which usually suppresses my appetite anyway

Day 2 - skipped my morning coffee since I take it with almond milk and didn't want to break out of the fast before 8 am (I get up at 5).  I ended up feeling absolutely TERRIBLE from about 8am-10:30 am even though I ate and had coffee in that time frame.  I realized later this was caffeine withdrawal, NOT issues from fasting.  Gum and hot tea at night helped to curb food cravings - I wasn't hungry, it was more the habit of putting something in my mouth in the evenings

Day 3 - things are looking up.  I made a black iced coffee in the morning to see if I could drink it like that and YEP! I now have my morning coffee this way just to get it in me.  No problems with hunger or anything.

Days 4-7 more of the same

So the moral of the story is, I am really happy and feel like I will be able to keep this up!

Checking in and the start of an IF trial

This morning's weight: 192

I read a nice analogy today on 3FC about dieting and weight loss, and how individuals deal with the inevitable ups and downs.  The comparison was to the children's game Chutes and Ladders, with the bottom line being that instead of focusing on the moments of our lives that are chutes, look forward to the next ladder.

I think I have been in a perpetual chute since the end of 2011.  I hit 144 pounds, a mere 4 freakin' pounds away from my GOAL, and something happened.  It is an intangible something.  I did not give up.  I did not lose faith in my ability to maintain a healthy lifestyle.  I did not decide to get fat again.

Partially I got lazy.  Counting calories and weighing every little thing is sooo tiring.  Cooking special meals constantly and dreaming up substitutions all the time is draining.  As time has crept onward, I have found it easier to just snack on little things, not really eat big meals, and just  try to keep track in my head what I ate.  Big mistake.  Huge.  52 pounds of mistake.

The other part of this downward spiral is this sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious state of mind I get into.  I call it my "Fugue State".  It happens when I am in the midst of eating something I shouldn't, or just moments after it is already consumed. My hand-mouth-brain connection gets messed up.  Sometimes I tell myself mid gulp "I will eat less later" or "I'm still within my allowance!"  or sometimes it is "fuck, did I just eat that, really?"

I want to slim down again.  I really do.  Thank goodness I have only gained back 52 pounds, and that has taken me a full 2 years which I think, on average, is better  than where most folks end up.  Most statistics I have read have said that when people lose weight, they generally put it all back on, plus some extra. 

Every time I try to reboot my eating plan it fails on day 4.  I have a hand-written journal that I keep with me to jot down little things.  It is not very full, but there are enough musings in there that I was able to track at least that much.  One other thing that I know about myself (and was reminded of after reading the aforementioned journal through) is that I am truly an all-or-nothing kind of gal.  Which is why what I have been doing the past 2 years isn't working.

So, all of this adds up to the conclusion that I need a new plan, where I can have tighter control, but think about it all less.  Sounds like an impossibility but I believe I may have found an option.

I should also mention that I still eat extremely healthy - it is my portion over the course of the day that is the problem.  I am still sugar free.  I still limit my bread intake.  I still don't eat out very often (once a month?) nor do I eat processed foods for the most part (sometimes my little snacks are bits of my husbands unhealthy foodstuffs.  Tasty, tasty garbage...).

I discovered the idea intermittent fasting (IF) again, although this is my first time at trying it.  I had heard about it over a year ago and poo-poo'd the idea out of hand without doing any research into it.  In my quest to be a lazy dieter, I have now looked into it.  I think this is something that might work for me.  You can do your own research into it, but basically you give yourself a window of eating and never eat outside of that window.  In my case, I am starting with 8 hours of feeding (8am-4pm)  w/ 16 hours of fasting.  YOu adjust as you go.  One doc suggested that the final time frame is more like 4/20, but I am not about to attempt that right out of the gate.

This lets me be lazy in that I can figure out my calories for my week (the breakfast and lunch that I bring with me to work are always the same) and then I don't have to think about food or calories once I leave my office for the day.

It feels like a brilliant plan.

Today is day 2 and I am happily ensconced in my feeding phase right now,  ha!.  I have been eating cashews, had some soup, and my breakfast, and I still have a salad and an egg for the tail end of the day.  I will end up at 1600 calories today.  I am letting myself have some extra for these first few days.  I will knock it down to 1400 as soon as I feel I can physically handle that, and then ultimately might try for 1200.  However, with the fact that I run 2-3 times a week, and I lift 3 days a week, I don't think I should be cutting calories that much.  If I don't lose a pound a week on 1400, I'll adjust accordingly.

Yesterday was fine.  I really liked that I knew I wasn't going to be eating once I left here.  I didn't get up a million times to look in the fridge or the cabinet.  I just settled into what I was doing (playing eq2) and stuck with it until bed time.  I woke up hungry, but not overly.  Had tea instead of coffee, came into the office.  By 7:30, I felt like I was going to throw up from hunger, but I waited until 8 for breakfast.  I felt floaty headed. 

I had coffee (finally) at 10:30.  HUGE mistake.  I have no idea if I felt like shit (even after breakfast) because I was having caffeine withdrawal, or if it was because of the previous days fast. 

The plan for tomorrow is to have coffee at 8 with my yogurt and see if I get that same feeling again.

This morning's weight: 171.8 (or 171.2 -  now I can't recall)

I am going very strong so far! No lapses, no issues.   In fact, I am not eating enough.  First I had to add 100 calories to my 900 allotment because I wasn't getting enough protein so decided to add an egg.  Over the weekend, I had a "hard" time hitting 800 so I discovered I could make a cookie-like dessert and get the protein and some calories while having dessert! So I took the egg back out of my weekday allotment and will do the cookies instead (6 TBS eggwhites, 200 grams of squash, 2 tsp Konjac powder, plus flavorings and stevia.  375 oven for 25 minutes on parchment paper)

The downside, my menstrual cycle is all effed in the a again, and I can only point to low calories.  Oh and I am already back to a constant state of cold, unless I am drinking something hot or in the hot shower.  Not having your body regulate it's temperature is awful.

This is just a short and sweet check in :)

Until next time!

This morning's weight: 174.6

Wow. A year to the day since my last entry and my big plans for maintenance.  I did not plan the timing of this, I swear.

I took a break from rigid dieting last year.  I somehow managed to struggle the whole year, but it was still a break.  I am still 100% sugar free.  I still steer away from white flour products.  I sort of avoid eating anything but clean,  but therein lies the trouble.

I found myself taking "little tastes" of things my husband had in the house: crackers, cheese, pepperoni, the homemade pizza dough I make for him every couple of weeks.  Those little tastes did me no good, I can assure you.  I also went way crazy with fruit, especially raisins (taken by the mouthful, or along with spoonfuls of natural peanut butter)  and bowls of frozen mixed fruit covered in chocolate baking powder and stevia. 

I think that most people without food issues would look at my idea of treats and say "uh yeah that is all healthy stuff...".  Yes it is, for most people.  But I have to face the facts.  I have food issues so I overeat.  And I have severe metabolic issues, so 1600 calories a day makes me gain weight (yes I am on meds, but it doesn't change my calorie reality).

The end result is that I gained 31 pounds over the course of 2012 when I was supposed to be maintaining.

I can chalk it up to a learning experience I think (hell, something good has to come out of it, right?).  Things I learned:

• My brain has a mind of it's own if I am not being strict
• I experience what I can only refer to as a fugue state where I don't have control over what I am putting in my mouth
• Counting calories is a pain in the ass, but the only way I have of corralling myself
• If I am not thinking about food most of the time (what I am going to eat, what I can't eat, the reasons for eating, the reasons for not eating) then I am unconsciously snacking
• 1400 calories or thereabouts is my maintenance level of calories (how freaking sad is that)
• I can't talk myself into being good one day here or there, or letting myself have treat days here or there : I am an all or nothing girl
• dieting is tiring, but if I want to stay healthy, I need to keep at it
• trying to talk myself in to being good doesn't work right away; something needs to click for me to be able to move forward. I don't know what that thing is.  It just happens.

 After months of me nightly berating myself and telling myself that "today was the last day I am overeating and I am going back to my strict way of dieting" it finally clicked last week and I am back to being strict again.  In fact, at least for now, I am stricter than I ever was in the past.  

I got on the scale last week and it was flickering between 181 and 178 (maybe my scale needs new batteries...).  I have put myself on a 900* calorie allowance until my stomach shrinks and my body finishes detoxing all the crap it has accumulated.  I have had a mild headache for 5 straight days now, but I have confidence it will pass.  I am already down to 174.6, most of which I know is a combo of water weight and my cycle coming to an end.  But there is a confidence boost and positive feedback I crave to keep going another day.

Right now, all I really want is to feel good again.  I am feeling puffy for lack of a better word.  My fingers feel pudgy.  I am having a harder time crossing my legs.  My favorite pants are hugging my thighs to the point I don't want to wear them as I feel they may tear.  My wedding ring is tight enough that it is sweating under the band and causing a skin reaction.  I am snoring more.  I am sleeping on my arms again and they are falling asleep / pins and needles pain up to the elbow and keeping me up all night. So in the immediate, my goals for re-losing are to feel better.

Once I am back to not feeling rolly-polly, I need to figure out some goals other than to "look good" at the wedding I am in come October.  Which,of course, I do want to look good.  Oh and I want to run again.  That has fallen to the way side a bit, and now it is too cold and too dark to start training up.  I'd like to start mountain biking this spring/summer.  It will be better on my old lady knees.

I have always thrived on goals during this process, so I definitely need to work on some of those.

I'll have to go through and update some of the pages on this blog.  I know I have a couple of people who poke their heads in, but mostly this is my personal log of this journey I am on.  I need to update my goals and want to add a page of meal plans that I can refer to when I forget what a 900 calorie day looks like.

Anyway, until next time (and hopefully that will be way sooner than January 3 of 2014!)...

*How did I come up with 900?  If 1400 is my maintenance, and I want to lose a pound a week, I need a 500 a day deficit. 500 x 7 = 3500 calories = 1 pound.  Of course, with severe hypothyroidism, 3500 calories for me is probably only half a pound or whatever, but since I don't have a scientific lab set up in my garage for testing my exact numbers, I just have to go with the generally accepted knowledge.